It Has Been Awhile

Hey Everyone,

My deepest apologies for going away for so long. If you knew all I had been up to you would understand! Well, probably not I am kind of lazy. When we last spoke I was on my way to play a little pick-up basketball with the KBDL team. That was not so good. It was just a lot of terrible defense and running back and forth. The team we played against in the "open gym" was full of d1 players while my team had mostly d3 players on it. They played defense harder than us, they shot less bad shots than us, yes, we lost every game on the night. I didn't even see the ball because all we did was shoot three pointers and on top of that I knew only one player on the team, barely, and nobody was passing me the ball. I left the open gym not very happy and planned to skip the game on Saturday and be finished with the KBDL after just one short day. But, after convincing and sweet talking from Kiley, and the fact I wanted my dad to be able to see me play again, I decided to give the KBDL one more shot. After working out hard for the whole day Friday and dealing with more Cha Cha problems, I showed up Saturday for a game they told me was at 6 pm. Well, the game was actually at 7 pm and they just say 6 so they actually have all the players show up because they are not all the brightest. I am responsible so I showed up at 5 pm and was shooting by myself for about an hour and a half by myself. That was exciting, especially since we were playing at a middle school that held about 300 fans and the baskets seemed super high! The real coach of the the team wasn't going to be there so I was afraid I wouldn't get to play much since I was the new one on the team joining up after half the season was already done! I was relieved though, when my name was called as a starter. On a side note, I was also relieved that Carl Richburg, who didn't go to practice, was on the team also. He played for Mason and was a great player for them, and also had experience with Southern Indiana and Miami (OH). I knew I would get a lot more looks with him playing. The game was a very quick paced game, something I never did in college but was exactly like my high school team. The crowd was the biggest surprise actually, filing in was around 200 or 250 people, they even had a dance show before the game and at halftime. Anyways, the game was against a team they had just lost to the weekend before without me and Richburg. This game was different, we went at them from the start and I was up to the task of running the court on this day. I got my baskets on dunks from fast breaks and a few post moves, and patrolled the paint on defense better than usual while the guards rained in jumpers and got steals. We finished the game with a 18 point victory, and with all the extra shot attempts I was able to pull down 21 rebounds, along with 16 points and 3 blocks with 3 assists. It wasn't a bad start, but it was still the end of my KBDL career before it really got started, as I had to be in Memphis for Memorial Day weekend. This wasn't the only basketball I played over the break. I also went to my high school and played open gym. Now, usually this open gym is not very strong at all and that is not a lie, it will be filled with high school guys and older men. Not this time. I got lucky enough to play with an array of really good players, including James Dews (Miami (FL)), Cordale Boyd (Concord)(Those 2 were former teammates), CJ Anderson (Xavier), Deonte Vaughn (Cincinnati), Steve Horton (Ball State), Jarelle Redden (North Alabama), Josh Chichester (Louisville-Football) and many other talented players. It was a really good open gym for at least 3 or 4 games. I ran really well with Vaughn and our team won most games after a poor start. I also did well against CJ Anderson as well and even got him to try a little bit. It was a really good experience for me. I am now back in Memphis and just trying to get normal I will let you in on my Memorial Day weekeend with my next post. Sorry again for the delay the next one will be much sooner!

Nicholas Kohsterized