D's Notebook

Tag: basketball (Page 1 of 41)

Weekend Notes

July 23, 2024 /

Belated notes after a morning of driver’s ed, some cleaning up after our travels, and starting to prep for our next trip.

Kid Hoops

Five months of travel ball came to an end this weekend in Louisville. L’s team went 2–2, losing both of their bracket games. It was a very weird weekend.

Like last week, the courts were filled with teams from all over the country. We saw teams from Georgia, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Texas, Virginia, California, Tennessee, Arkansas, Missouri, Kansas, West Virginia, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Alabama, Oklahoma, Iowa, New Jersey, and Nebraska.

Saturday we started against a team from Michigan. We led by seven at halftime unofficially. I say unofficially because the old dude running the clock and scoreboard had no idea what he was doing. At one point we had seven points even though we had not hit a 3 or a free throw, thus should have been on an even number. Later, when we did hit a 3, he gave both teams two points. Our assistant coach keeps track of stats on an iPad and tried to correct him multiple times, but old man was not having it. So, officially, we were just up four at the half. The dad from the other team who was keeping the official book was no help. He tracked the score with slash marks rather than numbers. So, for example, when L hit a 3-pointer, rather than write down a 3 on his sheet, he wrote down III. Thus he couldn’t reconcile his scoring to our coach’s digital version. Three of us rotate keeping the book when it is our team’s responsibility, and we took turns ripping this guy and discussing our scoring methods when we heard this after the game.

Anyway…we trailed 45–37 with about six minutes left before our girls got their shit together and ripped off a very nice 18–2 run to put the game away.

We were supposed to play a team from Florida Sunday, but they didn’t make the tournament and we won by forfeit, which also clinched first place in our pool. For some reason despite teams being in four team pools, you only played two pool games.

Weird.

Our coach asked for a replacement game and we got one against a team from Wichita. Since the game didn’t count in the standings, and they were coming straight from another game, the coaches agreed we would play 16 minute halves with a running clock rather than 14 minute halves with dead ball stops. And their coach asked ours not to press because his girls were tired.

So, naturally, our team was the one that looked tired and we trailed 18–2. Our coach said, “OK, we’re pressing now,” and got it down to two points at halftime. Then someone decided the second half would be just 12 minutes.

Whatever, we ended up winning by two.

Weird.

Onto bracket play. We started with a team from Arkansas. All skinny, white girls. They had won their two games both by 30+. Watching them in warmups, I leaned over to another dad and said, “I hate to jinx us, but this doesn’t look like a team that will beat us by 30.”

Any guess what happened next?

Yep, these skinny chicks from the ‘Saw ran our girls off the court. We hit one 3 in the first half. They missed one, going 7–8. We were down 35 at one point. But, hey, we got it down to 29 so I wasn’t wrong!

Their coach was a true piece of work. She ranted and raved the entire game. At halftime she screamed at her girls like they were down 15 not up 15. She yelled at our dad who was keeping the book when he tried to help her get her roster in. She yelled at the very nice older woman who was running the clock. I think her team played so good because they were genuinely frightened of making her mad and getting murdered.

Monday morning, our loser’s bracket game, against another team from the same program as the one we beat in game one. Nice little game. We trailed most of the first half but started the second half on an 8–1 run to jump up by six. Gave it all back and trailed by 4–5–6 most of the last six minutes. We put on a surge late but came up just short, losing by two. The real killer was we had a stretch where everyone kept selling out on the offensive boards and letting them get run-outs because no one got back. They scored six points on layups when we had no one within ten feet of the scorer. That’s the ballgame, right there.

I was keeping the book this game and their coach got super salty at the end of the game. She had been pretty quiet most of the day but in the last five minutes started screaming about every call. When her team was late coming out of a timeout and ref put the ball on the floor and started counting, she kept yelling “That’s fucked up!” over and over. When we fouled to put them on the line, she was all over the ref about how it was an intentional foul. She would not let up. The ref warned her multiple times before she finally walked away but kept yapping. Later we decided it would have been hilarious if she got T’ed up in the last 10 seconds of a two-point game and we won because she was an idiot.

Alas…

L did ok. Her best game was that last one, when she scored nine and had three assists and two steals. She scored 4, 7, and 5 in the other three games. She hit a couple threes but otherwise all of her scoring continued to be by finishing tough drives. She was, again, pissed that her team struggles because half the players don’t know the plays. She has basically told me she doesn’t care where she plays next year, as long as it’s on a team that practices. Once again it was glaringly obvious that every team we played gets regular practice time together. The close wins would have been more comfortable, I think we could have hung with that Arkansas team, and we win the last game if we practice a couple times a week.

Not the best ending for the team. I see some real growth in L’s game. Her finishing has gotten a lot better. Her defense has improved. Her free throws were much improved until the last two weeks. She actually airballed one on Monday. Yikes. We need to keep working on the jumper and her being better with both hands when facing tough defenders.

She had her last CHS weight lifting session of the summer today, has her last open gym tomorrow. They’ll take a few weeks off and in late August probably start doing some morning open gyms. After we get back from vacation we’ll figure out if she’s going to do any private work with teammates like she did in June, or we focus on individual workouts.

Feature Court

We had a couple hours to kill between games Sunday so a couple dads and I checked out the feature court, where the semifinals of the U–16 tournament were taking place. There were bleachers on one side and double rows of chairs for college coaches. When we walked up there was a game between a team from Ohio and one from Colorado going on. There were so many college coaches there that the IU head coach had to stand next to us since all the seats were taken. Eventually she got away from us schmucks.

We also saw coaches from Syracuse, USC, UCLA, Cal, Notre Dame, Ohio State, Alabama, Tennessee, Louisville, and Wisconsin.

I know I’ve shared this before, but it is really incredible watching these high-level games. Teams will run out 3–4 girls who are well over six feet tall. They can all shoot, rebound, and get up-and-down the court insanely fast.

Later we watched a team from Oakland that is sponsored by Jason Kidd. Bradley Beal had teams there. Good to see those guys supporting the women’s game!

Hotels

I forgot to mention last week that we finally stayed at decent hotels. In Cincinnati we were in a Courtyard and you would have thought we were in a luxury resort the way the girls acted when we checked in. Our coach said, “See, those nights in the bad hotels made them appreciate this more than they did before.”

True.

We were in a Hilton Garden Inn this week. It was perfectly fine. We gambled a little by booking there, which was just a couple minutes from the expo center where the tournament took place. It was not on the official hotel list, so we didn’t have an approved reservation number when we pre-registered the girls for the tournament. When they checked in to get their tournament badges, they had to show proof of lodging. I nervously stood to the side with another team dad while our daughters checked in, waiting to get called over and be asked to pay the “opt out fee” but they both got their badges and we hustled out.

Again, big fucking racket. It cost $70 to get in for the weekend, a bottled soda was $5, parking was $12 per day. And then they want you to stay only at the mediocre hotels that are on their list. We decided that’s why our hotel wasn’t on the “approved” list: there was a free shuttle so you didn’t have to pay for parking.

Democracy

Well, two weekends in a row that were monumental for news regarding our electoral process. Where last week’s news was an unwelcome surprise, Sunday’s news that President Biden was dropping out of the race was the exact opposite. It seemed inevitable and probably best for everyone. We tend to avoid talking politics in our AAU parent group, but this news had us cautiously discussing it, mostly regarding the historical ramifications rather than what we thought of any of the candidates involved.

I don’t know that Biden’s move saves the Democrats’ hopes this fall, but it for sure helps them. I think he’s a good person and that his presidency will generally be regarded as decent. He did some big things that benefitted a lot of people, including many who didn’t vote for him in 2020 and had zero chance of voting for him this year. But he inherited a disaster of an economy on the heels of an insurrection designed to overthrow our democracy. All his big projects, while good in the long term, may have been ill timed given the health of the economy, extending the inflationary period beyond the Covid days. Then again, our economy was so jacked that maybe anything any president did would have had as many negative effects as positive ones as we tried to get supply back in sync with demand.

Now we just have to hope Kamala is up for the fight that is ahead. JD Vance has already rolled out the lazy “she’s not grateful enough” line that tends to get attached to women and minorities. I’m sure that’s going to be repeated constantly over the next four months. Fortunately, she is facing a horrible human being that most of the country does not like. Seems like a low bar but we failed to clear it eight years ago and nearly tripped over it four years ago.

Weekend Notes

July 16, 2024 /

What a weekend! I assume a lot happened in the world, but last weekend was a live period for college basketball recruiting, and there were several massive tournaments in the Midwest. We played against or saw teams from Pennsylvania, Washington state, California, Colorado, North Carolina, Massachusetts, Michigan, Georgia, Illinois, Connecticut, Virginia, New York, New Jersey, Nevada, Kentucky, Ohio, Kansas, Missouri, plus a ton of teams that didn’t have a location in their name so we couldn’t identify them.

