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| Tweet Topic Started: Jun 11 2007, 12:30 PM (2,292 Views) | |
| Bada Bing | Jun 11 2007, 12:30 PM Post #1 |
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El Crack
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13.08.06 I don’t really know where to start, and to be honest, if this diary turns out to be a bag of soggy pants, it’s Bada’s fault for asking me to do it. I will do my best to shed some light on the lunacy of British basketball, but obviously there are things I can’t mention at all, and others I can only hint at. Let me know if you’re using it as a sleeping aid at hersey427@hotmail.com and I’ll try to spice it up with the naked Roger Lloyd story, though I have serious doubts the world’s ready for it - 18 months later and I’m still in therapy. Anyway, by some strange chain of events, I’ve ended up running the club that I used to simply make a nuisance of myself at (and edit the programme). I guess many people have compared it to putting the lunatic in charge of the asylum, but it’s all my own fault, so I shouldn’t whine too much. My biggest regret will always be that we had a year off between the old and the new Leopards, and while reading the interview on here with Mike Davies I found myself gnashing my teeth when he revealed how he and his group had two years to put some plans together to run TVT, giving them a massive head-start when it came to setting up Heat. We had two weeks, and when that failed, we lost a massive amount of momentum; and when we spent the six-eight months trying to get it going again in the BBL, we encountered Mike Smith. If I was bitter man, I would suggest that the world would be a better place if he drowned in his own puss, so we’d better move on. If it wasn’t for time-zones, I’d be trying to sign a centre at the moment. Trying to sign a centre has become this summer’s bug-bear “we haven’t got anywhere for the players to live, or any kit for them to play in” but life would be easier if we just had a bloody centre. The theory that the BBL has loads of Americans because it’s easy is a myth - it’s a pain in the rear end. After two weeks of trying to sign one particular centre, we gave up and moved onto centre #2, #3 is in the background waiting for the call, and who knows, by Christmas we might have the vaguest idea of what’s going on. I eventually gave up on #1 when it became apparent he had the brains of rocking horse. He had played in the Big East Conference (one of power-house conference in the US college game), and in Portugal, but still didn’t realise that there was time difference between Miami and Bishops Stortford, so I received a 4.54am phone call, and another one at 7am. Perhaps I should have answered the phone, and that situation could have ended a lot quicker. Shame really, he looked like a bloody monster, I’m not sure there would have been any room left in the paint with him and Errol in there. So, today’s job is to sign a centre, which probably rules me out watching the Charity Shield in the pub as (apparently) you have to be sober to negotiate contracts. Tomorrow I need to find a house for the lump and his three team-mates to live in, persuade a few players that they want to spend the morning of Bank Holiday Monday promoting the club at a carnival, working on some posters for games and go to a Board meeting. Oh yeah, and I’ve got a real job Readers of my Whatsbev diary will remember my bizarre dreams so here’s Bizarre dream #1 We’ve signed a 6ft 10in kid with a British passport straight from college (don’t get smart and say that we now don’t need a centre). Anyway, in my dream I pick him from the airport, but we get lost on the way home we get lost and end up at Reed Cricket Club (who recently gained TV fame on Sky’s Cricket AM). Naturally they ask the kid to play, and he goes on to hit a century and take a few wickets. He then announces that he’s decided to become a professional cricketer, and is moving to Australia. The sad thing is, it wouldn’t even surprise me. Now where have you heard that before ? 18.08.06 I guess I'm a fully fledged (part) owner/general manager now; I hate players. Not just American centres, but the whole bloody lot. We STILL don't have a centre. We're about as close to one as we were on Sunday - except it's a different one. Then there's the 4/5 weeks of getting work permit and visa. It was easier prior to 9/11 since all the player needed was a work permit. You could literally cut someone on a Sunday evening, and have a reasonable chance of getting the replacement into the country for the following weekend. Now, if you want them with you longer than six months (ie you sign them before November) the player needs to apply for a visa in the States - this can take four weeks. Basically it's a bloody nightmare. Not that it's any easier to get British players. I understand their frustration with the amount of foreign players in the British game, but it's never occurred to most of them to actually commit to a team more than a week before the season starts. We could fill our starting and five, and key bench spots, with Americans and EU players; two imports, two blokes called Mario (seriously) who want to sign for us, a Spanish bug guy, a Polish centre and the duel British/US centre we have joining us in September. But we don't want to do