While Matt McHale: Technical Writer is being inundated with training at his Clark Kent job, I figured this would be a good time to take a look at current events in the basketball world. (Don't worry -- the Pickup Diaries will resume before you know it)
Before we get started, a brief FYI. Several of you faithful Bawful readers have noted in the comments that a bogus redirect script has been affecting the site. After doing a little research, it appears to be related to the script used for the tag cloud that was on the navigation bar on the right side of the page. Many other bloggers who used that Technorati script are seeing the same issues with certain browsers. One particular release of Firefox seemed to be the most generally affected, and I personally have not been able to replicate the problem. However, I have temporarily removed the script from the site's template HTML, so hopefully the problem will be fixed. If you are still having troubles, let us know so we can look into it further.
Update! Do you want to see David Kahn squirm when being pressed by Chris Webber and Matt Winer about throwing so much money at Darko friggin' Milicic? Do you want to see C-Webb get pissed at Kahn for comparing him to Darko? Of course you do. In fact, I'll even embed the video here for your convenience:
We are still countless weeks away from the beginning of the season, and the Warriors' top draft pick Ekpe Udoh has already torn a ligament in his wrist and will miss six months of action. Did anybody inform him that he was drafted by the Warriors and not the Clippers? He wasn't contractually obligated to injure himself like he would have been if Donald Sterling was cutting his paychecks.
Speaking of injured Clippers, Shaun Livingston's back! After destroying his knee in pretty much the worst possible way against the Bobcats in 2007, he has now inked a 2 year, $7 million deal with... the Bobcats. Livingston's agent Henry Thomas commented "yes, how ironic," when this was pointed out to him. Technically that isn't irony; it's just a coincidence. Irony would be getting drafted by the Clippers and staying perfectly healthy and leading the team to a championship. But no matter. It's still nice to see Livinston getting another break after a horrible injury and struggles to regain his form in subsequent years. And now if you'll excuse me, I need to go throw up about eight times after remembering his ligament-ravaging fall.
Oh, and Knee-Mac to the Clippers? Maybe. You can't make this shit up.
In yet another example of NBA teams refusing to learn from history's mistakes, the Nyets have found a new general manager in... Billy King?? Don't they remember how he murdered Philly's 76ers, rolled its body up in a carpet, and tossed it off a bridge? (After that, Philly really could have used Superman -- oh, wait, they got him!. After Superman is done saving Philadelphia, he's trekking over to Detroit to attempt to save it before crippling depression sets in and he decides to just end it all. And I'm only making up part of that sentence.) In any event, there is a nice opportunity here. Not only are we likely to be treated to some comedic mismanagement, but we might even see another example of the team's GM being overruled by its owner. If Mikhail Prokhorov wants to pay eight bajillion rubles for some random scrub in an ill-advised trade, you know Billy King won't be able to say nyet. (Hmm. Maybe they should have gotten Isiah Thomas...)
After all the talks about Kobe Bryant's defensive nemesis Raja Bell coming over to the dark side and joining the Lakers, he's actually now going to the Utah Jazz instead. I feel like re-reading Seven Seconds or Less just to relive Kobe being frustrated by Bell's defense.
(I just realized that after Leandro Barbosa's move, Steve Nash is the only 7SOL era Suns player left. Holy crap, where doe the time go? Meanwhile, the Suns now have... Hedo TurkogluTurkododo. Sigh. Erm, I mean, ball.)
Did you know -- or care -- that the ESPY Awards were held last night? Yeah, neither did pretty much anybody else in the free world. The ESPYs haven't been any fun since this high point some twelve years ago. Anyway, Phil Jackson and Kobe Bryant both won awards. Sigh. However, the one bright spot? "Denver Nuggets coach George Karl received the Jimmy V ESPY for Perseverance. He missed games and practices last season while battling neck and throat cancer. A thinner Karl appeared well, although he didn't come backstage." Crap. Now I actually wish I would have watched a few minutes of the ESPYs now just to see that. Glad to hear George Karl is feeling a bit better.
By the way, hope you're ready for the lockout! Goddamnit.
One last non-NBA item I need to share: holy hell, John Daly is back! I'm sure this won't last, so enjoy it while you can.
