Game #3,4 & 5 Results

Game#3.....13 point winners against a team that has no business competing on this level of basketball. It was apparent from the start that we were going to cruise in this one so as usual the lead fluctuated up and down between 10 and 20 the entire game with us giving a few points back near the end when the final outcome had already been determined. Two straight weeks now without J.A., (is he even a part of this team?) Financially I would say an emphatic no of course since nobody rides for free..on partial scholarship yeah that happens all too often but no 100% free rides allowed in this organization. No sign of A.J. either and D.H. apparently has suffered a season ending ankle injury that will require surgery and two months of rehabbing. Good thing we only signed him to a one year deal with a team option for a second. I highly doubt we will see him anytime soon even after the rehab is complete unless he gets himself back into game shape. There really is not a market for an overweight, height challenged point guard who has seen better days but you never know I guess!

Game#4....Unfortunately, I did not witness this game from the sidelines since I had another obligation to tend to but I heard about the game from my teammates. Several key words were tossed around like no bench, being forced to play with only 5 players. One of which tweaked a knee , the other had a tender ankle, foul trouble by J.D. leading to an eventual foul out forcing us to play the final minute or so shorthanded. A buzzer beater that should not have counted, a controversial re-start...blah blah blah...bottom line we lost our first game by 1 point and it never should have gone down like that to begin with. What can you do?

Game #5....highly anticipated match-up against the best team in the league and we blow a 9 point lead with 10 minutes to go and lose our second straight game. I make a brief appearance for 2 minutes in the first half since we were a bit short to start the game. I did make a steal, then missed a three pointer then got pulled from the game. Yeah it happened that quickly for me in my first game action in nearly 6 weeks. When I mean first game action I am also referring to the first action physically of any kind. Other than some light jogging on the treadmill I had done nothing remotely active since the surgery per the good doctor. Needless to say J.A. made an appearance and started off solidly until the second half when he basically fell apart on the defensive end. I guess foul trouble will do that to you, just ask J.D. who for the second straight game was battling his own foul problems again. No A.J. and that left us in quite the quandry. We let this one get away when we should have easily cruised to the win. Now we are in a hole that is probably too deep to get out of. Until next time....

Game #2 Result

You know when you watch a game on television and one team dominates and controls the tempo of the game but for what ever reason they only hold a small lead over their opponent? Yeah, well that would describe this game perfectly I think. The J.A. experiment seems to be over already after appearing in exactly 1 game for Clip Joint. It amazes me how unmotivated people can be or in this case unreliable and untrustworthy someone can be. Regardless, we were certainly more talented than they were from top to bottom yet we could not score enough points to maintain more than a slim margin throughout the game. We built the lead up to 7 but during the final several minutes it became a 1 possession ball game.

I think I had my blood pressure rise above and beyond what a normal human being should endure standing on the sidelines overseeing the action. For the second straight game D.H. was exhausted after limited action, at one point acting like Larry Legend and laying down near the bench on his stomach resting his back, or so he claimed. I just think he came into camp out of shape and overweight and that was causing him to struggle mightily on the court. I even got into it a bit with the referee's and scorekeeper at the same time.

Yeah I have a fiery side to me when "coaching", I use that term loosely in this case because as grown adults and being a part of the team Im not really coaching, more like managing the situations and minutes so that we work our rotation to benefit the team as much as possible. Needless to say I think I was unhappy with the way things were progressing so I took some of that out on the officiating.

The bottom line is there is no way we should have barely escaped the gym with a 1 point victory as we did against such an average team. We play them again later in the season so hopefully we show them we can destroy them when necessary. I look forward to the opportunity and I only can hope the rest of the team feels the same way. Right now I do not see a lot of passion or energy coming from the team and that needs to change if we are going to compete in this league. Sitting at 2-0 is nice especially after we struggled during the regular season last session but still we have a ton of room for improvement. Until next time...

