complaining – My thoughts on everything

Why Eurobasket Sucks

Eurobasket.com is the largest website in the world that exclusively reports on overseas basketball. Most people have never heard of it, but it is required viewing for anyone playing abroad. It actually does a decent job of aggregating the scores and stats from leagues all over the world, but it does so using the ugliest, clunkiest website known to man.

The site is, quite frankly, hard to look at. The layout is hopelessly cluttered, there is no intuitive way to locate old posts, and it is chock full of obnoxious advertisements. Also, the main page is extra awkward because they shoehorn video clips into the middle of the headlines.

One of the front page video clips you can access is a 2 minute highlight of Yugoslavia vs South Korea from the 1996 Olympic games. It has 5 views on youtube, and I think I account for 3 of them.

Timely! At least can’t accuse them of chasing trends.

Continue reading “Why Eurobasket Sucks”

Who Are These Guys??

You have to sign a general D-League contract in order to be eligible for the draft. The league has a vetting process to make sure that only the most qualified people are in the draft pool.

The final list of players eligible for the D-League draft was just released. I was not one of the 261 people on the list. That is going to make things quite difficult for me in the “getting drafted” department.

I had a small chance of being selected even if I was eligible, but it would have been nice to be included. Particularly because of some of the other players that made the cut.

I want to look at some of the shorter people that are in the draft pool, because they are presumably my competition. Keep in mind that everyone listed at 6’0 is probably 5’10, and everyone listed at 5’11 is more like 5’8. That’s just the way basketball works.
For instance, see Courtney Lee, and his 6’5 listing.

I played some pickup against Lee a few years ago, and he is MAYBE 6’3 if he is wearing thick soled shoes and did an hour of yoga that morning. But there is no downside to listing yourself as taller than you are, so you’d be foolish not to.

And just to be clear, I am the last person to denigrate someone just because they are relatively unknown. There are tons of people out there who can thrive if they get an opportunity. Maybe one of these guys will get drafted and have a great career, and if so, more power to them. One of them might have absolutely killed during a tryout. Who knows. It’s just from where I’m sitting, these people seem to be particularly under qualified for inclusion in the draft. Continue reading “Who Are These Guys??”

Hazing

When a bunch of athletes are constantly hanging out with each other, it is natural for a lot of trash talking to go on. But if you are a small, white, Ivy League grad, you are probably going to deal with more crap than the average person. That is just the way the world works. There are a couple of main points people like me have to contend with. Continue reading “Hazing”

Philly Airport

I had a layover in the Philadelphia airport on my flight back home. My terminal featured no fewer than 8 strategically placed TV’s that played a Philadelphia infomercial every 3 minutes or so. It’s volume was offensively loud. I imagine someone high up in the airports marketing department pitching this: “Sitting down and zoning out out in front of the terminal is going the way of the dodo. My research shows we will get people to waste money at our dumpy little shops if we bombard them with an obnoxious advertisement. The key is that the we play it at decibels that pierce even the best headphone technology. People will never resent us for the shameless self promotion. It’s a no brainer!”

Make a corny, over produced, questionably factual, transparent cry for attention if you must, but don’t replay it every 3 minutes. There needs to be some sort of Geneva Convention type thing to establish protocols for the humanitarian treatment of airport travelers. If that came to be then this commercial would certainly be found in violation of everything that is decent and the creators would be punished appropriately.

Keep in mind that there were TV’s placed all throughout the terminal, so there was no way to escape the audio-visual bludgeoning other than to hide in the bathroom. Here’s my breakdown: Continue reading “Philly Airport”

Bitter Thoughts

Initially, it was the best news I had received in years. My owner and coach pulled me aside after I had helped my 2nd division team win its 5th straight game. They told me that I was being called up to the first division. I could not believe my good fortune. I had been waiting for this day since the second I landed in Israel last year, and I really did not think it would come until next season. But, a confluence of circumstances allowed my chance to come early. Haifa suffered some guard injuries and were playing terribly, and I was playing my best basketball since like 2007.The stuff I went through in Tivon has been well catalogued, but let me just briefly go over some of the highlights (lowlights?): Continue reading

More Summer/ More BBall

To begin, I need to mention that I also visited Seattle and Chicago this summer. While I was in Seattle people kept telling me it was the first time the temperature had risen above 75 in something like 200 days. I found that hard to believe, but I was happy to be there when it wasn’t overcast. I met some awesome people and basically spent the whole time at a pool, on a lake, playing a board game or out on the town. It was pretty amazing. Some highlights: Continue reading “More Summer/ More BBall”