A Different Game 1

So Jake sat in the middle of the court and closed his eyes, whoever looked at him thought he was meditating, so Jake thought to start Imagination Training.

In front of him appeared a large court, it was like a gym and had no crowd, in front of him had 10 players and one that looked like a judge, he could not see anyone besides them, nor the technical opponent.

It had 5 players in totally yellow uniforms and 5 players in purple uniforms, the judge had a black uniform, all 10 players had the same height and the same body shape, and all had a face without eyes and mouths and no nose, a mannequin's face.

It looked a bit like a horror movie when he saw more after he got used to it, so a window appeared in front of him to choose a team, he chose the purple shirt team.

So in the window sent him to choose the positions and heights of the players of his team, he gave a different position for each one, for Center (C) he gave a height of 1.70 m, for Power forward (PF) he gave a height of 1.65 m, for the small forward (SF) he gave a height of 1.60 m even for the point guard (PG) and the shooting guard (SG).

When the window told him to choose the heights of the opposing team he chose the same heights as his team.

After all, Jake was already 1.46 m tall and would continue to grow in a short period of time, he could not adjust everyone's height before each workout, it would be a waste of time, so Jake saved his selection and asked not to change until he wanted to.

When the window told him to choose the abilities of the players of his team he chose to always be a level higher than him, be his teammates or opponents, so he always had to try to improve, the system warned that SS skills they could not be increased so everyone would have the same skills as Jake in which he had SS.

So after he hit all the details the player who had the position that Jake wanted to play the point guard (PG) went to his team's reserve bench and the game started.

Everything was equal to an ordinary game the judge whistled, the electronic table on top of each basket marked the time of possession of the ball, the score of the game, the playing time and the period in which the game was.

In the beginning the ball was sent to the top and the centers of the two teams disputed the possession, the first possession went to the yellow team, ours was the purple team, that's how the big screen was, it was a normal game, the only thing I heard was the sound of the sneakers on the court.

Their team and mine was well organized, the artificial intelligence that commands their thinking should work as a professional player and with a lot of experience, their PG passed the ball to the SG who walked towards our basket, I realized it was the only one out of position on the court and I went to score the PG of the opposing team.

So the SG stopped for a while thinking about the move and made a nice pass to the PG of them who made a Layup and scored the first score of the game, that's when I realized that they must all shoot well and have SS passes plus the defenses are quite bad, because mine was, it seems like it was going to be a frank game with many points, but what matters most to me was to train my skills and not the result of the game.

I soon went to the corner of the court to restart the game, I passed the ball to the SG of my team and we started to advance to the opposing court, when the marker of my SG came I asked for the ball back and the ball was quickly passed for me, what is the good thing about being the coach of the team whenever I asked for the ball or had them do something they would do.

Soon my marker also appeared so I soon came on top of him to test my dribbling training, I hit the ball from one side to the other waiting for an opportunity, then I made a left turn and I passed the right, and I passed through the opponent , it seemed that my training was effective, this gave me more confidence, as soon as I reached the 3-point lineup the two teams were in position.

I saw an opening and then I gave a pass inside the area of the key to the Center that received and soon made the basket.

So playing the game I understood what the system meant by the difference of making a pass with players on the move, it also depends a lot on the ability of my team to play not only my pass ability.

Soon the yellow team began its new attack, I understood with this that the difference of the result of the game would be my actions, if I were well we would win and if I were badly we would lose, after all, all the other players are very equal in ability.

So I went to the tight marking on the PG of their team, as I marked a lot on top he did not have space to dribble me, so he gave a pass to the SG of the team that came back to receive the pass, so I gave space for the opponent's PG to receive the pass so he could score him again, and that's what happened.

When the PG received the ball and I went to mark it, he gave a dribble to the right and he threw 3 points, when I looked back the ball did not enter and the C of my team took the rebound, so I realized that my plan to make room for the opponent was not a good idea.

Soon I received the C pass and ran to the opposing court, when I ran I realized that they could not reach my speed so I ran faster and did a layup to score 2 more points for my team.

As I was faster I thought that using speed was a good strategy the sooner I gave up the idea if I ran every time I hit the ball I could not take two periods of play without getting tired.

So what followed was a fairly balanced game, as this was the first time I was doing this training I was trying to understand the processes of the game, more like I saw, they had a basic pattern of the game and did as you teach the manual.

Another thing I noticed was that the opposing team tried quite a few shots of 2 and 3 whenever they had space, my team did not do it because I had to pass the ball, if the shoot was 2 I had them tighten the mark more if was 3 I had to give space, they averaged 1 of 20 shoot, so it was guaranteed that they would miss, and so my team was increasing the advantage on the scoreboard.

At the end of the first quarter, the score was 20 to 12 for our team, my team lost only 1 attack and their team lost more by trying a 3-point shoot, I saw that they did it because they were behind the scoreboard and because my team pressed the mark.

I managed in that first period to see how a real team worked in a game, and also how to give passes, so I understood that I could choose different positions in my team to train different skills, I did not want to train layups and my defense by the height difference between I and the opponents, so I understood why I could choose the height of the opposing team, I could train in that space several times so I had no reason to hurry.

In the second period we continued trying the plays in the key, an interesting thing was that this opponent team did not commit fouls, so besides me sometimes pushing too hard in defense was a very clean game.

I tried several different types of pass and also sometimes forced an advance to the basket and did a layup, and when the advantage between us was too great I tried a 3-point throw, I hit 2, I missed 1 and in another I went blocked, was difficult because if I did not create too much space to throw the opponent blocked me by the difference in height.

So at the end of the second period, the game was 48 to 30, in that period the opposing team made fewer mistakes and we made more mistakes, but the baskets of 3 made up, so I saw it would be difficult to see the opponent hit a shoot and 3 in that game.