Update! Andy Gray just posted this picture on his SI Vault Twitter feed. "Bret Michaels, John Daly, John Daly's son and John Daly's son's middle finger." Enjoy!
"Recipes from an Italian Summer a collection put together by the Editors of Phaidon Press... A Beautiful FAT cookbook with warm weather recipes. The emphasis here is fresh, wonderful ingredients that are abundant in the summer. Fresh produce, fruits and berries, and herbs. 380 recipes for lighter, easy-to-follow summer dishes with big beautiful photographs." That's what I wrote after I had seen this gorgeous cookbook in the bookstore back at the end of June. Now that I have it in my hands and have been cooking from it, I can say it meets all my expectations and more! It's the perfect summer companion!
When you first open up Recipes from an Italian Summer, besides noticing the beautiful artwork, you'll see where the cookbook is going to take you.. Picnics, Salads, Barbecues, Light Lunches and Suppers, Summer Entertaining, Desserts and finally Ice Creams and Drinks. At the beginning of each chapter is a wonderful introduction to what you're about to tempt your taste buds with and it's relevance to summer,
"The huge range of antipasti, appetizers, and salads in the Italian summer repertoire provide a wonderful source of inspiration for picnic food. Dishes such as frittatas, cold risottos, pies and terrines are easy to transport, and work very well at picnics alongside the more traditional filled sandwiches, cold meats, cheeses and salads." ...intro to picnic recipes
The recipes that follow are easy, with easy to find fresh ingredients that should satisfy our summer eating. From making your own mayonnaise, to making a delicious Tomato tartare with basil. Using the fresh apples you have, there's a recipe for Apple strudel, which you can make the day ahead. Or how about Baked ricotta with sun-dried tomato pesto as an appetizer for summer entertaining that's in the oven for only 10 minutes! The range of recipes is amazing, going from simple salads to more exotic dishes such as Swordfish carpaccio with caper sauce. There's a recipe for Summer stuffed peppers that you can serve hot or cold that looks delicious, and a traditional Italian recipe for Sweet and Sour meatballs. And there are plenty of desserts , such as Blueberry tart, or Peaches with summer zabaglione! This is a cookbook that can satisfy that urge you have in the summer to cook a little lighter, refreshing meal with fresh local grown ingredients!
For my own search for fresh ingredients, I decided to choose a recipe where I could use some of the beautiful purple eggplants that have arrived at my market lately. And thanks to the publisher, Phaidon, I have their permission to share this easy, delicious summer recipe with you! Here it is...
Stuffed Eggplants
Melanzane ripiene
*recipe reprinted with permission of Phaidon Press Inc.
Ingredients:
4 Eggplants
6 Tablespoons butter, plus extra for greasing and dotting
olive oil, for frying
7 ounces ground beef
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1 cup fresh bread crumbs
salt and pepper
Preparation time: 30 minutes
Cooking time: 30 minutes
Serves: 4
Halve the eggplants lengthwise and scoop out and reserve most of the flesh from each half.
Sprinkle the eggplant skins with salt and turn them upside down to let the excess water drain.
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F and grease an ovenproof dish with butter. Heat a little oil in a skillet, add the ground beef, and cook over medium-high heat for a few minutes until browned. Set aside.
To make the bechamel sauce, melt 4 tablespoons of the butter in a medium pan over low heat. Stir in the flour and cook, stirring constantly, for 1 minute. Gradually stir in the milk and bring to a boil. Cook and continue to stir until the sauce is thickened. Remove the pan from the head, stir in the nutmeg, season with salt and pepper, and let cool slightly. Rinse the eggplant shells and pat dry with paper towels.
Chop the reserved eggplant and stir it into the sauce with the egg, meat and cheese, then season with salt and pepper. Fill the eggplant shells with this mixture, put them into the prepared dish, dot with the remaining butter and sprinkle with the bread crumbs. Bake for 30 minutes, until the topping is crisp and golden. Serve immediately.
