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{The following post contains immature language and not a little irony.  Reader discretion is advised.

Seriously, I owe Troy Sachs an apology for the verbal sucker punch below.  Whatever his gifts or gaffes, I should have spoken to him privately before sharing my opinions publicly.  And there was no good reason to overstate them in such an ugly way.  

Congrats to him and again to the rest of the Aussies.}

Hey, remember me?  The guy with the blog?  Yeah, I know, it’s been a while.  As you probably know by now, if you’ve slogged it out with me these past few weeks or months, I am the proud owner of a silver medal and another colourful batch of memories.  I thought about writing a few times over the past week, but I couldn’t find a two hour span when I wasn’t wiped out, or still pissed off, or a little drunk.  Might have made for an entertaining read, but I didn’t want to say anything I might regret later.  So here I am back in Vancouver, practicing safe blogging, and wondering how to wrap this thing up.  I think I’ll tackle it in bullet form…

Losing Gold

This has to come first, cause it’s the first thing everyone wants to know about.  What happened?  Are we disappointed?  What does it mean not to win three in a row?  Well, as anyone who reads Bill Simmons on espn.com knows, there are levels of losing.  He has a fairly elaborate system worked out that I won’t get into.  Suffice it to say, losing hurts, but some losses hurt more than others.  Of course, I can only speak personally.  It’s different for each guy in the room.  For me, I can live with it.  Making history would have been nice and made for a good story, but it was never high on my list.  I would have loved to see a gold medal around the necks of the new guys, but they’ll have more chances.    I was only really bothered by one thing – that I couldn’t be the leader we needed in that final game.  The team needed me to get fired up, but I couldn’t do it (more on this later).  I tried, but everytime I did, I could only think of how tired I was.  Tired is the wrong word.  Empty is better.  Whether it was the double OT or ten years of chasing a ball around, the gas tank was empty.  And this loomed like a colossal failure to me.  Why couldn’t I dig deeper?  Fatigue is no excuse.  The grind is no excuse.  I let everyone down.

But now it’s a week later, I’m back in surprisingly sunny Vancouver, contemplating an open road of possibilities.  And looking back I realize that I gave everything that I had, no more, no less.  I wasn’t the same leader that I was in ‘04, but I tried to lead as well as I could.  Other guys like Deng, Jaimie, and Dirt stepped up and let me be myself and offer what I could.  (Well except Jaimie – he complained more or less constantly about me dumping responsibilities on him, but what are friends for).

Winning Silver

Second best.  That’s not bad, right?  Right??!

The Aussies

In my mind, besides playing good, smart basketball, they did two important things very well.  They hit free throws.  And they controlled the emotional game within a game.  If this was an intentional part of their game plan, then their coach deserves some credit. First a little history.  In the past, games between Canada and Australia usually went like this; they came out like a battering ram, we got pissed off, and then it was game on.  We fed off the aggression and occasional outright violence of their players, and it usually worked in our favour.  In the final though, I felt like they lulled us to sleep.  They were playing hard, fast, and with intensity, but it was channelled more productively than I’d ever seen before.  Even Troy seemed less obnoxious than usual, for most of the game at least.  Somehow they avoided getting under our skin until it was too late.

Speaking of Troy, and I never do publicly, I feel like I owe a brief explanation of what I was thinking at the end of the game, in case you catch it on TV.  I took a fake-flagrant on Troy Sachs with 0.1 seconds left.   The thing is, as the clock was winding down, I suddenly realized that if this was my last game, it might be my last chance to punch him in the face.  Believe me, there was nothing emotional in it.  I wasn’t angry.  It’s simply that he’s been hiding behind the refs and the integrity of the game for a long time, and no one holds him accountable for being an idiot. 

That’s not my job though.  Besides, I’m biased and I’m no choir boy myself.  But since no one seems to talk about these things openly, I figure I’ll go ahead and offer my two cents, for what it’s worth. Troy’s the most talented athlete and the most f’d up person I’ve ever met.  

Most of the Aussies are good guys though.  They paid their dues and earned their success the hard way.  I congratulate them.  

Team Canada

Hard to say what the team will look like at Worlds in 2010.  I can’t speak for others, but I know that a number of guys have either decided to or are considering hanging it up.  But for all my blathering on about the well running dry, it was great to hear guys in the locker room after the final game talk about how much fire they still have.  Regardless of who moves on, our program is in good hands, from our staff at cwba to the coaches to the players.  

