Love and Basketball

It is snowy here, and I'm sitting in my apartment, listening to Jay Z on my stereo. I just fried and egg and put it on top of some leftover Korean food. I went to the gym this morning for an hour and a half and I have class at 2:20p today. It is my only class today. I will come home, continue to plan my Spring Break trip to Australia and then meet my friends for dinner before our Wednesday bowling league starts. When we are done we will go to the bars. I've been getting a lot of people saying "are you sad to be leaving school in a few months?". What do you think.

Upon some gentle chiding from a friend last week about not playing basketball enough and not loving it enough I've been getting on the court more and more in the past few weeks.

Just like this...except not at all like this.

In the NYTimes a few weeks back there was an article about how when Michelle Robinson first started dating the President she asked her brother Craig Robinson to play pickup with Barack, because there was a belief in the Robinson family (a family with a strong basketball pedigree) that you could tell a lot about a person by the way they played basketball. Unfortunately I can't find the article, but when I do I'll link to it. (It was from Time). Well I would agree 100% with that. Last week I played my first refereed game since I left New York, which was fun, except for this one guy on my team. This guy has all the gear, he is stronger than pretty much anyone out there, yet complains the most about fouls. I don't know if he can dunk, but he sure as hell can miss a ton of attempted dunks during warmups. He doesn't play defense. He doesn't come out of the game, and he is a horrendous shooter. When I play pickup with this guy and he's on the other team I just yell "shoot it" whenever he touches it. And he usually does. If you play you know someone like this.

So then I got to thinking, would I want to be in a group with this guy, or work with this guy? Probably not. So our reffed game last week was part of a grad league, and I was just subbing in for someone that couldn't make it. I was hoping we'd play the med school or the law school, but no, we get the School of Information. Five Chinese guys, three with identical black glasses, one white guy, and two white girls. So what does our no-defense-playing-horrible-shooting friend do as soon as the 5'1" girl takes a jumper...he sends into the 42nd row. That's cute, especially because we were up by about 20. I don't get too emotional out there on the court, but at one point I went to the bench and told someone to take him out. I got pissed, and now when I play against him and he makes a shot I say out loud "that dude is garbage, keep giving him that". My blood is boiling...

But back to the rec league game. So at one point the School of Information was making a bit of a run, and I couldn't understand how. But then I realized what was going on and let the ref in on a little piece of information, if you will. These guys were subbing on the fly, and right off the break like it was a freaking hockey game. I was in China for a few weeks back in 2004 and I played about a half an hour of pickup with my cousin and his Chinese friends, and there was absolutely no stoppage in play, so once that ball went through the hoop they just started up again. They clearly didn't know any better. It was amusing more than anything, and most importantly, no broken fingers, ankles, or noses.

And now to love love love. We had our Business School Prom/Formal last weekend. I will not bore you with prom nostalgia, but you can check it out here if you love schadenfreude. So what of Prom 2009. A bunch of nerds getting dressed up and possibly having their first and only night out of the year. Getting drunk, "acting a fool", stuffing their faces with cookies and cake, beer tears, fights, wine stained dresses. Yes ma'am, I have seen it all. How about an extra scoop of INFIDELITY on top of all that. If this event had a theme it would be "Infidelity Rules the Day". Who knew? Especially from the collective awkwardness that is business school. Maybe I don't mix it up with b-school folks as much as others, but good Lord, all the gossip and the drunken debauchery with people who were married or fiance-d or just in relationships. I would say that if you go to school here, and your significant other does not, there is a solid 40% chance you are being cheated on, or you are cheating on your (apparently not so) special someone. If your "other" is not in the US bump that up to 70%. What? Do you question this? Do you want stories? How about the one where the European girl comes to town and she's arguably "bschool cute" (nothing to aspire to, trust me) but engaged to her Slavic Prince Charming...but then basically started dating a piece of American Apple Pie with blonde hair and broke off the engagement. I suppose once you kind of granulate all these relationships it's kind of like Junior High, but now it's junior high with wedding rings and kids. I suppose junior high has kids these days though. The point being, MBA stands not for 'Masters of Business Administration', but for 'Married But Available'.

So if you want to do some due diligence on that potential mate, a) take them to the courts for a little pickup basketball, and b) take them to prom and feed a couple Makers rocks then witness them actually or metaphorically swat that little girl's shot into the 42nd row, and then make that decision of whether you want that person on your team for life.