Miscellaneous Whatnot

• 4 years ago I lived and breathed Maryland basketball. I went to every home game and showed up 3 hours early. I spent hours every day scouring the internet for articles and message boards. I owned www.juandixon.com and updated it daily. Yesterday I completely forgot about our game against Georgia Tech. Wow.
• Holy shit this kid is good. No right foot yet, but for most of this he is like 7 years old. FUTBOL JESUS! http://www.bercasio.com/movies/jean_carlos.wmv
• I still haven't done my first poker post, cause I haven't wanted to acknowledge the vicious losing streak I was on. But now that I'm starting to win again, maybe I'll get on that. Does that make me a fair-weather fan of myself?
• Ha, reminiscing about the good old days of Maryland basketball reminds me of my favorite false rumor ever. After a particularly bitter loss in the last game of the regular season (must have been 2001) at Virginia, the fans rushed the court as the Terps were walking off. Within an hour after the game, there was a rumor that Steve Blake had gotten into a fight with a fan, which would clearly lead to a suspension in the upcoming ACC tournament, but that Matt Hahn, the walk-on benchwarming son of Assistant Coach Billy Hahn, was going to take the fall for Blake and say he did it. Such a great rumor because it was so believable. Steve Blake doesn't take shit from anyone, so it was easy to believe that he'd punch some drunken Wahoo. And Matt Hahn was the ultimate team player who knew the best way he could help his team is to take the bullet. Plus, all white people look alike so the league would never know the difference. I love the ACC.
• Coach K looks like Fredo. This is well-documented.
• I had a 9pm basketball game tonight, and I have a 10:40pm soccer game tomorrow. I get so fired up during the games that it takes me hours to calm down enough to sleep. I'm going to be tired by Friday.
• Speaking of false rumors, I read a hoax article that said John Goodman died. Another easy to believe lie. Damn those bastards. To spite them I am going to watch The Big Lebowski this week.
• Its pretty funny that I'm posting links here like anyone reads it. HA!

I hate losing

I hate to lose more than I love to win.
Jimmy Connors

Our basketball team just lost a close game to a team that beat us earlier the season on a buzzer-beater. It really brings out that nagging feeling that Connors noted, something I've felt in sports, poker, and any other competitive endeavor.

If that is really true though, why would I play? Or better yet, why wouldn't I just play against 12 year old girls so there's never a risk of losing? Well in poker I'd actually gladly do the equivalent that a lot of the time and happily rake in the cash. That's pretty much what I did for 3 years of college, and the last 3 months of 2004 on PartyPoker (more on this in another post, this one is about competing). But with sports I guess I just love playing against good competition too. I love the feeling of improving my game, and I love when my vision of a play becomes a reality.

You hear cliches like "play as a team," or you read about the effects a great coach can have on a team, or you talk about how "team chemistry" is so important. In team sports you have several people all working together towards a common goal, the most effective way to reach that goal and win the game is to have everyone playing with one mind.

Any NBA team would easily crush even the best college basketball team, because the players are bigger, stronger, faster, and smarter. But if there was some alternate reality where 5 bodies could share one mind, I think the smaller, weaker, slower athletes could easily beat even the best NBA team. If everyone on a team knew exactly what everyone else on the team is going to do and has the exact same vision, they have an insurmountable advantage over a team of vastly superiour athletes. I don't know exactly where the line is - the high school JV girls team isn't going to beat the Lakers no matter how many minds are involved - but the point is that 5 bodies work so much more effeciently controled by 1 mind instead of 5.

Obviously in this world we can't share a mind between several bodies, but you try to get as close to it as possible. The point guard flashes 3 fingers to run a baseline screen play; the coach switches to a zone defense during a timeout; defenders call out a switch to cover a pick-and-roll; I make eye contact with you and then I make a backdoor cut for a layup. Communication.

Teams run plays so they know exactly what everyone is supposed to do. You practice them over and over and understand all the options. You scout out the competition and prepare a game plan to defend against their strengths and exploit their weaknesses. Everyone knows the plan. Everyone knows their role. Everyone is on the same page, and the best TEAM wins the game, at least thats what us purists believe.

The most frustrating thing about this basketball league I'm in with my boys is that we just go out once a week and run and thats it. I don't mind if people miss shots or fall over, but I hate it when we don't play smart. And I don't by any means intend to exclude myself - tonight I scolded us for taking bad shots, and promptly went right out and took a contested 3.

I try to get us to throw together a quick gameplan before we start, but we struggle to stick to all but the most basic strategies. If I map out a quick play during a timeout, everyone forgets about it by the time we walk back out on the court. I bark out orders on the court and from the bench because communicating is our only hope of playing with one mind. I don't know if my ideas are better than anyone else's, but everyone acting on one decent idea is better than 5 people acting on 5 different great ideas, and nobody else is speaking up.