The best player I saw was a 6’5”-ish girl from Michigan. I randomly walked over to her game as it was ending. The seats reserved for college coaches were filled. People were lined up three-deep around the court. I only saw her line up for a rebound so didn’t see anything of her game. I also tried to find her on a recruiting list but had no luck. Of course, while she plays for a Michigan team, she could be from anywhere, so without a name I was kind of stabbing in the dark.

L’s team had seven games in five days, in two different tournaments, in two different cities, so the days are a bit of a blur. I didn’t see any of Spain’s fantastic Sunday, Tadej Pogacar blowing open the Tour de France, the Home Run Derby, or anything else that was newsworthy. Fingers crossed nothing happened that will be in the history books one day.

Kid Hoops

No need to give a full breakdown of all seven of L’s games. That would take too long plus they run together to me at this point. It wasn’t a great weekend, anyway. Her team went 1–6 in those seven games.

Two of losses were against teams we had no business being on the same court. Both play the equivalent of two levels up from where L’s team is slotted in the AAU hierarchy. Thursday we lost to a team from Pittsburgh by 25. Friday we lost to a team from North Carolina by about the same score, but where we were only down 10 at the half in the first game, we were down 10–0 two minutes into the second game.

We later learned that North Carolina doesn’t have the same restrictions as Indiana when it comes to high school teammates playing together. In Indiana, only three girls from the same high school program can play travel ball together. There are zero rules in North Carolina, so this team was mostly from the same school. Not only have they been playing together for years, they play together year-round. Makes sense that they looked like a well-oiled machine.

Plus they were just really good. Their best player scored 23, and we had a running clock for the last 17 minutes of the game. She hit 3’s. She drove and scored. She blocked shots and grabbed rebounds. An athletic, 6’1”-ish player. I wish I had written down her name to follow if she ends up anywhere in three years.

Another loss came in double overtime to a team from the Seattle area. I missed this game but I guess we had every chance to win in regulation and OT, but blew both, then L had a chance to win the game in the second OT but didn’t get a foul call. In this tournament double OT ended when a team was up two points. In our second tournament, double OT was timed and the third OT was sudden death. Can we get some consistent rules here, tournament organizers?

The fourth loss was the most frustrating of the weekend. This was to another team from that same North Carolina program. We started up 12–0 before giving up a 14–0 the other way. The rest of the game was back-and-forth. L hit a 3 with about 3:00 left to give us the lead, but we gave up an immediate 3 on the other end and never got the lead back. Our girls just faded badly and couldn’t handle the physicality of summer ball.

These first four games were here in Indy. Sunday we drove down to Cincinnati for two days.

We lost the first game by 11. Again, we wilted against the physical nature of summer ball and trailed by 14 at the half. We finally started being tough in the second half and cut it to three but gave up back-to-back 3s that killed us. L had a half-court shot go in-and-out at the halftime buzzer. I told her if that had dropped, we would have won. The math doesn’t work out there but I insist the momentum shift would have been massive.

Finally, in game six, we played a bad team from Colorado. It took us a half to get going but ended up winning by 25.

Then Monday we finished against a team from New Jersey. They kept getting up by 5–7, then we would come back. We had a little run right after halftime and got it down to three. L missed a tough runner to cut it to one, we gave up a 12–0 run, and the game was over.

Yikes.

I mentioned this a couple times in there but our girls just looked super uncomfortable with the adjustment to travel rules after playing high school ball in June. Refs call almost nothing in travel ball to keep the clock moving. So teams are super physical knowing they can get away with it, and our nice, mostly suburban girls, just do not like that. I bet we win at least two of those games we lost with high school rules in place.

Plus you could tell that all seven teams we played against practice on a regular basis, where we had a couple partial practices around the holiday weekend that never had more than half the team there. There was a lot of grumbling from our parents about how our program needs to change their high school model, which does not allow for regular team practices except for the highest level teams. Our organization will have its own facility starting this fall. We hope that means the high school girls can get at least one practice per week in there, but there’s been no word about next year’s model yet.

Our team is not the most talented – I’d say we have one girl who would be a varsity player at any school, and then not until she’s a junior or senior – but they are very smart and when they had a chance to play together a lot in May, looked really good against similar competition. Getting practice time would not make a difference against those high level teams. I’m confident we would have won at least two more games if we practiced on a regular basis.

How did L do?

She had two really good games, then was decent in the others.

She guessed she scored 13 or 15 in that double OT game, but didn’t look at the scorebook to confirm. Our coach texted me and said she played well and did a great job getting to the rim and finishing in that game.

She had 13 in the game we blew the big lead. She should have had 15 but she totally wiped out on a breakaway. She claimed there were wet spots all over the court and slipped on one. She also had four assists and three steals in this game.

In the other five games, she averaged just under five points. Didn’t hit many 3s. Like most of her teammates she had way too many turnovers. Her free throws had been great all summer, but something was off there this weekend and she went just 1–5 (that I saw).

You can definitely see how all her work has paid off in her finishing. She was super aggressive all weekend and had her fair share of shots blocked inside. But she’s learned how to find an angle and get a shot up on the rim that often falls in. She takes some crazy-ass shots sometimes, but a decent amount of them either crawl in or at least have a chance where they used to be wild tosses that had no chance.

She was not enthused on the way home. She’s pissed more about her team and their inability to get on the same page than the losses. She complains about girls that don’t know the plays. Our offense is not super complicated but, again, when you don’t practice, teammates who aren’t like her and learn where everyone is supposed to be quickly are going to struggle. A couple girls in particular were always in the wrong spot on both ends and it killed us in a couple games.

On the other hand, one of our girls who is new to basketball and is struggling to figure out how 6’1” body and a new game at the same time had a couple stretches where she was really good.

We go to Louisville next weekend for our final event of the summer. Based on the early, partial schedule we’ve seen, we should be playing teams closer to our skill level. Fingers crossed…

Teeth

It’s been a rough dental summer in our house. All the girls have had to get multiple fillings. Pretty awesome when we just have a preventative dental plan.

Both M and C have had to go in for multiple visits to get everything fixed. One of C’s new fillings was giving her a lot of trouble. So, rather than go to L’s first game Friday, I took C to the endodontist for a consult. Fortunately there’s no need for a root canal at the moment. The doc was hopeful that the sensitivity is just because the filling is so close to the nerve and in time there will be new calcification that insulates the nerve better. But there is also the chance C will still need a root canal down the road.

When C told the endodontist she goes to CHS, the doc said her kids graduated from there a few years earlier.

“You probably know their crazy cousins, though.” One of her nephews was in M’s class and they were friendly. Another is in C’s class, but they run in different circles. And her niece is one of L’s best friends. Later we found out that until a few weeks ago the doc lived two doors down from one of M’s best friends. In fact, M went to her daughter’s grad party a few years ago just because she was at her best friend’s house that day. And the doc’s son goes to UC, although he’s older than M and they wouldn’t overlap in classes.

Small world.

Democracy

I don’t write about politics much these days. It depresses me. I think we’re in a very bad place, and headed to a worse one, no matter who wins this year’s elections. Or the 2026 ones. Or the 2028 ones. Our process seems hopelessly broken. Despite it seeming like most rational people want other choices, seek elected officials that will work to find common ground and represent all instead of a narrow set of interests that will keep them from getting primaried, we remain stuck with the mess we’re in.

Yet it seems like I need to share a few words about the shooting Saturday night. Very few words.

Once the initial shock passed and we got some clarity on the situation, the thought I was left with was Malcolm X’s famous line about chickens coming home to roost.

In this case, when you forge a political identity and movement based on fear, hatred, and manufactured bogeymen; make said movement about a person rather than an ideology; endlessly malign and delegitimize anyone and any view that is counter to yours; lie, lie, lie, and lie again; and throw in a heaping dose of paranoia, well, it’s not surprising we got here. All the ingredients are there in America 2024 for a disaster. It’s a bit of a surprise it took this long for us to reach this point. I’m hopeful this was a momentary blip. I fear it was the beginning of an even more difficult and tense time in our nation’s history.

It’s sad when you start hoping climate change destroys the world before our nation has a chance to fall apart.

Weekend Notes

July 1, 2024 /

Originally I planned on taking this week off. We have family coming in on Wednesday, holiday activities the rest of the week, and a busy two days before all that. But plenty happened over the weekend and I have a couple other posts nearly ready to go, so looks like we’ll slide into the holiday on a nearly normal schedule.

NBA Draft

What a weird-ass year. L had a workout Wednesday night so I wasn’t able to watch much of the first round live. I did sit through most of the second round Thursday to track the two Jayhawks.

