{"id":5862,"date":"2008-04-07T05:18:00","date_gmt":"2008-04-07T05:18:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lbpost.com\/articles\/sports\/an-unbiased-prediction-plus-my-plan-for-perfection\/"},"modified":"2008-04-07T05:18:00","modified_gmt":"2008-04-07T05:18:00","slug":"an-unbiased-prediction-plus-my-plan-for-perfection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/an-unbiased-prediction-plus-my-plan-for-perfection","title":{"rendered":"An Unbiased Prediction, Plus My Plan For Perfection!"},"content":{"rendered":"

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With Long Beach State’s basketball season long gone, the NCAA Tournament wrapping up tonight and the NBA playoffs causing most fans to fall asleep, basketball season is by all accounts, over.  Right?  <\/p>\n

Phooey to that, says I!<\/p>\n

First of all, the Long Beach State basketball season is NEVER over, as news found here indicates that Coach Monson and the 49ers have found a gem in recruit Eugene Phelps<\/a>, who will be tearing up the Pyramid next year.  Reads one excerpt from the story:<\/p>\n

Phelps has aspirations of starting for Long Beach State next season and hopes to lead them back to the NCAA tournament. <\/span>

Another plan of Phelps is to continue to dunk while on the Long Beach State campus next year.  “I can do everything,” said Phelps.  He put on quite a show with some thunderous dunks following testing.<\/span><\/p>\n

I too, hope Phelps continues to dunk while on the Long Beach State campus next year.<\/p>\n

In other news, I’ve been a Jayhawk since the day I was born – in Wichita, Kansas, coincidentally – and so it is with unbiased enthusiasm that I write ROCK CHALK<\/span> as the boys take on Memphis tonight for the NCAA title.  Memphis looked great against UCLA on Saturday, but did Kansas also not look great against North Carolina?  Plus, you show me a team with bigger, stronger and better defending guards than the Jayhawks’.  I’m calling it now.<\/p>\n

(You have no idea how many times my heart has been broken by Kansas’ unfulfilled championship potential.  My mom refuses to watch their games to this day because of past disappointments)<\/p>\n

Regardless, basketball season is<\/span> winding down.  But summer ball has always been my bread-n-butta (the only truly year-round game), and so I have decided to embark on an adventure to welcome in the Summer of 2008.<\/p>\n

I will be traveling from court to court throughout Long Beach, shooting free throws.  I have two goals: to shoot at least 50 free throws on every basket in the city, and to make at least 85% of my attempts.<\/p>\n

Now, 85% is a lot.  I’m not even sure that I have a chance.  I was about a 70% free-throw shooter in high school, and I would imagine that I’ve improved to a solid 75% since then.  So reaching 85% with such a high volume of attempts will be very difficult.  I mean, that’s 17 out of 20.  Forty-two or forty-three out of fifty.  And it’ll be especially difficult considering all of the dreaded double-rims<\/a> that I’ll have to face.  But I want to challenge myself to improve, after a hiatus from the local playgrounds that has lasted far too long.  And frankly, I didn’t think that 75% or 80% would impress anybody.<\/p>\n

So here I go.  I’d love for you to join me and see what you can shoot, and hopefully we’ll improve together.  LBPostSports.com, raising the entire city of Long Beach’s free-throw percentage!<\/p>\n

I’ll be writing about each court that I visit – chatting with the locals, assessing the conditions and hopefully scoring interviews with the best coaches and players that Long Beach has to offer along the way.  I’ll be starting out this morning at El Dorado Park.  Hope to see you there, and feel free to recommend a court for the future!<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_sponsor_sponsorship_scope":"","newspack_sponsor_native_byline_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_native_category_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_style":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_placement":"inherit","inline_featured_image":false,"newspack_ads_suppress_ads":false,"newspack_popups_has_disabled_popups":"","_":"","_author_alias":"","cap-aim":"","cap-description":"","cap-display_name":"","cap-first_name":"","cap-jabber":"","cap-last_name":"","cap-linked_account":"","cap-newspack_employer":"","cap-newspack_job_title":"","cap-newspack_phone_number":"","cap-newspack_role":"","cap-user_email":"","cap-user_login":"","cap-website":"","cap-yahooim":"","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_email_html":"","newspack_email_type":"","newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_hide_page_title":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_show_share_buttons":"","newspack_sponsor_byline_prefix":"","newspack_sponsor_disclaimer_override":"","newspack_sponsor_flag_override":"","newspack_sponsor_only_direct":"","newspack_sponsor_url":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"newspack_spnsrs_tax":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-5862","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5862","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5862"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5862\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5862"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_spnsrs_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_spnsrs_tax?post=5862"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=5862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}