that, we want to have a British base to the side - the trouble is that as we continue to be messed around, the option to sign people who are very keen to be part of the lunacy that is Leopards Basketball Club gets more appealing. Jack Majewski at LU has said that his club intend to work with a Turkish and a Latvian club to bring players over. I see no benefit for British players (and I can't see Tony G being overly happy with it), but when those players want to play for you, and are willing to commit, I can see why it's more appealing. Of course, a week before the season starts, those British players who are currently waiting for the seven-year NBA contract will remember they are EBL players and will want to sign, but will wonder why there's no longer any money available - it'll be because we've signed a team of bloke called Mario...... I was going to say "rant over" but my microwave curry has, for the fifth successive Wednesday, just exploded. This week saw the official announcement that Leopards would no longer be playing at Brentwood. We got our first front page in the Brentwood Gazette since August 2003 when it was announced that the old Leopards were dead - pretty much summing up basketball's coverage in the Press; win the national cup, only get the back page. It's sad in many ways, but inevitable since we were told in May 2005 that they would put the rent up from £1,400 a game (huge by EBL standards, anyway) to £4,000 a game. So Goresbrook's home now, and I'm happy with that - it's a decent venue by EBL standards and (arguably) better than Chester, MK, Worcester and LU. I'm told it's better than Leicester - we'll find out on October 14 - and is certainly better than the toilet Bullets played at last year. Time will tell how it work out, but when I drive past an empty Brentwood Centre on a Saturday evening, it will piss me off. Anyway, we have a house to put up our starting five of Mario, Mario, Calvin, Mario & Mario up in, which is a result - but I still have a feeling that I really haven't achieved much so far this week, other than do a good impression of a headless chicken. Still we've got a game in ten days, that should concentrate the mind. I'll try to be funny next time. |
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EuroLeague Women because women's basketball is the most important thing in life after family and good health! | |
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| hersey427 | Feb 9 2008, 11:59 AM Post #26 |
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Basketball Legend
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Jan 17 I'm at a loss how we could be so good from the line last week, and so poor this week. Even a small improvement would have won us the game, because it was only a six point game due to having to foul to stop the clock. What you do about that, i don't know. We're looking at addressing the rebound situation before the signing deadline (31/1). Clearly we're struggling again the bigger sides, but then with what is more often than not a four-guard line-up, we were always going to. Every week we seem to turn down another guard, but big men don't grow on trees. I never seriously thought we could win the league. I haven’t thought that about a Leopards team for ten years – jeez it’s ten years - and even then there were some brown trouser moments and Sheffield on that balmy April afternoon. The reality is we’re in the middle group of clubs with Derby, Bristol and Sheffield. That’s not noticeably different to last season, we’re just not bankrupting ourselves in the process. |
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Read my Olympic blog here Leopards - Division One league, play-off & National Cup winners 2012 Leopards - National Trophy winners 2013 - that'll complete the set That was my idea | |
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| hersey427 | Feb 9 2008, 12:02 PM Post #27 |
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Basketball Legend
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Jan 26 Well it’s public knowledge now that we parted company with our only American – “Stix” Bright. It actually happened before Christmas, but it so much like Groundhog Day that I couldn’t be arsed to write about it. In fact I only got around to a press release last week because it was raining a lot, and I knew it would get us on the back page of the local paper. They didn’t let me down: http://www.hertfordshiremercury.co.uk/hert...e.asp?ID=251258 The print version of the story has Stix denying that he offered to “kick my arse” all over Wodson Park’s car park. An interesting claim considering that the whole bar heard it. However I can confirm that I am not his mother. Unless I had a very strange conversation with myself on Thursday afternoon. I had actually found him a dentist, ten minutes walk from him house, he didn’t need an appointment, and we were willing to give him some money towards having his tooth out. I guess the only other thing I could have done is turn up with pliers and do the job myself. Which is beginning to seem an option. This does, of course, seem like groundhog day. Since we started in the 2004/5 season we’ve brought in 11 import players (nine work permit, one EU, one British passport-holding American). Three have left at the end of their contract, two walked out (Demetrice