Our league was short of coaches and I volunteered. It's 7th and 8th grade boys. It should be fun. I've coached in this league before, during 5th and 6th grades. My 5th grade team got second place, and my 6th grade team - which was basically the same boys - lost every game. So who really knows?

Here are all the plays I intend to run:







None. All I'm going to do is drill picks, pick-and-rolls, give-and-gos and moving without the ball. Plus, we're going to press like it's no one's business.

Last year, we played a team that was coached by a real asshole. We only had four boys make it to the game, and our best player was not there until the fourth quarter. So it was 5-on-4 for the first three quarters.

This asshole pressed the whole first half. The rule is that once a team is up by 20 points, they can no longer run a full-court press. So when they got up 24 - 2, they abandoned their full-court press and went into a half-court press. Remember, it's 5-on-4.

We made a miracle three-pointer at the half, and the score was 27 - 5. We somehow made 2 baskets to start the second half, cutting the score to 27 - 9. So what does this guy do?

Full-court press.

Hey, I'm all for winning, but that was ridiculous. All the parents on our team started booing him, and even parents from his team told me after the game they were embarassed.

After the game, when we did the shake-hands thing, I wouldn't shake his hand. But I tried to make it not look obvious. As he approached, I pretended to be distracted by someone, so it didn't look like I was snubbing him. He got the message though, and called me a loser. To my back.

I turned around and said, "At least I've got class" which was pretty ironic, since not shaking his hand was admittedly classless on my part.

He got up in my face and started screaming, "I'm just playing my game! I'm just playing my game!" I told him that pressing a 4-man team when ahead by 18 points in the second half wasn't anyone's "game".

I haven't seen that dude since. His son is a 9th grader (and a nice kid, I think), so they won't be in the league.