This recipe was absolutely delicious! I have always had eggplant in a tomato type sauce, so I didn't know what to expect using the bechamel sauce, which is a cream sauce. And now I know what I've been missing! The cream sauce complimented the flavor of the eggplant instead of drowning it! *A few personal notes about the recipe... This recipe called for 4 Eggplants, which I believe are suppose to be the smaller italian eggplants (In the photo in the cookbook all eight eggplant halves fit in one large baking dish). I used the larger American eggplants and baked them for 60 minutes in 2 baking dishes, just making sure that the top was crisp and golden. Different eggplants have different flavors too, so it's fun to try different kinds. Just make sure that you bake whichever eggplants you choose for the minimum of 30 minutes, and make sure the tops are crisp before serving.
I want to thank the publishers, Phaidon, for sending me this wonderful cookbook to review! And for letting me share a recipe! I'll be cooking quite a bit from this cookbook all summer long and then some! If you enjoy summer cooking, and enjoy using the fresh ingredients that the summer season is known for, Recipes from an Italian Summer would be a great cookbook to add to your cookbook shelf! I hope everyone enjoys this recipe! Let me know what you think if you do!
"I stared into the flames as they resurrected images and memories from my first days with him in this very room so many lifetimes ago. There is no explanation for love; no spoken words compare with its silent exhilaration. If that was true of the ordinary love between two mortals - if love is ever ordinary - then it was truer of a love that has contorted itself into different bodies in different eras over the centuries." ...Mina Murray
Dracula in Love by Karen Essex is seductive. It is the telling of a love story that had endured centuries, the love story between Count Dracula and Mina Murray, and part of that story is Count Dracula's rich history and how he became immortal. Karen Essex's prose is beautiful, draping itself around you and slowly drawing you in. Dracula in Love is erotic and passionate, and everything you'd want in a gothic love story. It's haunting, it's wonderful and I LOVED it!
In the original story by Bram Stoker, Dracula was everything that embodied evil, a blood sucking monster who almost destroyed the lives of a young naive lawyer he had hired, Jonathan Harker, and Harker's "prim & proper" fiance & soon to be wife, Mina Murray. Dracula's ultimate seduction of Mina was an act of revenge.But in Dracula in Love, the story of Dracula is told through Mina's eyes, with a backstory that has Dracula as Mina's soulmate, with a power over her that 700 years of yearning could not break. Even as she marries Jonathan Harker, she is drawn to him... in vivid erotic dreams she shares herself with the mysterious man she later knows to be Dracula. Her seduction is far from undesired, as the stirred memories of her past life with Dracula slowly open up a world that her victorian sensibilities should reject, but instead draw her even farther into the arms of Dracula.
Walk the dark, damp streets of Victorian England... Listen to the faint whispers of the night... watch out for the unnatural ones called vampires... OK, just read it! Karen Essex does an amazing job of creating a handsome, brooding, passionate Dracula any girl would love to invite in for a bite. And Mina is the ultimate heroine at first gentle and bound by the Victorian morals imposed on women of the time, but whose strong will and determination give her the strength to become so much more. And as if the love story weren't enough to satisfy any reader, Karen does a wonderful job of painting a true portrait of the women of the late 19th century, and what their place in society was. If walking the dark streets of Victorian England appeal to you, if a brooding handsome seductive vampire makes your knees weak, and if you love a girl who knows her own mind you will enjoy Dracula in Love! I was so fortunate to receive an ARC of Dracula in Love from Doubleday! Now I'm going to have to check out the other books Karen Essex has written because her writing in Dracula in Love was just so beautiful I want to read more.
Mark your calendars for August 10th, because that's when Dracula in Love will be coming to a bookstore near you!
With the weather severely limiting my ability to spent countless hours playing basketball on the various outdoor courts of my hometown, I decided to use the extra time for off-court training.
The decision was made one particularly bitter February day while visiting Gauvin. There was an old weight bench (complete with the weights) sitting in a heap in the backyard, half-buried in the snow. I rather stupidly asked Gauvin whether the bench was being used, and Gauvin rather stupidly replied, "I don't know."
Teenagers.
Anyway, this led to a short negotiation with Gauvin's dad, Vern, for ownership of the unused weight bench. We settled on a price of $50, which I thought was a pretty good deal for a bench that came with all the weights (most benches I had seen in the local sporting goods stores were sold without the weights). I'm sure Vern thought he was the one who'd gotten the deal, considering he now had a wad of cash in his pocket from selling something that was probably destined to be thrown out with the trash someday soon.
