Practice, practice, practice

Atlas was munching on his food, this time making sure he wasn't sitting anywhere anyone else would want to sit, just to avoid yesterdays mishaps. But despite his best efforts someone did decide to come up to him, but they weren't looking for trouble. It was one of the more popular kids at school, DeShawn. DeShawn was a imposing 6ft tall already, despite being in the same grade as Atlas.

DeShawn sat next to him and said "Hey man, I know its tough with John and stuff. He's always like that." They proceeded to have a nice conversation as they ate together. During the next class, he decided to see if he could see DeShawns stats, and it worked!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[STATS!]

LAYUPS: A+

DUNKS: A+

SHOOTING: B+

PASSING: B

DRIBBLING: A+

DEFENSE: A+

MISC SKILLS: B+

Remember, all skills are in comparison to your age group! :)

[BODY]

MENTAL AGE: 12

PHYSICAL AGE: 12

HEIGHT: 6'0

MAX HEIGHT: 6'9

(physical stats;)

HEIGHT: A+

SPEED: B+

STRENGTH: A+

VERTICAL: A

STAMINA: B+

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Atlas decides he must be on the basketball team with those stats, so he better get good to catch up.

After school he heads straight for the gymnasium, he needs to get good and FAST. As he walks in he hears the sound of dribbling, and dunking surprisingly. He looks at sees DeShawn practicing his dribble moves into his rim grazing dunks. Atlas is awestruck at the sight, and thinks that DeShawn might be the youngest person to ever dunk.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[NEW QUEST!]

You have unlocked the quest system! Complete challenges for amazing rewards!

[SCORE ON DESHAWN]

DeShawn is extremely gifted. Score on him once, in a game to 11 to complete this quest.

REWARDS:

+1 Letter grade for scoring

+1 Letter grade (Any)

BONUS:

Make DeShawn miss a shot.

+2 Letter grade defense

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This shouldn't be too hard, should it? All he has to do is score once, and DeShawn needs to miss once, right? He walks up to DeShawn and says "Would you mind playing a game of 1v1? First to 11, 1s and 2s, losers ball." "Sure, bro." DeShawn eagerly responds.

They check up, and Atlas gets ball first. He had a strategy, if he could just keep running around and tire out DeShawn, he could easily get a open layup. So that's exactly what he did. He ran from corner to corner around the three point line, but DeShawn was keeping up, and he was irritated.

DeShawn pokes the ball out of his dribble and gets a steal. He runs up to the basket for the easy dunk. Atlas's ball again. He attempts the same strategy again, and it fails. "That's a lame strat." DeShawn says. "Curry does it!" Atlas barks back.

The score is now 9-0, DeShawn leading, and he is thoroughly disappointed. He thought this kid would at least put up some kind of fight. It's Atlas's ball once more and he finally realizes a new strategy is needed.

He didn't know what that would be. But he did know one thing. He was going to score. He blows by DeShawn, so fast that he didn't even realize it was happening. By the time DeShawn realized what was going on, Atlas was already past him.

DeShawn sprinted back towards Atlas, as he was now on his hip. He couldn't catch up, because of how fast Atlas was moving, but he was still keeping close. Atlas knew this was his only chance to score. He remembered from his previous life that if he went with the easy overhand layup it would be blocked, but going with the underhand would be more difficult, but harder to block.

There was only one thing he could do, and that was the underhand layup. In all honesty, he didn't think he could make it considering his F tier layups, but he had to try anyways. He leaped, with all his might. He managed a 3 foot jump, shocking DeShawn.

He hit the clean finger roll into the basket and it bounced three times. Atlas waited in anticipation, and jumped in celebration when it finally went in. "YEAH BABY!" He screamed. "Bro, its just one point, but its FINALLY my ball." DeShawn couldn't understand his excitement, but he was amazing by his jump.

Atlas checks the ball and gets on defense. Atlas is sweating buckets, despite his score. He knows that he still should get a defensive stop, but that might be even harder than scoring, considering the massive size difference.

DeShawn sizes up Atlas. He wants to go for a 3 (2 points) to seal up the game, but he knows that Atlas could probably jump high enough to block it. He decides to just continue running and dunking for the remainder of the game. He tries to blow by Atlas but Atlas sticks with him.

Atlas isn't doing any considerable defense, considering his size, but it is worrying if he wants to finish over him. He jumps up to get a easy layup but Atlas jumps too. Not high enough to block the shot, but just high enough to contest it. DeShawn ends of missing his first shot of the game thanks to Atlas's defense.

"LETS GO!" Atlas says in a voice far to big for his size. "That was pretty nice defense, not gonna lie." DeShawn says surprised. He gets the rebound anyways, and does the easy lay up. 10-1. Its Atlas's ball again. DeShawn expects him to drive, so he plays looser defense. Indeed Atlas does drive, but he has a idea. When he's driving he does a sorry attempt at a step back to shake DeShawn off him.

It works a little, so he shoots the short midrange. He thinks its open, but its not. DeShawn shows off his vertical as well getting a nasty snatch block and going for the open lay, ending the game. "Good game, man! Your better than I thought you were!" DeShawn says.

"Thanks?" Atlas responds at the subtle rudeness but he doesn't mention it. "I need to uh, go to the bathroom." Atlas says. "Uh, ok." DeShawn replies. Atlas didn't really need to go to the bathroom, in reality he wanted to check out his quest rewards.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[QUEST SUCCEEDED!]

REWARDS:

+1 LETTER GRADE LAYUP

+1 ALLOCATABLE LETTER GRADE

+2 LETTER GRADE DEFENSE

[PRACTICE REWARDS]

You practiced for the first time! Here's what you learnt!

+1 LAYUP

+2 DEFENSE

You may notice the lack of 'Letter Grade' this is because you get sent up one level (B to B+, instead of B to A). These still are very visible upgrades!

(Update)

S.A.M users skills will now degrade at a rate of X/3, similar to the rate of learning new skills (which is X⋅3)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Once again Atlas is left awestruck. Not only by the stats but also by the new update. If he focuses on one skill for a few weeks, he should get really good with his other skills not facing that much of a decline, but that was something he should think about later. He went back to the gym only to find that DeShawn was gone, what a shame. He should get to practicing though.

He practices his layups and his dribbling for the rest of the day, until the janitor came to kick him out. Even then, he practiced on the way home, dribbling on the sidewalk. He's not letting DeShawn be better than him for very much longer.