Tuesday 22 November 2011

New addition.... Again

Found out yesterday we signed a new NBA player: Ekpe Udoh from the Golden State Warriors. Think he gets here tonight or tomorrow. He also played at Baylor with our guys Lace and Tweety... pretty sweet for them to be all back together. Anyways we'll see how it goes tomorrow in practice with him

Bye Week

Because there are 11 teams in the league, every week one of the teams gets a bye week... This week was our week. So instead of the usual grind we changed it up. Had a couple days off and instead of the usual game on sunday we had an intersquad scrimmage. Split the team into two groups of six and played a 40 minute running time game. It was kinda fun and much better than practice obviously. We bet a pizza dinner on the game and my side won, so we're all going out for pizza wednesday night.

Another part of the bye week is going to do some community service. The team that has the bye is sent by the league to a different town/city every week. For our week we went up north to a neighbourhood outside of Haifa. We played a game against a youth team up there and signed autographs/took pictures. Each player had a kind of collectors card made for them by the league... we signed them all and gave them out to the kids. It was a pretty good time and afterwards we went out to eat together. Back at it for the rest of the week getting ready for our game sunday

Tuesday 15 November 2011

@ Habika'a

Sunday we traveled to Givat Shmuel a little East of Tel-Aviv, so not too far away. Habika'a is a good team around the top of the standings in the league. We started out the game very well playing exactly how we wanted to. On our team, Lace Dunn was puttin on a show scoring like a madman, and the team was playing pretty good defense, helped by the fact Habika'a was brickkking threes. At halftime the score was something like 41-32 for us I think. Second half they started hitting some shots and had a couple possessions in a row making three pointers. From that point it was a tight game although we continued to hold onto the lead. In the fourth quarter Habika'a took their first lead since the first quarter but we quickly got it back. Fourth quarter nearing crunch time I made two free throws to put us up four I think. Habika'a then made a three and after one or two empty possessions I came down with a defensive rebound and got fouled. I made 1/2 (sad times) to put us up two. The came down and hit a quick two to tie the game. On our ensuing possession Tweety Carter went to his patented step back but hit back rim, this guy Pinnock grabbed the rebound, raced upcourt, and hit an offbalance shot to put them up two with 0.5 seconds left. We ran an alley oop play to try and win the game but the pass got intercepted and that was it. Tough lough to stomach because we were up the whole game and really needed the win. Coming up is our bye week so we have two days off now then some practices the rest of the week

Thursday 10 November 2011

Wednesday 9 November 2011

Game 4: vs. Rishon Le Zion

Trying to bounce back from the smackdown we took last week, we played at home against Rishon. I think they were 1-1 at the time. I got the start in this game, guess the coaches were just trying to change it up a bit after last game. The game out alright. Up and down, back and forth type of first half. We couldn't stop anybody on defense... it was kinda crazy. I had 2 fouls in the first quarter (the first one literally I have no idea what it was) so ended up sitting out the second quarter. Halftime we were down 46-40. Third quarter we went back to our usual starting five, the four Americans and an Israeli guard. They played for the majority of the quarter but it did not. go. well. We were outscored 27-9 in the third and weren't able to recover. The Americans got benched for the fourth but the game was too far out of reach. We made up a couple of points but we still ended up losing by 22 points. Another disappointing outcome for us. We need a win ASAP or things are going to start getting testy around here. Sunday we play at Habeeka, a tough team that has been playing well. I finished with four points (2/4) and three rebounds. Nothing special but I played alright.

Tuesday 8 November 2011

The JJ Hickson Experiment

As you may or may not know, our first NBA player Trevor Booker suffered a leg injury in preseason and had been out for a while... He ended up going back to the States to get it treated so we were down a player. The team ended up signing a player out of Creighton University named Kenny Lawson Jr. on a two month contract to fill in. He's still with us here, but the teams management wanted another NBA player on the team so they ended up signing J.J. Hickson who was recently traded to the Sacramento Kings for Omri Casspi, the legend. Anyways Hickson got here about a week and a half ago and played in our game last week at Holon. This week however, he told the management that he was homesick and wanted to be released from his contract. They worked it out and he was gone Monday morning. He was only here for around two weeks before going back to the U.S. Now we're back to the roster we had for our first two games in which we played well. Hopefully we can pick it up a bit and get back on track. We don't know if the club is going to sign another American so just gotta wait and see