Williams to an Austrian club, Brandon Kephart & Mario Lapadia to their mums), two were cut for basketball reasons (Skye Buck and Kyle Marian), one decided to get a real job and gave us plenty of notice (Haydon Herrin), one had visa problems (Scoop Wicker) and Stix became the first to actually be fired. It’s not an impressive list. Even if you took Scoop out of the equation (because that was a beginners’ cock-up on our part, and will never happen again), only 30 percent of those players stuck around. Two out of 11 not being good enough is probably natural, every club makes recruiting mistakes. The rest of it isn’t too special, though. I don’t know if we’re better or worse than other clubs at our level – most of them don’t talk about it. Perhaps we are too open about things, after all no one’s ever heard what happened to Derby Trailblazers’ Canadian point guard, but he appeared to have mysteriously disappeared. When you look at our success rate, and the fact that you can safely assume that each failure (with the exception of Marian) saw us waste at least a grand, I do wonder why we’ve bothered. But then even as I wrote out the contract for Stix I wondered why I was doing it. We can’t have done everything wrong as both British players – Dave Jones and James Nicholson - who spent a year with us as full-time players left on good terms, even if DJ swore to never live in Harlow again ! The sad thing is, if he’d just been willing to accept that he’s was out of order for disappearing for a week to Southampton to be with his girlfriend – because he had a toothache – and that he would have to do a couple of days work the next week even though it “nearly” Christmas, we could have got through this. But we move on. And we move on with a tin of Heinz Baked Beans and most of a bottle of fairy liquid which were left in his room when he left after the game on December 15. We haven’t got much from our various dalliances with American players, Brandon Kephart left some strange white pills that I certainly wouldn’t have put on the jacket spud last week. To be fair to him, he left the room in a decent state, although unlike DJ we didn’t get any free condoms ! So today we’re off for our traditional beating at Worthing. We’re taking the same group of players that went to Taunton, but we have the benefit of a real coach this time. I’ll stand in as assistant and (my real calling) water boy. I hate being water boy. We would have taken nine players to the game, with a genuine inside presence, but thanks to the Royal Mail, his licence didn’t get there in time. That’s a bit gutting, but at least I have half a can of beans to console me, and some washing up liquid to wash the bowl up with afterwards. |
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Read my Olympic blog here Leopards - Division One league, play-off & National Cup winners 2012 Leopards - National Trophy winners 2013 - that'll complete the set That was my idea | |
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| Bada Bing | Feb 24 2008, 01:50 PM Post #28 |
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El Crack
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09 feb I don’t like February. For those of you who’ve read this crap for over a year now, you’ll remember that my best friend died just under a year ago, and later in the month I ended up in hospital with internal bleeding. If you didn’t read it, it’s still there in the archives on whatsbev – though it ain’t pretty reading. Anyway, the fun in February started on the first day this year. I went into London last Friday. Had a few beers, and when I got back to Stortford station there was a long queue for a cab, and no cabs in sight. It’s a couple of miles walk to my house, and it’s all uphill, but I couldn’t be arsed to wait, so I walked home. It only took half an hour, and I was basically sober by the time I walked through the parade of shops a couple of minutes from my house. Which is where it all went off. There’s been a problem with the local 15-18 year-olds hanging around there, and even though it was 12.30am, there was a couple of 17-year-old there with a bottle of wine. They were clearly looking for trouble, and I kept walking, but backwards because I wasn’t inclined to have them behind me. I was “advised” by one of them that I had “better run”, but the idea of a) having my back to them & b) letting them find out where I live didn’t appeal. In the end one of them threw a couple of punches. One on the jaw, which didn’t hurt, and the other on my nose, which as we all know is so full of crap that it didn’t even bleed. I did manage to get a punch in that was hard enough to make me wonder next morning if I’d bust my wrist. Unfortunately, while I was dealing with that little scrote, the other one went behind me and smashed the bottle over my head. I went down quicker than Derby County, and took a couple of kicks before (finally) having the presence of mind to get my phone out and call the police. It worked, and as I got up and headed towards my house, I thought that I’d probably got out at of that pretty well – no broken bones, even where they’d kicked/punched me didn’t hurt. That was until I felt the back of my head. There was blood everywhere. Christ only knows what I looked like as Tracy opened the door to a creature that was soaked in blood from head to