By no means should this be interpretted as my busting on anyone on the squad. We all just signed up to come out and run, and I'm grateful that they listen cause I talk way too much. Everyone has a great attitude and is open to everyone else's suggestions. Every once in a while we even manage to execute on a plan. It is damn hard to have 6 people show up 10 minutes before a game after a long day of work and play well together. I love basketball and I love playing with these guys.

Teams that succeed in leagues like this are usually teams that have been playing together a long time and thus know each other very well, or teams with one or two excellent players with a ton of experience who are leaders for the team. These teams play with one mind better than the others.

An idea I'd really like to try is to find somebody who would coach us. It sounds funny for a league like this, but it would really help us so much to find an older guy who knows ball to watch from the sidelines and run the game. We can't really spend hours scouting opposition, cooking up schemes and practicing them. But we could have a respected leader who we all respect and follow.

Now I'm going to go watch the Maryland-Duke game. I think one reason among many that I'm not as into Maryland ball as I used to be is because I hate when we lose more than I love when we win. But I do love basketball.

I've fallen and I can't get up

So the snow gods and the comedy gods rumbled, and comedy gods were victorious. Stephen Lynch was very very funny, but Hedberg stole the show.

He must have been drunk or high out of his mind. Most of what was so funny about his act was that you couldn't believe that this was what you paid to come watch - he spent 5 minutes pushing back the curtain that hung behind the stage to see what was back there, he spent 5 minutes telling jokes from backstage cause he wandered back there and seemed to forget to come back out, he spent 15 minutes lying on the ground begging them to close the curtain or drag him offstage so the audience could go home, and he spent 5 minutes arguing with his manager that he didn't want to end the set. I couldn't tell if that was par for the course with him, or if we were witnessing some kind of rock-bottom. It was a bit sad though. Sean and I decided that he'd probably be dead within two years.

My concern would be that I'm too much like Mitch. He's a fairly intelligent guy with a lot going for him, but he's a complete mess. He staggers around the stage like standing is almost too much effort. I'm not wasted all the time, but I wonder if I've fallen over and can't seem to figure out how to get back up either.

I know that I could do a lot with my life, but I don't know what I want to do and so far I've been too lazy to figure it out. I have started to try though. In the next entry I will start my career musings.

See For Yourself

Don't believe me because you see me as your teacher. Don't believe me because others do. And don't believe anything because you've read it in a book either. Don't put your faith in reports, or tradition, or hearsay, or the authority of religious leaders or texts. Don't rely on mere logic or inference, or appearances, or speculation. See for yourself what is true- that's the only way you can genuinely know anything.
-Buddha

I think I saw that quote in someone's IM profile years ago, and I've kept a copy of it since then. I don't know where it came from, but I like it. My intention is to use this blog to explore the serious side of some of the lighter things in life, mostly poker and sports, hopefully with a lot of humor thrown in. If I can mix in elements of HDouble's poker blog( http://cardsspeak.servebeer.com/) with half the humor and insight of the Sports Guy ( http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/simmons/index) and have as much fun as the Sports Junkies (http://www.junkiesradio.com/) I'll be proud of this. And if it is none of those thing, it is still my way of seeing for myself what is true.

Definitions

If I tore your legs off, you'd look like snowmen
- Mitch Hedberg (talking to the ants in his ant farm)

I'm supposed to go to a comedy show tonight featuring Mitch Hedberg and Stephen Lynch, but it is pouring down snow so it looks like it might get cancelled. Too bad, those are some funny dudes.

I started this blog because I want to do more writing. Defining one's audience is crucial to effective writing, so I've decided to actually set up 2 blogs.

This one I will use like a personal journal and write about whatever is on my mind. I'll assume that I'm writing this just for me. I'm not even sure how this service works, so I'm guessing there's a chance that I'll have random people reading it, which is fine with me. I don't intend to publish this to my friends, so I suppose the point of this one is to write just for me, and anyone else who happens to read it should know that is its intention. I'll be curious to see if I truly write just for me, or if I shade my language knowing there is a chance that strangers might read it, or a smaller chance that friends might read it. We'll see.

Then I'm setting up another one that I will plan to share with people, writing specifically about poker and sports, and maybe some other lighter topics. Ideally it will look like the Sports Guy (http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/simmons/index) meets the Sports Junkies (http://www.junkiesradio.com/) with some of this guy too ( http://cardsspeak.servebeer.com/).

Topics I'd like to address here in the near future:

• Career, including my recent incident with HR
• That girl in Ohio
• Evolutionary Pyschology

But for now I'm going to set up that other blog. I need a clever name for it. Hmmm....

And it was good

I had to start writing somehow, and now I have. Its 3:30 in the morning, I just lost $190 playing No-Limit Hold'em, and there's a girl asleep somewhere in Ohio. I'm exhausted and exhilarated, and life is so damn good.