Gauvin helped me load the bench into my Fury, and I quickly drove home to set it up. There wasn't any room in my house for a weight bench, so I had to set it up in the garage. Of course, my mom was (and still is) a bit of a hoarder -- and saying "a bit" is a probably a significant understatement -- so I had to wedge the bench into very small space between boxes of Christmas decorations and huge bags of who-knows-what.
The bench was a little on the wobbly side, not to mention more than a little rusty, but I was stoked. I had been eyeballing weight benches for a while. Of all possible exercises, bench pressing seemed like the most manly. That's what all the guys at school either did, wanted to do, or talked about doing. In terms of the measures of manhood, the amount of weight a young man could bench press rivaled penis size and how many bases he had made it to with a girl.
Now, I had never actually attempted a bench press before, and I didn't attempt one the day I set up my new-but-used bench. I have no idea why. I guess the act of transporting it to my house and assembling it had been enough of a workout that day. Instead, I waited until one day after school the next week...which ended up being a pretty big mistake.
Oddly enough, my mom was out of town. She was still working at Delco Electronics, which made various car parts for General Motors. However, she has somehow stumbled into a position as liaison with another Delco plant that had been opened in Mexico, where the workers could be paid in lesser currencies (old rocks and chunks of rusty metal for instance) to do the same work fat Kokomoans were doing for upwards of $30 an hour. At any rate, my mom was in another country, and I was home alone.
I am very sad and embarrassed to report that this did not lead to a wild party or any other adventures. I didn't put a bra on my head and try to make a girl using an old Commodore 64, ala Weird Science. (But don't think I didn't want to. I mean the making a girl part, not the bra on my head part.) Nope. I did a lot of sitting around and eating pizza. And I tried out my weight bench.
Someone had driven my mom to the airport, so her car was still in the garage. The available space was so packed with stuff that I could barely walk through it to get to the bench. Inexperienced as I was, I didn't have a clear idea about how much weight I should use. However, 200 pounds sounded like a nice, manly number. So I jammed a hundred pounds of weights onto either side of the bar, squeezed past our old Christmas tree, and settled down onto the bench.
It took literally all my might to heave the bar off the bench, which should have made my Spider Sense tingle. But I was psyched and my testosterone was pumping. Therefore, instead of dropping the bar back into the braces, I slowly lowered it to my chest...
...and there it stayed.
I couldn't move it. I could not lift this thing an inch off my chest. In fact, it was taking every iota of my available strength to keep it from laying directly on me. Within about a minute of struggling, I didn't have enough strength for even that, and I was forced to let a portion of the weight rest on my chest. Now, I had grown up reading comic books, and whenever a hero really, really needed to something that required a phenomenal amount of strength, they would just imagine something inspiring -- like how Aunt May was going to die if Spider-Man didn't recover the poison antidote that Doctor Octopus had left laying just out of his reach -- which would result in an adrenaline surge that provided the hero without however much strength was required to accomplish the heretofore impossible task.
Well, I tried this method. Turns out, it doesn't work very well unless you've been bitten by a radioactive spider or exposed to gamma rays.
Now the weight was really pressing down on me. I couldn't expand my chest to get full breaths, so when I tried to scream all that came out was a rattling gasp. There was so much crap on either side of the bench, I couldn't tip the weights to either side of me. There was no escape. I couldn't yell for help. And my mom wasn't going to be home for days.
I'm going to die, I thought.
That did it. Now I got an adrenaline surge. However, it wasn't a dramatic movie moment. Like, I didn't toss the weighted bar aside like it was a paper weight. Instead, my adrenaline provided me just enough power to kinda-sorta lift the bar up enough on one side to wriggle and squirm my way -- slowly and painfully -- out from underneath the bar (while also sliding partially under my mom's car in the process).
I celebrated my survival by kicking the weight bench that had almost just killed me...bruising the hell out of my foot in the process.
Good times.
Shortly after learning the importance of slowly building up to larger amounts of weight on bench press, I purchased a punching bag. Although, like most wanna-be manly men, I wanted a heavy bag, I opted to go for a speed bag instead. This was because I had heard or read somewhere that using a speed bag was good both for cardiovascular conditioning and for improving hand-eye coordination, which was a skill that could translate to other sports as well.
