It was a heartbreaking end to our season in the Central Asian Basketball Classic. Six schools from Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan were hosted by our school for 3 days of tournament basketball. We played 7 games over the 3 days, winning 4 of them and losing three of them. After the round-robin portion of the tournament, we were seeded #2, just missing out on the top seed by a point differential of 1 point. That set us up for a difficult path to the finals. We lost in the semifinals to Bishkek IS and then in the consolation match, were upset by one point by Almaty International School. We finished a disappointing fourth place.
We had one of the youngest teams in the tournament with no grade 12 seniors and a team mostly of grade 10 students. The girls improved during the season and we finished with a record of 11 wins and 5 losses. We won our city championship tournament and have a lot to be proud of. I profoundly enjoyed the experience and love coaching basketball. In my career, I’ve been blessed to not be on the losing side to often, so losing out on a medal was painful. They say you learn from losing more than winning. I am taking away the following:
- Physical fitness is key in a tournament of this nature. I didn’t prepare the girls with strength and conditioning and it showed as the tournament wore on. I could have played our starters less during the round-robin in retrospect.
- We didn’t prepare enough against zone defenses. Our girls struggled with turnovers and finding open shots.
Probably the best thing about the season was the relationships I made with the players and coaches. It is such a privilege to get to work with and know young people. I have not coached girls in many years and it was cool to get back to teaching basketball fundamentals to them. My mother was a long-time basketball coach and I grew up around women’s basketball, so I felt a bit a home surrounded by girls in gymnasiums this season. I am glad the season is over because of the time commitment. I am looking forward to getting back to more time with Oliver and Nadia. Nadia was a fantastic supporter of the team and I want to thank her too.
This morning I am watching the Los Angeles Lakers versus the Denver Nuggets. LeBron James scored his 40,000 points earlier in the game. He passed second place Kareem Abdul Jabaar (38,387) who also had a long career. Kareem would have had more points if he had been allowed to go directly to the NBA like LeBron James. He spent 4 years at UCLA due to the rules at the time. He scored over 2,000 points a season in his first five years in the NBA. Even if he would have averaged 1,500 points a season as a rookie and the next three years, that would be 6,000 additional points, and I would add another 2,000, so say he would have finished with 46,000 points. He was a much different player than LeBron and had an unstoppable sky-hook shot. In looking at the all-time scoring leader list, I don’t see any current players approaching LeBron’s total. The closest is Kevin Durrant of the Phoenix Suns with 28,000 at age 35 and an injury history. It is amazing what LeBron is doing at age 39 with the Lakers. I think that will be his big legacy. He is still scoring at an elite rate, amassing almost 7,500 points and counting after age 35. How much more can he get? Players in their 40s are more injury prone so his career could end earlier than expected, based on his health today. I predict LeBron will get another 5,000 points over the next 4 seasons and finish around 45,000 for his career. By the way, Denver beat the Lakers with big baskets in the final few minutes of the game. The difference was Denver has two superstars, Jamaal Murray and Nikola Jokic and the Lakers only had LeBron tonight. Jokic is amazing and in just the few minutes I watched, he made an awkward, off-balance jump hook and had an amazing pass off the same jump hook move that resulted in a teammate’s dunk. Absolutely a joy to watch.
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