Kind of a big deal

Yeah, yeah... you are by now tired of first sentences that go something like, "I know it's been a while since I've posted, but blah blah blah." So we'll just dive right in.

First of all, Kansas won the Big 12 again. This is cool not just because it's incredibly rare for one team to win a power conference 11 times in a row, but also because it sets the stage for a Spinal Tap reference:

Eleven. Exactly. One louder.

Second of all, the conference was exceptionally tough this year; some number crunching indicates it was actually the toughest conference top to bottom. And that means the Big 12 tournament, which starts next week, will be unusually fun to watch. Just about every matchup either puts two ranked teams against each other or involves general bad blood.

I'm sure this, like all memories, has become a bit sepia-toned with age. But I remember getting into a game on an early day of the 1988 Big 8 tournament to watch Oklahoma (I remember because they had Skeeter Henry) play Colorado (I remember because they had, and still have, a buffalo mascot). My dad had gotten tickets. Kemper Arena smelled of sweat and popcorn. And cheering on two teams my 12-year-old self only vaguely cared about with my dad was... awesome.

Sadly, most of the games will be on at an hour that not even an unhappy Baby Blog would care to be awake at. I'll either be watching solo, or on time delay. Either way, I'm sure there will be a stream of text messages that will give me a pretty good idea of how things went. And then it's on to the NCAA tournament.

So here's to some great basketball. This has always been my favorite time of year for sports... even before Kansas' streak started.

It's that time of year

Ah, the winds of autumn. Here in Hong Kong, the signs are everywhere: leaves not falling from the trees, brisk chill absent from the air, apple cider and pumpkin spice lattes nowhere to be seen. (There are, however, plenty of people roasting chestnuts on streetcorners, but they do that during the summer too.)

And, oh yeah, college basketball. There's nary a sign of it in the 'Kong, but on Tuesday Kansas hits the court for the first time this season.

That's right--a shakycam video of a video screen in a basketball arena at... a glorified practice session this month. It doesn't get much dorkier than that. Fortunately, as noted above, actual basketball highlights are right around the corner. Happy autumn!

The universe is a basketball, and it has exploded

I really don't know what commentary to add here--it's Dennis Rodman sitting next to Kim Jong-un. And they're watching the Harlem Globetrotters (three of them, anyway) show off their fancy dribblin' in front of a crowd of identically dressed North Koreans. The clapping is polite, rhythmic and almost in unison.

And then there's a basketball game.

A slam-dunk for democracy? A propaganda exercise for the Evil Empire? WHO CARES!? My. Mind. Is. Blown.

Dunkin' ain't easy...

... and, technically speaking, it ain't necessary, either. Unless, of course, you're holding a dunk contest. In that case, as we see from this dunk competition in the Chinese pro league--the CBA--it is necessary to the point of repetition.

I'm definitely not one to mock other cultures for how they play my game of choice; I have shared the blacktop with ballers all over the world, many of whom have at least semi-schooled me and my old-guy knees. But if you're going to hold a dunk contest, make sure it involves actual, like, dunking, e.g.:

It's a little perplexing, actually. At my athletic peak--and let's be honest, it was more of a big hill than a mountain--I could dunk a women's ball (which is slightly smaller than the men's version) using one hand on a regulation-height rim. So I don't totally understand how professional basketball players who are both taller and in better shape than I ever was are having a hard time with the relatively straightforward act of throwing the ball through the hoop at point-blank range.

On the other hand, the CBA is doing well, and China's love of basketball has attracted major attention from the NBA. So maybe it's only a matter of time before the "shoe stuck to the backboard dunk" is just another part of the sport's lexicon.

The Art of Old Guy Basketball, Part II

Good evening, dear readers. I write this to you from a chair, which is not in itself unusual, but it is a chair from which I will not easily rise. That's because for the first time since arriving in Hong Kong, I played ball.

Oh, yes.  The Parents of the Blog got me a basketball for Christmas. I had been in the market for one for a while; our digs in Hong Kong are basically surrounded by public sports facilities, including some nice basketball courts. Many a day I walked by, taunted by the pristine nets--not chains!--well-maintained backboards and playing surfaces that, as far as I could tell, appeared to be scrubbed weekly, if not daily.

Someone pays close enough attention to the courts that the trapezoidal "international" foul lane…

The geometry makes it more fair, or something.

… had been scrubbed out at some point and replaced with the NCAA standard free-throw lane. Not only that, but the NCAA three-point line, which was recently moved to 20 feet, 9 inches, was up to standard. And you could see where the old one was before the groundskeepers scrubbed it off.

How to use the NCAA three-point line.

