Thanks for stopping by. Take a look around and sift through all the awkwardness that is living and playing basketball in Germany. You get to experience everything without the awkward turtle. Consider yourself lucky. Enjoy!

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Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Old Fashioned DunkFest

I just want to start by thanking everyone that has already voted. I am already putting together a few ideas of the first couple things I am going to write about. I have to keep this blog going somehow after the season because I know you don't want to hear about my training. It really is the unglamorous part of sport although part of my favorite.

I also want to thank everyone who has supported me by clicking on the ads. It is much appreciated and keep up the good work. If you aren't clicking the ads think of it as a mini-finger workout. A few clicks here and there will go a LONG ways over a lifetime. :) Think of the calories burned.

Back to the task at hand: Game Review

Honestly, going into this game we kind of thought it was going to be a blow-out. The only reason we played the game was to find out how big it was going to be and see how many dunks we could get. The house put in work scoring 76 of our total 110 points with the absence of Marko due to that fact that he's a wimp or has a sprained ankle but probably a combination of the two. I don't think Marko reads the blog so if I get whacked in the middle of the night I will know why.

Slight Tangent: My Serbian friend is on his way to coming to America to go to school and play basketball. If anybody knows a team who needs a big man and has a full-ride scholarship available let me know.

Direct quote from Junior Denson as we were sitting on the bench "Games like this are difficult to play in. I could literally score on every single possession if I wanted to but I don't want to get that tired. I mean its fun for you because you get to dunk but me I do the same lay-ups no matter who we play." To be honest he was 100% correct. We literally scored at will and my shot of choice was indeed the dunk shot. I may have had the coolest dunk of my career 30 seconds into the game. I don't remember how the fast break started but I got the ball on the wing with one guy to beat. I drove baseline then hop stepped to the middle and decided to hammer it on this "taken off guard" defender. I don't think he had any idea I was going to rise on him so he just stood underneath and took it like a champ.

We blew the game open right from the start. Holding a 20-40 point lead the entire game. I think in the game I had eight dunks and pinned three balls against the backboard to go along with a bunch of missed free throws. We gave the fans a little bit of everything: 3 balls, off the backboard dunks, reverses, 1-hand, 2-hand. Everyone on the team saw major minutes and we just had a lot of fun on the court. Games like this are fun every once in awhile but we look forward the battle next week with Recklinhausen, a little unfinished business or simply straight revenge.

Newspaper Box Score:
TEAM UND PUNKTE

TV Werne:
Aaron (17), Meinert (16), Mersch (8), Docenko (2), Denson (16), Wittwer (25), Lüttecke (7), Stachula (2), Tübel, Goldsmith (18).

Saturday, March 7, 2009

Dunk Fest vs. Borchen

111 - 64 beat down. I almost had double digit dunks. More to come during the week. Have a great Saturday night. Ciao

TJW

Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Recent Changes

I have made a few changes to the blog if you haven't already noticed.

1) I added a poll on the top right. This will run for about ten days and allow me to tailor some of my newest writing to you the reader. Take a few seconds to vote for one.

2) Along the right side I added a list called great reads. I am acquired a very fine taste for reading over here thanks to Mr. Goldsmith's ever changing array of books. If you liked to read and don't know what to read next check out a few of the books. Most of the books are pretty deep not necessarily in delivery but more along the lines of meaning. Some just good reads may pop up on there as well.

3) The final thing I decided to add was a little thing called AdSense. This allows me to make a little money from Google every time someone clicks on the advertisement sites. Matt actually introduced this concept to me and I think its a great way for the reader to support an author without having to making any real monetary sacrifice except for a few seconds to click a few links. I am by all means not telling you to click my links :) because Google says I can't tell you to click the links, so please don't go clicking on any Google ads on my page :) and supporting my writing! I tried to make them blend in with the page as much as possible so that they wouldn't take away from the blog. Let me know what you think.

Back at IT

Finally I am getting my act together and back on the blogging train. Now that I have my computer refurbished and Karneval is over its back to business for me. If anyone would like a little run-down of what Karneval was like for us over here in Germany my roommate Matthew Goldsmith does a fabulous job of detailing our day/s and you can find that riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight HERE. Since I don't have to explain Karneval this will make my first blog back a little easier on the fingers.

One thing I would like to address quickly is this concept of evolution. I know I haven't been evolving like I should but natural selection will soon take its course. It takes millions of years for things to change but hopefully it doesn't take that long for me to add new things to my blog. I have been thinking of ideas but finding the time to implement these ideas also takes, yep you guessed it, time. Have you ever stopped to contemplate this idea of time. What would happen if the concept of time was abandoned? The world might implode. :) No seriously it might. Our lives revolve completely around the clock. As our culture becomes more technologically advanced we rely more and more on the all-powerful clock. You know when you wake up suddenly and the first thing you do is look at the clock. We always ask how long something is going to take or how long it takes to get there or I'll be there at this or that time. I think our culture, and I am not excluded from this by any means, gets so concernec with the concept of time that time ends up passing them by without them knowing it. To me, time is now. Yes, time is an integral part of society but sometimes we need to let time go for awhile and stop worrying. Really all that matters is right now. I believe one should plan for the future but really will the future ever happen, if it does it becomes the present. Right now I am typing to you, and right now you are enjoying what you are reading. I hope. Two things happening at the same time but yet still at different times. It is all a matter of perspective I guess. I am not about to go on a watch burning brigade through the streets of Werne, but aren't some of the best times in our lives when time seems to stand still. When we are so caught up in the moment to not even notice the hours fly by. On the surface my last two statements seem to contradict eachother, or do they?

