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Spurs Win Again. We Don’t Get It.

Posted by :James Howden On : June 21, 2014
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I expected to be watching Game Seven of the NBA Finals Friday morning — I’m in China, lest ye forget — and instead I wrote this.

SPURS IN FIVE?! WHO CALLED THAT?

Nobody. Cuz we believe “the team with the best player wins”, cuz the NBA has marketed the hell out of individualism. And MJ did, and Shaq probably was, and so was Tim Duncan, once upon a time, but even back then it was always a team deal with the Spurs.

I forecast San Antonio in seven, so I’m still not adjusted. I’m programmed for an epic climax, as games 6 and 7 in 2013 were the best pair of basketball struggles I’ve seen, what, ever? At least since the Magic Lakers and the Celtic Birds in the ’80s. With the Spurs’ early air-conditioning this year, I’m revising history: they actually won last year, too, even though LeBron James held up the trophies and preened and narcissized “I’m not supposed to be here!” (Sorry, kid king. Noticing the clay feet more than is charitable.)

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Ten for Twelve. Ravens Win! (Well, *I* Felt Something.)

Posted by :James Howden On : March 10, 2014
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I’ll regret this later in the day, but only with a bleary, weary grin and a bemused shake of the skull. I get a little hoops-deprived here in China, but not in these wee hours. It’s ten to five in the morning, and my adopted hometown team has just done the ridiculous.

To update last week’s Jordan Conn article on Grantland: “If a team wins TEN out of 12 national championships in Canada, does it make any noise? Meet the Carleton University Ravens.” Well, the University of Ottawa Gee-Gees (just Google it) did, and fought madly and well, but the dynasty stands as the Ravens rolled on, 79-67. Did it make any noise? Well, just north of 7000 fans in the home of the NHL’s Ottawa Senators – yup, for all you Murricans reading, our national college hoops classic drew over 10,000 empty seats with the two local unis in it – made a fine effort. Sometimes the play-by-play guys were synchronized with the three cameras operating, and for a second-tier pro and a one-weekend-a-year ex-coach colour guy, the SportsNet 360 team did a fine job.

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Of Grantland and Conn and Backwoods Basketball

Posted by :James Howden On : March 8, 2014
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It’s an early Friday evening, down-home time. If I was in Ottawa, I’d have spent hours by now in a cavernous puck pagoda – named for reasons corporate after Canada’s iconic purveyor of duct tape, snow shovels, lawn mowers and power saws – and I and a few thousand echoing others would know two of the four teams in the only-slightly-mad northern university basketball version of the Final Four. It’s the Canadian Interuniversity Sport men’s basketball tournament, and you can’t get there from here in Dalian, China.

The expected collision in the Canadian final: Carleton Ravens collide, in the big house, with their crosstown rivals from OttawaU.

The March Madness of the American tournament – featuring 64 teams (once the play-in games are out of the way) to our eight finalists – is yet to come, and I’m only slightly crazed by the distance I feel. Detachment doesn’t come easy, but it comes, friends, it comes, often whether we want it or not. When I’m in Canada, I’m an Ottawa man, have been since 2002. I’m a long-time nutter of a basketball coach, and I knew Carleton University’s Amazing Dave before he was the least-known ruler of Canadian sport, the guy whose teams at a previously mediocre Ottawa school have won nine national championships in the last eleven years. It’s a dynasty such as we don’t see in sports anymore, and even most maple leafs don’t know about him or the furiously good teams he produces, year after decade. The most shocking upset, possibly, of this year’s CIS Final 8 happened before the tourney began, when the neighbouring University of Ottawa Gee-Gees were given the number one seed after a late comeback storm and a buzzer-beater in the (almost meaningless) Ontario final gave them a one-point win over Carleton’s Ravens, their first domestic loss in nearly two years.

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CIS: Finally in Halifax

Posted by :James Howden On : March 18, 2007
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Friday, March 16

After a long and wonderful drive down with son Ben, once upon a time a basketball player himself, I am in Halifax for the Canadian March Madness, the Canadian Interuniversity Sport men’s basketball championship. It’s been here for the past 24 years, and mainly because I was always coaching (or recovering from it) during the March Break, I’d never made the trip down. It comes to Ottawa, where I live, next year, so I wanted to see it before it left its Maritime home. I was excited.