I say it was a weird draft because in the various NBA podcasts I listen to, there were wild swings in opinion on what the analysts thought of almost every picks and trade. One person would love Houston taking Reid Shepherd at #3. Another couldn’t believe the pick and sees Shepherd, at best, as a backup for the next 10 years. Same for Memphis taking Zach Edey. One guy thought it was an amazing, possibly season-changing, pick. Another isn’t convinced Edey can play in the NBA for more than five minutes a half. Select just about any first round pick and you can find the same range in opinion.

Super bummed that Johnny Furphy had to to sit through the first round. He allegedly got good intel that he would go in the first 30 picks. The NBA thought that, too, thus extending the invitation to the green room Wednesday. By all accounts he likely would have returned to KU had he known he was not going to be a first rounder, which is the true bummer because I think he would have been a fantastic college player in year two.

Now it is cool that he ended up with the Pacers. As of this moment I’m not sure where he fits in, both because of his youth and need to get stronger, and the Pacers current roster construction. He has G-League For A Year written all over him, then maybe he can carve out a role with the big club in the ’25–26 season. Unless Kevin Pritchard has some more moves ahead which will open up an opportunity to play in Indy this year.

I also felt bad for Kevin McCullar. New York might be the ideal franchise for him, if/once he gets healthy, as Coach Tibbs loves guys who are dogs on defense. But this is a player who was generally regarded as one of the best in college basketball and a top 10 pick back in December. Then a stupid injury, and then injuries, derailed his season, KU’s season, and his draft hopes. Because of his size and defensive prowess, he will catch on somewhere. It will take a lot longer to make the money he seemed to have already banked six months ago, though.

I laughed at how like 90% of the guys interviewed after they were drafted mentioned how they were versatile. Saying it doesn’t always make it so, but it’s clear their agents got that buzzword in their heads before they started the draft prep process.

Bronny…I’m so torn on all of it. I don’t think he’s an NBA player right now, and believe there’s a 0% chance he would have been drafted this year were he not LeBron’s son. If the Lakers are smart, he won’t spend a day in the NBA this year – unless they get eliminated from playoff contention and call him up for the last game or something – and he can work on his game without the full spotlight on him. But the Lakers aren’t always a smart organization, at least when it comes to giving LeBron what he desires. I think LBJ legitimately wants Bronny to earn a spot on his own. But if the team is struggling in February, there’s going to be pressure to add Bronny over an established trade target. I hope it all works out for Bronny. He seems like a good kid and has handled the process well. There’s just an enormous amount of pressure on him to succeed.

I do think it is kind of garbage that agent Rich Paul was allegedly calling other teams and telling them not to draft Bronny, threatening that he would play in Australia if they did. Mostly because I don’t think anyone else really wanted to draft him. There were much better guys to take second round flyers on, and LBJ has expressed no interest in playing anywhere other than LA. I thought it was less about nepotism or entitlement than making Bronny seem better than he actually is.

I still think not drafting dudes because they are 22–23–24 years old is dumb. Sure, they may not have the ceilings that 19–20 year olds have. But you can also often plug them into roles a lot easier than those kids that are still learning. Teams that want to win now should never pass on a guy that can step in from day one and be a rotational player.

Kid Hoops

2–2 week last week to end the summer for CHS, leaving them at 13–7 for June. Which isn’t bad considering their roster.

It was a tough week for L. She got beat up physically in games and verbally by her coach and a couple teammates. This is moratorium week in Indiana. The time off comes at the perfect moment.

There were clear lessons for her from a month of varsity-level ball. She needs to get tougher and not shy away from contact. Improve her ball handling and passing a lot. Keep working on her shot. Not let her coach yelling at her get inside her head.

In reality just about all of her teammates have glaring holes in their games. Everyone needs the two-to-three more inches in height she could really use. Everyone could stand to shoot better. She’s a 5’6”-ish sophomore who will play a lot of minutes some games, and likely really struggle in some other games. That’s not too bad in the grand scheme of things.

Between Thursday night’s games there was a little break and she was out shooting with teammates, having fun, and she kept drilling shots. I told her on the way home she needs to find a way to translate that freeness from the moments when she’s messing around into games. If she can do that, it covers up for a lot of flaws.

She had two, one-hour private lessons last week, and a two-hour practice with her travel team Sunday. I’m sure she’ll want to get up early and shoot at least a couple days over the week off. The grind never ends.

Euro Sport

Man, what an embarrassing Euro 24 for the Italians. Can’t score, not talented enough to muddy up the games and hope for a 1–0 win anymore. Almost as embarrassing for the English, who are extraordinarily lucky to be moving on to the quarterfinals. Spain looks phenomenal. Such a shame they will face Germany in Friday’s quarterfinal.

I bought a Peacock subscription Friday night and was up early Saturday to start watching this year’s Tour de France. A completely amazing first stage, which featured the most total climbs ever in an opening day.

The winner of the last two tours, Jonas Vingegaard, suffered a horrific crash in April and almost didn’t enter this year’s Tour. But he’s looked totally healthy through two days. We’ll see if he can keep it up over another 19 days of racing.

Tadej Pogacar, the winner in ’20 and ’21, is the heavy favorite and was in yellow to start today’s race, but four other riders, including Vingegaard, were tied with him for overall time.

Keep checking this space for Tour updates I’m sure you are all very interested in.

Weekend Notes

June 24, 2024 /

We had a very boring weekend.

S worked both days, filling in for a hospitalist who is on maternity leave.

The girls all spent time with friends.

I read, watched some shows, swam.

It was our first weekend in quite awhile where there weren’t multiple things on the calendar that we had to rush around to. It was a nice change-of-pace, as next weekend and the holiday week following will both be very busy.

Kid Hoops

A quick blurb about L’s most recent games. It was a 3–1 week, which was a little unexpected. One team sent their JV squad instead of varsity, giving our girls an unlikely win.

Thursday night CHS took on HSE, which should be a top five 4A team this coming year. HSE has a senior who is ranked in the top 70 in her class headed to IU, and a junior who is ranked in the top 50. The senior is listed at 6’4” but I don’t buy that, as she walked past me after the game and is definitely not taller than me. Despite her size, she’s more of an outside player, and she hit at least five 3s on her way to 25-ish points.

The highlight of the night for us was L having to guard both of those girls on a couple possessions. She got switched onto the IU girl once, and that girl drifted out to the corner to clear the lane for the other D1 kid to drive and score. The next possession she again went to the wing and got the ball. L challenged her, the girl passed away, and when a pass came back and went awry, L chased after it going for the steal. Big girl used her longer arms to grab the ball then blow by L for a layup. Later L had to guard the junior and got hung up on a screen and allowed another layup. She did about all she could and had no chance. Unless she grows another five inches that’s about the best she can hope for against D1 talent. She won’t have to guard many players as good as these two in the coming year, so it was a good experience.

I believe we are 11–5 for the summer with four games left.

Summer Vibes

When we left her games Thursday it was nearly 10 PM. The western sky was aglow with the last hints of daylight on the longest day of the year. That’s one of my favorite parts of summer. Not the long days themselves, but that final glimmer left in the sky in the 30 minutes or so after sunset.

When I was a kid that glow meant the drive-in feature movie was about to start. Or it was time to start chasing fireflies. Or that I had a few minutes of play left before it was time to go inside. Or when I was really young, that I had one last burst of energy before my body started to shut down for the night, often transferred to bed by a parent after collapsing on the couch or floor.

The best part of that final light of the day was that it meant the intense heat of the daylight hours was dissipating, at least a little. Nothing is better than a warm, summer night. I love how the heat that gets absorbed by pavement all day gently radiates long after the sun has disappeared. Walking across the pool deck barefoot at night, on concrete that would have burnt my soles six hours earlier, is one of the great pleasures of summer.

I’ve long been pro-cicada, even in those crazy, infestation years like 2022. Or this year, I guess, a couple hundred miles west of here. The weeks when the fireflies are still abundant and the annual cicadas start bucking their heads are the best weeks of summer.

Worth noting I heard my first cicadas of 2024 Sunday evening.

Speaking of best weeks, I was thinking about how I would rank the best weeks of the year, if the calendar was divided into three week segments.

The first three weeks of June would be awfully high on the list. Most years that means warm, but not yet oppressively hot, days. Humid, but that good, late spring humidity that doesn’t suck the soul from your body like July humidity does. Early June means everything about summer is still fresh and new. Picking berries, sweet corn, building up your tan, going to the pool every day and it still being exciting. My birthday.

What other three week chunks would garner votes?

That’s harder because the other contenders are all kind of sequential. The three weeks after Labor Day, when summer is fading but autumn hasn’t arrived. Any three weeks in October, when the transition of temperatures finally hits in the Midwest. Some three-week section of the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas, when the world is lit up and decorated.

I’ll tell you what three weeks would not be on the list, though: Any three weeks in August. Or January. Or February.

Fuck all of those weeks.

Anyway, we are about to leave one of my favorite times of the year. The heat dome has shifted away from us for the time being. The week ahead looks very nice, a make-up for last week being so brutally hot. If the weather cooperates and our evening schedule allows, I might get to bust out the Solo fire pit for the first time.

