THE DREAM LEAGUE
Asian American / Open Basketball Leagues
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Tri-State War Dog 72, Moneyball 59 |
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TRI-STATE TAKES TOP SEED AND COMPLETES A SCORCHING UNDEFEATED SEASON |
| Despite the traitorous intentions of teammate Nazar Khan, who dramatically threw his Tri-State War Dog uniform to the floor just moments before tipoff to don a Moneyball jersey (more on this later), Tri-State War Dog was able to survive a determined Moneyball attack to secure the 72-59 win, the undefeated regular season, and the #1 seed for playoffs. Apparently Nazar’s teammate, Arif Ansari, had cut him off and stolen a rockstar parking spot just one block away from JRHS. The two had some heated words on the street, and it escalated during pre-game layup line drills when Ansari purposefully passed the ball at Khan’s feet not once, but twice. That was enough for Khan, who walked over to Brian Zhang’s Moneyball huddle and asked if there was a spot on their roster available for him. Nothing like this had ever happened before in the history of Dream League, and everyone in the gym was completely shocked. The grudge match began immediately, as Khan would outwork Ansari for offensive rebound putbacks, and Ansari would respond with a mid-range jumper and a strong post move. The two would continue to battle each other with evil intent the entire game, grabbing 28 rebounds between the two of them and swinging elbows with bad intent. For players on both teams this very public end to their bromance was, to say the least, a bit uncomfortable. TSWD opened up a nice lead in the first quarter behind Ansari and Kash Miah, who like last week’s game, started off very aggressively in looking (and making) his shot. Vegas Dave Wong, who had played 6 games the day before out on the blistering concrete courts of Chinatown, seemed a bit low on energy, but his normal 25+ppg output was more than compensated for by the blistering outside shooting of teammate Chris Kwan, who drained a ridiculous eight (8!) threes, many of them in transition. His teammates all know that Chris usually wins at least a couple games for them each season when he goes off like this, so they were happy to keep feeding the hot hand. Moneyball would battle back impressively, behind a tremendous effort by Victor Lin (22 points, 10 rebounds, 4 assists and 3 steals), a double-double by Nazar Khan (14 & 17) and Rob Chen (11 & 11) plus the contributions of Jack Chau (10 pts on 5/16 shooting, however). The game started with hot tempers, and it ended with those same emotions being burned off (like how firefighters use dynamite to put out forest fires) by the absolute sauna-like conditions in the gym. In a summer that has seen a long stretch of unimaginably hot and muggy Sunday afternoons, this one may have been the worst. 41-year old Andre Liu was later treated for heat exhaustion and was heard mumbling incoherently about coconut juice and yelling sorry to someone or something named Wilson (Wang? Lew? Volleyball?). Khan and Ansari kissed and made up, and it appears that Khan will rejoin his Tri-State teammates for the playoffs. Big kudos to Moneyball for fighting to the bitter end despite the heat, AND the fact that this was their second game of the day. With the final regular season done, the seedings for the playoffs are set as follows: 1. Tri-State War Dog (6-0) 2. Moneyball (3-3) 3. BK Hustlas (3-3) 4. Bad Boys (2-4) 5. Good News Bears (1-5) Best of luck to all the teams in the playoffs! May the best team emerge victorious and not dying of heat exhaustion. |
Score by Quarters
| Team | Q1 | Q2 | Q3 | Q4 | OT | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tri-State War Dog | 19 | 23 | 12 | 18 | - | 72 |
| Moneyball | 10 | 24 | 11 | 14 | - | 59 |
Boxscore
| Tri-State War Dog - 72 | |||||||||||
| Player | FG | 3PT | FT | REB | AST | STL | BLK | TO | F | PTS | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ansari, Arif | 4 / 14 [0.286] | 0 / 0 [0.000] | 1 / 2 [0.500] | 11 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 9 | |
| Chang, Jimmy | DNP | ||||||||||
| Khan, Nazar | DNP | ||||||||||
| Kwan, Chris | 8 / 14 [0.571] | 8 / 13 [0.615] | 0 / 0 [0.000] | 6 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 2 | 24 | |
| Liu, Andre | 1 / 7 [0.143] | 1 / 3 [0.333] | 0 / 2 [0.000] | 7 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 3 | |
| Miah, Kashem | 6 / 12 [0.500] | 2 / 6 [0.333] | 0 / 0 [0.000] | 9 | 3 | 2 | 0 | 3 | 0 | 14 | |
| Palacios, Marco | DNP | ||||||||||
| Shen, Felix | 2 / 5 [0.400] | 1 / 1 [1.000] | 0 / 0 [0.000] | 4 | 4 | 3 | 0 | 3 | 2 | 5 | |
| Wong, David | 7 / 15 [0.467] | 1 / 4 [0.250] | 2 / 2 [1.000] | 1 | 2 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 17 | |
| 28 / 67 [0.418] | 13 / 27 [0.481] | 3 / 6 [0.500] | 38 | 13 | 11 | 1 | 11 | 6 | 72 | ||
| Moneyball - 59 | |||||||||||
| Player | FG | 3PT | FT | REB | AST | STL | BLK | TO | F | PTS | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ?, James | DNP | ||||||||||
| Chau, Jack | 5 / 16 [0.313] | 0 / 3 [0.000] | 0 / 0 [0.000] | 2 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 5 | 0 | 10 | |
| Chen, Rob | 4 / 6 [0.667] | 3 / 5 [0.600] | 0 / 0 [0.000] | 11 | 3 | 2 | 0 | 7 | 3 | 11 | |
| Choe, Sol | DNP | ||||||||||
| Han, Danny | DNP | ||||||||||
| Huang, Ray | DNP | ||||||||||
| Khan, Naz | 6 / 13 [0.462] | 0 / 0 [0.000] | 2 / 6 [0.333] | 17 | 4 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 14 | |
| Lee, Brian | DNP | ||||||||||
| Lee, John | DNP | ||||||||||
| Lin, Victor | 9 / 22 [0.409] | 2 / 6 [0.333] | 2 / 4 [0.500] | 10 | 4 | 3 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 22 | |
| Seoh, Jason | DNP | ||||||||||
| Zhang, Brian | 1 / 8 [0.125] | 0 / 4 [0.000] | 0 / 0 [0.000] | 6 | 1 | 3 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 2 | |
| 25 / 65 [0.385] | 5 / 18 [0.278] | 4 / 10 [0.400] | 46 | 14 | 10 | 1 | 14 | 4 | 59 | ||
Referees
| William Bullock: | Rate Me |
| Lee Jones: | Rate Me |