Spiece, Part 2

The title of third best AAU team in the country is rather hard to come by. You truly have to be amazing to be considered nationally, but to be third, it’s hard for me to imagine. The team is Boo Williams from Virginia, and I believe that they deserve every bit of that ranking. So for us white kids from Iowa, we don’t have very much hope warming up across from 6 foot 10 inch monsters that are stronger than our whole team combined and have a 35 inch vertical. It’s intimidating to find out that their point guard is going to North Carolina to play. And it’s very intimidating to find out that he is not the only D1 player on the floor, or the bench for that matter.

But we held out own. It was the fourth game of the day for each team, so everybody on the floor was dead tired. This made it possible to scrap for baskets and stay in the game. It was nothing spectacular, but we managed to keep Boo Williams in reach throughout the first half. With about 1 minute left before halftime, we hit a three to put us up by 1, our only lead of the game. Then they made a basket right before the half, so we were only down by 1 at halftime. This is not bad (actually it’s great) for us. We were expecting to be down by 40 by halftime, so only 1 point was refreshing. But our fatigue, and their talent, took over in the third quarter and they got about a 15 point lead by the fourth. They didn’t expand it much after that, but there was no way that we were going to came back from any deficit.

So this team was pretty amazing. After the game, we were sitting around and our coach came over and started talking about them and what they were. He started to name off the kids and the schools they were going to. As I mentioned, the point guard is going to North Carolina, another guard is going to Duke. One of the big men is going to Wake Forrest, and another is going to Texas. All the others are getting recruited by ACC and SEC schools and will end up playing D1 basketball somewhere. My team, on the other hand, has a couple of good D2 players on it, a couple of guys going to college to play football, and a couple more that might not go play anywhere. So overall, we held our own, and I am proud that I can say we earned the respect of team Boo Williams, third ranked AAU team in the country.

Spiece, Part 1

This past weekend I was in Fort Wayne, Indiana for a basketball tournament. The tournament is called Spiece, and attracts teams from all over the nation. It’s a pretty cool experience and I think I was seen by a few college coaches, so that’s always a plus.

The Spiece field house is amazing in itself. It has eight full sized courts with shot clocks and the time on each backboard. But the courts are not what is so amazing. As you walk in to the field house, you go through a hall with memorabilia. There are signed pictures and posters hanging on every inch, from floor to ceiling of each wall. There are posters of Bobby Knight, Larry Bird, Reggie Miller, and the 1986 Indiana National Champions. But my favorite is the signed picture of Bobby Knight throwing the chair across the floor. Once you get past this hallway, you go into this open area. This area has more posters on the walls (these are life size though), and it has jerseys hanging from the ceiling. Some jerseys are signed, but all are from people that are well known (to say the least). They have everything from Patrick Ewing’s Knicks jersey, to Kevin Garnett’s Timberwolves jersey, but my favorite is David Robinson’s Air Force jersey. Let’s just say that there are few places like this, and I enjoy it every time I go.

But the field house is not the reason that I go to Fort Wayne. I go to play basketball. This is some of the best AAU basketball, and a lot of these teams could beat D1 schools…easily. This year, there were about 20 pools of four teams each (just in the 17 and under division, there were equal, if not more, in the younger divisions). The three pool play games were on Friday night and Saturday morning. In our Friday night game, we won by forfeit because the team was too far away to wait for them to arrive. This game would have been difficult for us to win anyway, so it was probably good that we didn’t play. On Saturday morning, we lost our first game, but won the second easily, so we ended getting first in the pool, miraculously. Our third game of the day was the first of bracket play (its single elimination from here), but it was another very average team, so we won again. This put us into the round of 16 (not bad for us Iowans) going against the third ranked AAU team in the country. Let me tell you about the last game…tomorrow.

Basketball Season

Basketball is finally in full swing. Every level and every age is playing and games are beginning. I could say that I am excited for it all, but that would only be halfway true. I am excited to play basketball yes, but the two and a half hour practices followed by half an hour of film is a little much. I liked the old days when I played for just an AAU team and we had one, maybe two, practices a week and tournaments on the weekends and that was it. All you did was show up and play games. But I know that all the work for the school team pay off in the end. The end result of the high school season is about 127 times better than any 8th grade AAU team.

While I am on the topic of basketball, I need to address the activity of basketball viewing. Watching basketball on TV is something I do fairly often, sometimes because it is halfway interesting and sometimes because it is the only thing on. But whenever I watch basketball on TV, I always watch college games. This is for two reasons: 1- college basketball is pure. The players are not getting paid millions of dollars to play; they are playing for the love of the game. 2- NBA basketball is not really basketball, it just a bunch of guys who seem like they don’t even care about the game and are just playing for the money. Isn’t sad that everything comes down to money.

College basketball is basketball at its finest. It is played hard and fair and teams actually try and play defense. Most of the players that you see are not going to the NBA, college players play for the game. They play hard and with emotion. This is what causes some of the best teams to get beat, the underdog just wants it more. One of the greatest television events (even though it is also just a money maker) is March Madness. I love watching this because it is a cumulative result of a year of basketball that comes down to two teams that have out lasted the rest. They may not be the best two teams in the nation, but they, once again, just wanted it more.

NBA basketball on the other hand, is just a wrong. The players are playing for the wrong reasons and they are wrong in the way they play as well. Almost every player is playing for the money, not for the game. I think that they are overpaid, and if you paid them what they actually deserve, almost nothing, then about 95% of them would leave the game. NBA players should not be making millions to play a game, a game that is corrupt and impure, and going down the wrong path.