Sports Notes

June 20, 2024 /

Time to knock out some sports notes while I avoid going outside and facing Heat Dome ’24.

Say Hey

The incomparable Willie Mays died Tuesday night. I never saw him play live as the tail end of his career just barely overlapped with my life. I did hear the stories and saw the grainy highlight reels. And I remember how those fat, softcover, sports trivia books popular in the late Seventies and early Eighties were always filled with amazing facts about his career. Willie, at worst, was on of the four best players ever. At worst.[1]

I sent a few of you this statement after the news of his death broke. I’m pretty proud of it so will repeat it for my blog readers:

Willie should have kicked Joe DiMaggio’s ass when the Yankee Clipper insisted on being introduced as “The Greatest Living Baseball Player” late in his life. It was asinine, dishonest, and offensive to suggest Joe D was better than the Say Hey Kid.

Rany Jazayerli has a great piece on The Ringer breaking down how Mays was even better than the raw numbers suggest. I know all about the time Ted Williams missed because of his military service in World War II and the Korean War. I did not know, or did not recall, Mays missed nearly two years when he served in Korea. Even for a player as accomplished as he was, those two years made a massive difference in his career production.

Willie Mays Was the Greatest Baseball Player Who Ever Lived

Royals

I’ve been paying more attention to the Royals over the past month or so. Figures that whatever fueled their hot start over the first two months of the season seems to have fizzled over that stretch. It is nice that they aren’t terrible, though. I’ve been on the verge of resubscribing to either MLB.TV to watch or At Bat to listen several times, but then they lose a couple games and I figure I watch/listen to other stuff at night so why upset my routine. Then again, At Bat is only $30…

Pacers

It won’t be official for a couple more weeks when the NBA calendar turns over, but word has it that the Pacers and Pascal Siakam have agreed on a big contract extension. There wasn’t much doubt; word around the NBA was that Siakam would not agree to be traded to a team he was not interested in re-signing with. There were some rough patches early, but eventually he fit in well with his new teammates. Add a summer of working out together plus a 100% healthy Tyrese Haliburton next season and the Pacers should be firmly in the second tier of the Eastern Conference behind Boston.

NBA Finals

What a boring series. Boston is the least impressive great team I can recall. That isn’t really fair. Almost every game, though, they have one terrible quarter which keeps you from thinking, “Wow, this team is incredible!” They have two legit stars in Jaylen Brown and Jason Tatum, a perfect compliment (when healthy) in Kristaps Porzingis, and remarkable role players in Jrue Holiday and Derrick White. White, especially, floors me every game when he makes multiple “HOLY SHIT!!!” defensive plays.

The Celtics definitely got a great draw, with Jimmy Butler, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Joel Embiid, and the entire Knicks roster injured and then Haliburton getting hurt during the Eastern Conference Finals and the Denver Nuggets getting knocked out of the Western Conference semis by Minnesota. That shouldn’t distract from a magnificent season and a team that is poised to be, perhaps, the next NBA dynasty getting the Finals monkey off their backs.

Olympic Swimming Trials

Big week here in Indy with the Olympic swimming trials at Lucas Oil Stadium, which is obviously a little weird. The closest we came to attending was having dinner with some friends who were in town to attend and dropping them off at the gates before we headed home.

I highly suggest finding one of the videos showing how they built the pools inside a football stadium. Wild stuff, and roughly 20,000 people a night are coming in to watch.

It’s been a good week for the local swimmers, with several athletes who either went/go to high school in the Indy suburbs, or attend(ed) IU or Notre Dame making the Olympic roster so far. I guess swimmers can come from anywhere, and the high school/club swim programs in Carmel are some of the absolute best in the world, but it is always weird to me that landlocked Indiana can crank out such high level swimmers.

The schedule for the week seems weird to me. Or at least the TV schedule. Some nights NBC showed swimming for an hour. Some nights two hours. I get that they have airtime to fill, and buzz to create for the Paris games. But seems like the trial meet used to be over a long weekend instead of stretched across a week.

Also I’m preemptively complaining about local NBC stations sending reporters to the Olympics. Absolutely zero need for it and their little puff pieces they file for the local news are terrible 99% of the time.

  1. Mays, Babe Ruth, Hank Aaron, Barry Bonds in some order. Your mileage may vary on Bonds.  ↩

Weekend Notes

June 17, 2024 /

Father’s Day came at the right moment. After three very busy days preceding it, Sunday was a nice day to relax and not have to be anywhere. S got us donuts for breakfast. We had my in-laws over for dinner, eating some carry-out barbecue. I received a Solo fire pit as a combo Father’s Day/birthday gift. Based on the forecast, I might get to use it sometime in 2025. L and I played two rounds of Cornhole; we started a summer-long competition last week and I currently lead 3–0. These are best of three matches and I’ve been lucky to win two of those, so really anyone’s ballgame at this point.

The only bummer was our pool has developed an issue – some kind of algae – that required me to pour 14 gallons of liquid chlorine into it Thursday evening. If you don’t own a pool, that’s a lot. So much that it made the water too toxic to swim in while it hopefully does its magic and kills off whatever had been eating the chlorine. Fingers crossed it will get back to normal this week, although now the water temp has creeped up and it’s not super refreshing.

Donuts With Dad

Friday morning I attended a Donuts With Dad breakfast for one of my nephews at his daycare. K is one of the two boys my sister-in-law A has adopted on her own. I did the same thing for his big brother M three years ago.

These events are fun because 1) a bunch of dads at a daycare is always a little awkward and 2) K and M are both Black, and they attend a Black-owned daycare that has only Black kids. A few things made me chuckle, and I hope everyone understands I offer these observations with respect for the folks running the facility, love for my nephews, and am mostly making fun of myself.

When I arrived the owner’s husband greeted me at the door. I’m not sure if he got the memo I would be coming because he paused for a moment before letting me in until I introduced myself. Then he was super friendly and thanked me for coming. A few minutes later his wife walked through the room and greeted me by saying, “I remember you,” as she passed by.

That made me laugh to myself. Guessing there aren’t a lot of other relatives like me who come in for special days.

The other dads, grandfathers, uncles rolled in and we sat in stilted silence. I would imagine any of them who pick up their kids/grandkids from the center know my sister-in-law, so weren’t surprised to see a white dude there. But I’m sure a few were curious about my presence.

Before they brought the children over, the owner’s five-year-old wandered in. It was his graduation day and he was dressed up for the occasion. His father asked him, “Have you said hello to the brothers?” The kid then made a circuit around the room, shaking everyone’s hand. He didn’t seem fazed by me and said “Good morning,” as he shook my hand. In my head I was again laughing at the prospect of him skipping me because I wasn’t a brother.

Again, more making fun of myself than my hosts.

K eventually came in and handed me a card he had colored. He looked super tired and not into the events. That’s standard for him. We jokingly say he’s an 80-year-old man trapped in a four-year-old’s body. He gave me a hug and stood next to me silently. I tried a number of questions that he answered sleepily without much enthusiasm. Until I asked him if he heard the storms overnight. That got him going and he told me all about how he heard the thunder, how he stayed in his bed (he did not), how he never goes into his mom’s room (he always goes in there), and on and one. He didn’t stop talking until I left.

The owner’s husband gave a nice little speech about the importance of father figures. He asked us all to say something about what parenthood means to us. The kid ate donuts and ate orange juice.

K and his family stopped by our house Sunday and he was still talking about the orange juice, so it must have been the good stuff. Or maybe my sister-in-law just never gets OJ.

Kid Hoops

L had six games in three days last week.

In the Thursday summer league, CHS played both Lawrence North, who should be a top five team this fall, and Lawrence Central, who went 30–1 last year, won state, and return just about everyone.[1]

There was a rising senior showcase elsewhere in town, so most of the teams were missing their best upperclassmen. LN did not have their stud point guard, but had a perfectly acceptable replacement and most of the rest of their team. We closed the first half on a little 4–0 run and went to halftime down seven. The dad I was sitting with and I felt pretty good about things. Then our girls gave up a 23–1 run in the third quarter. We ended up losing by 23, but fought hard to get it from 32 to 23 in the closing minutes. I thought our girls played hard but were just up against a much better team. L actually felt pretty good after this game.

LC was basically playing their JV. Their best player, who was the Indiana Gatorade player of the year as a junior, and her younger sister were both sitting and watching in street clothes. None of their other varsity starters were even in the building. We started up 11–4 but got sloppy and led by just two at half. The second half was back-and-forth. We trailed by six, got it to two, missed three chances to tie or take the lead in the last 19 seconds, and lost by two. A game we should have won. Even if it was a team full of sophomores and freshmen, it would have been cool to beat the defending state champs.

I don’t think L scored against LN; she had four against LC. She started both games, but two senior starters were gone for either the senior showcase or soccer.

