Dear Passion Episode 9

I dressed up, put my sneakers on, and walked out of the house. George and his dad were waiting for me. I looked back at dad, waved to mother hugged my dad, and went ahead. At the same time, Stephen also joined us. We went together, in the back seat of the car. George's father ( Derrick ) drove us to the court, it was a 20-minute drive and we were there at the court. As I was walking on to the court, I saw Marcus already working out, we arrived 45 minutes before the game. He was doing his drills, shooting and I looked at my guys and said, " We should practice our triangle offense. ", Stephen and George agreed. We practiced for 25 minutes and we got done, however, Marcus went on till the start of the game.

15 minutes before the game, our team and their parents arrived. Cole's father ( Errick ), Stephen's Father ( Howard ), Austin's father ( Raymond ), Paul's Father ( Jason ), and Matt's Father ( Peter ), at the same time, DayBallers, too, arrived with the match referee. 5 minutes before the game starts, I told George's Dad ( Derrick ) to record everything right from now. So, put out his camera and started recording there. The referee called us, Coach Barton was present the referee asked, " What's your team name? ", and we had no idea about it. So I said, " Ref, would you give us a minute? ". The ref said, " Sure ". We all discussed our team name and many came up, finally, we went with " Passion "

So the match started, we won the tip-off, went score the first basket. It turns, they started with a 3 pointer followed by a dunk, we went in the paint scored our second basket. The Day Ballers started to play their real game came in the arc, pulled up, jumper, knocking one after the other. We were also doing pretty good, the game went off 6 minutes and we started to wear off. Remember, how we defend, I went to everybody said, take your shot, do not leave no matter what. The less practice of defense caused us to foul more, as a result, free throws after free throws was a reward to Day Ballers.

The score was 17 - 8 at 1st the end 1st quarter, then something happened, we missed 6 straight shots, couldn't hit any shot not me, to anyone. Then we gave away turn over 4 of them, with the scoreboard at 25 - 8. Then we started playing, our game of triangle offense, they worked a lot, we went 17 down to equal of 25 - 25, as they were missing their shots, we had stolen, too. We continuously used it further, to take the lead, and went to a score of 30-35 before 6 minutes in the 2nd quarter. And then came Marcus with his 35 points second quarter and DayBallers led by 65-40, straight 35 points from Marcus, he now had 42 at the end of 2nd quarter.

We were tired and exhausted, we tried our triangle offense that stopped working, we couldn't go through their defense, there was no room for a layup, we kept fouling and giving them free throws, pullup jumpers won't go in for us and the last thing that was available for us was to hit from outside the arc. The scoreboard kept me hitting, 65 - 40 with Marcus taking such an impact Coach Barton gave us a plan, for defense, out two-man on Marcus, cover-up of the vacant guy, pressure him to pass the ball and not take the shot. I also, came up with a plan on offense, to take Cole as a jumper as they left him open, Austin could take the layup as he was short could sneak past everybody. George and I would take the outside shot, Stephen would stand under the hoop as he was the tallest guy on our side. For Marcus, it was and Cole to charge him by not him take the shot.

With all this, we went back on the court and I saw my dad coming to court and everyone was gazing at him. I didn't understand, went ahead to focus on the game. He waved and took his seat with his friends Derrick, Howard, Raymond, Errick, Jason, and Peter.

Life Lesson: Understand the game a lot more.

Here's a quick recap of Episode 9 under 15 seconds-