Random basketball points

taking a leaf out of hoi's blog, i'm gonna post some random points:

* NBA fantasy season is gonna start soon. If you want to join my league, email me on djhomixes@yahoo.com.hk . I have carefully set up the league with Ashby and Tim, taking into consideration the various categories and so on. I'm the commisioner and bascially organise the game.

* I also bought a julius erving retro nets jersey, I'm so stoked. It's fake and I got it at the markets for $30. It has this minor stain on it that I didn't notice because the market has poor lighting but other than that, I've very happy. My other purchase was a fake new era New York knicks hat for $17. They are normally like $20, but i managed to talk the guy down cause I claimed that i was a good customer. When I first tried my bargaining skills, i asked the dude to reduce the jersey to $25 because i claimed i saw it somewhere else (but was lying) but he stormed off with the jersey with a full pissed off look lol.

DPLAYGROUND
There this store called dplayground in Parra, and its like a basketball concept store. It's got two levels, with the bottom level being the main area of the store. This level is stocked out with NBA jerseys and AND1 shoes. It's like a baller's paradise. Be warned though: everything is priced pretty expensive as its all imported from the US. This is the only dedicated basketball store in all of NSW, and possibly Australia. When you walk up the upperlevel, there's like this cool graffiti on the wall and monster posters of Tim Duncan and AI. Hanging on the upper level is a cabinent, which is a shrine/Tribute to Jordan. It has several pairs of Jordan shoes, basketball cards, magazines which Jordan has graced, DVD's. You can tell whoever owns this store is a huge basketball fan.

I must admit that I visit their website http://www.dplayground.com/ at least once a day. It's just something that I do reguarly because they update which new stock they have. THey have pics of the latest shoes eg. Nike Hurache, K1X. THese guys sell everything b-ball related including figurines, armbands, basketball. I am confident in saying that they carry the largest stock of AND1 shoes, as they get different styles every week. The majority of their shoes are AND1. They don't carry much Nike or Reebok and have the latest k1x (Rucker Park) shoes - the Bobito.

WHen I went last week, they had an instore signing with two stars of the AND1 show - AO and the Professor. The line was huge, with approx 100 people waiting for signatures. To be honest, I'm not sure if I'd buy anything from the store cause it seems to be cool place to visit and see the latest clothing. I saw a lot of kids just hanging around the store as well, heaps of ballers (you can tell cause they carry basketballs and rock headbands) checking out the lastest new era caps.

The staff are very informative, cause the store used to be a footlocker and then branched out imdependently, called up their shoe supplier contacts and created their own bball store. I have some very good sources that tell me this - shoutout to Jay who works there and gave me the 411 about the store and Brett who works at the Nike store who's always telling me about the latest happenings. I even spotted a footlocker employee who was promoting the Dplayground store whilst I was in footlocker! Later i saw him hanging out at the dplayground store!.


Ballin'
Been playing so much basketball lately. 4 hours on Tuesday, 4 hours wednesday, 2.5 hours thursday and 1 hour friday. That's a lot of ball. I just love to ball and feel my game is improving (slightly , step by step). Today, I just practiced with myself - as there was no one else there. But that was fine, and I worked on my post moves. Particularly my left hand, which I don't use much. I have been trying to develop a left handed hook shot and also worked on some of my fakes.

i've also become a lot more aware of where players are on the court as well. knowing when someone is open, hitting them with a sweet pass when they are cutting and understanding to pass it to them when they in their favourite position. Also, if a guy is on fire, I recognise that you got to keep feeding them.

Another thing that I have picked up, is moving away from contact. There was this dickhead who doesn't know how to play and was guarding me in the post, on the left side of the key. He just constantly pushing me. I had the ball and gave me a light push in the back so I spun base line and hit a baby hook shot. In additon, there was another dude who was just all up in my face. He was constantly intiating physical contact which was fine and banging me. Whichever way I moved, there was contact. So I took the ball, spun right to avoid the contact and hit my patented turnaround jumpshot.

I also feel that my rebounding has improved over the last couple of months. I'm constantly crashing the boards and grabbing rebounds over bigger players. To me, its all about position, and desire. The other day I was playing against some skinny Asian guy that was 6 foot 4 but had only limited game. He had a natural height advantage over me, but i feel like i grabbed like 70% of the boards. I just dominated him on the glass because I knew how to box out and quickly move into position. In addition, I just wanted the ball more than he did. Furthermore, I figured out his game, which was to drive right most of the time or spin right and try a jump shot and I must have shut him down more than a few times. I'm no Ben Wallace but maybe Dan Gazuric?