foot. Anyway, to cut a long story short, two lots of stitches & nearly five hours later, I got home with a head swathed in bandages. I’ll live, I’m not very happy but it’s a bloody (pun intended) excuse for not writing this crap last week. Don’t you think ? Anyway, we’ve played twice since the last Asylum Seeker. We played really well at Worthing, and if the Royal Mail hadn’t screwed us by getting Errol’s licence to EB FIVE days after it was posted first class, I think we could have won the game. I’ve read plenty about how Worthing’s crowds are down because they’re not getting competitive games at home. Well the last two times we’ve played them, they’ve had competitive games, and maybe we will end their EBL Division One career with a Leopards win. Maybe. Last week we took a depleted side to King’s Lynn, and eventually won by four. Errol was never going to be available for that one, Carl Latham-Henry and Lee McCarthy were both injured and our other “new” signing – Roger Lloyd – forgot ! I’d would have banged my head on a wall, but it wasn’t really up to it. So we went with an eight-man roster, four of whom are teenagers. I never actually thought we’d lose, but it show that if we hadn’t strengthened the squad at the start of the season, we would be down there with fury, Taunton and Coventry. I also had to endure JB telling the players they all had to call me Pudsey ! So we move on to a home game against Bristol today. Now what can go wrong this week ? |
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EuroLeague Women because women's basketball is the most important thing in life after family and good health! | |
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| hersey427 | Mar 1 2008, 09:55 AM Post #29 |
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Basketball Legend
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24/2/8 Some you win… Well, Badaball’s brief closure means it’s been a couple of weeks since I last wrote something. If I’d written this a week ago, it would have been much more upbeat. It doesn’t get much better than going from one down with 0.89 seconds remaining to winning the game – without the need for OT. The game was against Bristol, and to be honest we should never have been in a position to need what could well have been a bail-out call to win it. We dominated the first period, but we do seem to have a problem closing games out. The debate about whether Gareth Laws was fouled or not could rage forever. Certainly if it WAS a foul, we should have three shots as he was clearly shooting, but in the end we’ll take the win. The atmosphere was electric during the timeout after Williams had given Bristol the lead with three seconds remaining as it was proof that you don’t need dancing girls and never ending music for the game to be exciting. Last Friday quickly brought us down to earth as we lost by 22 at Reading. From the second period onwards we never looked like getting anything from the game. I talk about the referees, and how as early as the first minute Dave Titmuss was making calls, but it didn’t make any real difference. It was easily our most disappointing display of the league season, and a reminder of the gulf between the “big three” and the rest. Friday night basketball proved an “interesting” experience. We knew that Gareth would never get there on time to warm up and start, but apart from that only “The Late Roger Lloyd” (as he has been called on many an occasion) failed to get there on time. The mindset in the EBL seems to be that midweek basketball is simply not possible, which is strange because Ware FC manage to make midweek trips of similar distance. All in perception, I guess. Despite the loss at Reading we are still on target for fourth place, which is better than we ever thought we’d manage. If we win the games we should – Coventry, Sheffield and Taunton, all at home – we would need a maximum of one win from our other four games – at Manchester & Derby, and at home against Reading & Worthing. So it’s do-able. We’re at home against Coventry this weekend, so all those predictions could have gone pearshaped by about 9.30pm ! It’s a game we should win, they rely heavily on their Americans, and if we can shut one of the down it should be enough. Then we’re off to Manchester, where I can’t honestly see us getting anything. It was a year ago this weekend that I managed to avoid driving the bus to the Ameachi Centre by having internal bleeding. I haven’t managed to repeat that his season, so I guess I have go. It’s also been a year since my friend Andy dropped dead. It still hurts, and I spent last Saturday watching Stortford at Lewes drinking myself daft (obviously it didn’t take long) in his memory. It puts it all in perspective, but I’ll still have the hump if we lose tonight. He wouldn’t expect any different. |
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Read my Olympic blog here Leopards - Division One league, play-off & National Cup winners 2012 Leopards - National Trophy winners 2013 - that'll complete the set That was my idea | |
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| hersey427 | Mar 6 2008, 07:37 PM Post #30 |
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Basketball Legend