Retirement and the Future

I’m not announcing anything, cause I don’t want to have to pull a Brett Favre someday.  I have a gut feeling that I’m supposed to move on to something else.  Within the sport, outside the sport, maybe both, don’t know.  I want to stay in Vancouver at least for a few more years, finish the music program I started at VCC, and take it from there.

So that’s it.  I’m going to post some photos, but there are some great photo galleries by Kevin Smith on the cwba site, here.  On the front page, there are still links to various articles and coverage.  Oh, and there’s a really good article about Jaimie’s chair here.

I’m going to try to resist a few urges tonight. Yes, those ones too – we have a big game tomorrow, after all. I was referring though to the urge to editorialize last night’s game. Maybe after it’s all over.
For now, just a brief recap and a few comments.

We showed up at the stadium at halftime of the Australia/GB semi. The Aussie’s were up big and going away with it, so it seemed. I hit the warmup court right away, but kept one eye on the TV. GB did manage to put a run together to get the deficit down to single digits, but they ran out of time. Little did I know that we’d be in a similar situation before long.

The US came out with all guns blazing. They were hitting shots and they were disrupting our offense. Remember what I wrote about the US pressuring you to reinvent yourself on the fly? That didn’t take long. They were picking on me quite a lot, so I abandoned my usual role of inbounding the ball and just tried to get up the court without the ball to relieve the pressure. Big mistake. But once we made that adjustment, and a few others, we stopped the bleeding and prevented the game from getting completely out of hand. We were still down double digits, but by midway through the second quarter, I felt like the worst was over, and we court really start to claw back.

And that we did in the second half, slowly but steadily. If you want to see how it all played out, you’ll have to watch the tape or read Stouty. He’s the king of details, most of which are at least partially based on true events. I guess we did just enough to win. Just enough free throws, just enough stops. We watched video today, and it was gratifying to see us executing some fairly simple but essential skills well, especially down the stretch. You don’t appreciate those things as much as the big turn of events, makes and misses, that kind of thing. But those little details kept us in the game, and eventually brought us back.

Not that we were perfect. Speaking personally – and painfully – I had a few atrocious junior ball turnovers, that would have racked my conscience with guilt had we lost. And though I made a few of the biggest shots of my career, I also made at least one of the biggest bonehead plays of the decade. In OT I got a rebound off Joey’s missed free throw, and found myself in the paint, facing him, back to the basket. It’s not often you have the chance to look a teammate square in the eye, consider his squared up scoring position 8 feet from the basket, and then firmly decide that your backwards 6 footer is the safer bet. That kind of opportunity does not come around every day.
I have to admit though, one of the more discouraging features of the blind backwards shot is that it’s hard to spot the American player who’s about to block it and take the ball away. Tough to see him coming.

But we survived it, though barely. Now we can laugh. If we’d lost, I wouldn’t find it quite as funny. Like I wrote a while back, winning heals all wounds. So does time. I know this because back in 2002 at the World Championships, the shoe was on the other foot. The similarities are eery. Canada vs the USA. Semifinal of a major tournament. Big halftime lead. Second half comeback capped by a tying basket in the dying seconds of regulation. Two OT’s. In the end, one euphoric winner, and one crushed loser. Except that time, the roles were reversed. They were the ones celebrating, and we were the ones wondering what went wrong.

Now it’s six years later, and if anything, I appreciate the experience, for two big reasons. The first one is that it motivated us to kick ass in 2004. The other is reason is that late in the game, I had a chance to take a wide open layup to put us up by four points, which might have iced it. But I turned it out. (And a few seconds later turned the ball over, leading to their tying hoop). I did it partly cause I was trying to be clever and kill clock, and partly because I didn’t have the kahonas to go in and take a pressure layup with my left hand (I was coming in on the left side and this was back when Frog would all but threaten to chop off our left hand if we didn’t use it on the left side. Ahh, the good old days, when everything was black and white…). Anyway, I felt like a real failure afterwards. But I had a good chat with Jerry at the Tokyo airport on the way home, and he told me never to do that again. Take the points. I said ok.

So good came from bad, and we benefited in the long run. I have no doubt that the US will learn and rebound from last night’s loss, both as a team and as individuals. They have time.

Incidentally, the US went on to win the Worlds in ‘02. So let’s hope the similarities continue.