Friday and Saturday we played in a team showcase that college coaches could attend. We saw one coach from Purdue but most were from smaller D1 or lower level schools.

Friday we played a tough 4A team from Fort Wayne. They had two long, athletic wings, a tall shooter, and a 5’11”-ish center who was a joy to watch because of her footwork. They worked us over pretty good and won by 18. L scored four.

Game two was against Jennings County, who just sent a girl to Michigan State but return a very good junior who scored 20+ on us last year. I bet she scored close to 30 Friday. It was actually a really good game. We trailed by nine multiple times but tied it with about three minutes left. L got a rebound, went full court, juked a defender, and then put her floater off the back of the rim. We never had another chance to take the lead and lost by nine, L scoring five.

Saturday the matchups were a little better. We played a semi-rural 3A team to start. Neither team scored for the first four minutes of the game. From there we went on a 33–5 run. We were super sloppy in the second half and only scored like 10 points, but only gave up eight or nine so it was a super comfortable win. L had five.

Our final game was against Norwell, who lost by three in the 3A state title game last spring. They lost seven seniors but were still stacked. They trapped everything, every player was lanky and athletic and aggressive, and they gave us fits for the first two, two-and-a-half quarters of the game. We trailed by eight in the fourth quarter before we finally figured out their pressure and used a 17–2 run to take the lead. We ended up winning by three. Really good way to end a long week. L didn’t play as much in this game because the pressure really bothered her, hitting one long 2 in the first half.

I think the team got better. The coach is figuring some things out about the lineup. I could probably guess our starting lineup and rotation if the real season started this week. I think L would be the first or second person off the bench, depending on what we needed and who the opponent is. She’s also seen what she needs to work on to make sure she gets those minutes after playing against older, bigger, stronger girls for three consecutive days.

US Open

Ugh. I’m glad our dinner with the in-laws coincided with the final 7–8 holes Sunday. Although I did walk in to see Rory McIlroy miss his short putt on 18 that cost him a chance at a playoff. I didn’t realize at the time he had missed a shorter put two holes earlier. Gutting.

I don’t like Bryson, I don’t buy that he’s changed, and some of the clearly PR flack cleared nonsense he was spouting after his win directly contradicts things he’s said before. And it’s patently ridiculous for a grown-ass man to wear the idiotic LIV team logo he has plastered on all his gear. Even with Rory’s meltdown and his disappointing avoidance of the media after, I will perpetually be Team Roars over anyone who has taken the Saudi blood money and claims, with a straight face, to have done so to “grow the game.” Especially when it’s a meathead like Bryson, who has a genuine, amazing gift for golf, but is equally off-putting in his personality and comments. Glad I only watch golf four times a year anymore.

  1. The arch rivals played three times last year. LC won by two in the Marion County tournament, by three in the regular season, and by seven in sectionals after trailing by 14. None of LC’s other wins in the state tournament were closer than 13 points.  ↩

Basketball Notes

June 12, 2024 /

Let’s talk basketball for a few minutes.

Kid Hoops

L has been busy with her high school teammates.

They have activities on the calendar four days a week for most of June. Three weight training sessions, one two-hour open gym, then two different nights with two games. She’s also volunteering at the boys camp this week and will work the girls camp in two weeks. And she has three lessons scheduled with a private trainer with four of her travel teammates. We’ve also gone to the Y a few of her off mornings to get shooting time in.

Girl is working.

When the CHS coach sent out the summer rosters two weeks ago, she did so with a clear disclaimer that these were for summer only, they would likely change week-to-week, and we shouldn’t read anything into where girls will end up in the fall.

Still, L is a varsity player for the summer, and she’s started two of their six games. Again, the rotations have been all over the place. When L has started, she’s been on the court with four upperclassmen. In the second halves of the same games she’s been on the court with two other sophomores and two freshmen. The coach is clearly trying to see how different girls work together, how they handle being asked to do more or just fill specific roles, etc.

I’ve enjoyed watching them play through the first two weeks. While we lost our two tallest girls to graduation, and our only girl over 5’8” is a freshman, it seems like we are a lot faster and more athletic than last year. I expect to see more pressure defense, and more defensive adjustments in general compared to last year. The key will be getting girls to shoot. Beyond our two best players, we have a lot of girls who are hesitant to shoot. They need to figure out when you are undersized and fast, if you get an open look you have to take it.

That’s true for L. She doesn’t have the same aggressiveness she had in her last week of travel ball. I know she wants to fit in as a sophomore and run the offense correctly because she doesn’t want to get yelled at. I’ve talked to her about understanding that after the ball has been swung side-to-side, if she gets it back and is open, that’s a good shot her coach will be fine with. She did hit an NBA-range 3 at the end of the first quarter in one of our games Tuesday night. I told her it looked pure and that she needs to relax and shoot like that when she gets the ball in the offense.

She is both very excited about the coming year – she really gets along with the older girls and hangs out with them more than the younger girls – and nervous about where she fits in. She said she’d rather come off the bench and play 10 minutes a game for varsity than play nearly every minute for JV like she did last year.

We talked through the roster one night and I think she’s in a good position to make varsity, but there’s always the chance the coach will want her to play a lot to keep getting better. Or swing between the rosters. It helps her cause that she’s the only true point guard among the bench players, which means she is the best player’s backup. But the offense isn’t really set up for a pure point guard to run the offense, so anyone can bring the ball up and initiate.

We’ve had 11 or 12 girls on the bench for varsity games so far. I’m pretty confident L is in the top 8 or 9, which puts her on the varsity roster for the fall. That’s a long way away, though, and plenty of time for both L to improve her game and solidify a spot or some of her teammates to get better and pass her up.

They play games on Tuesday and Thursday nights. Last week they broke open two close games late for wins, gave up a big lead to get tied late and then won the last two minutes to get the W, and then blew out a small school by 50 points when we basically did not shoot in the fourth quarter.

This Tuesday we got a comfortable win in game one, then came from eight down to beat a team that crushed us in both JV and varsity last season. You can’t put a lot of stock into these games, but that seemed like a big win. Our girls were very excited. One mom of a senior was super pumped, saying this was the first time in her daughter’s four summers that CHS had started 6–0.

That will likely change tomorrow. We play two of the best 4A teams in the state, Lawrence Central and Lawrence North. LC went 30–1 and won state last year, but is playing without most their top players. One of them is on a national team and I think the rest are playing in higher level leagues than the Indianapolis high school summer circuit. LN, who lost to the state champs three times and beat CHS by 32 in sectionals, is playing all their best players. They have one girl who is 6’5”. That should be fun.

CHS is also playing in a showcase over the weekend, four games in two days. This is an open event for recruiting, so there will be college coaches watching. Not sure if that will affect how our coach plays people or not.

Caitlin

Oh Lord, I guess I should have known that Caitlin Clark’s rookie year would turn into a whole thing. Can people just shut up and let the woman play?

I’m hesitant to dive into all of it as the discourse is out of control. Each week seems to bring some new “controversy,” that people tack 50 things that have nothing to do with basketball onto.

It should be no surprise that Clark has struggled in the transition to the WNBA. It’s a higher level of ball than college, and it will take some time for her to figure things out while getting stronger to deal with the higher level of physicality.

People are also forgetting that the Fever were an exceptionally bad team last year. While they drafted Aliyah Boston with the #1 pick in 2023, they still had the worst record in the league. The excitement about the future of the team with a Boston-Clark pairing was appropriate. They weren’t going to turn into a playoff team overnight, though.

Which is clear from watching them. The biggest issue I see is that most of Clark’s teammates have no idea how to play with her. She’ll set the defense up perfectly, zip a ball to a spot, and it goes flying out of bounds because her teammate either didn’t cut or stopped because they didn’t expect her to throw the ball to a wide open spot. So many times she’s made a gorgeous pass only to have it bounce off a Fever player’s hands because they weren’t looking or didn’t trust the ball to get through. Stuff like that will get better with both more time together and, likely, higher level teammates.

There there’s – waves hand at everything – all the other stuff. The physical play and officials looking the other way at some of it. The idiot Indiana congressman who demanded an explanation from the WNBA for why Clark is getting the same treatment pretty much every rookie in every sport has ever received.[1] The Olympic team “snub.” The exhausting, constant discourse in sports media. The assigning of political stances held by outside observers to Clark, her teammates, and her opponents when they’ve never said a word about non-basketball matters.

It’s almost enough that I wonder if Caitlin wishes she had stayed at Iowa for another year. Or taken the Big 3 money and played in a league that no one cares about without all this nonsense.

