Ever hear of “walking pneumonia”? I hadn’t, until my son was diagnosed with it last week. I said, is that like a walking taco? My wife didn’t think it was funny. My son had started feeling bad the week before; went to the doc, they saw nothing, he just has to fight it off. Weekend came, weekend went, and… he didn’t fight it off. He had ups and downs, but it was still there. Back to the doc again; turned out to be a good call by mom. This time it came back with “walking pneumonia”; antibiotic time.
It’s cross country season, but he missed his first meet because he wasn’t feeling well; his 2nd meet was this past Friday, the 3rd day of antibiotics. He wanted to run, but doctor’s orders did not agree. You’re just getting over pneumonia, get out there and run a mile and a half as fast as you can… haha. Smart move to be a spectator. After all, the next big event was on Saturday, the 3v3 tournament sponsored by the Chicago Bulls. Considering it was another day later, and only half court with one substitute player, IF he was feeling OK… he was, and off we went. Last year he played in the same tourney and finished in 2nd place… so close. This year they’d run it back with the same team name, and one different player. How’d it go?
The first game was easy… forfeit; wtf?! Only one kid from the other team showed up; that kind of sucked, although for my recovering son, maybe this was a good thing. The 2nd game wasn’t close; our team outclassed these other boys pretty easily. My son played well. He was hitting his outside shots, and also driving to the rim for buckets. My favorite in that game was his “and 1” where he got fouled and spun it up over the rim, off the backboard, and in; he hit the free throw too. This setup the final and deciding game. 2-0 team vs 2-0 team for the chance to go to the semis next weekend.
The game started a bit rough. The other team had this really tall kid, but he wasn’t the problem. It was this other kid, who was hitting everything, scoring the first 10 points for this team, as they clung to an early lead. Once our boys figured this out, and stuck with him, he started to cool off, and somebody from our team started to heat up. Once one of our boys figured out it was smarter to go to the rim instead of shoot from the outside, that started things in the right direction; they couldn’t guard him. Actually, the other two boys did well also… one of them doing a little bit of everything, one of them shutting down their big kid. Then, my son got hot… he was hitting everything, outside, inside, so much so, he had to do a heat check later in the game… just shoot it from anywhere… it didn’t go in, but enough of them did, and the boys will advance to play in the semis. Afterwards, the ref told him he liked his game… called him a sniper. I smiled.
You could tell my son wasn’t 100% out there, but whatever percent he was, was good enough. Obviously, he’s very familiar with the “flu game”… one of my personal favorites of all-time. For his performance in this one, I’m calling it the pneumonia game. Next weekend he’ll be 100%; hopefully all the boys will be, and they can bring it home this year. Can’t wait.
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