What a long week. As fast as I could, I got the top 50-60 U21 prospects together for a U21 camp at Madison Square Garden. The Knicks won’t be using it for a while, so I figured what the hell. With such a deep class of prospects, I was having trouble narrowing down the best at each position. I thought about getting 50 2x4’s and handing one to each member of the squad, and saying, “There are 50 of you, and I only need 9. Go.” I quickly realized I wouldn’t have any guards, so I put everyone’s name in a hat and drew: Vickers, Yi, McHugh, Withers, Mayer, Sanders, Brown, Parsons, and Foote.
Once the team was set, I jumped on the computer to buy plane tickets to Mexico for our team with the debit card to the U21 account that Rambo left me. It didn’t go through. After a recent $7,000 withdrawal, the current balance was $1.63. Rambo’s snicker when he handed me the card finally made sense. I gave Jason a call to see if I could get some money from the NT, but I was informed jfarb had actually put it all on the NT to beat Chile in the America’s final.
Practice started on Wednesday. Azariah, seeing I was busy, offered to help out. “Here, you take the guards, I’ll take the bigs,” he said. I wasn’t all that comfortable with it, but it was better than listening to him complain every time our rent-a-refs called a foul on Parsons. I walked over to the guards, and noticed Withers was missing. Smallfrie, a little confused, pointed to the locker room. I walked in to see Withers applying sunscreen to his entire body. “Dwain,” I said, “What are you doing?”
“Puttin on some sun block man, SPF 250. You want some?”
“Uh. Dwain… it’s November…in New York…and we’re inside.”
“You can never be too careful.”
And with that I left the locker room to go work with the guards. As I got back onto the court, I saw Azariah running “drills” with Parsons, Sanders, Brown, and Foote. These “drills” consisted of Azariah throwing lobs to Parsons, while Sanders, Brown, and Foote took turns getting dunked on.
Friday morning, we were finally leaving for Mexico. After everyone climbed on the bus, I got off to sign the form the bus driver handed me. $1200 for a bus ride? Ridiculous. As I was signing, I saw two figures sprinting towards the bus, and dive into the luggage compartment. I walked over.
“Oriole and Anderson Adams! Get off the bus!”
We arrived Saturday night, and I can’t remember a thing. We must have been drugged or something, I’m still looking into that. Someone completely shaved Yi’s head. I don’t know if they glued Yi’s hair onto Parsons’ face, or he just always looks like that. Either way, we have a lot of work to do.
Come join us on Monday at 9pm eastern for the opening match of the U21 season!