Time SkipA few weeks later, we had our first game against the Navy that was stationed here in j.a.pan. I was a bit excited to be playing in front of a crowd again. I was sitting in the locker room palms sweaty, a little bit nervous. I didn"t know if I was ready to get back on the court after experiencing so many things in my last mission.
I quickly shook it off as I had to focus and get prepared for this game. Paige came up to me and asked me if I was okay, I told her I"m better now that she"s next to me. Paige laughed and said, "you"ll be okay; all you have to do is just shoot."
It was then that it clicked in my head, just shoot! It sounded like it could be a brand name or something. I had to be able to brand myself as a businessman; just shoot was perfect. All I needed was a symbol like the Jordan sign and the Nike sign with the check sign. The just shoot logo had to be epic; instead of focusing on the game, I was over here thinking about my brand.
I told myself to focus as I watched Coach Andre going through some plays and what"s so I, I didn"t pay attention because well, I didn"t need to. After Coach Andre finished talking, we said a quick prayer before heading out to the gym. When we got out there, the crowd was cheering, there was nothing but military men and women in the stands, as they cheered for us.
One side was full of army people, and the other side was full of Navy people. The army folks were barking like dogs while the Navy people were just clapping their hands and shouting, "WE ARE THE NAVY!". I laughed when I heard that and thought they were quite amusing, barking like dogs.
Coach Andre had me on the bench as he told me just to watch the first game to see how they play, and if they need help in the last quarter, he will send me out. I frowned when I heard that, but I didn"t want to get on the wrong side of the coach, so I just kept quiet and went to sit on the bench.
The announcer introduced the starting lineups as he got the crowd excited. When they started introducing our team, the Navy side of the group started booing as they started talking trash about us being the worst team in the world. Finally, the game had started, and the ref threw up the jump ball as a season had finally begun.
I was quite excited, Aldrich had lost the jump ball as the Navy"s Center tapped the ball to their power forward who pa.s.sed it to their point guard. Their point guard was a strategist, he liked to take his time and pick apart the team, but the rest of his team were pretty terrible without him.
Their point guard was called Ron, Ron was a Caucasian guy about the same height as me 6"2, had surfer boy"s hair with a headband. Ron reminded me of Steve Nash and even the way he played. Ron did a quick bounce pa.s.s to their power forward, who went in and laid it up. I thought he was going to dunk it to get his team excited, but that didn"t happen.
Aldrich pa.s.sed in the ball to Paige, as Paige started the play. She quickly drove in and was about to lay it up when their center came up trying to block it, but she spun around him in the air and pa.s.sed it off to Khalid, who came running in and dunked it. This surprised not only me but everybody within the gym.
I started cheering for him, and I had even gotten excited about that play. I made a mental note to set up Khalid sometimes as this guy was quite the dunker. The Navy scored on us once again, and they were up by only two points when Paige set up Khalid once again, this time he took a mid-range shot and missed it.
Another mental note, don"t let Khalid shoot it, I continued to observe the team. Paige was doing pretty good with her pa.s.ses, and sometimes she even took it in for a layup. Paige would get fouled hard sometimes, which made me nervous, but she would get back up every time and had to the line. Once in a while, Ron would try to cop a feel on her, which led to her also retaliating by grabbing his jewels when he went for layups sometimes.
Paige made every free throw when she went to the line; on the other hand, everybody else on my team was missing their free throws, especially Khalid. I made another mental note that this guy can"t shoot, but he was a great dunker. The next person I focused on was Gonfreak; Gonfreak was the total opposite of Khalid. Gonfreak was a shooter and couldn"t dunk, but he couldn"t shoot from behind the three-point line and was more of a mid-range shooter, which I respected.
If I ever saw him open in the mid-range, I"d feed it to him, and last but not least was Aldrich, our Center, he was able to grab rebounds, but his offense was questionable. Once he grabbed the rebound, he would always pa.s.s it off instead of putting it back up. Aldrich was a little bit timid, but I needed to get him out of that way of thinking.
I had to let him eat some spicy food to toughen him up just kidding, but he needed to do a little bit more strength training as he was getting pushed around in the post even though Aldrich was slightly taller than the Navy"s Center he was still getting bullied around in the post. Chris was the shooting guard of the bench, so he was taking my place as a starter today, and he wasn"t doing too bad. Chris can most definitely shoot threes only when he"s wide open.