Coach — February 28, 2025 – John Agliata

🧩 Today’s Puzzle Pieces 🧩
Neighbor🏀
Sunset Dreams🎶
AI Justice⚖️

THE DAILY UPDATE

To say I don’t have the best basketball resume is akin to saying the Orange Ass president is causing just a little bit of chaos at the moment.

My basketball playing career involved one season when I was 16, hoopin’ it up for my town’s team. We went 3-3 that season before losing 135-3 in the first round of the regional tournament, and no, I’m not making that up and, no, it’s not a typo. Thankfully, I don’t remember much of that game, owing to a combination of the brain’s ability to block out traumatic memories and the fact that I was splattered all over the court in the first quarter after getting a knee to the back of the head and the floor to the front of the head while diving for a loose ball. Supposedly I scored one of our three points on a free throw, which leads me to always give the advice of “Aim for the middle of the three hoops that you see,” whether that’s advice for basketball or life.

Anywho, aside from that one competitive season, I played a whole lot of lunch-time and after-school games with friends, which meant I could hold my own on the court but I still was what I was, which was a then-scrawny 6-foot-nothing kid from Suburbia who sucked at ball handling and had maybe one post move.

My coaching career isn’t much more spectacular, though I have yet to get a concussion from it, so that’s a plus. I was assistant coach during one of Boy The Elder’s seasons of rec hoops and then head coach for two or three of Boy The Younger’s YMCA hoops seasons. The latter coaching stint occurred after watching BTY’s team lose 48-0, at which point I realized the bar had been set sufficiently low enough for me to step in. There were no shutouts, nor were there any 132-point losses, and I had a blast turning those ragtag bunch of weirdos into the Bad Boy Detroit Pistons of eastern Missourah.

This season, I agreed to coach BTY’s 15U development team and, in a twist I’m not quite sure I agreed to, ended up coaching the high school developmental team as well. Neither team had many dads clamoring to step up. In fact, I’m pretty sure my hand was the only one that was forced to be raised.

I led two practices and then promptly decided I’d rather have neck fusion surgery and missed a month-plus, handing the responsibilities over to my assistant coach while I recovered and drank smoothies and sipped bone broth.

In my absence, both of my teams got absolutely pasted in every single game they played. When I returned, they stopped getting absolutely pasted and started losing only mildly badly sometimes. We even won a few games, though, to be fair, two of those dubs came when my two teams played against each other, so I was pretty much guaranteed a win there.

In one of the 15U games, the coach of the varsity competitive team showed up. We battled a much more talented team to a draw at half time … and then didn’t score another point the entire game. That’s right. We were shut out in the second half. That’s a really, really hard thing to do. But we sure as hell did it — and did it well.

So you can imagine my surprise when that head coach of the varsity team asked me to step in next season and coach the team he currently leads while he steps back to be an assistant.

Coach Ed is a massive individual. At 6’8″, he played professional basketball overseas in his younger years. He now has coached for four decades. If you see Coach Ed, it’s impossible not to see “Basketball Coach.” The way he walks. The way he talks. The way he teaches the game. Everything … everything … screams “That’s a basketball coach.”

I mentioned to him that I was surprised he’d want me to coach, considering what he had witnessed of my inability to coach one single point out of my players during an entire half of basketball. He was kind and told me that when a team loses by single digits, it might be the coach but that when they lose by double digits, it’s because the team was outmanned. I imagine that’s something he’s used to help him get to sleep after bad losses during his 40 years of coaching.

And so, today, I agreed. Next season, unless something unexpected happens, I’ll be the head coach of the 16U varsity St. Louis Blue Knights. If someone had told me after picking me up off the floor during the first quarter of that 135-3 loss that this would be a part of my 50-year-old life, I would likely have collapsed back to the floor in laughter and hit my head again, knocking myself out cold one more time.

I’m actually kind of excited about it, to be honest. BTY will most likely be on that team. And there will be no developmental players who are in their first year of playing the game, which is the situation I had to deal with on every hoops team I’ve ever coached. I know some of the players who will be on those teams. They can play. In fact, some have recently won state championships, and a few just won a national championship today.

That sets the bar a helluva lot higher than when I became a YMCA coach. But I can do this. Right?

Something I’m grateful for today: Warm late-winter days.

Something I’ve (ghost)written: AI-Infused Justice for All?

Song of the Day: Jamie All Over, by Mayday Parade

Meaningful lyric from the S.O.T.D.:

Please don’t tell me
That I’m dreaming
When all I ever wanted was to
Dream another sunset with you

Something good from today/yesterday: A great final basketball practice of the season with my two teams.

Something I’m looking forward to in the next seven days: The MVC basketball tournament. Go Drake!

Fat-Ass Update:

Starting weight: 230.6 on 2/12/25
Goal weight (for now): 199.9
Today’s weight 223.1 (-7.5)
Fat-ass burn-off remaining: 23.2 fat-ass pounds

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Coach — February 28, 2025

THE DAILY UPDATE

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