My smart blog 0671

My basketball career has gone downhill since eighth grade. Back then, my pre/pubescing self earned the nickname"Paxson" (as in John; I believe it was a compliment to my jumper, but it might've called my haircut) and was really pretty great. Since then, disuse and liver abuse have worn down my game . Since faculty arrived in the park he was her only son, much as my only officially decent basketball performance. The comparisons I've obtained from friends after the match were to Robert Horry. No one is ever dared compare me to Tyrone Nesby; of appearing in the exact same sentence as Kevin Edwards, I can just dream. Except for now, when I did it. Anyhow, I guess maybe"The Kevin Edwards of CSTB Guest-Bloggers" isn't totally unfair. What I'm saying is, I've some experience on this park.

But including my glorious performances at the park (i.e. the time I scored five times in a match to 11) (after ), what went down there earlier this evening was sort of a new thing. At a little-promoted but quite well-attended game that benefited the charitable foundations of participants Claudio Reyna and Steve Nash, Sara Roosevelt Park hosted an 8-on-8 football match between an assemblage of MLS and European celebrities, NBA players and, uh, ESPN writer Marc Stein (who modestly failed to mention his presence in the game while writing this up in ESPN.com). Much of the large crowd -- that climbed mold-likeup the park's chain link fences and to a fragile-looking nearby trees, and stood nearby on the sidewalk and on seats -- appeared to be there as much to the football celebrities as for the basketball players. We All, though, came together in a few ways.

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Foremost among those was a tender, commonly good-natured heckling of Baron Davis, who revealed for the event wearing Harry Caray-frame glasses, a baseball cap comprising an upside down Dodgers-style LA, and garish, mid-calf-length ancient-school Reebok Pumps. Unlike the rest of them, he refused to twist the belt on these shorts enough that his undergarments weren't always constantly at least of showing. Unlike Nash, who scored a set of goals and is obviously an excellent soccer player, Davis had experience with this game. He'd have a sense of humor, however -- highlighted by a belly-flop onto prone Liverpool forward Robbie Fowler, that (amusingly) feigned injury following a clumsy-ish Davis handle -- and managed to score a goal off a wonderful feed from Jason Kidd. Yeah, Kidd also played. He assisted on two goals, and was really pretty good. Furthermore, if I need to mention this, he yooge: as big across as Claudio Reyna is down and up, take or give a couple inches.

In all, the NBA delegation comprised Kidd, Nash, Davis, Leandrinho Barbosa (who is good) and Raja Bell (who is less good, but did not injure anyone); the football side of things was emphasized by Fowler (great, but brief ), Reyna (according to his Click for more life, two inches shorter and a couple of pounds heavier than me, somehow), Henry (um, more to come ) and a couple of others who have played in Europe and the MLS. All told, believing that the game was played on a patch of Astroturf placed above a scraggly stretch of asphalt considerably more compact than the average soccer pitch (see what I did there? The terminology? I don't really know what it means, however, I heard Andy Gray say it ), it was pretty brilliant. Actually, even if you/one do not /does not look at it was fucking amazing.

The only noise I heard, out of conversations, for a lot of the half was backbeat along with the bassline to different rock tunes bumping from a nearby minivan. It had been tricky. The silence was not due to boredom, not on the Forsyth St. aspect of things (fucking Chrystie St is another tale; I hate these guys); the rationale, I am pretty certain, was that the crowd was legitimately rapt prior to the combination of star and virtuosity on screen.

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At the risk of losing your focus -- raptness/rapture is much more than I could expect, except when I'm weighing in on the important shit -- I'll mention a few things. (If you would rather just look at images, check this man's flickr feed to get shots of this game) First of which is that: if they ever choose to do an And1 Tour for football, and Thierry Henry is somehow otherwise unemployed (and he won't be), you need to go see it if he's engaging. While most of the big-time soccer dudes showed (unsurprisingly, yet still amazingly ) absurd skills, Henry is the very extravagant and colorful soccer player I have ever noticed.

I thought as much during the few cases in which I've watched him on TV -- and I haven't watched nearly as much soccer as GC has, or since you probably have -- but seeing him from 10 or so feet away was astonishing. The weather was bathwater-warm for the entire game, although all the players broke a sweat to several degrees (Stein, a ringer for Patton Oswalt but not terrible at soccer, was perspiration until he entered the match; Davis seemed hardly to perspiration ), Henry was well-soaked by the conclusion of the game. To say that he was the best player out there is, obviously, evident. Additionally, it is unfair to him. It was a type of shame, and getting to see it up close was that the sort of great luck Americans could have until he signs with the LA Galaxy in five decades or something.

Once the match was finished -- I feel the yellow team (Henry and Nash's) conquered the blue (Barbosa, Reyna and Kalou's) with a couple of goals -- that the players posed for a few photos and made their way to the LES. A surprisingly small mob surrounded henry, signed a few autographs, and climbed into a black SUV. Fowler left through precisely the exact same gate, ran a cube or two, realized he was not being followed , and slowed down ahead of where my friends and me were walking to a pub in the neighborhood. I was surprised when we slouched, didn't discover him there and perspiration over a pint of Newcastle. My calves hurt from standing for one hour and a half on tiptoe, trying to see what was going on. His probably were sore from performing amazing soccer-related items (that I can only imagine how his nostrils sensed ). In a few blockswe were both New Yorkers, soaking up what was great and (and that is cliched, and also a self-satisfied cliche, but in this case...) particular about the city on the way to somewhere else.