D-Leagueing It

I haven’t written a thing in 3 weeks.  Why?  Well I’ll say it has 30% to do with the fact that I play Madden during my usual blog time, but also because I was in the middle of a very productive month on the court.  Since I’ve sucked the last few games, I guess I can get back to my old bloggin’ ways.   










Yep, definitely got a Tech here.  It would be easy to blame the refs, but it’s not really their fault, I get frustrated when I play badly.  It’s even worse when I’ve been playing so well all month.  Although I must say that one game I got hammered in the back and that set me off, and I apologized to the ref who I went off on later, only to have another ref talk to me on a plane flight and tell me that I just tripped over someones foot.  C’mon now?  Word?  I’m just that clumsy that I throw myself over other peoples feet?  Gotta be kiddin me.  I actually heard one player on the other team say about that ref: “I just want to be him up!”  All that aside, it’s almost playoff time, so all the games will be crazy.   

Off the court has been a little more interesting.  Well, for starters, there has been this thing that has taken over our team socially.  It’s called “No Homo”.  No homo basically means “I’m not gay”.  Now, we are by no means homophobic, but I swear if you say anything remotely gay, you better say “no homo” afterwards or somebody will call you on it.  What I used to do, back home in California, was say “That’s what she said” after such comments.  Not anymore.  My first week here I was hearing people toss out this “No Homo” thing left and right.  Now it has gotten so bad that you can’t say anything without hearing “no homo.”  Basically if you talk about anything without making it clear what that thing is, you’re probably in a world of hurt.  Let’s say your legs hurt so bad you can hardly walk.  Don’t you dare say “Dang, I’m hurtin so bad I can hardly walk.”  Ok for example, one of my teammates was putting on his deoderant — couldn’t be a less “homo” thing, right — and I guess he had applied quite a bit of it already.  Well someone asks him “Why do you put so much on?”  He replies, “I don’t know, I just keep rubbing it til the white shows up.”  Oh my Lord did he get an ear full for not saying “no homo” after.  It’s gotten so bad that we can be in the huddle now.  Coach will say “Why can’t we get any balls inside?”  I swear guys will look at each other like “He better say no homo.”  It’s crazy because we play a sport.  A sport that involves balls, no less.  You can’t say anything sports related at all.  “Dang I only got 2 balls tonight.”  Nope, can’t say that.  So now we are wrapped up in this “no homo” mess and we can’t get out.  I, personally, and pushing for a return to “That’s what she said.”  That way we can all enjoy our gross sports statements.   

We did have one guy who never bought into the “no homo” nonsense.  We picked up a 6’11” Brazilian kid named Morro.  Morro speaks almost zero english.  He has since been released and signed by the Tulsa 66ers, but it was real interesting while he was here.  All he knows is cuss words.  To me this is hilarious because it makes his points a lot more emphasized that they need to be.  For example, he hardly got any playing time because the communication barrier was too strong.  As a result he was always angry about his playing situation.  We were roomates in the hotel when we went to Austin.  Out of the blue he says to me: “My agent is motherf*#ker.  Coach is motherf*#ker.”  I start to laugh and I ask him why.  He says “No money, no play? Both motherf*#ker.”  HAHA.   I speak real broken, simple english to him and I say “It no that bad.  Be good.  Patient Morro.”  Morro then grabs my laptop and goes to brazilbasket.com.  I had never heard of brazilbasket but I can only assume it’s run by the same people as eurobasket,  the largest international basketball website.  The writing is in all portugese so I can’t understand any of it.  He points to the very front page.  “MORRO:  0, 0, 0, 0… blah blah blah portugese nonsense.”  I ask him what that means in the best way I can.  He says “Morro no play.  Brazilbasket say Morro no play, Morro no good.”  I say “Noooooo.  No say that.”  He replies “Yes!  Nene?  NBA.  Vinicius?  NBA.  Barboza?  NBA.  Morro?  The laugh at Morro!”  I couldn’t help but laugh too.  I mean that was hella funny.  In the end, he switched teams and it worked out just fine for the guy.   

Taking Morro’s place on our roster is a guy by the name of Jerome Beasely.  Jerome used to play for the Wizards, right before I got here.  I specifically remember him posterizing Brad Buckman while I was still in Austin.  Well he’s back.  I had no idea this guy was such a character.  He might even be more of a character than me.  The thing about Jerome is that he is all about wordplay.  Like today he says “You’re tired because you just need to be home, in your sanctuary.”  He takes pleasure from throwing out words like sanctuary.  Jerome also thinks he can do everything.  Like Renaldo is watching a Jet Li movie.  There are obviously many Jet Li moves that get OOhh’s and AAaah’s from a normal audience.  Jerome?  He says “Those are basic moves really.  He isn’t doing anything really advanced.  Although later in the movie he will do some more uncommon moves that I will be able to complete soon.”  Huh?  What?  Did you just call Jet Li’s upside down Chinese flying movie bicycle kick a common move?  I could only imagine his 6’10” 270 lb. self trying to do a round house kick against Jet Li.  But Jerome says he is a first degree blackbelt and that one day he will reach the 8th degree.  It was when he said that that people started to look at him crazy.  Actually, I guess it was just me, because everyone else says “That’s just J.B.”  Well I didn’t know all that.  Someone said to him “You are just a man of many talents, huh?”  He replied “Yea, well actually there are only two or three things I can’t do.”  I said “Hold up, hold up.  You mean like two or three out of all the things in the world that can be done?  Like everything, only 2 or 3 can’t be completed by J.B.?”  “That’s exactly right, I can do about everything in the world except 2-3 things,” he replies.  This really bothers me for some reason.  Not in an angry way, but like a O.K. he can’t be serious kind of way.  So I sit back and make a list of things I KNOW he can’t do.  I text it to him: 

Things u probly cant do 

1.  Tight rope walk 

2.  Hit a Barry Zito curve 

3.  Surf a wave 

4.  Recite Pi to 50 places 

5.  Define Hypotenuse 

6.  Compete in the worlds strongest man 



I can do all of them. 

What?  Who are you guy?  You can’t possible believe that!  So I see him a few minutes later and I say to him “There’s no way you can tightrope walk.”  He says “It’s all about balance and focus.”  I say “And you can do the strongman competition?”  “All you said was can I compete, yea I can compete.”  Interesting.  I let it go for a while because I realize that he is not all about believing that he can do these things, but that he is about saying the right things to where you can’t prove him wrong.  I later say “You can’t swim the english channel.”  He says “If you give me enough time.”  See all he is looking for in a verbal out.  I get it.  But I did get him to admit that he couldn’t say Pi to 50 places, but even that was a struggle:  “SO what is Pi, to 50 places?”  “Well you need to give me the time to think about it,” he says.  I say “If you know it you know it, only geniuses can do something like that.  I only know to four places.”  He, of course, replies “Well you do know what classifies a genius right?  See they say we only use 10% of our brain, so if you use 11% you’re a genius.”  I guess he wins again, for now.  But I would appreciate if you could suggest things that Beasley can’t do in the comments section.  I actually think he would get a kick out of saying how he could do them.  He actually is enjoying me writing this right now.

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