Basketball Games Where All the Players are Six Feet Tall and White: Athleticism at it's Finest!

I've been meaning for some time to recap my intramural basketball season. It ended back in February or March or something. I think enough time has passed that my level of shame and humiliation is now at a manageable place in my heart.

Some of my friends that I work with at the dreaded textbook store talked me into being on their basketball team back when I re-enrolled in school. I was very wary because A.) I'm 27 and most everyone in the league is 20, B) I'm about 50 pounds heavier than I was back when I could actually play basketball and C.) Because I once was pretty good, I have some severe pride issues. I envisioned dragging my old, out of shape butt up and down the court trying in vain to keep up with guys as much as 9 years younger than me and watching them blow by me for layup after layup. This is, of course, exactly what happened.

The first time I went to "practice" with my teammates, we absolutely slaughtered a group of ROTC guys who also were in the league. Our front line was 6'4" and 6'3" and that's a pretty good-sized middle for intramurals. My teammates decided I should play point guard. Now, I am a natural born point guard. I can legitimately pass the ball better than anyone I've ever played against. I can also dribble and shoot fairly well. But sometime in the last 7 years my body absolutely betrayed me. Kind of like Tom Cruise's mind has betrayed him. I can't jump or run anymore. My knees and feet feel like Joan Rivers' face looks. My mind sees something on the court but my body moves at such a slow speed that it doesn't matter.

There are several types of guys involved with intramural hoops. The first kind is:

THE WAY TOO SERIOUS GUY:

This guy is really, really into intramural basketball. He talks trash, screams at the top of his lungs whenever he gets a rebound or blocks a shot, and scowls at all his teammates and the refs. This is the kind of guy who bet on a runner at the Special Olympics and then trip the other kids so his guy wins. I pretty much wanted to punch every guy that I encountered like this. This guy was usually seen checking the standings as if they were x-rays of his mom's cancer. Usually this guy wasn't even all that good.

THE TOTAL GEEK:

I have no explanation for why this guy ever played. There were lots of them though. Didn't have a trace of athletic ability, didn't know the rules, got pushed around. I would understand it if they appeared to be having fun but they usually looked miserable. I guess it's no fun to have the wind knocked out of you while trying to get a rebound.

THE GUY WHO HAS NO BUSINESS PLAYING INTRAMURAL BASKETBALL:

This is the most infuriating of all the guys. This guy is so freaking good that he just wrecks whoever tries to guard him. There was one guy who used to play for the Ole Miss varsity out there. He rode the bench for Barnes but the dude was 6'8" and weighed 260. Why in the world was if fun for him to play against us? For him it was like playing chess against someone who deaf, blind, and retarded. There was another guy who must have been in grad school or something because he was a starter on an Ole Miss team that won the freaking division in the 90's. This was how their offense wnet. Dribble, dribble, pass it to dude, dunk. Dribble, dribble, pass it to dude, three pointer. Dribble, Dribble, pass it to dude, dunk again. Sometime they would mix it up by letting him get the rebound, dribble it up himself and then dunk.

GUY WHO IS BASICALLY JUST REALLY COOL AND GOOD-LOOKING AND THERE JUST FOR FUN:

This was just me.

GIRLFRIENDS OF THE GUYS PLAYING:

These were the only specatators ever. Usually they were pretty good looking and it was emabarassing to screw up in front of them even though you knew they weren't there to see you. Generally these girls started out intently watching the game for the first 17 seconds. Then they would talk on their cellphones. Their boyfriends, who were always frat guys, would do something that were very proud of (it was usually something that was a regular white guy move...like an uncontested layup), then they would look into the crowd and see their girlfriend on the phone and getted pissed that she missed his moment of glory. It was quite entertaining.

My team pretty much sucked and we didnt't make the playoffs. It was pretty fun though. During one game I hit a three at the end of regulation to send the game into overtime (we lost in double overtime). That was the first time I ever did anything like that. Also, I had an opportunity to put on a sweat-soaked jersey immediately after the first game ended. That was pretty great.