Here's something you might be interested in.
As a kid, I'd read anything I could about the old-time basketball players. Their stories always fascinated me.
There was the New York Knicks teams in the early 70s, with an injured Willis Reed coming out and helping them win a championship.
Red Auerbach's Celts.
My favorite Lakers team in the early 70s, winning 33 straight games. That team had Jerry West, Elgin Baylor, and Wilt the Stilt.
In a Wilt Chamberlain autobiography (the one he wrote before admitting to sleeping with 20,000 women), he talked about the game in which he scored 100 points. It's a record that will never be broken (the 20,000 women might be...Warren Beatty is at about 18,436; the marriage has slowed him down a bit).
On all the AM sports stations, the talk was about another 100-point game in basketball. And when I met up with a friend for lunch, we discussed it.
It was a high school game in Texas, and it ended with a score of 100 to 0. And, what made the story ripe for debates was the fact that the team that scored 100 points fired their coach.
It was weird, because the school had apologized for running up the score on the other team. That coach, Micah Grimes, then posted a blog saying that he didn't agree with the apology.
What Grimes is so idiotic he doesn't get...is that there's nothing wrong with beating another team. And, I don't even buy all the arguments sports shows were making about the team that didn't score being a school for "disabled children" that only had eight girls try out for the team (as oppose to the other school, which had 200 girls to choose from).
There was also a lot of talk, because both were Christian schools.
The problem with Grimes is -- according to my friend who researched it -- he never put in his bench players.
Most teams with a big lead, would put in the players that sit the bench. This does a number of things. It keeps you from running the score up (which is the more sportsman like thing to do). And, it also gives more experience to those players, and helps prepare them for when a starter gets injured and they may need to come in and play. Not to mention the fact that, it just makes the game more enjoyable for those sitting on the bench. At the very least, wouldn't you as a coach want your players to be having fun?
Grimes apparently had his team doing a full-court press, and they were stealing the ball from the other team on each one of those presses.
One of the radio stations said that the winning team was even shooting three pointers late in the game. How hard would it have been for the coach to call a time-out and say "We don't need three pointers. We're winning by over 50 points. How about we work on some of our passes? And only shoot if you end up under the basket, all by yourself."
I've coached basketball, I know the things you can say. And, I've seen the other coaches that will do anything to win. Instead of teaching the kids how to have fun and learn the fundamentals, it's all about winning. And, rules had to be made that said each person on the team is played the same amount of time (which they still didn't do).
The losing team has been praised by all kinds of media. They were on many of the network TV morning shows, including "Good Morning America" and the "Today" show.
My friend told me the rest of their schedule was canceled, so that they wouldn't have to suffer another defeat like that.
But from the clip I saw in one of the interviews, they seemed to be taking the loss rather well.
I just can't wait for the next thing we get to hear from Micah Grimes. He's the type that would pull a Tonya Harding, and maybe have the new coach of Covenant School bashed in the knee.
As a kid, I'd read anything I could about the old-time basketball players. Their stories always fascinated me.
There was the New York Knicks teams in the early 70s, with an injured Willis Reed coming out and helping them win a championship.
Red Auerbach's Celts.
My favorite Lakers team in the early 70s, winning 33 straight games. That team had Jerry West, Elgin Baylor, and Wilt the Stilt.
In a Wilt Chamberlain autobiography (the one he wrote before admitting to sleeping with 20,000 women), he talked about the game in which he scored 100 points. It's a record that will never be broken (the 20,000 women might be...Warren Beatty is at about 18,436; the marriage has slowed him down a bit).
On all the AM sports stations, the talk was about another 100-point game in basketball. And when I met up with a friend for lunch, we discussed it.
It was a high school game in Texas, and it ended with a score of 100 to 0. And, what made the story ripe for debates was the fact that the team that scored 100 points fired their coach.
It was weird, because the school had apologized for running up the score on the other team. That coach, Micah Grimes, then posted a blog saying that he didn't agree with the apology.
What Grimes is so idiotic he doesn't get...is that there's nothing wrong with beating another team. And, I don't even buy all the arguments sports shows were making about the team that didn't score being a school for "disabled children" that only had eight girls try out for the team (as oppose to the other school, which had 200 girls to choose from).
There was also a lot of talk, because both were Christian schools.
The problem with Grimes is -- according to my friend who researched it -- he never put in his bench players.
Most teams with a big lead, would put in the players that sit the bench. This does a number of things. It keeps you from running the score up (which is the more sportsman like thing to do). And, it also gives more experience to those players, and helps prepare them for when a starter gets injured and they may need to come in and play. Not to mention the fact that, it just makes the game more enjoyable for those sitting on the bench. At the very least, wouldn't you as a coach want your players to be having fun?
Grimes apparently had his team doing a full-court press, and they were stealing the ball from the other team on each one of those presses.
One of the radio stations said that the winning team was even shooting three pointers late in the game. How hard would it have been for the coach to call a time-out and say "We don't need three pointers. We're winning by over 50 points. How about we work on some of our passes? And only shoot if you end up under the basket, all by yourself."
I've coached basketball, I know the things you can say. And, I've seen the other coaches that will do anything to win. Instead of teaching the kids how to have fun and learn the fundamentals, it's all about winning. And, rules had to be made that said each person on the team is played the same amount of time (which they still didn't do).
The losing team has been praised by all kinds of media. They were on many of the network TV morning shows, including "Good Morning America" and the "Today" show.
My friend told me the rest of their schedule was canceled, so that they wouldn't have to suffer another defeat like that.
But from the clip I saw in one of the interviews, they seemed to be taking the loss rather well.
I just can't wait for the next thing we get to hear from Micah Grimes. He's the type that would pull a Tonya Harding, and maybe have the new coach of Covenant School bashed in the knee.