Hooping @ 42

This past weekend (July 31st) some good friends from work and I competed in the annual Portland Trailblazers Street Jam 3+3 tournament. Our company (CMD Agency) sponsored us and even had jersey’s made for us (we called ourselves ‘RUN CMD’) and overall we had a great time. I learned a lot from competing in this tourney as well. Here then, is some of what I learned….

Number 1: Playing basketball at the local LA Fitness, and playing street ball are as different as speaking German and Spanish. The 4 of us (Gerardo, Chris, Jack and myself) had been hooping at LA Fitness near the office, every week since May of 2009. Not to get prepared for this tournament, oh no..that came organically out of the thin air. We play because we like it and it’s a great way to stay in shape. We also play with some other LA Fitness members and by and large, our games are friendly. They get intense sure, but nobody fouls aggressively or makes dirty plays. Boy, fouling….was that an eye opener at the Street Jam. We got mugged in the 3 games we played. By the time we were playing our last elimination game on Sunday morning (8/1/2010) we were giving it back too. But in the end we got out street balled by the competition. We just weren’t seasoned at street ball enough.

Number 2: Playing in the “Under 6′” category doesn’t mean anything. In fact, I could have played with Latvian midgets and the refs wouldn’t have called anything. We played a team that had 2 dudes who were at LEAST 6’2″. I’m sorry, but that’s just not a fair playing field. Why bother having categories? And yes, it did make a difference. In the end, their height advantage was evident on the boards. And it still pisses me off. Was their height advantage a game breaker in the end? Probably not. We COULD have hustled more, played more scrappy but it was really tough to overcome that jumping disadvantage. All of us are 5’11″ and we plain old got “out thugged” by the height and constant jersey grabbing. But that’s for another point…..

Number 3: …..Which is, hey Portland Trailblazers Street Jam 3+3 tournament referees….WHAT THE HELL IS A FOUL ANYWAY? Ok let me get this straight…I stand straight up, jump in the air with the shooter, make contact because HE jumped into me and I am guilty of fouling? But then on the next possession, my teammate (Gerardo) goes strong to the hoop, gets hit mid air on the ball and arm and get’s sent crashing to the blacktop, but that’s called a block? C’mon. What rule book are you people calling the game from? And by the way, while we’re on it, why didn’t the 2 refs in ANY game we competed in ever talk to one another when they disagreed on a call? Who’s call was right in the end anyway?

Number 4: Regardless of all these frustrations, it was still a LOT of fun to compete in this tournament. Personally it was VERY satisfying to do it and be a part of my team. I looked around a lot and I think I might have been one of the older players in the competition and I take great pride in that. I mean, I’m not an NBA player but I do hustle and am giving it my all. I am a HUGE NBA fan and basketball means a great deal to me. That I can still actively compete at this age is a big deal and I will play as long as I can given the physical limitations that my body imposes on me as time goes by. I do know this, if we’re all still at CMD next year, we’re going to enter this competition again but we’re going to get our thug on and knock some heads.