Shoot the "F...ing Ball!"

[Darrell KSR]

I hesitate on whether I should tell this on myself. But fools rush in, they say, so here I go...

My sleep is... erratic. I usually go to sleep fine, 9 times out of 10. But my sleep is almost always interrupted and I do not return to sleep.

Sometimes I have nightmares. Normal stuff. Falling off a cliff, or forgetting to attend classes or something. If it's scary, I'm usually shouting something, "get out! Go away!" Or whatever.

That's when my wife nudges me and wakes me up. I always remember the nightmare, then sorta chuckle at how dumb it was, and try to get back to sleep.

Last night was different. Way different. Like, never before kind of different.

First, I don't remember my dream. Not one bit of it. In fact, my wife could be pulling a joke on me. But she's not. It's true.

Apparently last night she decided not to wake me. Normally my dream/nightmares are punctuated with grunts, a shout of "get out," sometimes a "help," or whatever. Not last night.

This morning she asked me how the team did. I didn't know what she was talking about. She said she let me sleep through it last night because I was having entire conversations. (Note to self: that is scary in itself.)

Anyway, she said it was hysterical and she didn't want to stop me. Apparently I was yelling, "Shoot the F'ing ball. Drive the F'ing ball. Finish the F'ing layup."

She said like every other word was an F-bomb.

Now, what makes this so funny is that's just not a curse word I use. Oh, have I ever said, "F," I can't believe that call? Or whatever? Sure. But pretty rare, and even more rare to use the "ing" version.

And of course, I'm not coaching anybody right now.

And the only game I watched yesterday was Kentucky, and I was thrilled with our play.

Just cuckoo.

I read a story about Dr. Oz being caught saying something like, "that F'ing girl reporter," just before I went to bed, and I GUESS my subconscious picked up on that, plus the basketball game, conflated the two, and created a scenario where it would make sense.

I guess. Or maybe I'm just cuckoo. Either way...

Oh, FWIW, I told my son about it today. I coached him 8 years in basketball. He told me it was obviously pent up rage from coaching the middle school team all those years and holding in what I REALLY wanted to say.

That may have more merit.

[blueboss]

I hesitate on whether I should tell this on myself. But fools rush in, they say, so here I go...

My sleep is... erratic. I usually go to sleep fine, 9 times out of 10. But my sleep is almost always interrupted and I do not return to sleep.

Sometimes I have nightmares. Normal stuff. Falling off a cliff, or forgetting to attend classes or something. If it's scary, I'm usually shouting something, "get out! Go away!" Or whatever.

That's when my wife nudges me and wakes me up. I always remember the nightmare, then sorta chuckle at how dumb it was, and try to get back to sleep.

Last night was different. Way different. Like, never before kind of different.

First, I don't remember my dream. Not one bit of it. In fact, my wife could be pulling a joke on me. But she's not. It's true.

Apparently last night she decided not to wake me. Normally my dream/nightmares are punctuated with grunts, a shout of "get out," sometimes a "help," or whatever. Not last night.

This morning she asked me how the team did. I didn't know what she was talking about. She said she let me sleep through it last night because I was having entire conversations. (Note to self: that is scary in itself.)

Anyway, she said it was hysterical and she didn't want to stop me. Apparently I was yelling, "Shoot the F'ing ball. Drive the F'ing ball. Finish the F'ing layup."

She said like every other word was an F-bomb.

Now, what makes this so funny is that's just not a curse word I use. Oh, have I ever said, "F," I can't believe that call? Or whatever? Sure. But pretty rare, and even more rare to use the "ing" version.

And of course, I'm not coaching anybody right now.

And the only game I watched yesterday was Kentucky, and I was thrilled with our play.

Just cuckoo.

I read a story about Dr. Oz being caught saying something like, "that F'ing girl reporter," just before I went to bed, and I GUESS my subconscious picked up on that, plus the basketball game, conflated the two, and created a scenario where it would make sense.

I guess. Or maybe I'm just cuckoo. Either way...

Oh, FWIW, I told my son about it today. I coached him 8 years in basketball. He told me it was obviously pent up rage from coaching the middle school team all those years and holding in what I REALLY wanted to say.

That may have more merit.

That’s funny…maybe it stems from your stated displeasure of Cal screaming like a wild man through the course of every game. Perhaps you were dreaming you were coaching and Cal was a player on your team.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Catfan73]

Maybe Cal is actually sleep coaching?