Anyway, the point is, I had been wanting to get out and see how bad my shot had gotten since hooping it up in the Middle East. Today, I did it (after buying an air pump at Toys R US. Don't judge; the sporting goods store was "sold out" of pumps).

The result is, as I mentioned above, extremely sore knees. But I finally got a glimpse of what street basketball in Hong Kong means, at least in our little overplanned high-rise forest of a neighborhood. Several observations:

1) On the courts where I was playing, everyone wanted to be a guard.

2) No one played a ton of defense.

3) The average height was greater than that of the rest of Hong Kong, but still less than 6-foot-3, i.e., me.

That meant several things. Point (1) meant that I, a guy who somehow managed to be a post player in high school (second-most blocked shots in freshman history, holla!), had an advantage in not just height but know-how. Everyone was willing to give up position in the paint, no one seemed to see my patented, and by that I mean totally telegraphed, shoulder-fake coming, and I boxed the hell out of anything that moved.

Point (2) meant that when I did get away from the basket, I could square my shoulders, set my feet, not jump, and have a clean look at the hoop. It also meant that by playing any defense AT ALL, I could affect the game. This type of nominal guarding saved me the embarrassment of wheezing to a halt on a court full of young whippersnappers.

Point (3) meant the obvious--even my 36-year-old, bad-kneed self could get away with not jumping a whole lot and still getting rebounds, blocking shots, and so on.

In short: It was the perfect recipe for a game of Old Guy Basketball. I didn't dribble much. I passed a lot. I didn't shoot more than a couple of times beyond three feet. I was probably really annoying to anyone chasing a rebound under the basket.

And my team won.

I will take comfort in that as I ice my knees.

Droppin' Hong Kong dimes*

Hong Kong is a big place--or at least a lot of people in a small place--but even so, I can't believe I missed Kevin Durant's visit here. Worse, I apparently walked right by Southorn Playground when he was playing some pickup ball.

Showing off for a different Hong Kong crowd.

How do you miss a 6-foot-9 shooting guard in a place where the average height is something like 5-9? I dunno, but it happened. Doesn't say much for my court vision, does it?

*worth approximately $0.013

What March Madness looks like from the other side of the planet

On Sunday night in the U.S., Kansas and North Carolina played in the Elite Eight of the NCAA basketball tournament.

On Monday morning, I watched the game live.

Right now, Hong Kong is 12 hours ahead of the east coast, meaning a 4 p.m. tipoff in St. Louis equals a 5 a.m. alarm clock for me. It's a little surreal. Hong Kong is a bustling place; some nights it doesn't seem to sleep. But by 5 a.m. on a workday, it's pretty quiet. As I set up my laptop in our living room, nothing was moving outside except the gentle waves on Victoria Harbor.

It was an exciting game. Yet at this hour, and with Mrs. Blog fast asleep in another room, yelling, cursing or even whacking my forehead was a bit to boisterous. I resorted to sending frustrated e-mails to friends in the U.S. who were watching the game too.

If you squint really hard at the upper-right-hand corner, you can see me in my living room.

But the quiet was also helpful. During timeouts, I could look out the window at the lights across the harbor, watch the sunrise start to paint the edges of the sky, and take a deep breath. (It also helped that I planned to go back to bed after the game, meaning no coffee and a lower heart rate)

In the end, Kansas pulled off the upset, beating a UNC team with perhaps a half-dozen future NBA players on its roster. And as the sun rose, I took a deep breath and smiled: KU was going back to the Final Four.

Of course, that means I'll be awake again early on Sunday morning.

Tournament time

Yes, the most glorious time of year is upon us. Hordes of fans are huddled in front of their TVs for the days' worth of wall-to-wall basketball known as the NCAA tournament. Of course, in my case, this actually means sitting alone in front of a computer screen because of the obscene eight- to 11-hour time difference between here and the courts where the games are taking place.

Kansas' two games have started at 2:30 and 4:45 a.m. Abu Dhabi time and I, being a big fan of basketball in general and Kansas in particular, have watched both. It's fine at the time but hard not to regret the next day.

As Mrs. Blog can attest, I am not at my best after three hours' sleep. That meant most of Saturday was wasted, dissolved into a blur of recovery, and on Monday my brain cells were powered almost exclusively by caffeine.

A pre-dawn dunking against Illinois.

And I'm not out of the woods yet. Kansas has advanced to the Sweet Sixteen, and game time is... 3:30 a.m on Saturday. As long as they keep winning, though, I'll happily suffer a little grogginess--and I apologize in advance for inflicting Zombie Gerry on the rest of the world.