Playing the home team

What a great atmosphere! We are playing at the practice gym of the pro team here. It holds about 3,000 but they put in extra seats and let the fans sit up above us on walkways. Packed, screaming fans everywhere. Very cool! They jumped on us early by pushing the ball and scoring in transition an had a 10pt lead after 1 quarter but we cut it to 4pts at the end of the first half. We came out strong in the second half and got a lead for a few minutes in the 4th quarter but Israel's 3pt shooting got us in the end and we lost 86-82. Omri Casspi the first player from Israel to play in the NBA had a great game scoring 27pts, 4-6 from the 3pt line. Pops Mensah Bonsu had a great game for us scoring 25pts and grabbing 15 rebounds. He wowed the crowd with some unbelievable dunks over 2 or 3 of their players. They were so good even the home crowd cheered for them.

We played our 3rd game in 3 nights next against a very motivated team from the Netherlands. We chose to rest some of our starters, Pops and Nate Reinking and play some of the younger players extended minutes. They played a solid second half but could not overcome a poor first half and we lost by 11pts, 94-83. Although we were only 1-2 on the trip we accomplished what we wanted. We played some combinations of players we wanted to look at, played some of the younger players, rested some of the veterans and no one got hurt.

After getting back to London we got to do something pretty special. We got to take a tour of the 2012 site of the Olympic Games! It was some site. All the work that goes into putting together something like the Olympics is amazing.

Some facts: There will be over 16,000 athletes staying in the Olympic Village during the Olympics. The basketball arena will hold 10,000-12,000 and will be dismantled and moved after the games. There will be 7.7 million tickets available for the London games. 800,000 people expected to use public transportation to the games on the busiest day. Around 260,000 loaves of bread expected to be consumed at the London 2012 Games. they better start baking the bread NOW.