Two ought to do it.
This weekend Tony was involved in a basketball tournament featuring the Oak Hill Academy Warriors. Mind you, this is an invitational tournament. The school decides who they want to come and play. This year there were a total of 8 teams; however, Oak Hill is the big draw. Their alumni reads like a who’s who of basketball. Two notable graduates, of you follow professional basketball, are Brandon Jennings and Carmelo Anthony. To put it mildly, they are, in word: Great!
Coming into this game, there was no mystery. Everyone in the gym knew who would win and what it would look like. Yet, Tony was determined that he wanted to put up a good showing. He knew that they were out-manned, out-gunned, and out-whatever else you’d like. This years Oak HIll team has a number of players that are being recruited by colleges such as Duke, Kentucky, and Connecticut, all very well known colleges with rich histories of winning.
The game started well with us winning the tip-off and only being down by 10 – 11 after the first half of the first quarter. Oak Hill put their player, #21, Pe’Shon Howard on Tony and Tony showed him a few moves and made a quick 4 points. After being ahead by just 1 point, Oak Hill decided to take the gloves off and let the beatings begin. They started off by giving #21 a bit of help and double teaming Tony. Well, that effectively shut off our ability to get the ball down court or to get a shot. Soon, the score was 10 – 40. Yep, they outscored us 29 – 0 in short order. One of their players, #23, Roscoe Smith decided to hit 9 of 10 from 3-point range that night. He ended with 35 points!
From there it went down hill. There was nothing that we could do. Tony continued to bring the ball up, but with being double-teamed all the time, there was nothing much that he could do. Now, just to make sure, they decided to put #1 on Tony, Daron Lamb. He’s ranked, ummm, #2 in the COUNTRY as a point guard. After the game Tony said something like: Man! I could handle any of those guys and get around them, but Daron … man! He’s good! That’s high praise from Tony. Very high praise.
In the end, Tony finished with 7 points. He was not happy at all. He was rather disappointed that he didn’t have a better showing, mainly because there were coaches and recruiters watching. However, I told him that if he did the best that he could do, that’s all that he could do. He said that he’d forgotten about the recruiters. I told him that was a good thing because had he remembered during the game, he would have had a very bad game. I’ve seen it happen to lots of players, including him. The final score was 40 – 99. There was a small moral victory, though. They attempted to get 100 points and we prevented that. 
Although he really likes video, I really love documenting these moments and stories.
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2 Responses to “Unwanted attention and respect.”
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It sounds like a real compliment to Tony that he drew a double-team and/or the number one player to guard him. That had to be noticed by the coaches and recruiters as well. Nice job telling the story!
Congratulations for being invited to the tournament. Sounds like you have a son to be proud of in both athleticism and his maturity. Of course we know where he got both of those attributes, his mother.
Who all does Tony have looking at him and where is he interested in going?
This is a good action shot and shows the double teaming they did on Tony. I also, really like the color and sharpness of this image, you must have a really nice camera!