[MickintheHam]

If you had called on of your players a “selfish MFer”, I would say you are watching too much of Cal.

[Darrell KSR]

Just weird. I have no explanation.

If my wife tells me later today that I had some other weird talking in my sleep last night, I'm going to swear she's making it up.

[kingcat]

Perfectly normal

[CitizenBBN]

She said she let me sleep through it last night because I was having entire conversations. (Note to self: that is scary in itself.)


Oh, that's the scary part.

I had a colonoscopy some months ago, and apparently talked to the staff about how great my girlfriend was. As I was going under they asked about her as she is the one who came with me and thank Goodness I talked about how great she was and how lucky I was, b/c the staff told her.

But it scared me to think what they could ask and what I could say. That work I did for the mob, how the CIA recruited me, all those hotel soaps.

So yeah, that should scare you way more than how bad your team played.

[Darrell KSR]

If you had called on of your players a “selfish MFer”, I would say you are watching too much of Cal.

Lol. I missed this. I wish I had seen this when my son was still in town. I would have asked him to identify the player. Not T. Jones, but "my" player. Would've been easy.

I love Nicky to death, but he never saw a shot he didn't like.

We were at Prince of Peace one day. Game was tight, tied or a bucket ahead by one team or the other, fairly late in the game. He hit a little shot in the lane, basically a layup. Might have been the only basket he made the whole game. They go back ahead on their possession, and we get the ball back.

We cross midcourt, and Nicky lets fly a missile from about where Tayshaun Prince hit against UNC. Of course, the ball clanged off the backboard, we fortunately get an offensive rebound and a putback. POP calls timeout.

I'm about to go all Cal on him as he walks to the bench, and he just looks up at me and says, "Coach, I was feeling it."

LOL. It broke the tension, and I couldn't help but belly laugh. His "heat check" was a 4-foot shot, followed by a legit 30-footer in the 7th grade.

We won the game. Our team never got tight in close games. Nicky wouldn't let them, despite my worst coaching efforts.

In the 5th grade, St. Rose fielded a rare stud team in our age level. They lost 1 game in 3 years. We were tied with them, they went ahead and we had the ball down 2 with 10 seconds to play in our court. I called timeout, and set up a play for us to get a layup. Nicky had other ideas. Ball was passed to him, and he immediately went the wrong way. Then he started backward. Then moved forward and I'm yelling, "shoot, Nicky." At that point we had no choice.

He slings the ball from the top of the key, the buzzer sounds, and it slams into the backboard and immediately through the net for a game-winning 3-pointer bank shot. Only game they lost in 3 years. Their coach still gave me heck about the play. He still thinks I called it. I never told him differently.

Probably the best was in the 4th grade. We were playing Holy Family at St. Patrick in Adamsville. We were leading the whole game, I did a P-poor job of coaching, and we frittered away a double digit lead, they go up by 1.

We have the ball, and make a bad pass that almost ended the game, but it goes off them and we have an inbounds play on the side, with 3 seconds to play. We set up a very basic screen so we can get a shot. Nicky is supposed to run and set the screen at the elbow, and we were hoping for a 15-foot or closer shot, or maybe a layup if the lane was clear.

Instead, Nicky screams for the ball as he runs into the backcourt to receive it, and has the ball 60-feet away with the clock ticking away those 3 seconds.

Here's where it gets funny.

He manages to make it to almost midcourt, and heaves a shot that would not have made it to the paint, but he is clobbered by 3 defenders.

With no time remaining, he has 3 free throws. Makes the first, misses the next two, we go to overtime and somehow win despite my coaching and his play.

He was a kick to coach. Nowhere near the best player, but fearless, the best trash talker in Toy Bowl, and usually a pretty decent shooter. But you never knew what that selfish MFer (said in the nicest way) was going to do.

Good memories.

[CitizenBBN]

lol. that's a great story.

[Darrell KSR]

Have a lot of great stories. If you ever get a chance to volunteer coach kids in anything, you'll get back more than you give. That's a guarantee.

I remember all of the stories. Not all the teams were great, or even good or average. Some of my fondest memories comes from the bad seasons and the little triumphs we had, and the lessons we learned through losing. There is a lot of freedom you are given when the team is a bad team to do different things and that can be a breath of fresh air.

