How do I get my basketball team to win a game?

[Janx]

Re: Spirit points & Tonya Harding's assault on Nancy Kerrigan

I was playing on a co-ed intramural team that was getting beaten routinely, but one team really had everyone's number. They had a guy who was seriously good, accounting for 60-75% of his team's points. Well, when we got to play them, he was already doubling us up by halftime. By himself.

About midway through the third quarter, he was going up court with the ball when our exasperated player/coach shouted from the bench, "John, stop him!"

John was not a basketball player, but he was an athlete. A martial artist. And at mid-court, he landed a beautiful punch on the guy, knocking him out cold*. We lost by the slimmest margin of any other team to that point in the season.

(That guy didn't pad his stats anymore- from that point forward, he sat on the bench when the game was well in control.)



* John DID apologize to him- he claimed to have "freaked" a bit when the coach yelled- and there were no hard feelings.

Wow! I was just joking about taking out the other guys. I'd say I can't believe anybody would actually do that, but then, the joke was based on somebody actually doing that

I guess there is a corollary there, which applied in your story. Michael Jordan has no business playing in a special olympics league. Sure, it may be his right to do so, but odds are good, for most of the guys on a casual league, they are evenly matched because the teams are made of guys who weren't on the high school basketball team.

Once the "good' players join up, it aint' fun anymore

 

[Bullgrit]

It's kind of interesting because just watching from the bench we don't look that much worse than the other teams, nobody in this league is very good, but we're just getting pasted by 20+ points.

Read more: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...y-basketball-team-to-win-a-game#ixzz2gx74AqmL <-- this annoys the crap outta me.

My son played soccer for a few years, (two seasons per calendar year), and I noticed something like this occasionally with his games. Sometimes a game is very lopsided in the score, but looking from the sidelines, I couldn't see any difference in the two teams. No big errors, no slacking, no obvious skill advantages or disadvantages, just bad luck, I guess.

As for advice, really, the only way for a team to get better is practice. And that takes time that many such teams/leagues just don't have much of.

Bullgrit

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Once the "good' players join up, it aint' fun anymore.

There is a certain truth to that, as illustrated in my anecdote. Thing is, having witnessed it, I didn't actually INTERNALIZE that lesson until some years later.

I learned to play volleyball in a church singles group that happened to have in it a couple of guys who were vying for the Olympic team. So I learned how to do do certain things very well, especially serve: not only could I put the ball anywhere I wanted on the back half of the court with movement, accuracy and speed, I could also do this with a serve that moved the wrong way*. It even fooled the would-be Olympians.

Add to this the fact that, despite being 5'7", my vertical was enough to juuuust touch (not dunk on) the metal rim of a standard basketball goal, and I was a ridiculous force in most casual VB leagues. Essentially, I could block quite well and serve for ace after ace until I made a mistake.

And I did so, just like the guy dominated in the coed intrarmural BB league... until someone took me aside and talked to me about it. I still did my serves like I did before, but only enough times over the course of an evening to keep my skills sharp.












* That is to say, when a right handed server serves with movement, the serve will usually break straight down or from right to left, just like a curveball in baseball. Not only could I do that, but I could make my serve break from left to right as if being served by a lefty...without serving with my left hand.