Paralympian blog

Basketball highs and lows
06/07/2010

Basketball highs and lows

This month's been a bit of a weird one for me, with some basketball highs and lows.

It started with the end of season play offs. Now we had already won the league, just beating MK Aces into first place on goal difference, and it was our chance to clinch the "double" by winning the play offs. This is basically the top 4 teams playing against each other in a sort of mini tournament. Every division does this, and like in the football play offs, the top team is promoted. Obviously this isn't the case for the superleague as there is no higher division, so it is more of a show case for the sport as well as being a tournament.

We won our first game with relative ease although we did take our foot off the pedal at times, allowing them to come back a bit, but in the end we comfortably won. Then in the final, we're winning by a couple of points and trading baskets, when I pick up a un-sportsmanlike foul (think of it as sort of a yellow card in football) as I clipped the person with the balls chair to stop him passing it to his team mate for an easy layup. This wouldn't usually be an issue if it wasn't for what happened next. It was just after half time and we're still up by a few points. They grab a quick rebounding leading to a fast break. I sprint to get in the lane, in between the person with the ball and the basket and brake, attempting to cause him to charge in to me, and draw the offensive foul. Well . . . it didn't quite work, although I thought I had position (and so did the whole crowd for the record). The ref thought I hit him from behind and therefore gave another un-sportsmanlike foul, which yes as you already guessed, like football means I was sent off!

From here it went a bit downhill. Everything seemed to go against us, every bounce, every blow of the whistle, rebound. We lost by a few points, and my only consolation was that soon we were going to the Astra Tech Championship in Holland - and I knew we could do well there. I'll tell you about it next time.

Cheers, Lee

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