And upon arrival, road-weary and just a bit late for Friday’s game 1, I had a little spasm of disappointment. My eighth-row seats were beyond the baseline, not foul-line high as I’d been led to believe. The programme had a hasty feel to it, including two photos of players from the favoured Atlantic school which hadn’t even qualified and one mystery photo in which the tiny shorts worn by the player proved it be at least a dozen years out-of-date. Leafing through, the listing of national Players of the Year (the Mike Moser Memorial Trophy) was not only incomplete, but it misspelled the name of Eli Pasquale, one of the greatest players in CIS history. (Never mind the substitution of “it’s” for “its”.) Brandon University, the second seed in the tournament, had incorrect numbers for most of its prime players that had to be revised at tipoff. High school stuff. The Metro Centre is a fine facility that (mostly) doesn’t overwhelm the event — good crowds here are six or seven thousand, and they have occasionally had more than 10,000 — but the mural of the Saint Mary’s Huskies, a local team, winning the ’99 championship also has a distinctly high school feel to it.

My excitement took a temporary dip, but I emerged from Disappointment Mode before long. Here are some other quick impressions from the Friday games, the four quarterfinal matches of this “Final 8” tourney. For game summaries and general tournament information, please go to the CIS tournament website here. What follows are some quick-and-filthy-clean impressions from this basketball vagabond.

Game 1: The number one seed was one I’d questioned, as the Concordia Stingers had run up victories in the small and undistinguished Quebec conference. And Upset Special it was, as the Saint Mary’s Huskies brought tears to the eyes of championship players from their glory days with a last-second victory. Having placed second in an upset-filled Atlantic qualifying tournament, the HomeBoys took full advantage of the friendly crowd and a curiously bland Concordia team. Sophomore Mark McLaughlin hit the winning free throw, and his toughness belies his slender frame. Nice player. Took me awhile to get into the thing, as the atmosphere I’d expected with an AUS team in it didn’t kick in ’til the last several minutes. When it did, it made a difference. Nothing like home cooking, and Stinger All-Canadian Perrotte was held down. Energizing finish.

Game 2: Brandon v. Windsor. Windsor had knocked off Carleton in the Ontario UA final in their own peculiar barn, and they looked good for a awhile in their first trip to the Nationals in ages, but they didn’t guard Brandon’s point Yul Michel well at all. He’s very quick, and was continually allowed to go right to his favourite moves. This one had the feeling of being over before it should’ve been. When Windsor was down 8, it felt like more. And soon it was. Chris Oliver, Windsor’s coach, is known as an uber-dedicated coach, one of the best technical minds that we have. He’s still a young guy, though, and a quiet, reserved presence on the bench. Maybe I just favour a more activist stance from a hoops coach, but I wonder if he has the fire to inspire. I think we’ll see, because I expect Windsor to be good for long while with him. Brandon is a very talented group. They were more than full measure for the win, and maybe Windsor’s big game was last weekend over Carleton, a great win for their young coach. For his players, maybe being here was enough.

Game 3: University of Ottawa v. University of British Columbia. OU, by contrast with Windsor, looked more ‘n ready to be at Nationals. Beating Carleton, the 4-time national champion, twice during league play will do that for you, as will a two-point loss to them in the OUA East final. Their intensity gave them an early jump on UBC, a talented two-seed, and the Gee-Gees have the horses to run with UBC. Their gifted young point guard, Josh Gibson-Bascome, sat for much of the end of the first half with two fouls, which allowed UBC back in to the game. Casey Archibald hit an effortless jumper to bring the Thunderbirds back to within two at half, but Gibson-Bascombe was tremendous in the second, seeming imperious in answering every UBC challenge. He dominated the first six minutes of the second, mainly with surgical passing. In the Carleton-flavoured contingent where I’m sitting, he’s not very popular, but he and his mates were very tough down the stretch, and UBC just didn’t defend well enough. And so continues the T-Bird tradition of national flameouts, and so another all-Ottawa grudge match is set up for the semi-finals.