Well lets get back to business. I will get off my philosophical soapbox and back to the task at hand -- Just for record I never had that whole bit about time in there before I proofread the blog, I seem to get more philosophical as the night goes on :). Patience is a virtue, right? Please sent all hate mail to my mother because she is a certified pyschologist (yes she does have a degree) and then you two can meet up and talk about why you have so much hate inside that you need to send hate mail because some guy won't update his blog with cool new things and just rants about whats on his mind (my english teachers/profs would be excited by the impressive run-on I just wrote. I did take a few english classes in college but its a matter of choice whether or not I apply that knowledge). Thanks Mom.

Alright, lets get down to business. The first slightly painful task at hand is to talk about Luddenscheid. If from the previous statement you still haven't figured out that we lost well now you know because I just said it.

I don't exactly know the final score of the game and I am way too lazy to look it up so you will just have to live with we lost by three. Thinking about this game in retrospect brings to mind the analogy of a rollercoaster, preferably The Wild Thing at Valleyfair right before I ride it for the first time.

Why? Read on my friends, read on.

Well, first off you never know what to expect from German officiating just as I didn't know what to expect from the ride. Was it going to be an uneventful ride or am I going to hurl some bodily fluids on the cute girl next to me? You never know what you are going to get until the game starts and you never really know what you got until the game is over. Mull that one over for awhile. As you can tell by the previous statement there is a lot of "I never know" going on here.

Secondly, the game had lots of ups and downs as anyone who has ever ridden or even seen a rollercoaster in real life or on t.v. can attest to. Lots of highs and lows. Sometimes you are as light as a bird and other times the ride is g-checking you into your seat. In other words sometimes you are defying gravity and other times gravity is defining you in a small little ball on your seat. That is kind of how it felt like for me during this game. We would get a sizable lead of around ten points and feel like we are defying gravity then forget to play defense, take quick shots, and no longer take care of the ball and now we are back at the bottom of the hill. This happened multiple times throughout the game. Very sickening indeed. I am actually getting pretty sick right now talking about it.

Thirdly, we were just flat out rusty. That can happen when a finely tuned and oiled machine (rollercoaster....i needed to stay with the analogy) is allowed to sit in the rain for a week without any attention to its detail. We came into the game and just missed so many shots we normally make.

Honestly, I never really felt like myself during the game. Maybe it was getting thrown out of our pre-game routine, maybe it was being off for a week. I don't know but I don't like to make excuses. As I learned on G's to Gent's a true gentleman always takes responsibility for his actions. I just didn't play as well as I should have. It won't happen again.

As for my other teams. I was unable to coach my men's team and they lost in Unna. Thankfully we still have a one game lead on the second place team with four games remaining, so we really need to put in some work here the next few weeks. If any of my guys are reading this, we still have practice on Tuesdays in case anybody forgot.

My U14 was off this week.

A little over a month and I will be back on US soil. The weather today was stupendous. The sun was out. It was probably 50 degrees. A rare, beautiful day in Germany. It honestly felt like the beginning of spring which I think happens a lot earlier over here. Which is nice.

That is all my friends
TJW

P.S. With spring comes impromptu soccer games and streetball adventures. I feel privileged to have weaved my way into one of each this past weekend.

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Evolution not change

I had a nice bed time conversation with Matthew last night and it made me realize the stagnancy of my blog. I think change is a good thing. I am not talking about a complete overhaul here but rather improvements and evolution. Maybe I should call it evolving rather than changing. The word change has a negative connotation where something isn't working and one must do something different so I am going to stick to evolve. My blog will evolve to both benefit the reader and also myself.

As my blog evolves I want the input of the reader throughout this whole process. If you feel something is stupid or unnecessary tell me. I value your opinion because you are the reason I write. I plan to add some new applications to my blog and also add more content. I have just added Adsense which is a pay per click application where I actually get a few cents every time you click on one of the ads. It is not fully operational yet but hopefully will be in the next two days and when that happens I address it again.

In addition to my game reviews I have always wanted to put my degree in Health and Fitness to use because I still do a ton of reading on these subjects especially in the realms strength training and nutrition. It is no fun keeping all this information boxed up in my head so I hope to start passing along this type of information once or twice a week. I hope that you may find some of the information useful and can make improvements in your own life. Book reviews, movie reviews, recipe reviews who knows where this is going to go, but I plan for my blog to become much more diverse than just the happenings of my life.

If you have any ideas of things you want me to talk about or subjects you want me to research and blog about just place a comment

Signing off maybe for the last time today
TJW

P.S. I may get my computer back today