That was fun! And a gratuitous celebrity tie-in.

I just got back from playing 3 hours of basketball at the gym. The first game I played in (the first game of the night), was by far the best basketball that I've been involved with since I arrived in Anchorage. The rest of the night was also quite good. The second best night? This past Monday. So I'd say things are looking up if these games weren't just a statistical blip!

Between games, I started chatting it up with one of the guys on the sidelines who I'd met on Monday night. Turns out the reason the games were so good is that a bunch of the guys playing play on the team for the army base located up here. Not sure why they decided to show up tonight, but I definitely appreciated it.

And that guy I was talking to? Turns out that he played basketball at LSU with Chris Jackson (who later changed his name to Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf-- I hope I spelled that correctly) after being high school rivals with him. Since I'm not sure that means anything to most people, Chris Jackson played at LSU in the early nineties and was featured by Sports Illustrated on its cover as possibly the best college player in the country. My sideline buddy played a little professionally overseas, but I didn't get a good sense of for how long. At the moment, he's recovering from a leg injury (shot in the leg while doing some bodyguard work*--and, no, I didn't ask for more details), but once he's recovered he has a tryout/workout lined up with the New Orleans Hornets arranged by his cousin...Scottie Pippen.

Nice to have a cousin who has that sort of pull. And nice of that cousin to do it.

I've now run into Scottie Pippen's cousin and Reuben Stoddard's (the American Idol singer) cousin in completely random situations. Bizarre. Even more bizarre, I remembered that I had had a basketball counselor in the early nineties at overnight camp who was a player for LSU, and my sideline buddy recognized the name as someone he had played with in school (the counselor's first name was Elmer, I think, but I can't remember his last name at all).

In other news, I know the Sixers have played the last two nights and I haven't commented on the games. They were pretty ugly, so I'm not sure you really want me to comment, but I'll put some thoughts together tomorrow. For now, I'm going to watch the rerun of the Lakers-Rockets game on ESPN while eating dinner (it's now 11:47 PM local time, so it's a bit of a late meal...).


*I learned about my sideline buddies gunshot wound on Monday night. As part of the same discussion, I learned that the other big guy in the game was also recovering from an injury-- the index finger (closest one to the thumb, right?) had been removed above the top knuckle as the result of an accident (and, again, I didn't ask for more details). I hadn't noticed anything unusual with his shot during the game, so he seems to be dealing with the loss pretty well. I thought I was tough for dealing well with my dislocated finder, but after talking with these guys I pretty much feel like a pansy. It's sort of like those NFL gear advertisements... (you know, the ones with the tag line "You wouldn't make it in the NFL...")