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March 1 THOSE THREE MAGIC LETTERS In the days when Sky could be bothered to screen basketball, Kevin Cadle used to finish the live coverage with the words “and don’t forget those three letters – N B A”. We still have plenty of other three letter acronyms – BBL, EBL and, of course, the BBA. The bloody BBA. It’s almost laughable that after over three years of talk about Synergy & the BBA we STILL waiting for an announcement as to when they’ll actually start playing basketball. If I had been running the BBA, I would have staged something last summer. Six teams in a two-month competition, a couple of games at each of a couple venues for a few weeks. It would have given them an idea of what they faced, and if it flopped badly, they could have walked away without losing too much money. They would also have stood a chance of getting affiliated to EB as it wouldn’t have been in competition, which may have solved some long-term problems. From a Leopards point of view it will make little difference whether the BBA starts or not. When I first started watching the old Leopards, it was because I saw them on TV. I looked around to see if there was another team in the area, and discovered that Stevenage Rebels (the original Ware franchise moved across Herts for two years before being sold to what is now Worthing Thunder) were doing well in Division One. So basically, a team on TV in a pro lead me to watch a side at the level currently are playing at. The effect on Leopards caused by the BBA may be positive, negative or indifferent. My money’s on the latter, incidentally. My main concern about the BBA is what effect it will have on British basketball when it all goes pear-shaped. It’s bad enough that club go under, and it does nothing for the perception of the game that the professional game has lost teams in London (times two) Manchester, Derby, Brighton, Bracknell and Birmingham in the last eight years. When a league folds it will be even worse. Because the main problem is that the BBA is only being formed to make money. On the front page it announces that it will be highly profitable, and from all the numbers that were being bandied around when the league was last “launched” they are completely unrealistic about just how much can be made from a league in UK. There is only one way to make a small fortune out of basketball in the UK. Invest a large one. I’m not saying that club can’t make a profit, but it isn’t going to run into millions (unless we’re talking about Turkish Lire) and that is the kind of money that the BBA were talking about. They were also looking at an immediate profit, which in virtually any business is hard to do. The basis of this large profit-margin was that thousands of people were going to turn up at the “events” that the BBA were going to put on every month. They were looking at charging 20 quid a ticket and, while they clearly aren’t looking at the current support base of British basketball to achieve those number, anyone whose done anything regarding getting crowds will know – people don’t generally want to pay a tenner to watch the game in this country, let alone double that. Even if the bloke who came third in the X Factor is “performing” at half-time. For that reason alone, the BBA won’t survive. They will also have to overcome a lot of obstacles that are there because virtually no one in British basketball wants to work with them. I can’t see how they can affiliate to EB, because of the contract with the BBL. Even any potential damage to the EBL is irrelevant because of that five year deal. Bearing in mind how many unaffiliated leagues there are in the US, I doubt that worries Synergy. But it will cause numerous complications – getting work permits for the American players they are going to want & getting referees and table officials, because they won’t be allowed to officiate in the BBL & EBL is they are involved with a “rogue” league. Both of those problems, and the others which will come up, are curable with money. But it will also be a constant drain on their resources, and they are only here to make money. The comments by Digital Spy on Whatsbev were spot on in many regards. He was wasting his time, though, when talking about building clubs. Because that would suggest a real, long term, interest in British basketball. The very fact that Ken Olisa’s quotes “lifestyle, music and sport” as what their league will offer, in that order, sums it up. Basketball is a mere add-on. There’s never been any real talk about what the BBA will do for the game in this country, and their long term plan seems to end after five years. I didn’t mean for this to be a rant about why the BBA will fail – the truth is it may not, but it’ll never make the kind of money its backers want. But the more I look at it, the lower the chances of it being a success seem to be. I think the BBA WILL start, because after around 40 months of work, I don’t think Ron Scott is willing to bin the whole plan. But I think the chances of it still being around 40 months after it starts as virtually nil. And if I had a reputation to stake on that, I gladly would. |
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Read my Olympic blog here Leopards - Division One league, play-off & National Cup winners 2012 Leopards - National Trophy winners 2013 - that'll complete the set That was my idea | |
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8:50 AM Jul 11