Game 4: Carleton v. Acadia. Well, I gave away this one, but there wasn’t much surprise here. Acadia was a surprise winner in the Atlantic, maybe the third best team in the AUS, but put together some wins when it counted. Within five minutes, though CU wasn’t shooting well, I smelled blowout. The Ravens’ suffocating, truly obsessive rebounding and defence had the Axemen perched on their frustrated heels. Acadia depended so much on one All-Canadian guard, Paulo Santana (he’s good, but first team A-C? Come on), and ooh-aah shot-blocks and dazzling dimes. One problem: Carleton neither cares for nor allows much of that to happen. Acadia limped to the dressing room with 17 points at half, and Carleton was already up 21 without having too much going smoothly on offence. The second half was even more stunning. Acadia managed 21 points in the half to only lose by 48… The referees hadn’t the heart to keep calling Acadia for all their charges in the second half, or it could’ve been worse. WOW. An unbelievable butt-kicking, and what a great rest for CU’s stars, especialy the chronically gimpy, two-time national Player of the Year, Osvaldo Jeanty. And because of the way CU is built, garbage time doesn’t allow the pressure to relent. The scrubs play hard and insist on rebounding, because that’s The Smart Way. Coach Dave went berserk and called an angry timeout over boxout failures when the lead was 32. And so now they have to beat OU again. I’m predicting an easy time for a change, not of Acadian proportions but more comfortably than they have in the last couple of years. OU’s inexperience at Nationals will show. And CU looked to be on an implacable mission in their Drive for Five. Incredible performance.

Need One Ticket

Posted by :James Howden On : March 4, 2007
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And on nights like the last one, I’m also smack-tackled by the need for a basketball team to coach. The hot ticket in Ottawa Saturday was for the OUA East championship game between the hometown Carleton Ravens and their cross-town antagonists, the University of Ottawa Gee-Gees. I’d struck out Wednesday when the tickets sold out in a couple of hours, so I lined up early for standing room seats. However, the “Need One” sign that I’d artfully duct-taped to my sleeve got me pretty close to my usual seat, and next to an Ottawa U co-ed who’d hoped for a more interesting date, I’m sure. We were right behind the Ravens’ bench, where I can watch Coach Dave Smart’s perpetual agony at the imperfections of his players (and of the officials, who had a tough game).

It’s great to see that kind of feverish local demand for what the Murricans call “college basketball”, in a game to decide who’d go to the Last Dance, the Canuck version of March Madness. (Mind you, ticket scarcity comes easier when the Ravens’ Nest seats fewer than 2000 people.) Ottawa U finally beat the Ravens in the Smart Era for the first time last year, and this season won both games in tight struggles, the first one before a CIS record crowd of nearly 10,000 at Scotiabank Place. (And yes, I know, the Carolina Tar Heels get more than that for their first open practice of the season. That’s a different world down there.) But the brutally efficient Ravens had still managed first place by being more consistent than the mercurial Gee-Gees; for them, beating Carleton is everything.

It looked like Carleton was going to run off and hide early, but two tight block/charge calls on successive possessions both went against Ravens star Aaron Doornekamp, leaving him with a pair of fouls and causing a potential five-point swing. From there, the Gee-Gees went on an absurd run to take a three-point halftime lead. It was wild, and it got wilder. Neither team shot well, and there were incredible sequences of defensive intensity and offensive nervousness that resulted in almost comically bad misses. The players know each other so well that Doornekamp and Osvaldo Jeanty, Canada’s reigning Player of the Year, were both in check. Similarly, the Gee-Gees silky sophomore, Josh Gibson-Bascombe, had to work very hard for his shots, though he hit several big-time threes.

The biggest shot of the game broke the second half 46-46 tie that had seemed to go on forever, and it came from an unexpected source. With the shot clock running down, substitute defensive stopper Rob Saunders nailed a tough jumper off the dribble, and the Ravens never trailed again. (Saunders is an electrical engineering student, another thing you don’t see among the NCAA Division 1 heavyweights.) The man he replaced, Stu Turnbull, looks more like a light-heavyweight boxer than a basketball player, but muscled his way to 17 points to lead the four-time champion Ravens to the win. And now Carleton goes for its fifth consecutive national title in the Final 8 at Halifax, one of the great (and under-reported) stories in Canadian sport.

Consider these ridiculous facts about the Ravens’ captain, Jeanty: he told his coach as a freshman that his goal was to win five CIS championships – only one remains; his regular season and playoff record in those four-plus years is now 130-8, a winning ratio over 95% (!); he has been the championship game MVP in all four that he has played. Meanwhile, NOT SO SMART! the Gee-Gees fans chanted, but Coach Dave has put together, at a university with no outstanding tradition of basketball excellence, one of the most powerful and unlikely dynasties we’ve ever seen.