We had a bad team one year. My son was sick with a respiratory ailment. Played competitive soccer--his main sport--and played about 20 minutes earlier that day in a game. Was just as beat as beat could be. We fielded a team of 6 players--one of them him, sick as a dog, another arrived on crutches. His Dad said he could play. My assistant coach was a physician. He looked at him, pronounced him ok to play. When he was in the game, we put him on the offensive end and forced the other team to play us basically 4v4, more or less. Not ideal.

We had the ball down 3 with a few seconds left. My son begged to come out. I told him he could do it. He told me he couldn't stand. I told him he could do it. He stayed in.

We threw the ball to him, and he banked in a 3-pointer at the buzzer to send us to overtime. Terrible shot, but it went in.

I used his experience to "coach" him for life lessons from then on. Remember when you were sick, played a competitive soccer game (highest level in the state) in the morning, and then hit the game-tying shot in basketball in the afternoon? You can work, compete and succeed even when you aren't at your best. That goes for academics, athletics, and in our jobs.

We lost that game, by the way. Didn't matter. The lesson was learned.

Here's another day he wasn't at his best this past Fall. Played all 110 minutes against their cross-town rival. Team was down two starters in the back line, and needed every ounce he could bring.

It's not always about winning, but just learning what you can do is important.

[Darrell KSR]

By the way, I have just as many stories on the girls team. Learning to coach girls was a process for me. I learned more from them than they did from me.

Girls have to have fun to play well. Boys have to play well to have fun. The way you coach that makes your head explode...or did mine.

[Darrell KSR]

My girls...

A., who was the best athlete, but couldn't shoot. Her Dad told her one day that they needed to "intentionally foul" a player when we were behind, because they were an awful free throw shooter. The girl, as good-hearted as you can find, didn't know what "intentionally foul" looked like, so she shoved the girl into the wall to be sure a foul was called. It was...lol.

G., whose Dad came to see me after practice one day to tell me not to show his daughter how to hold the ball when shooting, because "she does it better her way." They also came to the opposite side of the gym one day we were playing when we only had 5 players, and she was so out of shape she couldn't go up and down the court, so we played 4v5 and sat her to rest her. During the rest, her Dad came over to give her M&M's "for energy."

A.L., who was the weakest player on the team, but an actress at heart (later that was her major in college). She insisted she was "the best player on the team," despite scoring the least number of points on the team. Single digits for the season, as I recall.

S., who had been berated by a prior coach for jumping when she shot a free throw because she wasn't strong enough to hurl a basketball all the way to the goal, the next year joining my team...and facing that same coach, was assigned the "man-to-man" in a box-and-one against that coach's daughter, the leading scorer in the league. She shut her out (the girl scored when S. was out of the game, but not when she was in guarding), and we won.

C., our best player, and best shooter. Won many games for us. One year I was assistant coach and C. was fouled in a tie game with a few seconds to play, and our head coach called timeout, and then looked at me and said, "I wasn't supposed to do that, was I?" Sure enough, she got nervous when all the teammates told her she had to make it, and they knew she would make it, etc., and missed the FT, and we lost. We held a ceremony the next practice to take away the coach's whistle, and told them that he was prohibited from calling timeouts for the rest of the season, and the girls loved it. She may have, but I don't remember her missing another critical FT the rest of the year.

R., one of the weaker players, was in a game we were leading. The other team had their own version of a really weak player, and that player had the ball with the time ticking down. Their girl started to pass the ball, weakly, and it sort of hit R's hand and bounced. The horn sounded, we won, and the girls all swarmed R. for "blocking the shot" that saved the game for us. Made her season.

CC. wasn't fast, wasn't a good shooter, wasn't tall, but she was aggressive. We developed a stat just for her for causing jump balls. She learned how to go after every basketball and put two hands on it just to create the jump ball. We progressed the next year to teaching her to rip it away from players to create steals--unfortunately, it took more than one season to learn, but she became known as one of the best defenders in the league because of it.

Just little things. Of course, the "Navy Blue Angels," by themselves, were a thing, and have all kind of stories from that as well.

[dan_bgblue]

The paragraph about A. and the intentional foul was hilarious, and a lot of the funny was because the parent caused it.

[CitizenBBN]

This focus on things other than winning sure explains a lot of the trouble we saw with the decline of the storied Navy Blue Angels program... (Man was that an old callback or what?)