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Tuesday, January 30, 2007
You can fuel some of the people any of the time 
| | Started by reading aloud 14 statements from the Cluetrain Manifesto - since they so beautifully captures the zeitgeist - even though they were written in 1999, soon almost 8 years ago. The statements/worldview apparently was somewhat controversial with the crowd, or at least with one of the other panelists, which set the scene for the most confrontational and aggressive personal attack in a panel debate i've ever seen or experienced. Still puzzled and somewhat shocked here many hours later trying to gear down. We live in interesting disruptive times... |
| | The disruption at hand occurred when Thomas busted Nokia's ad agency for running a fake blog, video, and grassroots hacker organization on behalf of the company. |
Getting back into the game
| | Toby Getsch says I should follow HoopsAddict.com. He also says BTW, when I say Doc, my first thought is Dr. J. Smooooth! For what little it's worth (nothing, actually), I was a big Dr. J. fan. Especially after he became (as I recall) the first player to dunk after launching from the foul line. (Though his best moment was a mind-changing in-the-air reverse layup while cutting behind the backboard in a game against the Lakers.) |
| | But my game, such as it was, did not call to mind any competent basketball players, at any level of the game upwards of Junior High. My highest achievement in basketball — and a testimony to my above-minimal skills at the game — was not being chosen last in in pick-up games. I was always chosen last in most other sports I played when I was a kid. Especially baseball. But once I got to playing basketball I took great pleasure in not sucking as badly as other players. |
| | I only brought one talent to the game. I wouldn't call it a skill, but it was definitely a talent. I was good at shooting the ball from the outside, if nobody guarded me. At my prime I was good for 50% or better from the floor, and maybe 70-80% from the foul line. And since defense wasn't a major part of pick-up ball back when I played, I scored some. Not a helluva lot, because there were always better players around. But some. |
| | I discovered this talent by accident when I was a freshman at Guilford College, in the fall of 1965. Guilford was just beginning to enjoy small college basketball greatness then. Basketball was always a Big Deal in North Carolina, and Guilford was no exception. A number of players went from Guilford to the pros in the years I was there, but only one succeeded: Bob Kauffman, a 3-time All-Star with the Buffalo Braves, now the L.A. Clippers. In 1974, five years after I graduated, Lloyd (later World B.) Free and M.L. Carr led Guilford to the NAIA championship. |
| | Anyway, I was waiting at my cousins' house in Graham for my aunt to take me to the dentist, when I picked up a ball that was laying on the basketball court by their driveway. (Although my cousins there consisted of five boys, and they were all big Wake Forest fans, their big sport was swimming. In fact, I don't recall ever even shooting hoops with them back then — though we talked college ball all the time.)* |
| | Anyway, I was standing about 20 feet from the hoop there, and I shot the ball. To my surprise, it went in. So I retrieved the ball, walked to the back of the court and shot again. Once again, it went in. This may have been total luck, divine guidance or something equally strange. But, whatever the reason, I got hooked. On the basis of no history whatsoever, I now believed totally that I could put the ball in the basket. Never mind that I was 18 years old and a non-athlete of lifelong standing. Never mind that I was five-nine, weighed one-thirty-five, and had no experience at the game. I now believed I could play — in fact that I needed to play. I knew I could do this, should do this. |
| | So I started playing pick-up with my friends. Some of them were pretty good, meaning that they had actually played a lot back wherever they grew up. None of these guys were varsity-grade, but they could play. Other friends were just as inexperienced as I was, and less talented. But we enjoyed playing together, and that became our main way of killing time. |
| | Gradually, over the next several years, I learned to dribble and pass with a degree of adequacy. I had the leaping ability of a dumpster and couldn't get a rebound; but I hardly wanted one, because I liked being out where I could shoot. That was my game, being kind of a Designated Shooter. |
| | Over the decades after college, my idea of a good time after work was to go out and shoot hoops for an hour or so. In Palo Alto, when my son Allen was in junior high and high school, we played a lot of one-on-one. He got a lot better than me by the end of that; but it was always fun. Most of the time, over many years, I'd just play games to 100 of hits vs. misses. The rule was, I had to shoot from beyond the key (what became the college 3-point line, though that didn't exist when I started out) and I had to move around. Sometimes I'd change the rule and move my minimum distance in to the foul line; but mostly I'd shoot from an arc between the corners and the top of the key. And I'd usually win, meaning I'd shoot better than 50%. I think my top score was something like 100 to 70. |
| | Last few times I tried this game I shot about 10% from the same range. So I ain't what I used to be. I'm also half an inch shorter and sixty pounds heavier than I was when I started playing forty-one years ago. And I haven't had a hoop nearby since... hmm... 1987. Twenty years. But the urge to play is still strong. My 10-year-old kid is tall for his age and not a bad shot, so I'm looking forward to shooting hoops with him after school in the driveway, and losing by decreasing margins in games of hits vs. misses when the kid isn't up for something less boring. |
| | For now it's just one more thing to blog about. But when I start playing again, it'll be one more reason not to blog. Count on it. |
| | * After reading this, my cousin Paul wrote to say that the boys did play a lot of hoops there, but prefered to involve me on other activities when I'd visit. That was because, well, I kinda sucked at the game. |
A step toward the o-Phone
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