Ok, time for bed. I guess that turned into something of an editorial after all. Oh well. Some urges just can’t be resisted.

ps. Apparently, I didn’t have my details straight wrt the Iran situation. Here’s the official story – the Iranians boycotted their quarterfinal vs the US because the organizers changed the game time at the last minute ie. the day before. They filed a protest and refused to play. Why would they come so far only to give up over so little? Did they not want to play the US? Did they anticipate a politically unsavory matchup with Israel after the quarters? Draw your own conclusions. I’m staying out of it. I just wished they’d stuck around and played it out. They were fun to watch.

pps. Should I write something about the Aussies? What should I say? Same cast of characters from 2004, with a couple new faces. Same intensity. Same aggression. They’re playing well. Many of their top guys play competitively year round, in Europe, then in the Aussie league. So they look fit and game ready. That’s about it. Oh, and God help the referees.

Last time I wrote, I set some goals for myself.  Let’s see how I did. Visit Beijing?  Yes.  Massage?  Check.  Try to avoid McDonalds?  Yes, every day.   Post photos?  Don’t actually have a camera.  Haven’t hit the sauna yet either, but we’ve played a few evening games and by the time we get back to the Village, it’s too late.

I’m feeling a bit rushed today.  I meant to write yesterday.  I wheeled across the walkway that separates our building from the Super Resident Center at about 10:30 last night , took the elevator downstairs to the Athlete’s Lounge, and the first thing I saw was Roger Federer on TV hitting a ridiculous overhand winner at the US Open.  So I spent the next hour reading about tennis, which I happen to follow quite closely.  Especially Federer.  I know people like to cheer for underdogs and have good reasons for it, but I’ve always found myself cheering for the favorite.  Jordan, Tiger, Federer.  I suppose that partly comes from my experience as an athlete.  I’ve been the underdog and I’ve been the favorite, and it’s much tougher being the favorite.  The ability to come through under pressure is the ultimate measure of an athlete, and underdogs get a free pass.

So I have about an hour until we catch our bus from the National Indoor Stadium for our third game, this one against Sweden.  It’ll be interesting to see how they come out.  They’re coming off a 25 point loss to a surprisingly strong Iran team, who put over 90 points on the board against them.  We won our first game in a nail-biter vs Germany. They played us close back in June, so we weren’t exactly taken by surprise.  I had the sense that the ball was jumping out of our hands a little bit.  It’s hard to get a good feel for your shot when adrenaline gifts you an extra 5 feet on your shooting range.  First your shot is long, then short because you overcorrect.  I misfired on my first few shots before finding a comfort zone.   Fortunately I usually play a lot of minutes, which gives me time to settle in.  I’ve never been a guy that comes off the bench to give the team 5 minutes here and there.  That has to be tough.  Those guys are expected to come in and hit right away.  No warm up window allowed.  That’s a pressure situation that I’ve never really had to face.

Had a little trouble at the free throw line, but I made enough to keep them honest.  For being friends of mine, the Germans sure fouled me a lot.  They were actually pretty smart about it, and the refs were calling a LOT of chair contact.  That should play into our hands, if they continue to call it that way.  I’m not saying we’re saints, but I would argue that our style relies less on aggressive chair contact that some other teams.  I’m sure some Aussie or American would be calling b.s. on that statement right now, if they could read it.

Gotta love the Great Firewall.

Oops, I suppose they could read it on the cwba site.  But I’d find that a little creepy, if opposing players were reading this.  I’ve kind of noticed that with Facebook as well. I’m friends – in the Facebook sense – with players on other teams, but I don’t want to know who they’re poking or what they’re doing right now.  That’s what’s weird about Facebook sometimes – you have these uncomfortably close encounters with someone’s psyche – often an acquaintance or a competitor – and in a public forum no less.  Too much information. Just like this blog, perhaps.

Sorry, this is jumping all over the place, but the clock is ticking. Our second game, FYI, was against South Africa.  I want to peel back the curtains here a little bit – cause otherwise what’s the point of blogging? – to tell you that it was a win that felt like a loss.  We played 35 minutes of good basketball, and 5 minutes of relatively poor basketball.  We won by 20.  The locker room was a like a morgue.  You don’t read about those things in the game summaries, but these atmospheres are what constitutes most of our experience, and are what we feel most keenly. So it would be false and pointless to write about how merrily we go, whistling as we work.   I won’t get into specifics, but combined with a misunderstanding this morning about whose clock has the right time, there is palpable tension in the team right now. It’s happened before, no doubt it will happen again.  It’s not unique to us – we’re not the only team to employ a sports psychologist.  In my experience, winning is the magic balm that heals all wounds and the timely joke that dissolves the tension.  So we need to win tonight, and win big.

