Proud dad (blond kid version)

The crowd started chanting “MVP, MVP” as the blond kid stepped up to the foul line for his second pair of free-throws. I didn’t join in, that would have been a bit weird. He (again) sunk them both. The comeback from 16-down against Barnet Bulldogs was well and truly on, and the place was absolutely rocking. The U-16 boys and their (possibly mental) parents had shown up early to give support as their coach is doubling up (well, he’s actually trebling up which is a nightmare and the U-12 girls clearly didn’t read the “support us and we’ll support you” memo) and had already been making a racket, and they were joined by 20 or so U-12s and their parents who’d somehow blagged a scrimmage on the other court.

Barnet were in full panic mode and seemingly unable to stop fouling. So blond kid went back to the line where those chants got even louder. He did look a bit blown away by it all but sunk them both to complete a personal 6-0 run. We did still have one last chance to blow it when the kid who’d started the comeback with a couple of threes turned the ball over and it was Barnet’s turn to go to the line needing two to win. It was so loud the ref had to bellow for quiet to tell the visiting player that he had two free throws and the ball went live on the second – you have to do this kind of thing in the U-14 conference. He split the pair, I was proud of how cool Alex had been at the line to go 6/6, but this kid deserved a bit of credit for getting one with that din going on.

Overtime was all Wolves as they rushed to an 84-75 victory, and the final buzzer was greeted by a full scale court storming from the U-12s. It was all a bit surreal. Especially as I then ran out of the gym and drove at furious speeds to join in Bishop’s Stortford Football Club’s 150th birthday celebration. The idea was I’d show up, get the place set up for two games and leave clear instructions for a quick change to the show court, watch until the five minute mark in the third period when Alex would sit down for the rest of the period as part of “all must play”. I would miss the fourth period, but we’d be about 20 down by then – it’s been tough for a U-13 team in an U-14 league with only a couple of players who have any real experience – so it would be no big deal. The rest of the day would be taken care of by a group of willing helpers, and the lack of a senior game in the evening made life easier. But the game passed really quickly, to the point that i reckoned I could do it in time if i stayed until midway through the fourth period – and then make a decision. Obviously the blond kid at the foul line made the decision, football could wait. And it kept on waiting. Because you can’t leave before overtime. Or during it. So I ran over, gave Alex a quick “well done” and drove like a lunatic. No tickets have arrived yet, but the successor to Little Blue Car touched 97mph at times.

I made the birthday bash about 15 minutes late. It was good. I saw a lot of people who looked a lot older than when I last saw them. The bit where Stortford made a really crap attempt at playing football was a downer on things, we’ve been dealt a shit hand in the grim north. I do miss going there on a Saturday, but it’s the life I’ve chosen. And the blond kid at the foul line made it worthwhile.

You may have noticed that this blog still hasn’t truly returned despite the promise a month ago. Which is a shame, because it wasn’t supposed to become my own version of Facebook. . But I’m dealing with Basketball England, it’s almost a shock that the season actually happened, and four months after we got going the website still isn’t up-to-date and working properly. So you’re just going to have to wait. Sorry. Stay tuned in. But not too often, we’re in BE Standard Time. Which isn’t the best, despite its acronym.

Just four points short

If you going to score 73, you may as well go the whole hog and get your jersey number. He didn’t even hog the ball. That video I’ve linked to only shows his points. It takes eight minutes. Nuff said.

I was over the moon when Mavs drafted Luka .  I wasn’t wrong , he appears to be okay.

Proud dad

I miss blogging but I’m enjoying the W/EABL. Wednesday was hard going but the tall creature who arrives home, eats everything we have and then buggers back off to St Albans appears to be doing okay.

Whether the England selectors will ever notice remains to be seen. While I do worry about my “influence”, they’ve picked players who have bigger arseholes as parents than me. There are bigger arseholes than me.
She also played her first school game for six years, out-scoring and out-assisting the opposition in an 85-24 win. 34 points is a career high, I’ve suggested she just scores a few more every game until she does a Wilt.

The end of an error

Originally posted 17:43 17/10/23

C’mon, you got a clue yesterday.

This blog closes today.

It doesn’t actually close . Everything (well almost everything) I’ve written is still online in case you get bored. There just won’t be any new stuff.

So, after Six years, four months, three days  (I’ve always been precise) and 3,430 posts, it’s over.

Around 340,000 people have logged during that time (not 340k different people, obviously) and read articles close to three quarters of a million times. That’s pretty fucking scary. And obviously a bit pleasing. Despite my fears that the demise of whatsbev.com would send this blog the same way.

