The dynamic of my men's basketball league has changed a lot since the community center where we play started allowing younger players to play in what had formerly been an over-30 league. It kind of makes sense from their perspective. Since a new YMCA opened last year, they'd been losing memberships and hemmorhaging money.
But the league has gone from a competitive-yet-friendly type of thing to cutthtroat. Last night, we're playing a team of 20-somethings. They're younger, quicker and more talented than we are, but we have the advantage of having played together for a long time, so we're kind of hanging around.
I'm guarding a kid half my age who is a couple inches shorter and presumably quicker. So I'm laying off a couple of feet so he doesn't drive around me. He misses his first four shots, which I'm hardly contesting, so I figure whatever I'm doing is working.
He hits his fifth shot, a 15-footer, and then says to me "You can't guard me." I reply, "I haven't had to yet." Now it's on.
The next time he tries to take a jumper, I get a piece and it falls about two feet short of the rim. He turns to one of the refs and says "Where's the foul? I'm a shooter. If I miss by that much, it's because I got hit." Now it's REALLY on.
I never trash talk unless someone else trash talks me first. So now I'm in this guy's mug the rest of the game, calling him "Microwave" and "World" (raise your hand if you get those references). He scores one bucket the rest of the first half, on a 15-footer after he came off a moving pick, then sits out the first 15 minutes of the second half.
They had one guy who kind of took over the game late in the second half, and we were down by nine with 15 seconds left. Microwave starts running around trying to score garbage points. He tries to take the ball to the hole, I cut him off, and he throws up a prayer that rattles off the backboard. He turns and starts begging for a foul again, and the ref laughs at him.
He blows off the post-game handshake, goes up to the league director and accuses me of calling him a "nigg*r." The director laughs at him, and says "(Artie) has been playing in this league for 15 years and I've never heard him say anything like that. You've been in the league for 15 minutes. Who am I going to believe?"
When my team and I left the gym, the Microwave was yelling at the director and the referees, also accusing them of being racist.