Because I didn't have a father around to do it for me, I had to install the bag myself. This was a problem because, again, I didn't have a father around to teach me important things. Such as when installing heavy items into drywall, you should really try to secure it into studs or wall supports. That would have been some damn handy information to have. I simply borrowed a drill from my next door neighbor, drilled some holes and screwed that sucker directly into the thin, flakey drywall.
I'm sure you can figure out where I'm going with this.
All things considered, I'm surprised things didn't go worse. I think the thing managed to stay in the wall for a couple weeks, which was probably a couple weeks longer than it should have. But at some point -- probably when I was punching for power instead of speed and dexterity -- the whole unit slid right off the wall and fell on me. Of course, being the idiot that I was, I just drilled some new holes and screwed it back onto the wall. This time, it only stayed up a couple days before falling off (this time I was ready and jumped out of the way in time).
Another failure.
Soon, I convinced Dave and Gauvin to come over and work out with me after school (but before my mom came home, meaning we had the extra car space to move around in). These days, between magazines like Men's Health and what you can find on the Internet, there are endless sources for good workout routines. But when I was a teenager, all we had were whatever crappy crap we could find at local bookstores or hear about by word of mouth.
This led to various forms of unintentional hilarity. For instance, Dave had heard from the friend of a friend of his brother's that a good ab workout was to stand against a solid wall, tighten your stomach muscles and let somebody punch you rapidly in the gut for a couple minutes (or however long you could ensure it). Next thing you knew, we were standing around punching each other. As a workout.
We also started running together. Unfortunately, Gauvin wasn't a runner. So the running circuit we devised -- which ran from Dave's house (which was across the street from our high school and a couple blocks from Boulevard school) to Highland Park (Kokomo's most prestigious park, home to Old Ben, the world's largest preserved steer) -- was much too far for Gauvin's tastes.
Therefore, it would go like this. We would start off at a moderate pace for the first half-mile or so. That's the point where Gauvin would start to lag behind. It wasn't that Gauvin wasn't in good shape. Hell, Vern believed in punishing his children with pushups and pull-ups. But he had no cardiovascular endurance whatsoever, mostly because he hated (and still hates) all forms of exercise that develop that kind of endurance.
After Gauvin started his "granny shuffle" (as me and Dave secretly called it), Dave and I would maintain our original pace until we'd gotten maybe a quarter mile ahead of Gauvin. Then we'd turn around, run back to where he was, then turn back around and resume our forward run. We would continue doing this for the duration of the run, meaning Dave and I would eventually run nearly twice the actual distance between the two points.
I should probably note that, at this particular time in my life, I didn't have a very clear notion of what good workout gear was. I had a standard basketball outfit (black Purdue shorts and a matching tank). But here was what I typically worked out in: an old-school Hulkamania tank top (complete with three rips across the back), a "Hulk Rules" bandana and a pair of yellow Purdue shorts. I probably looked like a huge, nerdy banana.
What's more, I owned exactly one pair of shoes: a pair of black Converse high tops. That's right, baby! I was rocking the Converse Weapon. These were my school shoes, my weight lifting shoes and my running shoes. They also would have been my date shoes if I had been going on any dates. Come to think about it, this fact might partially explain why I wasn't dating.
Here's a funny story. My future girlfriend, Aimee, heard me talking about going for a run and suggested we go running some time. I showed up for that run in -- I shit you not -- a pair of jean shorts and a Larry Bird t-shirt. Within about half a second of seeing me, Aimee said: "You...do realize we're going running right?"
That was the point where I finally went out and bought some legit workout clothes: mesh athletic shorts and tanks. Most of them were of decent size and quality, but, much to ongoing shame, I purchased a pair of 1980s-style Celtics practice shorts.
That is, short shorts.
What's worse, I would pair them with bike shorts (worn underneath), which had become a semi-popular practice in the NBA. I thought I looked awesome.
Regardless of how I looked, the new duds certainly made working out a lot more comfortable (and therefore enjoyable). So much so that I couldn't believe I'd been working out in what were basically street clothes for so long.
