Kainan: Quarter-finals

On Friday night at the gym, while doing my usual crunches, I felt fatigued. Not the short term type as in I'd been into that session for too long, but just the long term type. Kinda like, I've been doing this for ages, when does it end? I think when you start questioning things like that, it's a sign of fatigue and/or lack of motivation.

On Saturday my plan was to go to the courts to practice a bit, given the quarter-finals the next day. I played my PS3 in the morning and then headed out to the courts at 11am-ish. I shot around, felt a bit bored until I challenged myself to hit a long range two from all angles before leaving. I did that, but what was scary was the fact that I felt bored during that. I should never feel bored, and yet, I did. I questioned my long term fatigue even more.

The thing is, back in the days when I played only on Sundays, there would be a break of one or two months between seasons. That would give me time to re-charge myself both mentally and physically. It gave me something to work towards - next season. Every workout session I had the next season in mind.

However, these days, because the Wednesday night comp is continuous, I don't get that time to myself to re-charge. It seems like things like things just keep going and going without an end. That causes me to be tired. Add on top of that, I seem to playing more now with my knee post-surgery than before. Further, there's all this Bo-created drama that just drains me mentally.

Today, I played a bit of PS3 before getting ready for the game. I shaved my head and took a shower and then left. I didn't really want the additional distraction of Erica, but I decided to send her a message anyway. I asked her to send me a message when she gets back, which I had anticipated to be in a few days time on Tuesday.

I got to the courts about 40 minutes early, and just did some suicides on the netball courts to warm up, before going in to see Nick and Jim already there on court three. We shot around and I discussed my game plan with them, and then Mike and Alex Z showed up, and I told them my game plan as well. I wanted to start with Nick, Richard, Carter, One and me. Mike said I should have Carter as guard because of his size, and I asked him who should start, and he gave me the same lineup except with Bert replacing Carter.

I see the advantages of playing Carter at guard, but that adds one more to our guard rotation and I also find he gets more steals from the forward position. In the end, I went with my starting line up. I knew if we lost, I'd be responsible.

It was a bit back and forth for like the first 10 minutes, but they started hitting some outside shots and pulled away. I moved Carter to guard, which really limited the minutes of Jim, me, MJ and One. Mike also got more playing time than before, playing basically the last five minutes of the first half and first five minutes of the second half. However, my reward was seeing him trying to dribble in the backcourt, losing it, and the other team scoring an easy basket.

So after that, during halftime, one of my remarks to the team was I didn't want to see any And1 shit. He knew it was a reference to him, because afterwards I heard Bo telling him not to worry about it. As much as I don't like straining our relationship, I nevertheless felt justified in doing that. He's been doing that for years and never learns.

In the second half, the scoring girl came and told me we could only have 10 active players, and because we had 11, we had to scratch one off. I immediately looked at Bo, and goddamnit, you do not know how much I wanted it to be him. But you know the shit storm that would've caused? In the end, I sacrificed myself. He heard and volunteered, and I just told him it was too late. You just know that'd be one of the things he'd keep in his list of 'get backs' in the future.

So I watched from the sidelines as our deficit increased, and hope began to sink. I watched as Carter ditched the team offense and threw up shot after shot. I don't can't really criticise him for it - it was that style of play which gave us wins. I guess if we live by Carter, we also die by Carter.

At Nick's suggestion, we changed to man-to-man defense, which gave us a bit of a boost, but it was a bit too late. We ended up losing by about 15 points. It was a disappointing end to the season. Despite the fact that we had never beaten this Aesthetics team before, I was confident we could beat them today with us at full strength (though question whether Richard was hung over etc).

I sat with Nick and Richard after the game, feeling dejected. I wanted to know if Richard would play next season, but didn't ask. Bert expressed his interest, and I was glad he did. I would like to keep very much the same line up, except I think I may have lost Mike, and in turn, Carter. I guess it wouldn't be too big of a loss, as Carter exposed one weakness today, which was basically if you're having an off game, to just accept it. And with Mike, I'm just tired of his lack of discipline in general. To my disappointment, it looks like Bo will be returning.

I checked my messages and Erica had sent me a message. The convo was this:

Me: Ericaaaaaa
Me: send me message when you get back :)
Her: ha
Her: 11/10

11/10? What the hell does that mean? Both 11 October and 10 November have passed.

I figured she must have meant days.

Me: 11 or 10 days?
Her: 10

Not sure if her short messages are an indication of a lack of interest, and if so, stemming from my messages which may appear too desperate? Or maybe, like a meme I saw once, it could just be a case of girls sending short messages and expecting you to turn it into a full (yet funny) conversation.

And what the hell, 10 more days? Damn. And how about telling me without me asking?

After the game, with just Nick and Jim around, I told them I was actually a question mark for next season. I just want to get away from the team and have some time to myself, to re-charge. The main question I am going to ask myself is: do I want to deal with Bo for another season?

After the game, Jim and I went to Parramatta to eat. I told him I probably couldn't make the US trip, given the dental costs I'm about to (further) incur. What I didn't really disclose was the fact that now I'd have to pay off my credit card in full because my last few transactions triggered the accrual of interest (just like I had guessed, yet contrary to what the dude told me when I signed up), and because I do plan on asking Erica to go on a one week holiday up to the Gold Coast during the Christmas/NYE break.

He managed to talk me out of it mainly because he intended to go in May/June, whereas I had planned it for February/March, so given that, I should have a bit more time to save up.

At the shopping centre, I decided to be good and just eat a box of sushi. He bought some sort of crab mornay thing, which came with a crab salad. He said it was too much crab for him (lol) and so offered me his crab salad which I gladly took because I was still hungry.

After that we went to Stratty to meet Mark for some pick up bball. He had come down from QLD and was really eager to meet us. I felt kinda bad for him that no one else came, apart from Gus. We played two on two, and although Jim and I won the first game, we lost the next two. At first I didn't want to play that hard, but then it got a bit competitive and I actually started trying to block shots (awkward landing on ankles be damned) but even after we lost I didn't feel too bad about it.

Gus had to go because of his wife and kid, while the three of us just sat around talking. Despite the heat, it was good. We went to Gloria Jeans after to get a drink (my shout), only to be annoyed by this guy who kept coming in to ask for money. On his third attempt, we decided to leave.

I gotta say, when you are dehydrated, the drinks at Gloria Jeans do nothing to quench your thirst. In fact, it probably only makes things worse. So after that, we went to Woolies where Jim bought some bread and juice, and I got a bottle of water. We drove Mark back to his car and then Jim dropped me off at the station.

So now I gotta think of an 'end of season' message to type on on facebook to the team. I am looking forward to having a break, but at the same time I don't want to rest too long so that getting back in shape is too hard. That difficulty gets compounded with age.

I just want my fire back.