First off, I’d like to apologize for the lack of updates here on The Blue Workhorse in the last week. We’ve had difficulties with our internet access at the home base for the past week, and we are hoping those problems will be fixed in the next couple of days.

I’ve also been busy with contests, weddings, work, etc. that have limited my abilities to get to public Internet access. Until everything is corrected, we’ll try to get a post in here and there using public access when we have time.

Now onto a tragic tale:

I would like to thank Atlanta’s 790 The Zone for the opportunity to participate in their annual Atlanta Hawks’ Dribble ‘Til You Drop contest on Friday.

Unfortunately, I blew my chance to win the grand prize of Atlanta Hawks’ season tickets on the lower level, an autographed jersey and Meet & Greet with the Hawks player of the winner’s choice, and dinner for two at STATS sports restaurant just down the street from Philips Arena.

But before I get to how I blew my opportunity to meet Josh Smith, Marvin Williams, Al Horford, or Joe Johnson, here’s how the competition went down:

After signing up and being chosen to participate, all contestants showed up at Philips Arena from 10-10:45. There was registration and waiver signing to be done, but at 11, everyone took the floor with their own basketball and began dribbling and dribbling and dribbling…and dribbling and dribbling.

From 11 AM to 7 PM (or until there was only one dribbler remaining), contestants had to maintain a legal dribble AKA no carrying the basketball (ala Iverson’s crossover) using their left, right, or both hands. Yea, it was kinda weird that you could legally double dribble. Of course for anyone that had played basketball previously, dribbling with both hands (simultaneously) was probably more difficult than dribbling in a traditional manner.

Nevertheless, contestants had to maintain a continuous dribble for 8 hours. Well, except that there was a 5 min restroom/snack/rest break every hour. That was the extent of the rules for competing, and then at the end of the 8 hours, if there were multiple contestants remaining, which there were, there would be a raffle for the grand prize and 5 other prize packs of a pair of tickets.

Now to the contributing factors of and how I blew it:

  • First, having to work the night before (night shift from 11 PM to 7 AM) was not beneficial to winning a contest that involves standing up and doing a repetitive motion, which becomes very boring after only 20 or 30 minutes, for 8 hours.
  • Having a flat basketball is definitely not advantageous to winning a dribbling competition. That’s why I attempted to get a good leather basketball that was fully pumped up from my buddy Roshad, who just lives up the street from me. Unfortunately, Roshad failed me. I also couldn’t find my basketball pump anywhere in the house, so I left with a basketball that would bounce back up to only my knees when dropped.
  • Luckily, there was a guy at the competition that allowed me to borrow the pump he had brought. I pumped it up thinking it was good only for it to still take a tremendous effort for me to bounce the ball back up, which I dealt with for the first two hours until I could borrow the pump again during the second 5-min break (I was using the restroom during break #1 after downing a Mountain Dew Code Red to make sure I was awake enough for the drive down to Atlanta).
  • Hour 1: During the first hour, I chose to just walk around the square of the free throw lane for the majority of the time. I also walked up and down the court and around the perimeter of the court a few times.
  • Hour 2 (first 30 min): The fatigue from not sleeping began to set in during the first 20 min of the second hour. Personally, when I’m tired, I have to keep my brain active in order to stay awake. Otherwise, I’ll stray off into a daydream and then ultimately into sleep. Usually, the easiest way is to do something creative (writing), talk to someone, or do something active, such as exercise or dancing.
  • To stay awake during hour two, I began to “dance” with the ball when a good hip-hop song would come on. (Side Note: “Dancing” with the ball is something I’ve done since high school. During warmups in high school, I’d go out to half court after the initial layup lines every team runs and then pretty much make a fool of myself as I danced and pranced around to the beat of the music while I dribbled and passed with a teammate. I’d do all kinds of stupid stuff like faking passes, throwing no-look passes, sliding around while dribbling, and getting some fan interaction. I’d like to think it was pretty entertaining for anyone that showed up to the game before tip-off or for anyone that returned from their post-girls-game restroom/snack break.) This made me one of the favorites for the radio’s event workers and cameras as undoubtedly, someone moving around and doing something was more interesting than all of the guys that just stood in the same exact place and dribbled while listening to their IPods.
  • Hour 2 (last 25 min):During the second half of hour two, I went to the corner of the court and talked to one of the Philips Arena workers (they had to sit their doing nothing for the entire 8 hours). I had my back to the radio stations’ workers, who were all hanging out at the scorer’s table. Evidently, they had to see both of my hands to assure I wasn’t cheating in any fashion, so after the second break they made a rule that you had to stay inside the boundaries of the court (had to stay inbounds).
  • You wouldn’t think it would have so much of an effect, but doing the repetitive motion of dribbling a basketball, even if you continually switch hands and attempt to rest, really puts a strain on the body. After hour one, the UCL that allows you to extend and retract your arm at the elbow started aching. By the middle of hour two, my wrists and fingers had stiffened and ached. During hour three, my neck was aching from looking down to assure my dribble. After hour four, the tips of my fingertips were in pain where they were being rubbed slick. The competition just kept wearing down my body, and not having slept couldn’t have helped.
  • Hours 3-5: During the last 5 minutes of the second hour, I had started talking to a couple of guys in one corner of the court (unfortunately, I never got their names). One guy was from Florida and the other guy had lived in Chicago, Texas, and California. We ended up talking about all types of topics, including TV shows (now and from the 80s), movies, music, but mostly sports. These guys were really down to earth guys, so we just hung out and chatted about everything until I blew it.
  • 5 min prior to the end of Hour 5: I blow it! There was only a little bit of time left in the 5th hour (5-10 min at the most), and the radio workers put on a good DMX song (DMX despite his idiocy is my favorite rapper), so I started to get into the song and was dancing around with the ball trying to loosen up my legs and shoulders some after having been standing in the same spot for a while. I was messing around and went to do a low crossover from my right to left hand, and when I crossedover, whether from the flat ball, the fatigue in my arms, or the amount of dust and dirt that had collected on the ball (my hands were black when I left the competition from the dirt that was on the floor), the ball didn’t make it all the way back up to my left hand. The ball slipped away and bounced maybe three times, before I got to the ball and continued dribbling the ball.
  • However, from behind me I heard one of the workers start yelling and then told me I was out. I tried to play it off like it was something I had done on purpose, hoping they hadn’t been paying attention. After consulting with one of the male workers, who tried to help me out saying that he didn’t see me mess up, one of the other female workers came out of no where to tell me I had to go.
  • There was nothing I could do to dispute the worker’s official call. I drained one last shot (we had been allowed to shoot before the contest began and during the 5-min breaks), and then walked off the court.
  • After heading off the court, former UGA star and Cincinnati Bengal David Pollack (he’s a radio host for 790, and they were broadcasting live from the event at 4 PM) came over and talked to me about what happened, which was a pretty cool consolation since I’m a big Georgia fan. However, it still would have been better to have season tickets and the rest of the prizes.

Nonetheless, it was a fun experience (besides the sore muscles) getting the chance to be on the court at Philips Arena. I got a chance to shoot some true NBA three-pointers (yea it’s longer than you think when watching on TV or in the crowd), and I got to chat with Pollack for a couple of minutes, so I can’t complain about the experience.

Now…I just have to wait until next year.

Shotgun Spratling

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