Bad start is a good start

If everything is good at the beginning, you can't go far.
That was the second game in the basketball tournament and that was the second time we lost. I was very exiting before this event. This is the first time I join a league outside my small campus.

The first match was a hard beginning. We have a good start with only 5 points less than the oponent team after the first quarter. Things changes when they put more defense on us. They defense right when we have the ball in our half court. It's quite disapointed when we made some 8 seconds fault (when you cant bring the ball to the opponent's half court after 8 seconds). I have watched many Vietnamese matches and rarely saw any team commit this. Without coach (ahh, he is busy on this hardest day), we did not have good communication. I mean, everyone wants best improvement for the team. However, noone has the best effective voice as the coach. I listened to some advices and ideas to defense, passing. Then I realised that we agreed with so many conflict ideas. Then when we were back to playing, things happened the same as start. Gun (a Korean) was always the best player in our team. He flied in and out, left to right and took almost all offensive rebounds. But one could not make the team. We gradually lost strength.
However, truely say, that was not very bad for a new team if you know that we only had around 1 month to practice together, esspecially 1 week to practice playing with full court. I was not confident in the game but I am happy with my team's performance.

The second match was a big supprising experience for me. This time we had our coach. However, we lost Gun. I could only said "#$%#" to this guy even he was painful with his broken leg. How can a grown man decided to play 2 damn friendly matches continuosly in the day before the important match. Then when his teamates were crazy fighting in the game, he sat outside enjoy watching. I was played at the beginning. The opponents were not as good as the previous team. But amazingly we were shocked because they played so agressive. They ran like crazy and defensed full court. I counld not even make one clear pass. We were turned over most of the chances. We had to cal for time out and make many substitutions. I was out. I must say that this is good for me, but it is good for team. I will talk more on this later. Still, we lost the ball many times and hardly make a shoot. When they did many basic shooting. I was very angry because we set two players outside when they have 3 players, which means 2 must move much to defense those 3 guys. Often, one of them could make a shoot. They scored about 12 points until end of second quarter. That was 31 for them and 7 for us. Tuan asked me how did I feel and my answer was no, we could not make it. Coach called me to play in the middle of third quarter. I realised that I was waiting for too long. I played with all my strength, ran up and down the court. The coach was right when putting me outside waiting, because now I was willing to play. We could do some offense now since they did not put much defense on the our half court. So we had time to bring the ball to their rim. However, we are not good at defense. Even we could score some, we let them do many successful and clear shoot. Esspecially forwards, they did not defense at all. We surely need many practices on defense and team cooperation.

Now I know that a good palyer need not beautiful dribbling skill, he need strength, basic but arcurate shooting skill. What does the team need? I may find out through this tournament. We still have one more game. Every game is a big challenge. And I believe that "If you know the way you go, you can't go far"