Head to Head

Every week, similar to when we were living in Ecuador, I play basketball with a group of teachers, locals, and other expats. It is one of the ways I try to keep up with my stress management, my exercise, and get to know people. Participating in these games has been a fun way to direct the focus away from school from time to time and towards other things.

About a week ago, on our group text chat, we received a message from one of the non-teachers in our group. We were invited to play a friendly scrimmage against the Saudi national basketball team. As in, the Dream Team of Saudi. This was the team that would represent the entire country in the FIBA World Championships, and other international events such as the Olympics (if they qualify).

Needless to say our text group lit up with excitement. Online scouting of their team via YouTube quickly took over our afternoons. Texts like "21 can't shoot free throws, we should keep that in mind," and other nonsense peppered our conversation. We got way to excited way to quickly. But it was admittedly a really cool experience. We weren't playing local guys from a rec. league or the local YMCA in a pickup game. We were going to play the real deal national team. It was pretty great.

When the day came for our big scrimmage, we all drove over to the Olympic Park, not knowing what to expect. Due to Ramadan scheduling, and most of the timing for the entire country being a little unusual for us, our game started at 10:30pm. We got there at ten, did some warm-ups, missed our shots, stretched a bit, and marveled at the thrones lining the gym. I'll say that again, there were thrones for the royal family in the gym positioned at center court. The total gym occupancy was about 6000-8000 if I had to guess.

After warming up a bit, we saw them come in. We were full of bluster and confidence but when they got into their warm-up routines, and we saw them we quickly realized...a country of 33 million was capable of finding 15 guys to represent their country that were vastly superior players and athletes to a group of teachers in various degrees of "in-shape" who happen to dabble in weekly pickup games. They had guys over 7 feet tall, a bunch more who looked carved out of granite who towered over us at 6'7 or above.

Undeterred, we matched up for the jump ball and started. Through the first ten minutes or so, we were tied 11-11. They would throw down a dunk, we would hit a long shot. They would out-rebound us and run faster than us, we would chase them.

After not too long, we stopped keeping score. It was better for us that way. It seemed that every time we did something well, they would go on a run of doing something better 7-8 times in a row. Watching all the while were four to five men in full traditional Saudi thobes, sipping tea that was brought to them by an attendant. I'm not quite sure who they were, but I imagine they were the financiers of the team, or company sponsors, or...I don't know, sports enthusiasts with clout? In my mind they were the Jay-Z of this basketball team.

While they did not arrange for a scoreboard operator to work during the night, basic math suggests that we lost by approximately a score of 90+ to 42. We did not win. We were not close. But, we had a great time, faced off against the country's finest basketball players, and lived to tell the tale. In summary, I technically played in the Game of Thrones (as I am calling it) and I made it out alive with a good story.