Dealing with intramural injustice

Dealing with intramural injustice

Two more days that will live in infamy: January 22: My B-league
intramural basketball team plays on Pauley Pavilion center court
Monday night, high off a dose of Thomas Calabro and Co.

We play "Hard Kore" to a tie at halftime. The game rolls on, and
our team goes up by a deuce with one tick on the clock. Hard Kore
inbounds it and, with two guys in his face, their go-to guy ices it
from behind the three-point arc.

Game over, we lose.

January 29, Wooden Center: Still reeling from the
UCLA-Louisville game, our team is 0-1 and needs a win to stay above
.500 and make the playoffs. To make a long story short, we cling to
a one-point lead this time. We call a time out. "Don’t foul," we
counsel.

They need to get the ball all the way down court and score in
exactly 2.0 seconds. I repeat, two seconds. Tyus Edney is in
Sacramento this evening.

They inbound it from the far baseline to a man just behind their
side of the tip-off circle. He bobbles the pass, dribbles it twice,
takes one and a half steps and throws it in all in two seconds –
the time it takes to fart. At least, that’s what the refs say.

Tempers roar as opposing players begin to trade threatening
remarks and mutual utterances of invective. Were we going to settle
this with an old-fashioned, all-out brewhaha? Evidently not.

The refs look confounded, disoriented and tentative in their
decision. But the call stands: The basket counts.

Of course, this changes the whole complexion of the game’s
aftermath, not to mention the game. "Yeah! We won," becomes "we
played like *#@% anyway." "Good game" becomes "what a bunch of
*#@%."

There went our B-league aspirations and fantasy of wearing the
"IM Champs" T-shirt. We were the IM Chumps – even had a T-shirt
made the next day.

We had unwittingly disrupted the cosmos, and now He was wreaking
divine intervention. I mean, once is gosh-darned unlucky, but
twice?! In the span of eight days?

Conclusions, conundrums:

1. Does a buzzer-beater mean one team outplayed the other, that
they unequivocally defeated the opposition? Shouldn’t there be a
rule against those? Maybe each game could begin with a disclaimer
such as, if the game is really close in the waning seconds, the
contest will be decided by rocks/paper/scissors, since that’s the
only fair way.

2. Intramurals are jacked. This is just the latest exposition of
the league’s inadequacies. Nix the footlocker suits and hire a
time-keeper! We had a shrill-voiced, other-team booster corruptly
running the clock throughout the game. Also, in last-second
situations, have one referee watch the clock, ready to blow the
whistle, and have the other monitor the court. Get an air horn.
Just spare me the last-second, birthday shot,
running-heave-off-the-glass-and-toilet-rimmed bucket.

Or else bring back instant replay.

Yoni TamlerComments to [email protected]