Anyway, winter was finally starting to fade. Around mid-March, the NBA on NBC was airing a matchup between the Boston Celtics and the Portland Trail Blazers. At the time, the Celtics were struggling (having lost three straight) and the Blazers were on fire (having won seven in a row). Larry Bird was on his last legs and playing in a cumbersome back brace that made him look either fat or box-like, depending on your point of view. Even worse, Portland -- the second-best team in the league and widely considered the only team that could knock the Bulls off in the Finals -- were a young, running, gunning team...Kryptonite for an old, gimpy team like Boston.
It was supposed to be a blowout. Instead, viewers were treated to an instant classic: Clyde Drexler went crazy (41 points, 8 rebounds, 11 assists, and 17 free throw attempts) but Larry Bird was, well, Larry Bird: 49 points (19-for-35), 14 rebounds, 12 assists, 4 steals and a blocked shot. What's more, Bird hit one of the craziest buzzer-beaters I've ever seen to force OT...a one-handed push shot while shuffling his feet in the midst of a bear hug from Drexler. It was, and still is, unbelievable that thing went in.
Here are some highlights:
I cannot tell you how juiced up I was after that game. It had seemed, I don't know, world changing. I felt like Bird was back. I felt like the Celtics could totally win the title that year as long as everybody stayed healthy. I thought, as Kevin Garnett would later say, ANYTHING IS POOOOSSSSSIIIBBBBBLLLLLEEE!!!
So I finally stated out loud what I had been thinking about for a while: "I'm going to be on the varsity basketball team my senior year."
Barely a Lady... Book One in the Drake's Rakes Series
Giveaway Has Ended!
Congrats to Aimee, Cheryl and Chanelle!
Olivia Grace has secrets that could destroy her. One of the greatest of these is the Earl of Gracechurch, who married and divorced her five years earlier. Abandoned and disgraced, Grace has survived those years at the edge of respectability. Then she stumbles over Jack on the battlefield of Waterloo, and he becomes an even more dangerous secret. For not only is he unconscious, he is clad in an enemy uniform.
But worse, when Jack finally wakes in Olivia's care, he can't remember how he came to be on a battlefield in Belgium. In fact, he can remember nothing of the last five years. He thinks he and Olivia are still blissfully together. To keep him from being hanged for a traitor, Olivia must pretend she and Jack are still married. To unearth the real traitors, Olivia and Jack must unravel the truth hidden within his faulty memory. To save themselves and the friends who have given them sanctuary, they must stand against their enemies, even as they both keep their secrets. In the end, can they risk everything to help Jack recover his lost memories, even though the truth may destroy them both?
Eileen Dreyer will not disappoint Historical Romance readers in Barely a Lady. What I found refreshing was the setting of this romance. Coming out of the pages of my usual Highlander romances, Barely a Lady is set during the 1815's, in Brussels and during the Battle of Waterloo. Dukes & Dutchesses, Lady's and Earls fill the pages, but so does deceit, betrayals, scandals, passion and treason (And let me tell you backstabbing doesn't even come close to what Olivia experiences from her husbands family). Well developed strong characters (and Olivia makes a perfect heroine), that seem to command the page even from the start, a good story with plenty of history and romance. The romance between Jack and Olivia was enjoyable, but Gervaise is an "interesting" charmer (and Jack's friend) and part of the picture too. Plus, Jack's amnesia makes for some very interesting reading! A good leisurely read for summer!
About Eileen Dreyer... Dreyer won her first publishing award in 1987, being named the best new Contemporary Romance Author by Romantic Times. Since that time she has also garnered not only five other writing awards from Romantic Times, but five RITA Awards from Romance Writers of America, which secures her only the fourth place in the Romance Writers of America prestigious Hall of Fame. Since extending her reach to suspense, she has also garnered a coveted Anthony Award nomination for her last paperback, Bad Medicine. She has over three million books in print world wide, and has made regular appearances on the Waldenbook and B.Dalton bestsellers list, and now the USA Today list. Eileen is an addicted traveler, having sung in some of the best Irish pubs in the world, and admits she sees research as a handy way to salve her insatiable curiosity. She counts film producers, police detectives and Olympic athletes as some of her sources and friends. She's also trained in forensic nursing and death investigation, although she doesn't see herself actively working in the field, unless this writing thing doesn't pan out. You can learn more about Eileen at her website EileenDreyer.com.
