The little deputy turned 5 this year, and he announced he wanted to play basketball.  Our local recreation department has a Bitty Basketball League for 5-6 year olds.  The cut-off day is September 1.  The Little Deputy's birthday is September 1.  He is literally the youngest child in the league.

Naturally I decided to coach.  The Wizard of Westwood, John Wooden I am not, but I am a disciple of Coach Jim Beddall, the Sage of Selinsgrove.  Coach Beddall was my basketball coach from 7th grade through high school.  I manned the spot on the bench next to Coach Beddall for 6 years.  I couldn't really dribble, shoot, pass, and was way too slow to play defense, but I could tell if the low post guy was overplaying our #4 guy, and that the back door pass was open on the low post all day, and I would tell Coach.  He really wouldn't listen.  He'd usually grumble something about why did he quit smoking?

I enlisted my law partner as my assistant coach.  She afterall, played with Pokey Chatman, who coached a national championship team.  We are one degree away from basketball glory, there is no way we can't, at a minimum, field a competitive team, with all this pseudo coaching greatness sort of osmosizing throuh our veins.

We have 11 kids on our team.  9 boys, including the Little Deputy and 2 girls, one of which is going to be better than Candace Parker, and you heard that here first.  We play on a regulation sized court, except with an 8' basket.  Our first practice was an exercise in cat herding.  About 4 of the 11 kids can dribble.  3 of the 11 can consistently reach the basket.  7 of the 11 kids on the team, including the Little Deputy have no prayer of getting the ball anywhere near the basketball goal this year.

At one of the practices, I actually tried to install Coach Beddall's motion offense.  I have no idea what in the world I was thinking.  The idea of setting a pick and coming off it, or bounce passing on the baseline was so foreign to the kids, I probably would have been better off teaching them calculus while speaking Mandarin Chinese.  Fortunately, I have Coach Wendy, who discerned, give the ball to one of the kids that can dribble, and have them pass to one of the kids that can reach the basket.  Yahtzee!  We had an offense.  After a month of practice, we had our first game yesterday.

One of the rules in our league is that every kid on the team has to play a full quarter.  Great rule.  We had 10 kids show up for the game yesterday.  I played the best 5 players in the first quarter and we jumped out to a commanding 2-0 lead.  Because of our swarming 2-3 zone defense, the other team never even shot the ball.  Not one time.  During the second quarter, I put in the other 5 kids.  Our swarming 2-3 zone defense, turned into the run away from the ball defense.  The Little Deputy spent most of the second quarter telling me he had to poo poo, when he should have been playing defense.  (He did in fact spend the entire 3rd quarter in the bathroom poo-pooing).  We did not get a shot off during the entire second quarter.  However, #2 on the opposing team, channeled Kobe Bryant and lit us up for 5 points.  After the second quarter, Coach Wendy and I determined #2 on the opposing team, was the ONLY player on their team that could reach the basket.  He was it.  I then switched to the soon to be famous "Chaos 5 Defense'.

I invented it  yesterday during half-time.  The Chaos 5 defense involves putting all 5 of your defensive players on one guy, which in this case was #2.  The Chaos 5 defense worked wonderfully.  The other team did not get a shot off in the second half, and we forced 9000 turnovers.  Coach Wendy's daughter, the next Candance Parker, lit up the scoreboard for 2 huge buckets, and we won the game 6-5.

I was crazy happy. The kids were crazy happy. The Little Deputy's fiber intake seems to be clicking on all cylinders.   Every kid on the team played at least half the game.  All the kids had fun. Just 9 more games to go, and then its March Maddness.  Yes, the Bitty Basketball League has a March Madness!  Nolan Richardson used to call his Razorback team 40 minutes of hell.  I think our games can be called 24 minutes of confusion and chaos!  But alot more fun!