I have such admiration for what they do, but I can’t get into the yelling and chanting. (And it was LOUD.) I’m too busy pretending to coach. I’m breaking down Turnbull’s jumpshot during the pre-game. I mutter about Gibson-Bascombe’s decision-making, and tip my hat to his smooth and confident game (and wonder how Ottawa U pried him out of Toronto, and away from a U.S. full-ride scholarship, which must have been available to him). Finish strong, I plead with Doornekamp, who apparently doesn’t hear me. What’s worse, these tired old bones couldn’t sleep afterwards because this fevered old brain is in full game-analysis mode, and planning practices for a non-existent team. Drives me nuts. Love this time of year.

Four Straight Titles — Does Anybody Hear?

Posted by :James Howden On : March 20, 2006
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If a basketball team wins four straight national championships and hardly anyone notices, does it make a sound? (Does anybody but Mom and Dad meet them at the airport?) Do they go to Disney World? (Or maybe Ray’s Reptiles?) Will they meet the President? (The President, say, of their own university? Okay, this is Canada, and the school is in Ottawa. Maybe the Prime Minister will…Nah.) Wait. I know what happens. Finals are coming; these guys will probably be in class today. (No, Toto, I don’t think we’re talking about the NCAA anymore.)

Yes, the Carleton University Invisible Ravens did it again, and it makes no sense to me. [Editor’s note: they aren’t actually invisible. They just perform amazing feats of tough effort and athletic intelligence and united commitment when hardly anybody’s looking. Yeah, it’s a CIS thing… CIS, not CSI. We’re talkin’ actual people, not TV science cops. Canadian Interuniversity Sport… Yes, they have sports… Yes, they are sometimes on television, if local-access cable counts… No, they’re actually students at the university they play for…Yes, I’m totally serious!)

The Ravens don’t have an actual point guard nor a real post presence. Their most talented player missed the title run with a bum ankle. They’re outsized almost every night. But the Carleton basketball men do have some mysterious and some blatantly obvious qualities that allowed them to win the National Championship again. They’re fiercely competitive, defensively intimidating without either a shot-blocker or on-ball pickpockets, offensively disciplined without being tentative, and they rebound like their erectile function depended on it. Hey, it’s four in a row, kids. Don’t you think some attention should be paid to these guys?

Manny Jean-Marie just doesn’t make a mistake. For my money, he doesn’t make enough; when their gargantuan home winning streak was broken in January, his cautiousness and deference to teammates was exposed. When the Ravens had even less firepower available in the title game, though, he did more than “just being Manny”: his shots were daggers to the UVic Vikings, not just his stops and big boards and every loose ball. When Carleton actually had point guards during his first two seasons, Ryan Bell was an undersized but athletic forward. Yesterday, he convinced me that maybe the Ravens do have a point guard, one who happens to be their best rebounder. Bell took over the game late, and even got some clear-outs called for him when the shooting star had been taken away. (Finally.)

Because it’s not as if that Star, Osvaldo Jeanty, hadn’t already rained enough threes and drained enough clutch off-balance finishes to be named MVP of yesterday’s final. That, my friends, is another Four Straight. The Wizard of Os has been named the Final Ten tournament’s best man twice, including this year, but he has been Mr. Clutch in the national championship game every time he’s played in it. Four for four. (If CIS basketball ever decides to brand itself, they can just modify the Jerry West-inspired NBA logo with an Os silhouette. And unlike the original Mr. Clutch, Osvaldo actually does go to his left.) And next year, he’s gunning to fulfil the goal he set for himself and his team when Dave Smart recruited him: Coach, we’re going to win the CIS five times by the time I’m done. That’s the plan. Even before all those titles, Dave was a confident and spookily focussed guy, but I’ll bet even he had trouble not smirking. Sure, kid. Yeah. The Carleton dynasty. You bet.

Well, now it’s here. This was the year for the rest of the country to get ‘em, especially with star sophomore forward Aaron Doornekamp on the shelf. Their top 8 players, at least, are expected back. Osvaldo, a Business major, has some unfinished biz to take care of. I hope Os takes a day off. The Drive for Five, though, probably started today. Today, this will be a pretty big story in Ottawa, but not for long. I know Carleton students who don’t know much about the Ravens. Listen, I still can get a buzz about big-money athletics, but I must tell you: this is the most interesting ongoing story in my personal Wide World of Sports.

