management BS – Page 2 – My thoughts on everything

ODWB

Quick bball update and then on to my clash with the old guy who lives in my building. We have had 3 practice games so far. Scrimmages out here are serious business. They all have 3 refs and the coaches treat them like real games. Foreigners throughout the league are already getting cut for under-performing. Thankfully my team has been cruising. I don’t want to be overconfident, but right now we are looking pretty damn good. The teams we have played are supposed to be decent and we have been blowing them out. The first game we were up 28-3 after 6 minutes. We have 3 solid guards, a 4 who can bomb from the perimeter, and a big who finishes everything. Offensively we will be a tough match up. I have been playing pretty well. Nothing special, just solid. Over the 3 games I have averaged 12 points, about 4 assists and 4 rebounds, with some steals sprinkled in. I can for sure score more, but as long as we’re winning and I’m playing I’ll be happy. Continue reading “ODWB”

Start of Year 3 in Israel

I have arrived in Israel for the 3rd straight year. If you had told me in 2005 that upon graduating college I would spend 27 of the next 36 months in Israel I would have never believed it. Yet here I am, on a team called Beer Yaakov. The city is right outside of Tel Aviv and is very close to all sorts of interesting places. That does not matter to me as much as it normally would because I am car-less this year. Yes, my time in Haifa was so disastrous that I could not even sign a contract that included a vehicle. So it goes. The silver lining is that I won’t have to pay for gas anymore, which was where like half my paychecks went last year. Continue reading “Start of Year 3 in Israel”

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

Trip to the North

It is well-known that outside of basketball I live an extremely lazy life out here. To accomodate this life I went through great pains to black out my room by thumbtacking clothes over the window. With the complete blackness and the use of earplugs (so as to not hear the moaning, dying cats or the buzzing fridge) I can, and do, sleep uninterrupted for 10-12 hours a night. It’s pretty awesome. Except when you almost sleep through a pre-season game. That’s when the plan backfires. Continue reading “Trip to the North”

Summer Recap/Back In Israel

Quick recap of my summer:

I spent May just kind of putzing around doing nothing other than working out with my brother and shooting at the high school. This actually could be a pretty complete recap of my summer as a whole. A lot of working out in my front yard, shooting at my high school and watching TV with JD and Catie. But there were some other interesting things. I started playing with a semi pro team in the IBL called the LA Lightening. I was very lukewarm to the idea at first, especially after not playing that much in my first game. But after a while I got comfortable, the other PG left, and I had my best and most fun stretch of basketball in a long time. Granted a lot of the teams we played were complete garbage, but there were some pretty solid squads in there too. Some notable people on my team: Continue reading “Summer Recap/Back In Israel”

Game/My Apartment

I have had a resurgence the past month and actually resemble a real basketball player at this point. I have averaged 16 and 4 the past 3 games and we picked up 2 crucial wins. The most recent game was especially fun because the crowd was really into it. It was tight pretty much the whole way and featured a few memorable moments. The first came in the 3rd quarter after we had finally built up a little momentum and seized a 2 point lead. Then they came down and our big guy got called for a foul. This guy is pretty much the Rasheed Wallace of the league. He definitely has accumulated enough techs and pissed off enough refs to become a target for their calls. As I have noted before the refs here are remarkably awful, but the disrespect our big man shows is still over the top. Continue reading “Game/My Apartment”