__ the Basketball

“Man, Sharron Collins can really shoot.

Huh? What?

Heroin? …from the hip? …off a text message? Skeet? Any sucker who creep up on him?"

Classic.

I’ve believed that “score the basketball” not only was redundant, but a sign of language decay.

El Gato no gustan los perros flacos…con el basquetbol. Que lastima! Voy a la la playa!

Translation:
The Cat doesn’t like the skinny dogs . . . with the basketball. What a pity! I go to the the beach!

Had a coach tell us repeatedly to, “Do the little things it takes to win basketball games!!!”

Sadly, he never explicitly told us what those little things were. We sort of had to figure that out each time we were kicked out of practice.

There’s no way Paulino makes that shot against West Virginia in the Sweet 16 without … a basketball.

James Naismith could really invent that basketball.

5 minutes of commercials followed by 5 minutes of pitiful sponsor laden Kellogg fortified pre-game, followed by the tip-off and then more commercials followed by Clark Kellogg, more commercials, and finally…. some you guessed it….. the-basketball game.

…. before quickly going to commercials and then switching you (via Kellogg split screen magic) to another game just as you were hooked into previous game.

Scipio,

During a basketball gme, there are occasions when the identification of objects is essential for clarity’s sake. For instance, if an announcer says, “The Aggies really like to pound it inside,” what is a listener to think? Given the subject of this particular statement, identiction of the direcct object is essential to the fan’s understanding of the proclivitiy being referenced.

Also, the prepositional object of the statement is taken to be understood; however, the subject of the statement once again requires that an object be identified, so as to avoid the confusion which would otherwise, and with great certainty, result.

Don’t bitch about Kellogg, lest they bring back Packer.

And so it was, that, on that bright and brilliant Thursday in March, as bluebonnets twinkled their bright white eyes across the highways and byways of this great state of Texas, 13 young men wearing another color, the color of summer sunsets and East Texas clay, made their way to another state, North Carolina, to face a team from a third state, that is neither Texas, nor North Carolina, but is instead, Minnesota, for a first ever meeting to contest supremacy in the sport … of basketball.