Game #1 Result

A quick recap of the very first game against an opponent that was better suited for the D-League in my opinion because despite being rather frisky in terms of doing everything okay they had no real superstars to compete on this level. With a deep bench (and by that I mean 4 players), we were prime for action. I of course was on the IR or the DNP list with my surgery just having been completed a week prior. Well what can i say other than a great start to season #2....an easy double digit victory with J.A. showing us what all the hype was about.

Granted he was a bit raw and unpolished, he brought new energy and a large presence in the middle of our 2-3 zone that we have not had in many seasons since J.G. I will be honest when i say i do not love his jump shot, but his athleticism makes him a very tough player to handle inside from the free throw line and in. Also back in the fold D.H. showed up with an extra 10-15 pounds since the last time I have seen him which is not a good thing when you are 5-6. I was extremely disappointed with that revelation. A.J. our third off-season acquisition looks to be just like the departed M.D. but maybe a little bit better with the ball in his hands.

Overall, I think we might have something here but it is too early to tell at this point. All I know is we are 1-0 , and a good start to the season is always important. However, I for one am miserable "watching" and not participating in these games. I am at least 5 weeks away from making my debut this season...this is harder than I thought...

*Ketch-up*

Okay, okay I admit I took a two month break for many reasons but mostly because I have become super busy doing more important things.

I recently have started coaching boys and girls youth basketball which takes up more of my free time every week. Therefore the Clip Joint has been neglected to some extent, not really the team itself but this blog to be completely accurate.

So I began stories of our first season in the big time and our early struggles which manifested themselves into mid-season struggles which culminated into a finals appearance despite said struggles. That's right, you heard me correctly the first time, despite carrying a regular season record of 1-7 into the playoffs as the lowest seed we made the championship game. Despite losing many a game we managed to find a little more cohesion towards the back end of the schedule and our losses were by 9 points or less except for two blow outs early on.

Since the league schedulers insist on being idiots we only had to win 1 game to make the finals. I know, I know seems like a cheap way to do things but we really did not care so when we defeated the #2 seeded team to get an entry for the championship we were extremely confident that we could get it done. All season long we have been playing the role of the underdog despite carrying 5 titles into this league. Nobody expected us to compete with such a small and somewhat undermanned team but we scratched and clawed our way into every game we could.

Last night we attempted to pull the big upset against the #1 seed and for a half it was back and forth as close as you could get, yet we still trailed by a point at the break. An early run and a change in defense made things difficult for us and we dug a hole for ourselves that we could not climb out of. Down by 7-10 points the rest of the way we got it as close as 5 with the ball and a couple of 3 point chances away from making it 2 points but the ball wouldn't go down for us and you combine that with their excellent free throw shooting (somewhere in the neighborhood of 90% at least, 18-20?) it was over Johnny.

So there we were on the bench after the game dejected as our shot at shocking the league had come and gone and another season had ended. A new season is on the horizon but there will be more changes coming...

K.J. has chosen to sit this one out for personal reasons to get in better game shape as he put it and to take a mental breather from all the weekly preparations needed. I will be undergoing surgery that will put me on the shelf for almost the entire season. Despite not suiting up I plan to attend most of the games if not all of them so I will be back on track with the recaps from here on forward. New players coming in, a few moving out and maybe the debut of the long promised Clip Joint movie.....I say maybe because the director has gotten a bit too lazy the last few months...or should I say pre-occupied?

Needless to say that is all for now....until next time...which I promise will not be in 2 months..

Heartbreaker You Got The Best Of Me....

So going into game two we were more confident since we were supposed to have a full roster of players ready to go. Unfortunately, those nagging issues continued to play a large part of our early season problems and we dropped another close game by 5 points. It has been frusterating at times because we feel like despite not playing very good basketball we have been competitive in the first two games of the season. Surely we need to cut down on the amount od turnovers because in this league the margin for error is so slim for us.

Every team features athletes who can jump higher than us, shoot better than us and in general are taller than us as well. Therefore, we need to play a near perfect fundamentally sound game to succeed. It is a good learning experience for us though since we are playing shorthanded with only 7 or 8 players from week to week.