OUA East Playoffs: Ravens in a Romp

Posted by :James Howden On : February 25, 2006
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The basketball dynasty in my back yard keeps rolling along. The Carleton Ravens should have been facing York, and the Lions are getting healthy at the right time. They’ve looked good recently. (They’ve looked good, that is, in game reports I read on the CUBDL, an email newsletter on Canadian university hoops. You didn’t think their games were televised, did you? A note to Dale Stevens, McMaster  Marauder loyalist and hoops devotee in Hamilton, at dstevens@mcmaster.ca, will get you in on the CIS hoop scoop.) York has played much of the year without their top scorer (last year’s OUA East Player of the Year, Dan Eaves) and rebounder (6’10” Jordan Foebel), and could have threatened the Ravens’ drive for a fourth straight national title.

But Queens went in and shocked Toronto, moving York into a matchup with Ottawa and earning themselves the privilege of getting drilled by 34 at the Ravens’ Nest. Ouch. My taxi run to pick up friends made us a bit late, and while we waited for a break in play before sitting down, Osvaldo Jeanty hit three treys in consecutive possessions. By the time we were settled, about 8 minutes in, so was the game. Aside from the Wizard of Os, nobody played all that great, and Coach Dave was fuming. (But then, he always does.) Wait, I should say that Rob Saunders is proving to be better than I realized (he’s been hurt lots, too), another one of those tough Carleton guys who isn’t great at anything but defends well, knows where the rim is and rebounds like a madman.

And El Predicto knew this game would be a blowout, but he goes farther: Ottawa U is going down tonight to York in the other East semifinal. Their terrific season (including that long-awaited win over the cross-town rival Ravens!) ends with a groan. Just a feeling.

Hammer and Tongs on the Hardwood

Posted by :James Howden On : January 17, 2006
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Wow! In one of the best ballgames I’ve seen in a long time — one of the highlights of the Ottawa sports scene (sorry, Senators, and to all the hockey-heads for whom this was not even on jock radar (Jock Radar! Now there’s a good name for an ex-athlete detective)) — the Carleton Ravens followed up their loss last week to Brock with their first home loss after 56 consecutive wins in the Nest. Even more compelling, it was to their hometown rivals, their main competition for Ottawa basketball talent, the U of O Gee Gees. It was a renewal of the Battle of the Daves, Carleton’s Smart (“what rivalry?”) and Ottawa’s DeAveiro (who had not beaten the Ravens in his head coaching career, something like 14 attempts).

It was what we all wish Canadian university sport could more often be. There was a sold-out audience in a quality athletic facility (in Canada, that means 2000 people – compare that with the “quaint and undersized” Cameron Indoor Stadium at Duke, where demand is feverish for the 8000 seats, or North Carolina’s on-campus Dean Dome” and its 21,000 bumholders). There were student fans with energy and imagination, and well-trained and talented athletes playing for their lives. 63-62 was the final count, and neither team ever led by much. It was tense from the opening tip, and the Gee Gees had an answer for everything Carleton had, including holding its star and leader Osvaldo Jeanty in check. Alex McLeod hit big shots for the Gee Gees, but it was an unlikely three from their quick but poor-shooting point, Teti Kabetu, that gave Ottawa a 5-point lead late and sealed the deal.

They call it the Canal War, and if you were too attached to your television and its through-the-motions January Blaw professional sports offerings, you missed something great. I’m only gloating because I was there, and proved to myself, once again, that sports can be a vibrant spectacle even without bright lights and TV timeouts. Especially then. When I was a high school teacher and coach, kids would ask me who my favourite team was. I’d say, “The Blue Devils, of course!” and I didn’t mean Duke. (I like them, too.) These were the McKinnon Park BDs, and try as we might, we had limited success in getting guys to take off their Yankees caps and Raiders jackets and come watch athletes they actually knew.

“Small service is true service,” wrote Mr. Wordsworth, and hometown fans may be the truest of their kind, too. (Hey, get a load of that — I got a poetry reference into the hoop scoop!)

Bruins, Badgers Beat Ravens: The Streak Bites

Posted by :James Howden On : January 8, 2006
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The sun has (barely) risen today, and there are no signs of earthquakes in the Ottawa valley, but a rumble has sounded over the broad horizons of homegrown university basketball…
Oh, somewhere in this favoured land the sun is shining bright,
The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light;
And somewhere men are laughing, and somewhere children shout,
But there is no joy in Bytown – mighty Carleton has streaked out.
     (with apologies to Mr. Thayer, Mr. Casey, and his Bat)

Yes, friends and neighbours, The Streak is over, and the Mighty Ravens have lost a game that counted in the standings. They were bushwhacked 69-67 on the road by the Brock Badgers.