Want to know a few fun fact about Eileen?
* Eileen has written 25 contemporary romances as Kathl
een Korbel and am a member of the RWA Hall of Fame.
* Hugh Jackman and Kate Winslet were the models for Jack and Olivia.
* All my characters did their own stunts.
* Olivia's name was originally Annie. My characters' names tend to change as I write the book and get to know them better. And Olivia wasn't an Annie. I try and make sure all the names are corrected in editing, but occasionally, I miss one or two.
Now, if all that doesn't entice you, courtesy of Hachette Book Group I have 3 copies of Barely a Lady for a GIVEAWAY! Here's How to Enter...
Giveaway Has Ended!
* Let's all get in a little romance in this summer! All you need to do to enter is leave a comment with your email address!
* If you want to Tweet or Blog about the giveaway, that's great too! You'll get a bonus entry for spreading the word! Just leave me a link to where you tweeted or blogged!
This giveaway is open to US and Canadian residents only (No PO boxes). The books will be shipped to the winners directly from the publisher. Contest ends 11:59pm EST on July 27th. I will randomly pick the winners the next day and email them! (please check your email.. winner must reply to me within 3 days! Thanks!) Good Luck!
I want to thank Anna of Hachette Book Group for sending along a copy of Barely a Lady to review! Today's post is also part of Eileen Dreyer's Blog Tour for Barely a Lady!
After getting my ass handed to me for the first time, I decided it was time to diversify my offensive game. Under the circumstances, however, this was easier said than done. The reason being was that it was in the middle of a typically harsh Indiana winter. I continued playing on the Boulevard court through Christmas and New Year, but early January saw a heavy, unrelenting snowfall that officially (and indefinitely) ended my outdoor practices.
To make matters worse, there weren't any open gym times in Kokomo. At the time, I couldn't afford to join the YMCA (which, back then, was the only pay-for-use gym in town that had a basketball court). Just about every school in the area had a court, but you couldn't just walk in and use them.
The only way I could get any practice was to show up to the intramural league early to shoot around and then try to get in some extra shooting after the league ended...until the janitor kicked me out that is (which was usually pretty quickly). Unfortunately, I wasn't the only person to have this stroke of brilliance. If I showed up a half hour before intramurals -- which was the earliest that the doors would be unlocked -- there were already a dozen or so other people lined up and ready to go.
It's never easy shooting around in a scrum. When you have more than two or three people shooting at the same basket, it becomes chaos. You're always waiting for an opening to take a shot, but then, so is everybody else. You'll begin your shooting motion only to see somebody else doing the same thing out of the corner of your eye. Sometimes you'll pull back your shot and the other guy will do the same thing, which means you'll both miss the opening. Or maybe you chuck your shot up anyway and your ball collides with his ball in midair. Or, worst of all, you make some strange adjustment to your shot -- maybe a higher-than-normal arc, maybe a too-quick release, etc. -- so that there won't be a collision. However, shooting in an unusual fashion doesn't actually improve your shot at all because shooting is all about muscle memory, and you'll probably never shoot exactly like that ever again.
Another problem when shooting in a scrum is self-consciousness. Among males (and possibly females as far as I know), even shooting around can be a competition. If you're shooting around with other people, hitting shots makes you feel cool. On the flip side, missing shots can be embarrassing, especially if you miss four, five, six, seven, etc. in a row. Of course, missing several consecutive shots is a natural consequence of working on shots you're not yet good at. And yet missing shots around other people -- especially when you'll probably be playing against them in a few minutes -- can turn up the social pressure.
When this happens, a pickup baller will often find himself gravitating toward his pet shots or even shooting free throws. People will say they're doing this to "get into a rhythm," which is true to some extent. But it's also a way to show the world at large that, "See? I can hit shots. I have real basketball skills."
I sometimes fell victim to this social pressure. In particular, I avoided my weakest shooting areas, which were the left and right baselines. Baseline shots are the areas from which players are most likely to either a) shoot an airball (the most humiliating of missed shots) or b) have their miss careen away in the opposite direction, thereby ensuring maximum "chase your own ball down" potential. Scampering across the floor after a badly missed shot can feel almost as silly as missing the shot itself.
