Saturday, March 15, 2008

PLEASE FORCE YOUR KIDS TO PLAY

Today I got to my sons basketball game about 15 minutes early. This gave me the opportunity to watch the basketball game before my sons started. I am guessing here but these kids were in either 5th or 6th grade. I am leaning toward 6th grade. Each team had exactly 5 players show up for todays game and the game is set up in 6.....6 minute periods with no stoppage of the clock. So breaks are frequent.

Here is my observation.......THESE KIDS ARE TERRIBLE AT PLAYING BASKETBALL. Here is what I saw.

Shot from one foot....hit bottom of rim
Kid rebounds and shoots again.....hit bottom of rim
Other team rebounds...passes the ball out....great pass.
The kid gets the pass but tries to dribble and it goes off his foot and rolls out of bounds.
Team inbounds pass and kid shoots a 3 pointer....excellent form and MAKES IT.
Team inbounds the ball and their point guard is dribbling I swear all by himself and he falls down. I guess he tripped on the paint on the floor. Other team stills...dribbles down the court for a layup but NO...Layup hits the bottom of the rim.

There is more but you get the point. Each team had one good player and the rest of the kids were just BAD.....and this was the 10th game of the season and after at least 10 practices as a team.

If JDHTEACH were a sixth grader and on this team I am telling you I would have been a STUD. I am not saying that I was a basketball god or anything I just know where my skills were at this level.

I am not making this up when I say this fact. You put me and two of my friends K and D that lived on my street as a kid and we would have beat the living crap out of either one of these teams 5 on 3.

Why do I make such a claim??? Because we actually played OUTSIDE as a kid. When we did play outside I would say at least 4 out of 7 days we played basketball. We were in shape..these kids are puffing and wheezing. We were pulling off no look passes because we knew where our buddies would be. I can think of 2 other friends of mine M and T that if you add them up to make the teams even we would never loose to either of those teams. I tell you NEVER. We actually had plays and practiced playing 21 against one another when we could not scratch up a game. It got to the point that all of the other kids in our neighborhood would come up with all different types of combinations of kids to try to beat JDH, K, and D. They even attempted to throw in a couple of older siblings at us who were a grade level above us. We never lost. I am not lying about this but we just didn't. I was the inside guy because of my size. K was the intermediate shooter and D was deadly from outside. So kids had to pick their poison....stack on me I dish it to K and it's over. Double K and he dishes it to me or D and its over. For 3 years we ruled the neighborhood and we never lost. By the time we got to high school we joined the church leagues and played there.
Where we basketball gods???/ HECK NO!!!!!! Only one of us went on to play high school basketball.

We just played the game.....outside.....A LOT. On Saturday nights we would go up to the local Rec and play with and against kids that were 2 or three years older than us. You learn a lot by doing that as well.

So parents....please get your kids out there and make them play.....DADS...get out there and help your son. Coach...teach skills....play with them do something to get them out there playing.

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