Time to run off.  By the way, if you caught the Opening Ceremonies on TV, I just want to assure you that the fireworks were very real.  The entire show was a spectacular display.  Beautiful sets and choreography.  I slipped out just before they lit the flame, but what I saw was great.  In Sydney, I remember feeling overwhelmed by the immense scale of everything, everyone.  This time was no different. But for some reason, the first thought that entered my mind when we walked out from the tunnel onto the track, to be greeted by 100 000 faces, was “Wow, Napolean lost 4 times this many people in Russia.”

Too many war movies I guess.

What day is it? I lost track a while ago. My laptop informs me that it is Thursday, and who am I to argue. If I remember correctly, we moved into the Paralympic Village last Saturday, and it’s been a blur since then.

We were among the first teams to move in, which gave us a chance to roam and explore before the crowds arrived. The Village is quite remarkable. In some ways it resembles Sydney and Athens – the cafeteria, the bus depots, the pool, the international zone with its shops and boutiques all seem quite familiar. But the distinguishing features are numerous as well. The buildings are much taller (9 stories? vs. 2 or 3 in Sydney and Athens), which means the entire village is more compact and has about it a bustling, busy, almost urban energy. Meanwhile, trees line every road and walkway. The lawns are green and well kept. There are ponds filled with lilly pads, and walking bridges to carry you over them. At night, Chinese lanterns glow red. The cynic whispers “cliche”, but it’s amazing the ambiance you can create with a light bulb and a bit of red tissue paper.

It’s not all roses though. The smell that greets you as you approach the dining hall is not coming from the kitchen, at least I hope it’s not. Computer and wireless internet access is available, but as I mentioned before, certain websites are not. Some of the image and branding policies seem a little overbearing. Event ticketing has been a mess. But overall, I have to join in with the chorus of praises and acknowledge that the Chinese are making a hell of an impression.

So I just read Stouty’s blog on the CWBA website. Since I’m giving credit where it’s due, I have to say that I respect a guy who can talk non stop all day long, skype for hours at a time, and still have the energy to sit down and write 5000 words every other night. That guy has absolutely remarkable stamina. Just to give you my own brief take on the daily goings-on of a team waiting interminably for this tournament to start already, I can 100% vouch for the fact that Richard Peter routinely lives up to his nickname. Personally, I keep my distance from the pranking, which is the only prudent course of action for someone who zones out as often as I do. I’m happy to let Ross be the easy target, and as far as I can tell, so is Ross. That guy can take a licking and almost seems to enjoy it. (I should know, but that’s another story).

It’s all in good fun of course. We all know that half the game is staying busy and keeping your mind occupied. Give an athlete too much time to reflect and you’ll likely have a basket case on your hands before too long. So we avoid getting into our own heads by getting into each other’s. Or we sit in the cafeteria, watch people, watch people watch us watching them, and listen to Stouty’s ongoing commentary, which is quite often simply a matter of saying out loud what we’re all thinking. Yeah, I said out loud.

CBC is here. I met Scott Russell tonight at our flag raising ceremony. Nice guy. Despite my repeated protests, I was talked into filming a quick spot for their Paralympic coverage. I’ve been a little prickly when it comes to some media requests. The less I say about why, the better perhaps. I’m just trying to be genuine, in my own way. Sometimes that means saying no.

While we’re on the subject of media, in addition to CBC’s weekend coverage of the Games, you can check out paralympicsport.tv for online coverage (daily schedule at paralympic.org), as well as youtube.com/paralympicsporttv and universalsport.com, which is an online arm of NBC.

I also want to plug an upcoming behind-the-scenes profile on my

teammate Dr. Jaimie Borisoff. Back in August, a CBC film crew

followed him around Vancouver for a day to see how an athlete/scientist/entrepreneur/husband/cafe connoisseur finds enough time in the day. I was there to lend moral support, offer technical advice, and to mug in the background. It’ll air sometime during CBC’s coverage.

I better go to bed. Tomorrow we practice again, the next day

(Saturday?) is the Opening Ceremony, and the following day we play our first game against Germany. My goals between now and then are to hit the sauna at least one more time, get out of the village and visit Beijing, get an aroma massage, try to give McDonalds the cold shoulder, post a few more pictures, and enjoy what’s feeling more and more like my last go around.