I've a long and largely undistinguished basketball career, dotted with a few spectacular moments that would stifle your yawns for several minutes. In recent years I've played with a group of guys on Saturday mornings in an non-air-conditioned health club gym. It's sort of a society that you join gradually -- at first you hang around, keep your mouth shut, and play hard, and eventually you just "belong."
Some of these guys have played for 10-15 years or more. Take Rick, the six-foot 225 pound fiftysomething who's too old to be my brother and too young to be my dad. He hangs around the three point line as if he physically lacked the energy to move any closer to the basket. He's tired like a fox. You put a new guy on him defensively, and suddenly Rick's draining 3-4 treys to end the game, after lulling New Guy into thinking he's useless. If you switch a top defender on him, then he lounges around half-court to draw you away from helping New Guy, who's left to pat players on the back as they giggle their way past him for easy layups.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. Today is about a new stat: 50 Time. This is the amount of time that it takes me to make 50 baskets -- 5 shots from 10 spots each. Imagine five evenly-spaced spots arcing around the three point line from corner to corner, then imagine five more spots that are two steps closer to the hoop, and there you go. Shots have to be made sequentially, no fair shooting out of order just because you happened to rebound the ball near a shooting station.
I've played three times so far. Day 1: 19 minutes. Day 2: 26 minutes. Day 3: 13 minutes.
Beat me!
Fantasy Baseball Update: 94 points, 1st place by 9.5. Daisuke Matsuzaka's dominating the Tampa Bay Devil Rays tonight so things are looking up.
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