I am finding the cultural differences between Thai and Canadian basketball players a little bit frustrating. Thai male bball players don't consider bball a priority. School comes first which makes sense, but so does spirit week activities and Robotics trips to Japan and many other activities.
I currently have 16 players on my roster and on any given practice (2 a week) I have 7 or 8 players out. Starter or sub, it makes little difference. However, come game time I am likely to have 14 players show up.
In Canada I always had the rule, that if you missed the practice before a game then you did not play during that game. If I tried to impose that rule then I the team would get clobbered by the opposition. The level of play is quite high and the teams are well coached. The other teams actually have offensive and defensive systems in place, but that may be a function of having the same coach in place over a number of years.
In my case, I am having difficult getting offensive and defensive systems in place due to practice participation. We are good at running and gunning but do not play defense very well or run anything on offense. Our length of possession is probably 10 seconds out of the potential 24 seconds. We also shoot the ball poorly. Last game we shot 27% and most of the missed shots were in the paint with no rebounder in position.
Despite the above, we won our first game 46-27 and lost our second game 66-64 with us being up by 1 with 24 seconds to go and the other team ran their offense, reversed the ball and hit a trey leaving us 2 seconds and a hail Mary shot.
The frustrating part for me, is that we could be really good! Spirit week is over but exams start soon, but I hope to get our systems in place.
In the meantime, I am adjusting my expectations ...
Family life is good. Jaidan is back in nursery school (9 am to 3 pm) and I am enjoying being busy with basketball. My buddy John just got married and his Thai wife hasn't stopped smiling since :-)
My buddy Harvey arrives from London for 3 months on the 30th. He is staying in the same apartment building as me. My buddy Ashley and Bridgett arrive on January 4th and they too are staying in my building for their first month of 5 in Thailand.
TTYL
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