Created a New Blog, Played More Basketball

So I jumped back in the saddle and played another full court game down on campus today. Some of the same guys were there. I wasn't great, but this time I made a few plays across the board--tough rebound, defense, shot in traffic, pass in traffic--that got some love from the other members of my team. Still couldn't hit the outside shot. Lifting weights first might have contributed to that, but it also seemed to calm me down a bit at the start. Have to figure it all out slowly. Don't think I can play more than a couple days a week at most. We'll see how much agony I'm in tonight.

Also created a new blog, Sand Dreaming of Stars, just to post my fiction and some of my poems. Becoming an official, paid, published writer is less a part of my dream than just getting my ideas out of my head and into the world. I still plan on submitting things, but I'm also going to put rejected or in progress material here under a Creative Commons 3.0 noncommercial license. If it ever gets to the point where somebody cares about who has first publishing rights to something I've already posted, I'll have made much more progress than I have to date.

Wrist Brace: Pros and Cons

[Spider-Man's web-shooters, courtesy of Wikipedia. I am wearing something kind of like these, only not cool. In any way. Unless you are an elementary school kid.]

I hurt my wrist and I'm wearing a wrist brace. I thought I'd tell you all about it.

The advantages of wearing a wrist brace:

• Reduced wrist pain for the most part
  
• Even when my wrist is still sore, wearing the brace draws attention to my ailment in a quiet but obvious way. People ask, "What did you do to your wrist?" with expressions of concern. This gives me a variety of response options: (a) the joke explanation ("I got high-fived so hard it popped a tendon"), which I almost always use for kids; (b) the shrug-the-shoulders, "Guess I'm getting old" line; (c) the "lots of typing and some weight-lifting" line (which not only has the virtue of being largely true, it draws attention to two of my more respectable hobbies); or (d) "Shooting baskets," which I reserve for people who know that up until last week, I generally spend about 15-20 minutes shooting baskets in the park next to my kids' elementary school each day before I pick them up. There are junior high kids who just call me, "The basketball guy."
• I get to politely brush off expressions of concern with a brave and/or optimistic, "It will get better. Or not. Just one of those things in life." Just saying this often enough almost convinces me that it is true and helps alleviate my typical pessimism about physical setbacks.
• Wearing the brace discourages me from typing too much or doing several other things that probably contributed to the problem in the first place.
• Every once in a while, I look down and can't help feeling a little bit like Spider-Man.

Cons about wearing the wrist brace:

• Tough to fit under the sleeves of some shirts.
• Can't play basketball with the brace on. The other day, for the first time ever, I saw another adult shooting baskets in the park before the end of school. Older, white-haired fellow. Missing a lot of shots but his release put nice spin on the ball, so I could tell he knew what he was doing. Really wanted to go shoot with him for a minute, particularly since he had a ball that was clearly a bit low on air and I always drive around with a ball, pump, and needle in my car. But it was quite early in the "rest the wrist" process and I didn't want to screw up my self-guided rehabilitation.
  
• Makes going to the bathroom a bit of an adventure, because . . . well, the brace/splint keeps you from bending your wrist. Now, imagine attending to a certain anterior region of your anatomy following a trip to the bathroom with an arm that moves like a robotic appendage or the limb of a George Romero style zombie. Ain't happening. So I have to remove the brace and then put it back on. (Note that this has really brought home to me how right-handed I am. The other day I thought, "Well, I'll try the left hand this time." And it simply refused to move, as if my right-brain was saying, "The right hand gets all the accolades and respect anyway--the left hand is not going to assume this duty." I seriously hope that I don't ever break my right arm.)
• Sometimes people make professional bowler jokes regarding the wrist brace. Not a fan of bowling.
  
• Every once I a while I try to flex my right hand and realize how impractical Spider-Man's classic wrist-mounted web-shooters (see above) with the trigger in the palm really are. That saddens me, because those are cool.
  

It's Not the Freethrows, Stupid

Sports commentator guys Mike and Mike made the offhand comment this morning that MSU lost to Carolina largely because they put them on the line so often, giving up 40 freethrows while shooting only 23.

Except, of course, that in the previous game Michigan State got outshot 33 to 20 at the freethrow line and won comfortably. Moreover, Michigan State got outscored from the FT line by the EXACT SAME MARGIN--seven freethrows--in both the win and the loss.

So clearly, the freethrows were only a part of what went down, and not really the most significant part, either. MSU had one starter foul out, as did UNC. Total fouls were 28 to 22. Given that the Spartans were in comeback mode most of the game, which tends to encourage players to gamble and commit fouls, that really isn't a big disparity.

Let's hear it for more shallow analysis from people getting paid to give us their opinions!

This is why People Hate Duke

I got to go see two NCAA first round games on Friday here in Boise, and I intend to blog about that. At the moment, I'm just royally pissed off by the finish of the Texas-Duke game.

I only got to watch the last couple minutes because naturally we're given the Gonzaga game here in Boise. But that was enough to see Duke bailed out once again down the stretch by the referees.

First Duke takes the lead on an extremely sketchy "loose ball" foul where the only thing Texas did was be bigger and stronger than Duke's stick-man players on the interior. A Duke guy comes flying into someone with inside position, falls on his ass, and goes to the line for two. Classic.

Then on the other end, our big guy gets mugged underneath on the shot and fighting for the rebound with no call. (Watch this and explain how the Duke guy got freethrows at one end and the Texas center didn't.) Duke's point guard flings the ball past half court. A Texas and Duke player are in hot pursuit. The Texas guy has clear position on the ball and bumps the Duke guy flying past him. The Duke player reacts as though he had been punched by Superman. The whistle blows and Duke gets the game-sealing free throws.

Here's the thing: The Texas guy HAD THE BALL. There was no way the Duke player was going to get it. Any contact had nothing to do with altering the outcome of the play--it didn't put Duke at a disadvantage or give Texas anything they didn't already have. It wasn't flagrant contact. It was incidental. I can't think of two other teams in the country who would be given that call at that point in a game on this stage.

So TWICE in the last minute, TEXAS HAS POSSESSION OF THE BALL and not only do the officials take that away, THEY AWARD FREETHROWS TO DUKE.

I want to like Duke. I defend them fairly regularly against Duke haters because they play smart. But when the fact that they are undersized and puny across their front line and thus highly vulnerable to being outrebounded and outfought for loose balls gets turned into an advantage for them because the officials try to bail them out, that just pisses me off.

Then the assholes at CBS show "the final seconds" of the Texas-Duke game and leave out BOTH of these controversial sequences that decided the outcome of the game. Great reporting, douche-bags.

I'm not a big fan of Villanova, but I hope they DESTROY DUKE in the next round. And if the officials call the game remotely like they called the Villanova-UCLA game, Duke has no prayer. And I'm so angry at the moment that I'm hoping for an utter beatdown.