Another week at the office!

Hello Everyone,

Greetings from Hotel Komeda and club “Czekolada”, the club where you can “come and taste how the “Czekolada” taste like”. I’m not exactly sure what that means, I think it got lost in translation. That was the first stop on the road trip. It was a nice hotel with comfortable beds, but they were a little on small side. It was about an eight hour bus ride. We stopped at a small restaurant in some town. The neighbors had goats on leashes next to the road. The meal was just alright, so far the lunches on the road have all been chicken filled with spinach and cheese. Most places still manage to mess that up, like this place put a whole bottle of herbs/pepper inside the chicken. The dinner at the hotel was decent some spaghetti Bolognese, hard to mess that one up. The hotel had the smallest elevator I have seen which got me thinking.


I have ridden a ton of different elevators throughout my day and there are many variations. Are there competing elevator companies like cell phones (Sprint, Verizon, AT&T)? There could be L-VAT, Gravity-Defiant, and Silver risers. I’m not sure where I was going with this other then I don’t know who makes elevators. I will have to look that one up on wikipedia. If my travel channel or food network job does not pan out maybe I can get into the company naming business.


Game

We had a very nice first quarter taking an eight point lead into the 2nd. Then all hell broke lose where we picked up an intentional foul and a technical along with giving up multiple fast break lay-ups. We were lucky to go into halftime only down 4. The second half was a little better where we kept our composure and played well as a team hitting open shots and playing solid defense. We ended up with a 9 point victory.

I felt like this was one of my better games even though I did not score that much. I ended up with 7 points on 2-5 from three and 1-2 from the foul line along with 3 steals and 4 rebounds. I had my hands on a lot more rebounds tipping them out or somewhere where a teammate could grab them. I don’t believe the guy I was guarding scored more then two points on me. I know it is a team game but I take pride in stopping my man. I took part in my first press conference here in Poland. It is the same as any other. Coaches open up with a statement then the players, then questions. The gym itself reminded me of a small 1A high school in Indiana. It was actually smaller then that and the court was not regulation size it was also smaller.

Due to the financial situation we did not stay on the road we ended up driving back after the game arriving home at like 5 am. We practiced on Thursday and then turned around and left Friday for the game on Saturday. I was mistaken on the trip itself, we were going to stay in Poznan not Warsaw. We will be staying in Warsaw next weekend. In that short amount of time back at home I was able to try cow tongue. This was not on purpose, the restaurant that we get a discount at has a choice of three soups, and three entrées. There is usually a player or some one there to translate the menu, I decided to just guess number two. I did not know it was cow tongue till after I ate it and one of the players came for lunch and told me. It was not all that bad which was probably because they covered it in some kind of white sauce.

Friday we left for Polpharma. It was about a 4 hour bus trip through the snowy forests. We have had the first snow of the early winter. Luckily the team came through with our winter jackets before we left. We stayed at a normal European hotel that could not match up with the rooms of “HOTEL KOMEDA”, however the food could as the kitchen prepared some nice meals for us.

The Game

This was easily our worst game of the season, against the best team in the league right now (they are first place). What makes it worse was it was on TV. It is easy for some people to say well we just had a bad game, but my opinion is much different. I think they exposed a lot of weaknesses on our team, which is what good teams do. For one they pressured us like crazy and we backed down like scared turtles hiding in there shell. They pressured our guards like crazy and they made wrong decision after wrong decision. They dominated the ball far too much which kept people from getting involved. It had a train reaction where people stopped playing defense because they weren’t getting the ball. Then when they got the ball they felt like they had to shoot it because they would not get it again. I do not have this opinion only because I got 2 shots and maybe touched the ball 4 times. If you go down the stat sheet no one had a good shooting game because they were forcing instead of shooting wide open shots.

Personally, like I stated above I took 1 three and 1 two point shot. I played only 14 minutes of the game. This baffles me only because of the comments after the game. The coach said “I can’t even play our best shooter because you guys can’t find him”. Now some might take that as a compliment like wow I’m the best shooter, but for me it was an insult. In my whole career, I have not achieved what I have only because I could shoot, it was all the little things I brought to the team. For example making the extra pass, taking care of the ball, rebounding, playing solid defense, I can vividly remember times in the game where I displayed these things. Is it frustrating not getting shots when you’re open? Yes, but I don’t stop playing because of it, in fact I like to think I’m a smarter basketball player where I look for other areas to contribute. That is my 30 second rant sorry to put you guys through it.

We had a pre-thanksgiving dinner with the president on Sunday. Apparently they do not have turkey here in Kolobrezg. They even went 40 minutes to the next big city and still were not able to find any. They substituted chicken stuffed with dressing which was not that bad. The biggest thing missing were the sides. They served fries and salad that is no where close to the green bean casserole, cheesy potatoes, fried mushrooms, warm biscuits, and all the other delicious sides. I hope you all are thankful for these things come thanksgiving (if you want to give a small toast to me I wont object!! KIDDING).

We have a week of practice before the next match when we head 15 hours south east to the farthest game of the season. We then stay in Warsaw for a couple days before the next road game. Hopefully this week of practice we can get better on our weaknesses. I know I might sound like we our doomed, but we are 6-5 and in the middle of the pact in the league. There are still a lot of games left and we still have a long road ahead of us.

Until next time!

This is BC gone for now