(A note on alliterative naming: when you are a young university, with no hoary traditions that require your teams to be called the Fighting Blue Hens or the Banana Slugs – and I’m not making those up – a predisposition to cutesy alliterations like Brock Badgers suggests lousy luck, crazy karma, stilted style and inadequate imagination. Isaac Brock was a British general, people! Couldn’t we come up with something vaguely related to the school’s namesake? Or its history or geography? Are Badgers even native to the Niagara peninsula?! I desist.)

But the Badgers and their Tiny Perfect Pointguard, Brad Rootes, got it done. With Rootes and a dominant big man, Kevin Stienstra, Brock has two elements that this year’s Ravens don’t, which has made the continuance of their 87-game winning streak in regular- and post-season play all the more incredible. It also looks like they’ll lose their hold on first place in the Ontario Universities East conference for the first time since the millennium, or thereabouts.

There’s more than a hardworking Rodent Road-killer at play here, though. There’s no doubt about it: the Ravens’ wings were actually clipped by Walton Gang Karma. Even though a couple of pre-season losses to Canadian and American teams — including the fabled Bruins themselves at Pauley Pavilion this year — had always placed an asterisk beside The Streak, 87 straight counters and three straight national titles make for a potent resumé. Still, the gods of basketball, at the certain behest of Bill Walton, Jamaal Wilkes and Greg Lee and the rest of the early-70s UCLA Bruins, had decreed that the Ravens Must Die. Those John Wooden-coached teams, with their astounding (asterisk-free) run of 88 games, remain on the top of the college basketball heap. Not that the Ravens ever tried to pass themselves off as sharing the same level as UCLA – for all their domestic greatness, they would be at best a marginal NCAA D-1 team that could hang tough only in the weakest of conferences – but a tiny stir of anxiety in the hoops pantheon has been safely squashed.

But listen: the Ravens rock anyhow. They may be relieved, after all, and Coach Dave will surely have their attention now, if focus was missing. (And I doubt that it was.) At least they didn’t lose to the cross-town Ottawa Gee-Gees, who come to the Ravens’ Nest soon. (Gee-Gees. Gee-Gees? But no, no more rants on team names. Not today.) I’m sure some of the joylessness of Bytown hangs over the Ottawa gym, where they thought they’d be the giant-killers. Still, the lead dog in Canadian basketball has stumbled, and the pack is restless. Should be fun to watch from here.

Basketball Boy Gets Out With the Ravens

Posted by :James Howden On : November 19, 2005
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We had shared pizza and ice cream and our favourite examples of good news. It was our Saturday evening antidote to fearful headlines and breathless predictions of imminent disaster, the ones that lead so smoothly, so ridiculously, into pitches for cars and entertainments. And then everybody took off early for a serious dose of music-as-medicine, so I was free to sneak off to a ballgame. Whee! I was a free man in Ottawa / I felt unfettered and alive / There was nobody callin’ me up for favours / And noone’s future to decide. (Apologies to the divine Ms. M.)

Carleton Ravens basketball is a great sports story, grinding toward a fourth straight national championship and building on their crazy run of success. Tonight, against the Waterloo Warriors, their undefeated streak hit EIGHTY-TWO. They’ve lost a couple of early-season exhibitions over the last few years, but in league and playoff matches they haven’t lost in 82 straight contests. They have no dominant post players. (Haven’t had during the whole run.) They are outsized nearly every night, yet they almost never get outrebounded. This year they don’t have a true point guard, and there’s nobody you’d call a scoring machine or a magical passer. And it doesn’t seem to matter a bit. They defend maniacally, they shoot fearlessly, they play together.

And I can get into this stuff, lived it for a long time as a high school coach, but tonight I watched the game as if it was played in an aquarium and I was outside it. I remembered clearly what the fishbowl was like, and what part of it I had once inhabited. I easily recognized all the species swimming inside it, but the experience felt distant. (Or I did.) Hmm. So this is basketball. Right. They take it so seriously. Coach Dave Smart is a drama, all expectation and insistence and disbelief at his players’ failings, even as they dismantle an opponent. The relentless quest for the meaning of performance. It all looks so fun and familiar, but I felt so far away.