This week
For America the first day of the week is Sunday, but in Belgium it is Monday. My week started early Sunday morning at 9.30. I ran a clinic for basketball club Helchteren, which is the city I live in and the local basketball organisation. They have teams from 6 years old all the way up to adults. I did a two-and-a-half hour clinic on ball-handling and shooting. The cool thing about basketball is that most terms are universal, so the kids understand baseline is baseline, lay-up is lay-up, pass is pass, … If you have never experienced a clinic of seminar that has to be translated from one language to another you are missing a real treat. Not that PJ (my cousin, the basketball coach/translator) did a bad job but a joke in English translated into Dutch is much harder than I thought. I got some laughs when I spoke Dutch to them because they weren’t expecting it. The kids were great listeners, picked up things very fast and very eager to learn, fantastic ! I had a half-court shot contest for a free ticket to one of our games, there were 6 near-makes and one kid made the shot and won the ticket. All and all I had a great time and looking forward to the next time.
Last night’s game was a first since my time in Belgium to win in the Sportoase Arena in Leuven. I’m not saying I believe in curses like the silly Boston Redsox fans but I have never won in that building in 4 years, no matter what team I was on we couldn’t find a way to win. My current teammates had the same problem, never winning in Leuven. And you have to understand, they are always at the bottom of the standings. I don’t know if it is the climbing wall behind the basket, the attached swimming pool or people coming into our locking room before the game changing so they can go to their karate class BUT there is something about this place. Before I go too far, you read that right, a guy comes into our locker room 30 minutes before tip-off to change into his karate outfit for his karate class in the annex gym. Imagine an entire basketball team and coaches getting ready for a game and a stranger comes in, walks through the locker room, picks a place out in the corner and starts changing. Our coaches ask him if he is lost and he replies no I always change in here, like he is the only one in there and this is normal. A couple of players ask him nicely to leave but he refuses until our assistant-coach has to go get security to make him leave. As he is leaving with the security we noticed that he is a black belt and Brian Lynch (our SF) says “if I would have known you were a black belt we would have created more space.” Where else in the world can you have this happen? Just to let you know, the loosing streak is over. We won 64-79, I had 6 points, 3rbs in 11minutes.