All that said, I showed up early to intramurals and I stayed late. The whole "first guy to get here, last guy to leave" mentality. I worked hard on extending my range -- which I had initially limited to 15 feet and in -- out to the three-point line. Even though various sources, including my hero, Larry Bird, decried the three-pointer as a low percentage shot, I had to admit that hitting one made me feel pretty cool. If you can't dunk -- and let's face it, most people can't -- hitting a triple is the next most impressive basketball accomplishment. Especially if you can do it well. Once I started hitting a few, I became increasingly interested in improving that aspect of my game.
That wasn't the only skill I was working on at that time. I don't remember where I read it, but some source -- possibly The Kokomo Tribute, which was the town paper -- had published an interview with the head coach of the Kokomo High School men's varsity basketball team. In that article, he encouraged specialization. I know that may sound strange, because today's NBA favors players who have diverse talents and wide-ranging skill sets. However, the coach said that not everybody could do everything, but most people could learn to do one thing really well. Doing that could provide young players with a "marketable" skill that could translate to success on a varsity level. In that article, the coach then described a player who had impressed with his ability to block shots in tryouts. Based on that one solid skill, the player had made the team and went on to have a solid high school career, which then led to a walk-on position with a Division I college team.
I decided to focus on rebounding. Since the level of play in the intramural league was terrible, I decided to use the games as rebounding practice. I stopped looking for passes that were never going to come anyway. Instead, I watched shots go up and then went after them with a vengeance. And you know what? It's amazing how many extra possessions I got for my team, how many garbage points I was able to score by doing nothing else on offense besides shagging for rebounds.
But hey, that was the secret of Dennis Rodman's success, right?
I did discover one other thing. Any time I didn't grab a defensive rebound, if I sprinted balls out and beat everybody down the floor, my teammates would occasionally pass me the ball on the break. Doing this could (and often did) lead to two or three easy buckets every game. Which leads us to...
Pickup Rule #5: Always run out hard on offense
Just like in the NBA, there are blowouts in pickup games. But the marjority of them tend to be close. This is especially true in weekly pickup leagues because the people involved try to make the teams reasonably even in terms of talent. This means that every point is of crucial importance, which further means that scoring an easy bucket makes the game, well, much easier.
Mind you, it's tough for people to maintain that kind of effort, because it's a high effort, low reward strategy. Let's say you play a game to 21 (which is what we do in our league) and your team has, say, 30-40 possessions. This means that, in addition to all the other energy you're expending, you could end up doing 40-ish all-out sprints...which isn't easy.
What makes it even harder is when you're being defended by someone who has sniffed out what you're doing and decides to run with you. When that happens, a lot of pickup ballers will stop running, because what's the point, right?
Well, like Yogi Berra once said of baseball, ninety percent of this game is half-mental. If you relentlessly give all-out effort on every possession, there's a very, very high liklihood that you'll either break your defender's will or wear him out trying. Either way, you gain the advantage. And every little advantage can mean the difference between a win and a loss.
While all this was going on, I was prepping for college entrance exams. They were still a few months away, which made it hard to concentrate on studying. Then I found out the S.A.T. would coincide with the second round of the NBA playoffs. Now I was able to associate studying with the NBA...which, oddly enough, helped motivate me.
Not so for my buddy Dave D. I convinced him to study with me one night, and 45 minutes of review just about did him in.
"Holy shit," he said, plopping his head down onto his prep book, "can't I just put your brain in a jar and use that during the test? I didn't read any rules against doing that? Could be a key loophole."
"Well," I said, "forgetting the fact that I actually need my brain, the technology necessary to remove it, keep it alive, and establish an interface between it and you're brain while..."
"Head hurting now," Dave said. "Please stop."
I stopped. Dave stopped. And we went out for pizza.
That was my life at that time. Hanging out, playing ball and studying. Don't even ask me about my dating life, because it didn't exist outside of my wildest (or, based on my limited romantic knowledge and experience, "mildest") fantasies.
But very soon I would be developing a whole new goal for myself...
