Adam and basketball

Adam has enjoyed playing his first season of basketball this winter. He was a member of the "Snakes" basketball team for 1st and 2nd graders. It's been a great experience for him - he's really developed a lot of new skills playing on this team. He had a great time even though the team didn't do so well through most of the season - they lost their first 5 games - usually pretty badly. But during the last game of the season (yesterday), the whole team stepped up and pulled out a victory (38-30). Adam was the star of the game (in my opinion) - he scored 14 points, grabbed about 10 rebounds and had a couple of steals. He really was hustling around the court - and chasing after rebounds. At one point he even dove around another kid to save a rebound from going out of bounds - he ended up with skinned knees from that one, but was proud of his battle wounds.

The reason he scored so many points I think was not so much skill as brains - he figured out the system. You see, in first grade basketball, it is illegal to steal the ball while your opponent is dribbling - you can only steal passes. You also can't block shots. So every time Adam would get the ball, he would dribble kind of nonchalantly up to the basket, pick up the ball, focus and shoot it. It would go in most times. He figured out he could just keep dribbling forward and the opponent couldn't really stop him. Here are some pictures (and even a video) of Adam playing ball. These were taken two weeks ago...


Here's Adam on defense. He was real good at defense - he would stick with his guy no matter where he went - even if he ran past half court while the ball was under the basket. We'll have to work on keeping an eye both on his man and on the ball, but pretty good for starters!




Here he is defending again. Notice the seven footer on the left of the picture. This was the real reason Adam's team lost their first 5 games. Every one of the teams had a 2nd grader who had hit an early growth spurt. This particular team had 7 foot twins that got almost every rebound.


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Okay, so this video doesn't show Adam at his best, but it's still kind of fun. He's taking the ball down the court, dribbles it off the opponents foot. His coach kicks it back to him. He loses it again, but then grabs it and hands it to a teammate. Then he skips (literally) around and gets in perfect rebounding position - grabs the rebound and promptly throws up an airball - then runs back for defense.