Best athlete you ever played against?

What just happened?

 

I bet he was no Air Bud.

 

Is it possible that Jimmy King just travels the earth, looking for pick-up basketball games to play in?
He strolls onto the court in a generic gold uniform vaguely reminiscient of Michigan's unis and says, "Hi! I'm Jimmy King! You may remember me from such classic games as the 1991, 1992 and 1993 NCAA championship games. I was one of the Fab Five. One of the sucky ones."
Jimmy King then imparts wisdom and life lessons, maybe throws down a dunk or two to wow the rubes, and moves on to the next town to continue his life's mission.

 

That sounds like a clip from the Simpsons.

 

I was thinking more "Fresh Prince."
Will misses the last shot in the big game and is feeling down. Jimmy King walks into the empty gym and tells a joke about Chris Webber's timeout and some story about how he once missed a big shot to lose a game. Will starts to realize it's not the end of the world, and he and Jimmy King play a little one-on-one. Will hits a ridiculously-filmed dunk on Jimmy.
Then they share an awkward around the neck hug and walk off as the credits roll and the applause track kicks in.

 

Honestly? You should have brought a baseball with you, walked out to pitcher's mound, and made the softball players try to hit that from 43 feet. Good luck.

It's not the pitcher. It's the mound. It's too close. Kids throw no-hitters all the time, come back two hours later, throw another no hitter. And it's not because they're Nolan Ryan.

 

Windmill is a natural motion, throwing a baseball is about the worst thing you can do for an arm.

 

The MasterCraft Pro Wakeboard Tour made its debut in my small town last year.

For media day, the tour sent Zane Schwenk (an X Games gold medalist) and tour star Andrew Adkison. Schwenk drove the boat while Adkison gave pointers to me and a co-worker. Our photog shot/filmed the whole thing while on the boat with the four of us (Schwenk, Adkison, co-worker and myself).

I was horrendous at wakeboarding. My co-worker wasn't bad. After the two of us were done, Adkison and Schwenk pulled off some awesome moves (which were actually far more tame than what they did in the competition).

Two cool dudes.

 

I answered this one in the original thread, but I'll do it again since the guy was recently on the NBA All-Star team for the first time: Zach Randolph.

He went to the big city school in my county, while I was at one of the schools out in the cornfields. But, we all played together in the same, very competitive summer league at a neighboring town. Our high school varsity teams would have likely crossed each other in the old sectional, but my freshman year coincided with the first year of class hoops in Indiana. I did play against his brother in middle school.

Second best player was Dominic James, four year starter at Marquette and Big East's Frosh of the Year back in '06. I played D-3 ball and he'd come to our open gyms during the fall before his season started to get some run while his teammates were playing football. I covered him once, too, so I think he is the only guy I ever covered and played against (albeit pickup ball).

 

Freshman year at Purdue, I played intramural basketball with a guy I went to HS with and he had a 6-6 roomate who was a redshirt TE on the football team, so we were pretty good (no thanks to me).
We get into the second round of the intramural tournament that season and face off against the team that eventually ran through the whole thing and made a mockery of every team it faced.
Its main cog was a Prop-48 freshman, who had intramural as he only outlet that seson.
His name: Glen "Big Dog" Robinson.

 

I once worked a walk off Ken Patterson, who went on to pitch for the White Sox and Cubs. He struck me out on (I think) seven pitches the other two times I faced him.