I’m also pleased I finished on an unbeaten 647 day streak.

It’s just time to stop. The reasons are multiple. And I’ll give them.

I decided it was probably time to start bringing this to an end a while ago. I put it off for a while, for reasons that will be clear one day, but during that period there’s been four or five articles I haven’t written because they’re going to cause me more grief than they could ever be worth. But it’s not really why I started doing it. When I started this blog I was running Leopards, if someone didn’t like something I’d written they could contact the bloke in charge at Leopards and get politely told that he didn’t care if they didn’t like it. Now I work for Oaklands College Wolves, and the middle bit of that name is key. I haven’t been told to close the blog, but it’s clear that – mainly due to the actions of others – it’s going to cause issues continuing it while working for the college. This isn’t truly living the dream, that would be running Mavs (unlikely) or getting paid to run Leopards (which if things had gone differently could have happened), but it’s what I want to do and I’m now in the position where I am getting paid to do two jobs I love/like (I’m not sure anyone actually loves cover teaching) and I don’t want to fuck that up.

There is no need for this blog to fuck up my job with Oaklands College Wolves.  I’ve only written opinion – everyone’s entitled to an opinion – or facts, which could be challenged but the shouty people don’t do that. They go whining to the college. There are a lot of great people in basketball, not all of them are great at what they do, but I try to cut them some slack. But there are also some really sad fuckers who think that, despite earning a decent living out of the game (and we’re not talking about part-time jobs topped up by working in a school), their  shithousary can’t be commented upon or even have the piss taken out of them because they are far too important. They’re almost like clones in that they all react the same way. There isn’t a spine between them, so they don’t contact me directly, they go running to the college or BE to register their whine like primary school kids. It’s pathetic, but they’re pathetic people, poncing a living out of our game. Obviously if any of them want to complain about this piece, they’d have to admit to being a gutless twat, so I’ll leave it them if they want to fess up.

There will be a serious party at Gate 13. Etihad Campus when they get the news. The way an NGB who are failing in an almost endless list of things can find time to harass me is fucking shameful. There’s some (only some, I should add) people who should take a good look at themselves. They’re in the job to run basketball, not carry out personal vendettas. They’re really not very good at either.

There is also the matter of the amount of time this takes, their have been times I’ve had to force myself to write some shit because I won’t let the bloody streak end. I’ve never put the blog ahead of Wolves or Leopards, but I could probably use the time more constructively or maybe even switch off from basketball. I need to do the latter occasionally.

And in many ways it could be argued that this is a natural time to end it as my journey has reached a point where it would become repetitive simply to write about what happened in a gym in St Albans this weekend. The blog has seen me go from running a senior club who’d found themselves dumped in D2 before getting promoted in my kitchen, doing two more years in D1 before coming to an end. We’ve been through the plague season with Wolves, seen me somehow provide the spark that restarted second tier basketball during the dark days of lockdown, when hits on here ballooned to numbers I never dreamed of because no one had anything better to do than read about a game in an empty gym (normally Oaklands, sometimes Nottingham) and my hopes that the world would reopen some day. It did, of course, and both of my readers got to discover how I accidentally ended up running junior basketball at Oaklands that summer, which in turn led the “new” job. And now we’re back round to me being secretary of a D2 men’s team (among many other jobs), it’s like it’s gone full circle.

Caitlin seemed a bit sad when I said it was the end of this. It certainly dispelled the myth she was embarrassed by the blog. It’s followed her career from being an under-10 playing for Essex, Harlow and East all way through five years of junior basketball, the joy and – genuine heartbreak – of Aspire (and the final shit show of that is something BE should hang their heads in shame about, as they effectively punished the innocent far more than those who caused the mess) to playing in the WBBL and going to a GB camp, and now the twin adventures of WEABL and D2. The flaw in the “it’s time” argument, is that she’s now in a whole new chapter. It would have been nice to write about it. But this blog isn’t just “what I did on Wednesday afternoon”, otherwise you might be reading about Y7&8 music again.

Then there’s Alex, the boy who seemed to be an under12 for all of eternity. It’s probably a year late, but he gets to start his NBL journey. I’ll generally only see the home bits of it – and I do feel a bit guilty about that – but it would have been nice to write a bit more about him. And then there’s my chaotic girls’ team, you’ll just to wait for them to win the team award in SPOTY in a few years time..

