THE DREAM LEAGUE
Asian American / Open Basketball Leagues
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A Ball 64, Big Red 40 |
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Why This Game Was Played? No One Knows | |||||
October 8, 2006 – New York, NY (DL) – Honestly, as a sportswriter, what do you write about when nothing happened? What do you write about when, at the start of the A Ball-Big Red game, one team not named A Ball, has just three warm bodies shooting jump shots and one of them is on his cell phone frantically making calls? It’s obvious that Ray Huang, Big Red’s captain is trying to locate where two of his other players are at the moment. It’s 10:45 in the morning on Sunday, so it’s early and it’s likely that they are either a) dead asleep, b) hung over from a wild night on the town and still praying to the porcelain god, or c) in Queens at a softball game, as Alex Kang was. (He plays softball at 8am on Sundays.) The game is held up as long as it possibly can be. The League officials, ever the lenient ones, have decided not to implement the official rules that either call for a forfeit in A Ball’s favor, or to start the clock and wait till at least a fourth player arrives for Big Red.
A Ball impatiently waits on the other side, all warmed up and no place to go. Finally at two past the hour, the game can no longer wait. It’s decided and agreed upon by all parties – who aren’t all happy with the situation – that the game shall tip-off 3 on 4. A Ball will take out a man and play with a one-man advantage. What is this, hockey? Red’s Allan Chan may be from Toronto, but even his beloved Maple Leafs would view this as a joke. Well, that’s exactly what the Dream League has always feared, but as reality set in and 3 on 4 began, that’s what they were presented with – a comical situation. A fourth player – Jon Tung – would arrive eventually halfway through the 1st for Red, but by then, A Ball already had a large lead, one that would never go away for the entire game. A Ball, as they should have, pummeled the four man team ultimately 64-40 and improved to 4-2 in the process. I wish I could say that A Ball played a brilliant game and because they shot a splendid 43% from the field, because they ruled the boards by a +22 advantage, because they assisted on 60% of their baskets, because they barely turned the ball over – that because of all those reasons – that they won the game.
But I’d be stretching the truth. The truth is – not to discount the season high 21 points by Danny Chin or his 7 boards and 3 steals or Mark Kiang’s 12 point, 10 board double double or Nihar Jhaveri’s 12 points, 7 boards, and 4 dimes – if A Ball didn’t do all that they did, given they played the entire game with a man advantage, that might have been more of a joke than the fact this game was played without a full 10 men on the court at all times. Think about it. For a long duration at the start of the game, there were only 7 men on the court. Seven! Dr. James Naismith had to have been rolling in his grave. DL officials will tell you that they didn’t create this league in order to see such a travesty take place. No one – not A Ball, not the referees, not Elmo the janitor – wants to see what took place ever take place. It’s a testament to A Ball that they went through their paces without nary a complaint. They ran their 2-2 zone to perfection against Red’s three-man weave at the outstart and took an 18-9 lead after one. Chin used the game as an opportunity to break out of his season long doldrum. Kiang, Jhaveri, and Chris Kim took no prisoners and kept pouring in points with no one guarding them. (How do you play a 3-man defense? A 1-1-1?)
A Ball outscored Red in every quarter and when they had their full 5, while they undoubtedly looked good against just 4 players today, you could see flashes of play that gave reason as to why they would look good against another team that actually had 5 players as they. Danny Han handed out assists left and right (6), Jae Ha Hwang grabbed a season high 10 rebounds, and the pickin’s were easy for Drew Chen, Han, and Chin who each had 3 steals. But again, lest we get carried away with their thorough housecleaning of Red (1-4), who was led by Chan’s 14 points, let’s remember that it was all done with only four of a possible eleven Red players in the gym. (Three-and-a-half if you count Tung missing part of the 1st.) The League’s gotta just count this as a forfeit next time. This one was a total waste of everyone’s time, mine included. That’s why I say when nothing happens on the court, nothing ought to be written. I can’t believe I just wrote about this game after all. Sorry, A Ball – this was no fault of yours.
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Score by Quarters
| Team | Q1 | Q2 | Q3 | Q4 | OT | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A Ball | 18 | 13 | 16 | 17 | - | 64 |
| Big Red | 9 | 9 | 11 | 11 | - | 40 |
Boxscore
| A Ball - 64 | |||||||||||
| Player | FG | 3PT | FT | REB | AST | STL | BLK | TO | F | PTS | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chen, Andrew | 2 / 5 [0.400] | 1 / 2 [0.500] | 0 / 0 [0.000] | 1 | 3 | 3 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 5 | |
| Chin, Danny | 9 / 19 [0.474] | 3 / 7 [0.429] | 0 / 0 [0.000] | 7 | 1 | 3 | 0 | 4 | 2 | 21 | |
| Han, Danny | 3 / 5 [0.600] | 0 / 1 [0.000] | 0 / 0 [0.000] | 4 | 6 | 3 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 6 | |
| Hwang, Jae Ha | 0 / 5 [0.000] | 0 / 0 [0.000] | 0 / 0 [0.000] | 10 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | |
| Jhaveri, Nihar | 5 / 14 [0.357] | 0 / 0 [0.000] | 2 / 2 [1.000] | 7 | 4 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 12 | |
| Kiang, Mark | 6 / 14 [0.429] | 0 / 0 [0.000] | 0 / 0 [0.000] | 10 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 3 | 5 | 12 | |
| Kim, Chris | 4 / 4 [1.000] | 0 / 0 [0.000] | 0 / 1 [0.000] | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 8 | |
| Morita, Brent | DNP | ||||||||||
| So, Andy | DNP | ||||||||||
| Yatani, Wii | DNP | ||||||||||
| 29 / 66 [0.439] | 4 / 10 [0.400] | 2 / 3 [0.667] | 42 | 16 | 11 | 3 | 9 | 14 | 64 | ||
| Big Red - 40 | |||||||||||
| Player | FG | 3PT | FT | REB | AST | STL | BLK | TO | F | PTS | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chan, Alan | 5 / 14 [0.357] | 4 / 10 [0.400] | 0 / 0 [0.000] | 2 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 5 | 0 | 14 | |
| Chan, Gary | DNP | ||||||||||
| Chan, Terry | DNP | ||||||||||
| Chen, Rob | DNP | ||||||||||
| Huang, Ray | 3 / 14 [0.214] | 0 / 5 [0.000] | 2 / 2 [1.000] | 5 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 4 | 0 | 8 | |
| Kang, Alex | DNP | ||||||||||
| Lin, Victor | DNP | ||||||||||
| Sang, Dave | DNP | ||||||||||
| Seto, Derek | DNP | ||||||||||
| Tan, Jeremy | 5 / 9 [0.556] | 0 / 0 [0.000] | 0 / 0 [0.000] | 4 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 10 | |
| Tung, Jon | 3 / 11 [0.273] | 0 / 0 [0.000] | 2 / 4 [0.500] | 9 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 2 | 8 | |
| Win, Ray | DNP | ||||||||||
| Yeh, Elyn | DNP | ||||||||||
| 16 / 48 [0.333] | 4 / 15 [0.267] | 4 / 6 [0.667] | 20 | 5 | 3 | 1 | 13 | 3 | 40 | ||
Referees
| William Bullock: | Rate Me |
| Oscar Duckworth: | Rate Me |