At the risk of making the mistake others have made by trying to guess what she is thinking, I bet that’s not the case, though. I know she’s pissed that her team sucks. I know she’s frustrated in both her play and that she and her teammates can’t get on the same page. I’m sure she’s sick of getting beaten up every game with defenders often getting away with it. I guarantee she’s disappointed by not making the Olympic team. I’m also 100% sure she understands the logic behind the decision, knowing that roster spot has to earned and not assumed, and will use it as fuel to make sure there’s no way they can leave her off the roster next time.[2]

I don’t know, and don’t care, what she thinks about racial politics, about alleged gay vs straight divide in women’s sports, or anything else that is extraneous to putting the ball through the hoop. In fact, I bet while she has opinions on all of these subjects, her primary focus is getting better, making her team better, and finding a way to win games. She would be perfectly fine being the only straight, white girl, Midwesterner on the team if it meant the Fever made the playoffs.

For some reason the Olympic roster was still a hot topic on ESPN this morning, so I don’t think any of this is going away.

  1. There is no grandstander who grandstands as much as a Republican when they can exploit even the tiniest racial angle in any debate. If it was two white guys involved, I bet this jackass would have applauded their old school toughness. “Nothing given, everything earned!”  ↩
  2. Her press conference after she got the news was tremendous. All the idiots screaming about the decision on cable TV could learn a lot from how she handled it. Also, let’s not forget the Olympic tryouts were during the Final Four, so the process seemed stacked against any college player that was playing for the national championship.  ↩

Wednesday Notes

May 29, 2024 /

A few more random notes that didn’t fit into the weekend wrap-up.

Number Three Behind The Wheel

L finally got her learner’s permit today. She had been gung-ho about driving since she was 13, and dove into the driver’s ed self-teaching program when we signed her up back in December. We’ve been taking her across the street to drive around the high school parking lot since last fall.

Then a couple friends, who are smart cookies like her, failed their learner’s permit written test on their first tries. I think that spooked her. And one day when she was out with S, S let L drive her Telluride on one of the most difficult roads on the north side of Indy, Kessler Boulevard. This is a four-lane road that is riddled with potholes, is extremely narrow, there is zero curb, where everyone drives way too fast, and has a brutal double curve that can be frightening to even experienced drivers when it gets busy. C and I both avoid it when we drive to CHS, trading a slightly longer route for not having to deal with Kessler’s headaches. L didn’t wreck, thank goodness, but it freaked her out and she suddenly stopped asking to drive or bringing up going to take her permit test.

Fortunately she finally got past all that, studied this week, and knocked the test out in like six minutes.

Now she goes onto the Ready to Drive list, and hopefully we can get her six in-car sessions scheduled and completed before she goes back to school in August. The school across the street has a 12-week wait, so we signed her up in Carmel which was 3–4 weeks last we heard.

The Electric Company

We’ve had the joy this year of dealing with insane billing issues from our electric company. Late last year they updated their billing system – to serve us better, of course – and the result has been a disaster for some people. They claim only 10% of their customers have been affected, but it has to be more otherwise the issues I’m about to lay out would have been fixed by now.

We do the budget billing plan, paying the same amount each month. That total gets adjusted up or down each June based on our usage over the previous year. For some reason they adjusted ours in February, increasing it by over 50%. Our new monthly amount was 28% higher than our biggest month of usage charge over the past year. A couple weeks later we got an email saying we had been billed incorrectly and a credit would appear on our account. Of course they still took out the incorrect amount, because we are signed up for automatic payments.

The next three months we did not get a bill at all. I kept checking the local media and Reddit, and our company said “a small number of people” were not receiving bills. Others were getting bills that were wildly incorrect. One lady called and they couldn’t find a record that she had made a payment on her account since 1970. She was not close to 54 years old. The company claimed they were working on a fix and were not disconnecting service or charging late fees for customers getting incorrect bills.

Obviously we could have kept paying our monthly amount but given we had zero confidence they wouldn’t apply it incorrectly, we just waited for a new bill.

When we didn’t get a bill again in May, I called the special line set up to handle billing issues. I talked to a lady who could not have been less helpful. She wasn’t rude or anything, she just had zero ability to assist me. It took her five minutes and multiple tries to even find our account. I slowly repeated our account number three times and our address as many times. Despite my name being listed first on our bill, she said I was not on the account and asked if I had S’s permission to access our account. We’re all for challenging traditional gender roles in this house, but I thought that was wild that I was being asked if I had permission from my wife to call about our bill. I thought about telling her that my wife lets me have my own credit card and drive on my own, too.

Eventually she found our account. She couldn’t tell me a damn thing I couldn’t see for myself when I looked at our information online. Her advice: keep checking every few weeks, they were working on a fix.

Uh-huh.

We finally got a bill two weeks later. It charged us for the three months we had not been billed, which is appropriate. What was not appropriate was that they charged us three months at the new, incorrect, budget amount.

So I called the regular customer service line. It literally took eight minutes navigating their phone tree before I finally smashed 0 and was able to speak to a real person. Every other option just played various recordings, most encouraging customers to use the company website to get assistance.

Once connected with a live human, I explained my dilemma: our budget bill went up much higher than our highest actual bill, we never received the credit promised, we didn’t receive a bill for three months, and now we were being charged 3x the incorrect amount.

This lady was very nice. She told me to just pay our old budget amount. She said they were working to fix all these errors, but, “Obviously they haven’t got to yours yet,” she said with a sarcastic chuckle. She said she would flag our account again so it, hopefully, gets reviewed and corrected. I could tell she didn’t have much confidence that would happen. Unlike the other lady, who seemed to just be reading from the script in front of her, this woman was friendly and empathetic. I told her I knew she was probably getting tons of calls about these issues, and appreciated that she actually seemed to care about helping me and was nice about it. I think I made her day. Hell, it’s not her fault her company sucks.

So we’ll see if we get a corrected bill here in the next few weeks. I wouldn’t be surprised it if takes another call or two after that bill comes to get things straightened out.

I normally don’t post on Reddit, but I’ve checked into a couple threads on the local thread chiming in with my experience. Again, it sure seems like more than 10% of customers are affected.

Strangely our state utility board has taken zero action to force the power people to get this straightened out. They even approved a big rate increase in the midst of this. Again, to better serve us, I’m sure.

Bill Walton

I found the varied reactions to Bill Walton’s death very interesting. You either loved his schtick as a broadcaster or you hated it, and that view affected your first thoughts when you learned he had passed.

I did not like his TV style at all. That’s because I’m a super fan that takes sports way too seriously. When I’m watching a KU game, I want descriptions and analysis of what is happening. Not wild asides that have nothing to do with what’s on the court. Nor histrionic statements based on one play rather than an entire body of work. So I loathed the rare times that Walton did a KU game. He distracted from whatever the Jayhawks were doing on the court. In time I learned to keep the TV muted, or the volume barely high enough to catch some crowd noise, if he was on the mic.

As I thought about his life and career, though, I realized he really was a trendsetter. All of these modern, alternate broadcasts, which have reached their peak with the Manningcasts of Monday Night Football, stem from how he called games. “Don’t take these things so seriously,” he seemed to be saying, “they are just games and there are far more important things in life like your relationships with the people you love and how you interact with the planet we call home.” Well, the Mannings and Kevin Harts of the world probably aren’t thinking that deeply, but Walton opened a door for non-traditional broadcasts that people who don’t care about the game turn in to watch.

That’s a much healthier view of sports that I generally take, at least when my teams are involved. It was good that someone was pushing that idea, even if Walton’s technique was maddening.

For all his goofiness and frustrating qualities, the outpouring of love for him after his death has been wonderful to read. He was a truly unique human, and he very much lived the peace and love values his generation espoused in the Sixties. There have been so many examples of him going out of his way to make other people’s lives better in difficult moments, or needling people he cared about with perfectly timed barbs.

Let’s not forget that Walton was a remarkable player who had his career cut short by a series of cruel injuries. He was one of the most dominant college players ever and was on that trajectory in the NBA until his feet and legs started failing him.

I won’t miss avoiding him on ESPN, but I appreciate that he made the world a better place in his 71 years.

Weekend Notes

May 28, 2024 /

A long holiday weekend filled with guests, rain, and fun.

L had a group of girl friends over Friday night. Storms curtailed their pool time but otherwise they kicked off their summer well. Since she spends so much time with basketball girls, it’s always good to get a confirmation that she hangs out with other freshman girls sometimes. Sorry, sophomore girls!

She took me to the gym Monday morning for a shooting workout. She shot the best I’ve ever seen her shoot…until the friendly maintenance guy came over and asked me if I thought the rim was crooked. She had already told me it felt off, but something about him asking got in her head and the second half of her trip around the 3-point arc wasn’t as good as the first 40 minutes of shooting.

M had three UC girls from Ohio stay with us Saturday and Sunday nights.[1] A few local UC kids linked up with them at various points. The group took over our pool Saturday evening. Seemed like good kids and everyone had fun. M enjoyed showing off her hometown. This was the first time I’ve ever bought alcohol for my kid and her friends, which was a little odd. I thought it was funny the Ohio girls all brought drinks of their own but didn’t bring them into the house until they realize we didn’t mind if they drank as long as they stayed at our house once they started.