After getting used to winning all the time in the lower level league we are finding that we no longer can coast for even short stretches because every possession is important for us. Starting 0-2 is not the best way to make a first impression on these teams but I find solace in the fact that we have yet to be blown out in the first two contests.

I hope that in our next game we are able to somehow close the gap even firther and maybe even pull out a victory for the first time. Everyone is playing extremely hard and eventually that hard work should pay off for us. In the end, we want to build an even stronger franchise and program so this first "expansion" season for us is a building block towards the future of the team.

It's Been A Long Time Since I Left You

That is right peoples, I am back after a short hiatus to update you on everything that has gone on over the past 3 weeks or so. When I last wrote we were in between seasons looking to upgrade our roster in hopes of getting a few big men for the upcoming jump to the premier league. Well, we had a few players come in for workouts and none of them panned out. Originally, we had a free agent signed sealed and delivered but then right as we were signing the contract he got cold feet and backed off. No big deal really, but we headed intot he season with the same core group from the last season.

Our opening game was against two time champion "Shhh. Listen". Having lost their first game of the season they were going to make sure they did not drop a second straight game to us, the new kids on the block. Missing G.C. and his compadre hurt as we were left with just 7 players against what seemed like an army of players taller than 6-2. Keep in mind our tallest guy is like 6 feet tall, so the challenge was certainly a difficult one for us. Before the game started I am almost positive they felt like they were going to simply power right through us without much resistance. Unfortunately, we refused to make it easy and actually led for 2/3 of the game before finally succumbing to their size losing by 7 points.

So here we are at 0-1 ready for week 2 and the arrival of G.C. back to the lineup and allegedly two new players who look to suit up for the very first time. Looking at the competition I can honestly say that we are talented enough as a team to compete with these guys even though the majority of the players are taller, perhaps a step quicker and perhaps able to jump a little higher than us. One thing is for sure though, we have more heart and play funadmentally sound basketball that will cause other teams to work that much harder to beat us.

I expect that we will lose some games, but over the course of the season I would not be shocked to find us close to the top of the standings. I should be updating this weekly again now that the season has started so until tomorrow when I offer up a preview for our next game.

Daily Operations....

Here I am the day after a grueling mid week practice, feeling the effects of 1 1/2 hours of straight physical basketball. It probably was worsened by the fact that we only had 9 people show up so we were playing 4 on 4 full court the entire time. I have no problem with that set-up since it means you never leave the court and you have to work even harder to cover on defense. J.D. had his mid-range game in full effect on showcase last night. I mean he literally may have missed 6 shots the entire night and that might not sound impressive but it is when you take into consideration the fact that he probably put up about 25 shots. Allegedly he has become a clone of his brother because now he is a gym rat every morning. I am not sure how long this routine will last because all it takes is one long night out and a runny nose and that one time he skips will turn into, two and then into ahh f it, I am done with the gym. I give him credit though for at least attempting to improve his upper body strength, so kudos go out to him.
I felt like I had a pretty good showing throughout the evening, my three ball was working and I even manged to hit a few of my patented one handed "tear drops" a la Mark Jackson. Combine that with some solid defense and rebounding and I certainly put in a full nights worth of effort.

Our roster situation is as crazy as it has ever been with at least 2 if not 3 spots still available for numerous players who are looking to get in on the excitement that is Clip Joint basketball. I even received an email from the league advising me that a player was trying desperately to contact me in hopes of getting our attention and trying him out. I guess it has gotten to that point now, where the upper echelon free agents are looking to get involved. That is super positive and can only help us out in the long run when looking to expand our team.

The league was supposed to kick-off again this weekend but due to a few minor issues they decided it was best if they postponed it another week. This too is pretty good news for us as we would like to get any and all issues squared away before the first game. So here we are, playing the waiting game on these new players. Trying to hammer out contract offers in hopes of landing a true big man for the first time since J.G. Speaking of J.G., I had a conversation with him a few weeks back and the rehab on his knee is right on schedule. Maybe by the middle of next year he will be ready to come back and fill that void for us, for now though he can only sit and watch from the owners box every week.

Time to ice down the knee a little bit....adios till next time