Ho ho, hold the phone.

With just one week and one game left till the end of the first half of season and the beginning of Christmas break, this will likely serve as my last post of 2012 folks!  Anyways, settle in, this post is going to be a doozey—consider it my Christmas present to you. We’ll discuss recompense later.

If you remember, we last left off with our big win over Wasserburg, the team everyone predicted to win our league. Turns out after that win, I got player of the week, which was alright.  Rhein Mein was our next challenge, and while they don’t boast the offensive talents like Wasserburg, their trademark scrappiness and fast play always seems to disrupt their opponents and promote ugly basketball. Road wins against them are always crucial. Ugly doesn’t quite do justice to how poorly we began this game, unfortunately. Far too many turnovers, missed lay-ups and zero execution highlight our first half performance that ended with us tied at 33. 

The second half was considerably better for us, especially in terms of taking care of the ball and we won 79-70. I finished with 32 and 9 and was player of the week again—I think reinforcing the importance of a win at Rhein Mein. But my favorite part about this game, with the exception of the win, was Sidney surprising me and Bri by showing up! I haven't seen her since season opener so it was great getting to catch up in person! 

I had my second European concert experience following the Rhein Mein game and it was every bit as amazing…basically. I don’t know if any concert will beat my back stage experience with Mr. Costner’s band last year in Berlin. Florence and the Machine was the band this time and Century Hall in Frankfurt was the venue. I went with one of my teammates whose girlfriend orchestrated the whole thing as a Christmas present for her. We had one of our trainers drive out an extra car with us so we could take it after the game. Fortunately our game was only 15 minutes away from the venue so we had plenty of time. Our tickets were for the standing area in front near the stage and it was perfect! Florence was incredible—if you don’t know her, seriously, get to know her, her voice is heavenly. Don’t be put-off or intimidated by the whole “and the machine” thing. Want to know my favorite part? Sure you do. Now, I am just gonna put this out there but here it is: the harp. The harp is sexy, I tell you what. Music would be strikingly better with more harps and Florence understood this and just had a crap load of harp mixing around on stage and I dug it. I could be wrong, but I am pretty certain harps are super easy to learn and cheap as chips, so we should all probably just go out and buy one and get this harp movement rolling. Good talk.

This weekend there were no league games and instead we had our Pokal games to play. We faced Opladen, a second division team about 4 hours away. We won 77-55 but this game sincerely felt like a loss. I know the final score suggests we won, but I assure you we lost in everything else in that game. We sucked. Granted, the team we played wasn’t good but for most of the game we were just as talentless. I was absolutely no exception—I finished with 8 points and the strong desire to throw-up. With that win we advance to the elite 8 for Pokal. We face Oberhausen next on January 5^th.

The snow has really started to come on strong the last week or so making the Christmas markets even more picturesque, and waaaay less tempting to attend. Still, as painfully cold as they have become, we repeatedly go and pretend to not freeze. We went to Wolfsburg last week which turned out to be real magical for me since I got some one on one time with my boys—Kobe and Dirk. Seeing their faces blown up 100 sizes too big on a wall really warmed my soul.

Our final game before break is at home against Marburg on Saturday. We beat them in our final preseason game on the road at the buzzer, but it’s safe to say that just as we have improved since then, they have too, so I expect a good game. Our Christmas party will follow the game and two days later I will be on a plane to LA. After booking our flights home, our management casually informed us that we might have some trouble returning to Germany—Merry Christmas! Ho ho, hold the phone. Evidently, the paperwork that they were supposed to do for our workers visas, allowing us to stay out here for more than 90 days at a time, well, they hadn’t done it. Wednesday morning we attempted to amend this by doing said paperwork only to find out that it takes weeks to get the documents back and traveling without them would guarantee problems at the border upon our return. Neat.

We made a Christmas card as a team this season and while I am not going to actually send it to any of you, I am going to post it below and we can just pretend that is the same thing. I hope you enjoy it and I truly hope everyone has a blessed holiday with friends and family. Rejoice in our Lord and Savior’s birth, the true meaning of CHRISTmas! God bless!