But there was never going to be a right time to stop something that’s gone on for so long. There was always going to be something left to say. It’s not as if Basketball England were going to become perfect (or even close to it) one day

I only kept writing this because people appeared to enjoy (plus it was worth doing to poke s few pompous prats). And it was nice to receive comments from people, or be told by complete strangers on my travel that they liked my blog. It was never the kind of blog that demanded thousands of likes to keep going, but it was nice to appreciated. Connors kept me going at times, the input from coaches at D1 level and other people around the game – rarely publicly acknowledged for obvious reasons – and all the other people who’ve sent the occasional word or two of encouragement. Tracy’s put up with spending time I could have probably done something else with, while Dave Forester remains “The Man” in so many ways. I shouldn’t need a solicitor to enable me to write this blog, but apparently I do. That steady stream of stuff from Ginger Nigel at Derby has helped, as had things from my former Leopards colleagues. Apologies to anyone missed out.

This blog didn’t change the world (it did pressurise GB to run teams at one point, though) but i hope it gave an insight into running a club at two whole different levels, provided a bit of amusement on occasions and proved better than some of the banal crap that gets churned our claiming to be basketball journalism. .

I wrote the history of Leopards during Lockdown, maybe it’s time I i wrote that book.

There will be one more post. I’m not sure when. Certainly not for a while. But there are  some things that really do need to be in the public domain, and will be. They don’t involve anyone I’ve hinted at above. They do involve the actions of the failed excuse of a National Governing Body we’re forced to endure. That’s enough said for now, you can definitely have the rest of October off if you don’t fancy reading the archives. But you should probably check back in for that one last post in November.

Everyone – except the nutcase mate of IRF – is welcome to keep in touch via the comment facility.

I will miss doing this. There will be times when I’ll be just exploding  to rant about something I need to get off my chest. I might succumb and start an anonymous account on a different platform. It won’t be tomorrow, but if you see a piece of  brilliantly written but anonymous basketball journalism, it might be me. Or maybe it’s someone else.

So thanks to everyone who’s enjoyed the brilliantly named Dave’s Basketball Blog. Fuck the rest of you. It’s been fun.

Hersey out.

This needs to be mentioned

At 11:23 it was Wolves U-15 11 Luton U-16 23

At 11:25 it was Wolves U-15 11 Luton U-16 25

At 11:26 it was Wolves U-15 11 Luton U-16 26

At 11:29 it was Wolves U-15 11 Luton U-16 29

At 11:31 it was Wolves U-15 11 Luton U-16 31

I found myself wondering if I actually wanted our team to score. If I wanted this bizarre set of scores should continue.  It’s been a tough season for them, seven of our U-16 (prem) squad at U-15s, they would make a huge difference. And they wouldn’t need (12-year-old) Alex to train with them to make up numbers. But they finally split a pair at the line. The risk of getting to 11-59 (and it was small risk. as half-time would’ve got in the way) was over. Luton did reach 59, but we managed to 32.

In other news, our D2 games against Westminster have both been postponed due to the courts being double booked – which is quite an achievement – and my New Year’s Resolution still won’t be happening for a while because normal time doesn’t exist at Gate 13. Etihad Campus. No wonder this game doesn’t progress.

Happy New Year

Didn’t time fly?

All that time you got back in your life when I stopped regularly typing this tripe. Actually I got quite a lot of messages about its (apparent) demise, people miss it and so do I. It would have been fun to talk about Saturday’s game. About how Hatters forget to bring kit. Forgot to enter through the correct entrance. Forgot to stay on the road when they drove down the wrong entrance and got their bus stuck in the mud. And Garnett Gayle then forgot to wipe his feet, and left mud all over the court. They did remember to whine about absolutely everything, because none of the above was their fault. Like many other things since I stopped writing regularly, it deserved a blog.

It’s been a contrasting year, the kids are both doing well (Cait made her home WBBL debut in the Sheffield debacle), but their grandad isn’t around to see it.

But when I wrote

“There will be one more post. I’m not sure when. Certainly not for a while. But there are  some things that really do need to be in the public domain, and will be. They don’t involve anyone I’ve hinted at above. They do involve the actions of the failed excuse of a National Governing Body we’re forced to endure. That’s enough said for now, you can definitely have the rest of October off if you don’t fancy reading the archives. But you should probably check back in for that one last post in November.”

I really thought that one last post would be in November. We’re now in January. It’s like our NGB operate in a different time zone. It’s probably why they achieve so little. But I have one New Year’s Resolution;

I’ll be back.

Have a good 2024.