confrontation with glory-seeking dad

Again, 3 assists?

 

And SIX (6) turnovers.

I'd ask the coach, "Why is a PG who turned the ball over 6 times playing 32 minutes? You think you might have somebody on the bench who might not turn the ball every other time he comes down court??"

 

What I truly would (and have) said in that situation is:

"The game story is not mean to list every player or every score. That's why we have the boxscore where your son's name and his four points are listed. In the future if he scores in double digits or makes a key play, then he may be in the story."

 

as long as that paper does agate...

 

It should.

 

His name was in the agate, but not until Friday morning under the "late scores" section.

The kid in question is a point guard, and many of his turnovers occured after the losing team went to a full-court press late in the second half and early in the fourth quarter. The team switched to press defense when the point guard wasn't expecting it or whatever.

The kid is a pretty good point guard, and he never scores much. I looked back at our archives of what he's done. Most points this season was nine during a regular season blowout win over some sad-sack team.

As luck would have it, the kid came out like a champ in the tourney finals Saturday night. He drove the length of the court with 12 seconds left and scored the tying shot that sent it into overtime. His team then pulled out the win.

As luck would have it, another stringer covered that game while I was across town on a girls' tourney final. The stringer interviewed the kid afterwards and told me that the kid only said, "yeah" and "no" and getting him to talk in any detail took an act of congress.

Thanks for all the help guys. This board is much better than a therapist, and much cheaper, too!

 

Wrong. You owe each of us $500.

 

And I'm also going to write you a scrip for Paxil. You're looking a bit pale.

 

Don't listen to Alley. He's in bed with the pharmaceutical companies.

Eat some chicken soup, wear ear plugs and nod to parents.

 

I went to one of the drive-thru medical clinics a year ago with some type of flu or strep throat kind of thing. The doctor prescribed a Z-pack of antibiotics, gave me a shot of tetracycline and offered me a prescription for Paxil as well.

I said, what the fuck would I need Paxil for.

He said it helps a lot of ailments.

Snake-oil, is what I said in response.

No shit, they give Paxil out for anything.

 

Sirs, Madames,

I'd rather deal with a father than a mother. I've saved the one story from yore.

Scourge of the paparazzi nothing beside wrath of the hockey mom
The Bugle, Date: Way back, as indicated by cultural touchstones mentioned.

TOO often lately we've been treated to the bleatings of celebrities and near-celebrities whose lives have supposedly been made miserable by the tabloid press and nosy lensmen.

The puck scribe works several leagues under even the remotely famous, but must cope with a scourge no less intrusive and far more menacing: the hockey parent.

Steven Seagal can grouse about braving a phalanx of telephoto lenses en route to a blowfish dinner, but he would cower in a showdown like the one I suffered through the other day.

I was not only introduced to the mother of a junior player, but introduced as a hockey writer. I wish I had disavowed my occupation.

"What do you think of my son?" she asked, bypassing the amenities.

I had seen her son play a dozen times in the past two years. He was, in fact, the leading scorer on his major-junior team. He also was not selected in his National Hockey League draft year. "As good as he's ever going to be," scouts deemed.

The situation called for diplomacy, if not dishonesty. "Your son's a good, tough player," I said.

True. One night I saw him score on a breakaway on the road and then skate by the home team's bench to look for a scrap. He yelled epithets that would have made Andrew Dice Clay blush.

"He wasn't drafted because of his father, right?" the woman said. "Go ahead, you can say it."

Oh, boy. I knew not only the kid but also his father, a tough athlete in his own right but a fellow whose series of battles with booze and drugs was headed to a seventh game. As a result, he and his wife had long ago cleared marital waivers.

Here, though, diplomacy couldn't override the truth.

"No matter how bad your ex might be, if a team projected your son as a pro, they would have drafted him," I said. "Teams don't hold parents against the players.

"Scouts figure that your son is a good junior player, but that he won't develop far beyond that -- good enough to star in junior, probably play in high minors as a pro, but not to be a NHLer."

There are occasions that beg for the lie of convenience. This was one of those situations.

The mother's profane tirade proved that her son might have been a chip off the father's block as an athlete, but his mouth definitely came from her side of the family.

"I saw him play against Joe Thornton," she said. "He's nuthin'. He can't do anything that my son can't do."

I was too polite to point out that Thornton, the first pick over-all in the 1997 draft, could pull a quarter-million out of his savings account without putting a dent in it, and her son couldn't. Right now her son might be almost as good as Thornton, but only because the Boston's future star has a cast on his arm.

"With Thornton's size the scouts can project him becoming stronger and his skills getting better. Scouts might guess wrong about a kid making it sometimes, but they almost never guess wrong about a kid not making it."

Sure, there are stories of players who weren't selected in their draft year, who walk on, try out and eventually make the grade. Mike Keane worked the miracle in Montreal years back, and is now a $2-million-a-season guy in New York. Dave Poulin had a long and productive career skating out of the college ranks.

Fact is, with 26 teams, with a draft that digs through 400 juniors to find 40 that will be pros of long standing, with the money at risk, it's ever less likely that a player will escape the scouting dragnet.

There are still misses, yet those who are passed over once are likely to be discovered later. Take the Leafs' Mike Johnson. A late-developing kid who didn't show much as a U.S. collegian before his draft year, Johnson was passed over in his draft year. Yet a couple of years later everybody knew about him and he was the object of a bidding war.

In Ottawa, winger Magnus Arvedsson went undrafted as an 18-year-old, but a lot of teams knew his shoe size this summer before Ottawa drafted him as a 25-year-old. Good players are found. Ex-husbands and politics don't factor in it.

The mother was not swayed. "My son's as good as Thornton. He practices with pros and he's as good as them. It's his father's fault. We've got an agent, and if he doesn't find a job for my son we'll find another agent."

What would Steven Seagal do if he had to face down this mother of all hockey mothers? Probably wish that he were famous.

YHS, etc

 

The dad has to be lying. If the kid plays 32 minutes, even with those kind of stats, he must be making some great defensive stops, one of which had to have been mentioned somewhere. Unless it's common there for kids to play full games. I can't remember the last time I saw it except on very small teams.