C ran around with friends a few times over the weekend.

Friday night M, S, and I went to a grad party. Right when we showed up heavy rains made a right turn from the path they were taking and drenched the party for about 30 minutes. Worth noting this was a mostly outdoor party, so that was kind of a bummer. We huddled in the clubhouse during the actual stormy part of the rain, then escaped to squeeze under a tent when it switched to straight rain. I ran into the guy who coached L’s St. P’s team her 8th grade year and we caught up a bit. Also saw one of the people somewhat responsible for S and I meeting 24 years ago, who was down from Michigan for the party.

It being Memorial Day weekend in Indy, the Indianapolis 500 dominated events. For a week we knew the weather would be a problem. Sure enough, just before the race was scheduled to start severe storms blew through central Indiana. We knew a lot of people at the race and apparently it was a lot of fun to go sit in cars or squeeze into shelters for the 90 or so minutes it took the storms to pass through. The four-hour delay turned an already long day into a monumental investment in time. We know people who got to the track around 6:00 AM and didn’t get home until close to midnight. That sounds horrible to me, terrific race or not.

The bonus of the storms, and the window of clear weather that followed, was that the IMS decided to waive the local TV blackout. So when the green flag dropped at 4:45, we were able to watch live for only the third time since I moved here.[2]

What a great race! Or at least the last ten laps. The last lap specifically. Two passes between winner Josef Newgarden and runner up Pato O’Ward in the final trip around the track was a lot of fun. The UC visitors were watching with us, and the Ohio girls were enthralled by the finish.

Monday we had our family gathering, with most of the locals present. I had two grills going to feed everyone. It was also the 8th birthday for one of our nephews, so there was cake and presents. Another round of storms came through late Sunday/early Monday and made it a blustery and cooler day. I cranked up the pool heater and the nephews didn’t seem to mind, although none of the parents or our girls got into the pool with them.

I had a moment over the weekend when I had some longing for old school holiday weekends, when your favorite radio station had a Block Party Weekend, or some other gimmick to get people to tune in. I remember an All Eighties Weekend around July 4 in the late 90s, which seemed like such a crazy idea. Imagine playing nothing but 80s music!!! It seemed like everywhere we went that weekend, people our age had that station on and we talked about how great the selections were.

Anyway, I realized that The Bridge, the eclectic KC radio station I stream sometimes, was doing a block party deal, and the iHeart Radio AT40 station was playing a marathon of year-end countdowns. I’m sure other outlets had gimmicks, too. The problem is me, and how I just don’t listen to any radio feeds for more than when I’m making/eating lunch or dinner or otherwise hanging in the kitchen. Otherwise it is all streaming playlists I have made myself, or whatever new album I’m spinning on Spotify.

Pacers…man, what a disappointing week. They had game one locked up until Tyrese Haliburton made a horrible, unforced turnover, Rick Carlisle failed to call a timeout to advance the ball which led to an awful turnover which led to an unforgivable defensive lapse that led to Jaylon Brown sending the game to overtime with a corner three. And still the Pacers had a chance, until Haliburton again sucked in the final minute of OT.

Then in game two, they were hanging in there, battling, down just four in the second half. I left to help S do a few things to get ready for weekend guests. I was away from the TV for maybe five minutes. When I came back the Celtics were up 15, Haliburton was in the locker room injured, and Pascal Siakam, who had been torching the C’s, was on the bench with the rest of the starters.

Game three, again, was right in the Pacers’ hands. Even without Haliburton, who re-aggravated his hamstring injury that derailed the second half of his season, the Pacers built an 18-point second half lead. They blew the entire thing, losing by three. They became the first team in the last 25 years to lead two NBA playoff games by five in the last two minutes and lose each. They became the first NBA team to ever shoot over 51% in the first three games and lose them all.

Last night’s collapse to give the C’s the sweep was inevitable. The Pacers failed to score a point in the final 3:33 and again lost by three.

The Celtics are clearly the better team. The Pacers lost their best player seven quarters into the series. Yet they could have easily been up 3–1 this morning, headed back to Boston. This team is so flawed on the defensive end and on the boards, yet they are so good offensively they still almost make up for it against maybe the best team in the league. If I was a Boston fan, I’d be worried that my team couldn’t put away a team that was missing their star and plays defense like the entire team has five fouls and don’t want to pick up their sixth.

Great, fun season, though. If Haliburton hadn’t gotten hurt in January, maybe they are higher in the playoff seeding. But that would have robbed us of the dramatic wins over the Bucks and Knicks to get to the Eastern Conference Finals.

Fingers crossed they re-sign Siakam. There is a ton of talent on the wing. Is Ben Mathurin the perfect third cog with Haliburton and Siakam? Maybe they move a couple of those guys to both clear playing time and find another solid defender/rebounder. Maybe rookie Jarace Walker is ready to contribute next year, as he seems perfectly designed to fill that role. They really need another big body. They don’t have a first round pick but do have three second round picks to play with. Should be an interesting summer for a team on the rise.

  1. One from outside Cleveland, one from Dayton, one from Cincinnati.  ↩

  2. The other two times were the 100th running, which was sold out months in advance, and the delayed 2020 race that had no one in the stands due to Covid.  ↩

Weekend Notes

May 20, 2024 /

Lots of notes from the past several days.

Travel Hoops

Pretty good weekend of hoops in Louisville. For the first time ever, we went 3–0 in pool play at a national event. We won our first game Friday by 11. It was a very tough, defensive contest that we controlled pretty much from the opening tip. However we only scored 28 points for the game, so it wasn’t the smoothest of performances. Giving up only 17 is decent, though.

Saturday we had two games, eight hours apart, which was not ideal for planning the day. We won game one by 10. Again controlled it pretty much the entire time. Our final game we won by 19, but led by just five early in the second half before we finally got things figured out. Both games we were in the mid–40s so a little more typical performances.

None of these teams were great, but we also could have lost any of those games just a year ago. It helps having some more size and for our returning girls to really be locked in.

Sunday morning we had a semifinal game against a team from Southeast Missouri. We watched part of one of their games Saturday and knew they were basically one girl on offense and really tough, pressure D. We figured it would be a good game we could win if we handled the pressure.

That was exactly how it worked out. We did not handle their pressure for about a five minute stretch in the first half and they ran out to an 11-point lead. On consecutive possessions we turned it over in the backcourt and they scored, which is just a killer.

Their one girl was exactly what we thought. She’s probably 6’1” but super fast. Most of her game is just grabbing a rebound and taking off, daring anyone to stop her. She killed us either beating our defense up the court, overwhelming whoever was guarding her, or making a great move to get by the primary defender and then no one was there to help. She hit one three and a couple free throws, but everything else was on a drive to the basket.

We were down nine at the half. Midway through the second half we finally started getting some stops. We got it the lead down to four points three times, but kept stalling there. Then L hit a 3 to bring us to within three. In the final 90 seconds L scored three times – once on a drive when she was also fouled but didn’t get the call,[1] once on a long two, and once when she hit two free throws after her shot barely rimmed out – to cut it to one. But each time we either gave up a basket or they hit two free throws when we fouled to put them on the line. We never had the ball down one or two.

Their best player hit a free throw with one second left to put them up two, then intentionally missed her second attempt. L got the rebound and made a full-court heave that only went about 60 feet. Worth noting we were playing on a college court, which is 10 feet longer than where the girls normally play. So her shot would have only been 20 feet short had we been on a high school court.

Bummer to lose, but a really good game. If we could have just weathered those five minutes – L was on the bench for that entire stretch, by the way – it could have been a different result.

Playing for the championship at a national tournament would have been cool,[2] but it was nice to leave Louisville at 10:00 AM and not have to hang around for a 1:00 game.

LB was fantastic all weekend. It was the best she’s ever played over multiple games. Friday she only scored four points, but finally hit a 3, her first in a real game since December! Seriously, it had been since before Christmas, nearly five full months. Sure, there weren’t any games from the last week of January until the first week of April, but you figure she would have made one in there somewhere.

She scored 12 and 11 on Saturday, hitting another 3 in each game. Then she had 14 on Sunday, hitting two threes and both of her free throws while getting three rebounds, two assists, and three steals. I was pumped afterwards, she was pissed that they lost. Perfect.

Overall she was 16–31 from the field, 5–12 from 3, 4–6 from the line. Again, likely the best she’s ever shot.

She had told me she thought the training she’s doing three nights a week had been helping, making her both stronger and more confident. For this weekend, at least, that seemed to be absolutely true.

