Midnight basketball

Until last night, I hadn't played basketball in months. I was kind of missing it though, so joined Ash and his friends for their 10pm-midnight Tuesday night run at their church court.

I'd played in this game once before, but it always takes a while to get used to. The main thing is that the court is a bit smaller than usual - kind of like the one Will Smith played on in the episode of "Fresh Prince" where he joined the high school basketball team.



This affects the spacing (especially playing 5 on 5), cuts down on the fast breaks (even in a full court game there were only a few, and you needed to execute well to pull them off), and allows guys to shoot threes from close to half court.

I ended up with Ash during the first game, and I liked our chances. Unfortunately the other team had a guy called Tom, a fifty-something American dude, who was by far the best older player I've ever come up against. He spent most of that first game shooting threes from near halfcourt, and didn't miss a single one.

After a few rematches, we switched up the teams, and this time it was Ash, Tom and myself, plus another top player, plus the worst guy in the game. I really felt like this was going to be our chance, but we lost a steady stream of games by one or two points. It made little sense to Ash or I, we felt like we had better positions at three of the five positions (which was important since we were playing man on man) but we just couldn't seem to grab a win.

I started off really badly, missing all my outside shots, but after the first game or two started driving and grabbing boards, and ended up doing ok for myself around the rim. Didn't get to bed until about 12.30 or so, and then had a pretty rubbish night of sleep, so woke today feeling rather average. It was good to get out there and play in something close to a real game again though, I think I'll be a semi-regular from here on out.