Basketball season has started, and we were going to play at Springbrook High as visitors. When we got there, the place was packed because everybody wanted to see this game even though it was just a scrimmage game.
The school decided to still make money off this game by charging money at the door, being so shameless. We went to greet everybody from the Spring Brook team before the match started. One guy from their group said that I should take it easy on them. This made me chuckle a bit as he told me that he was a fan of mine. His other teammates got mad and pulled him away with embarrassment written on their faces. Just a reminder of my team:
Point Guard Starter: Iso
Bench: D Rose(transfer)
Shooting Guard Starter: Eazy
Bench: Dan
Small Forward Starter: Brione
Bench: Breeze
Power Forward Starter: Flex
Bench: Swin
Center Starter: Momba
Bench: Kevin Love(transfer)
The game went underway as we won the jump ball, Momba passed the ball to Iso who started to arrange for the attack. ISO passed it to Brione, who quickly rushed past his defender to lay it up, giving us the first point even though I wanted the first point of the season and last season of my high school basketball career. I was still happy to give it to Brione and nobody else. The game continued since I was back to 100% I did a few shots not to discourage the other team. I went to sit on the bench for the rest of the first quarter. Otherwise, they wouldn't have any chance of coming back. During the second quarter game, the game was heated. The two new transfer students Derrick Rose and Kevin Love had come in to play just to get to feel for the games.
D Rose was not doing much due to being defended heavily while the center K Love was doing as he pleases inside the post. Spring Brooks teams center couldn't stop K Love, and that's when the coach decided that when I was out of the game, he would play K Love because Momba wasn't much of a scorer, but a defender and that complimented my game since I like to score more and not defend.
We were winning by 8 points by the second half. We went to rest in the locker room as a coach was talking about slowing it down and then speeding it up. I had no clue what he was talking about, but I guess he was just trying to run the time. D Rose came to speak to me and ask me why I only played for a few minutes when I was just getting hot. I told him that I was allowing them to play more, and this shocked him, giving him a grateful look. Rose had seen several of my games and had come to respect me; he told me that the only reason why he went to the school was to play with me, which surprised me. I told him I'd get to play with them in one of these games very soon, so he shouldn't sweat the small stuff. When the time was up, we went back out to start the second half. I was out on the court this half for a few minutes just to push our lead up. The guy who was guarding me was nervous about being playing against me. I shook my head and just quickly stole the ball from him without using any of my abilities. I ran down the court and dunked it and told him not to get intimidated by me and should play his game and never be scared to face off against someone. He was grateful for this small talk; after that, his confidence came back and was playing with more energy. Even though I stole the ball from him a couple of times using time freeze, I still respect his hustle. I played for the whole third quarter and got some points. We had a large margin because I was only shooting 3-pointers, and they had even put every single person on their team to guard me, but it still didn't work. I have learned a lot of new tricks playing football and training over the summer. Even at the festival, I gained some more knowledge on how to get rid of opponents and beat them off the dribble.
The game continued as we pushed the lead to 15 points and then to 20 before the fourth-quarter came to an end. We were not even taking the game seriously, and only the Springbrook bench was out there playing, so we allowed our chair to come out and duke it out with them too. The game ended with the points being 80-55, we had won by a large margin and weren't going to stop there. We went to thank the other team for the match and then went out to celebrate like we usually do. One person I noticed was in the stands cheering for our team was Sandra. I was surprised she still came out to see the game even though I knew she was probably forced by her friends just to come out and have some fun. It felt good to see her again and was hoping that maybe we can link back up again. I went to say hi to her after the game and had almost kissed her out of habit, and she nearly returned it too until her friend stopped the both us and reality set in as we both started laughing and gave an awkward hug. I asked her if she was going to celebrate with us at the restaurant, but she declined it as we went our separate ways. I was honestly happy to see she was doing good, and it seemed like she had gotten even more beautiful than before. I didn't want to chase after her because I'm not the type to do that. I respect boundaries, and if it's not meant to be God will send over another one or we will connect again. In my previous life, I always lived by the saying everything happens for a reason.