Now travel takes a pause for a month, although she still has a week or two of training left. High school ball will start the first week of June. Right now it looks like they’ll lift weights 2–3 times a week, have one basketball workout, then, assuming she gets pulled into the varsity group for summer, play two nights a week in different leagues. I think it’s a good assumption she will be varsity for the summer since A) she deserves it and B) one of the varsity starting guards is a D1 soccer recruit and is usually traveling for soccer and skips basketball over the summer. Then two more out-of-town tournaments in July before this travel cycle wraps up.

Louisville

A few non-hoops stories from the weekend.

We stayed at an Econo Lodge downtown. This was again a tournament where you are required to stay at an “approved” hotel. And the PGA Championship was also in Louisville. So pickins was slim. I read good reviews of the Econo Lodge and figured it was better to take a chance, be downtown for activities, and less than ten minutes from the Expo Center as opposed to staying 30–40 minutes away as a lot of other teams were doing.

They must have paid someone to do those reviews because they were not accurate.

Our hotel was old, it smelled, and it was surrounded by homeless people. Our room smelled like people had been smoking weed in it for years. Friday night starting around 11–11:30 a bunch of kids showed up for what seems to have been a post-party. They ran around screaming and yelling for hours. I guess the cops finally came flying into the parking lot at 3:00 AM and cleared them all out. I think I had finally passed out about 2:45 so missed that excitement. I had Sentry Mode engaged on my Tesla and never got any alerts, so hoped all was well. Some of our other families said they saw kids taking pictures around it. I haven’t gone back to review the footage yet, mostly because I can’t figure out how to pull it up, but there weren’t any scratches, dents, or dings, so I figured it’s all good. I’m glad I could contribute to their fun.

Despite the smell, our room seemed clean, which is more important than dodging homeless men and dealing with hours of teenage noise. The AC worked sporadically so I went from sweaty to freezing every 30 minutes or so as it debated what temperature air to pump out.

So qualified success? We have some good stories!

There was actually a good pizza place across the street. We went there Friday after our game to eat and watch the Pacers game.

A bonus of the PGA being in town was the parking for that event was at the Expo center, too. Thus, for some reason, they weren’t charging parking. Two years ago when we played in the same event it was $35 to park for the weekend. I’m sure they’ll get us when we go back in July. It was $70 to get in the door for the weekend, though.

We had a very bougey breakfast Saturday. L and I grabbed some Starbucks and ate/drank it while charging the Tesla.

That evening we had a good team dinner at a little hole-in-the-wall Mexican place. Not sure how, but they brought meals for 19 people out at the same time. A team of French Canadian girls rolled in while we were eating. One of their coaches saw our shirts and asked if we knew Jennifer Mathurin, sister of injured Pacer Bennedict Mathurin. She has done some work with girls youth programs in Indy, but isn’t directly associated with ours. He said she had played in his program when she was growing up in Montreal. Nice coincidence.

The Dreaded Procedure

I kicked off the weekend Thursday by having my second colonoscopy, seven years after #1. I put off the second because I’m lazy, justifying it by thinking since I was a little early with the first, I could be late with the second. All seems to have gone well. They did remove a couple polyps, like last time. Thankfully the biopsies came back clean.

The prep always sucks. I don’t mind the “stool time,” for lack of a better phrase. It’s the hunger and headaches that come with that bother me. Wednesday kind of sucked as I dealt with that. But Thursday was fine. Pro tip: pick a flavor of Gatorade you can tolerate but don’t love for your Metamucil dosing. After you suck down those two 32 ounce servings the night before and morning of, the taste is kind of disgusting. You don’t want to ruin your preference for a good flavor.

After my first scope, it took me hours to shake the anesthesia. I only vaguely remember leaving the facility and riding home. My first real memory was saying something at the dinner table and everyone laughing at me because it was, apparently, the third time I had said the same thing.

This time I bounced back pretty quickly. There were some hazy moments in the recovery room, but I clearly remember it being like someone flipped a switch and I was suddenly awake and talking to my nurse. We had a real good conversation, as I recall. It didn’t hurt that she was nice to look at.[3] But later I realized I have no memory of getting dressed. I’m pretty sure I did it on my own. If a pretty nurse helped me get dressed I sure hope I would remember it. Don’t tell S.

Before my scope seven years ago, a friend who had already been through it told me to plan on stopping for some kind of good food on my way home to reward myself for two days of fasting. Which I obviously couldn’t do since I was still sleepy. Thursday, though, I was wide awake, ordered Culver’s from my phone and had S stop there on the way home to pick up a shake, burger, and fries. Which tasted amazing!

I took a couple brief naps in the afternoon but otherwise seemed pretty normal. I slept like a baby Thursday night and was pretty much normal again on Friday for the drive south.

When I weighed in before we left for the surgery center, I was down six pounds! Just in time for pool season!

PACERS!!!!!!!

I’ll admit, I was totally prepared to be let down Sunday. Especially since we made it home in time to watch Pacers-Knicks game seven. Even when the Pacers jumped out to an early lead, shooting nearly 80% in the first quarter, I figured it wouldn’t last. Surely they would start tossing up bricks, Jalen Brunson would score 50, every close call would go against the Pacers, the Nova Knicks would shove with impunity, and the Pacers would slink back home for the off-season.

I was kind of right: the Pacers cooled off to shoot just 67.1% for the game, an NBA Playoffs record. They answered every Knicks run. Tyrese Haliburton turned into the Hali from before his January injuries. The bench was gigantic. The Knicks ran out of steam, other than Donte DiVincenzo, and Brunson’s body finally let him down, his left hand breaking when he tried to prevent a Haliburton break-away layup.

Massive win for the Pacers. This was supposed to be a year to just get back into the playoffs. Instead they are four wins from the NBA Finals. The #1 seed Boston Celtics block their path. It feels like a Celtics in five pick. However, a non-Pacers friend texted me Sunday evening saying he fully expects whatever voodoo magic the Pacers are working with to cause Jason Tatum and Jaylen Brown to get hurt in the next week. Giannis didn’t play in round one and Dame missed two games. The Knicks started the series with a ton of injuries and seemingly added another each game along the way. I would be worried if I was a Celtics fan.

I felt terrible for Brunson. You can’t help but respect that dude, even with all his flopping. He works so damn hard and takes on such a huge role for that team, and makes tough bucket after tough bucket. And as much as I hate Jason Hart and DiVincenzo, I give them grudging respect for how hard they play. Granted, they foul on every possession and somehow never get called for it. This series generated flashbacks to the KU-Villanova Elite 8 game I went to in, coincidentally, Louisville, when the Wildcats somehow ran through every KU screen and were never called for a foul. It’s like the refs let it go the first time because they can’t believe anyone would be so brazen, then realize they can’t call it later in the game because they didn’t in the first half. Not that I’m still bitter about a game that was eight years ago…[4]

And how about Minnesota ripping off a 54–24 run in the second half to come from 20 down to knock out the defending champs? I never expect the Nuggets to be the team to fall apart in their season’s biggest moments.

PGA

I guess it was a good tournament. I saw bits and pieces here and there over the weekend. It was a little weird to be so close to the tournament without seeing much of it.

But, HOLY SHIT, the Scottie Scheffler kerfuffle! Obviously this in no way compares to another Louisville Police Department fuck up. Or others if you want to dig into their history. Still, what an absolute shit-show. Saturday when we were navigating to the parking lot there were a bunch of LPD officers directing traffic. You can be damn-sure I followed their instructions to the letter.

Obviously this is going to get “fixed” soon. Major props to Scheffler for handling it with absolute aplomb. Shooting a 65 after spending a few hours in jail is one of the most impressive things he’s ever done. He fell apart Saturday and you have to wonder if the stress of Friday caught up with him. He finished eight shots behind winner Xander Schauffele, so I doubt it cost him the tournament. But you never know how things would have turned out if he had been in the final group, or simply closer to Schauffele, and able to put pressure on him Sunday.

I also had to laugh at how many people were screaming “Free Scottie!” Friday who probably have performative Blue Lives Matter stickers on their vehicles, think George Floyd got what he deserved, and that Black Lives Matters is a terrorist group without legitimate complaints. And how a lot of these people suddenly took eye witness accounts that were completely different than the official police report very seriously when an affluent, white golfer was involved. America, baby!

  1. One of our other parents got a video and you can hear me yelling “AND ONE!!!” I’m generally more laid back at games than I have been in recent years, but for a moment I was That Dad again.  ↩
  2. That sounds cooler than it actually is. There are literally hundreds of teams in every age group at these tournaments. To win the “championship,” L’s team had to win their pool, win a semifinal game against another pool winner, then beat a team that won their semifinal. So this represented just four pools out of eight. And this was just in our division within the 2027 age bracket. There were four different ’27 divisions. I’m not sure if all the others had eight pools but assuming they did, that means there were eight champions just for current freshmen this weekend. I think there are even more teams in the middle school divisions. Wild.  ↩
  3. I’m sorry.  ↩
  4. As you well know I can get all fired up about games from way longer ago than eight years.  ↩
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