Coulda, woulda, shoulda

First off, it was a great year for the Thunder.

I didn't know what to expect, starting in March, adding a 13U team, staying busy all the way through fall. There's not a thing I regret, even with the ups and downs. We learn as we go. Our 17U stayed busy and got better. Our 13U did so much and grew tremendously in just a few months together. Our 15U doesn't look quite the same during fall — football season — without Max and Haka. Felix, Yong and Wilson dropped off the face of the earth and didn't show up much in the late summer and fall, but what can we do? As coaches, we give everyone opportunities, and some guys step up, some guys fade.

All in all, though, we learned a lot. We had fundraisers. We played 119 games (I think) as a whole. We practiced almost every day, especially in the summer. And now, with one month until high school season starts, we've completed our last game. I'm still going to be at the park on certain days (when I'm not working) for you guys who want to work out and scrimmage. (The court at Makiki Park is still being resurfaced, so we'll have to practice at Cartwright or elsewhere.)

As for today's game, it was a good, gradual comeback against FSU. We overcame a lot of lethargic play early and rallied to take a 40-38 lead. Then we simply gave the game away. Turnovers. Unforced errors in our spread set in the final 2 minutes. The spread was one of our strengths back in 15U a year and two years ago. But with our current 17U, there's not a lot of experience and familiarity with the spread.

We dribbled too deep, got in trouble, turnover. Our corner guys didn't flash to the high post at all. Not helpful. But more than anything, we just didn't have consistent intensity and energy from the start, and that's how we fell behind by 12 points when we really should've been running past FSU, which had just five players.

We had a chance to win with the score tied and 8 seconds or so left. Then one of the officials called Isaiah for an offensive foul when there was absolutely no contact. Isaiah did a crossover dribble, the defender buckled and stepped backwards, and the official — Matt Ho (?) — blew his whistle. It was an incredibly bad call.

FSU got the ball back with 1.4 seconds left, and their best player hit a halfcourt shot with Isaiah right on him, to win the game.

I spent at least 30 minutes talking with the officials after the game. I had to make sure about a few things.

1. Matt Ho has been making horrendous calls against the Thunder since we first began three years ago in the KAC League. Things were so bad that season — he teched one of our guys twice in a game and kept picking on him the rest of that year — that he cost us three or four wins. I've reffed a lot in the past, and I always try to give these men and women a fair shake. But Matt has continued to rule borderline calls against us so often in the three years since, I have to finally realize that he has some kind of issue with us.

So I asked him point blank, 'Why do you call everything against us when it's a borderline call?' He denied it, even though I've got three years worth of game video that would easily prove him wrong. I asked him, face to face, to just be honest and tell me what we've done to deserve his bias against us. He refused to admit anything.

2. I showed the game video to both Matt and the other official, Gerald. I showed it to them twice, three times, four times, five times. They finally realized that Matt had screwed up so royally, they couldn't doubt me anymore. I asked Matt how he could call Isaiah for an offensive foul?

He said, "I saw the defensive guy fall backwards."

Did you see Isaiah's arm on the defensive player?

"No," he said.

So you didn't actually see a foul, but you blew the whistle and assumed there had been a foul. You were guessing.

"No, I wasn't guessing."

We went back and forth on this for minutes. He wasn't sure what had happened. It was a guess, and with all his guesses in Thunder games, he rules against the Thunder.

So what happens now? NJB All-Net's 17U director, Stephen Chong, said there's nothing he can do. That's no surprise. But he and Gerald (the other ref) recommended that I send my complaint to the 50th State Basketball Officials Association. So I'll do that, even though it's almost meaningless. Gerald said the association can make sure that Matt never refs another one of our games again. I don't think that's true, but I also believe now that I should've made this request three years ago.

I do believe in the power of video. When Tanielu got clotheslined in a tournament at Aiea in June, I sent the video to the tournament director, who sent it to the officials association. A few weeks later, the head ref apologized to me. The same guy who gave me a technical foul for asking why no foul had been called. After seeing the video, he and the ref who totally missed the call (a college ref, they told me) realized they had screwed up.

The thing is, some officials can be so immature that they refuse to listen to reason and facts. That's all I can offer as a coach, and rather than get wild and loud, I try to talk with them. It usually helps, but it doesn't necessarily change anything when a ref is stubborn and inflexible.

I asked Gerald why he didn't confer with Matt to make sure they had the call right. But Gerald refused to take responsibility. To him, he won't discuss any call with another ref. It's really chicken of him, to back off rather than do the right thing for kids playing basketball.

In the end, two adults took the game out of the hands of basketball players. Kids. And their stubbornness cost our kids a chance to finish a game properly. That's what pisses me off most about our last game of the year.

But, for now, it's out in the open. I said my piece to the refs. I have the video. I have three years of dealing with Matt Ho, the referee. And I'm going to deal with it in an open and transparent way. I'll go through their protocol. I'll edit the video and show it to the association and the league. I don't know yet if I'll post it publicly, but I'm leaning that way. There are a LOT of people who have warned me about Matt Ho, and if showing the video in public helps other teams and kids avoid having their games stolen from them, I'm for that.

I'm just sad that it had to be us. In a perfect world, we would've won despite the terrible officiating. We'd be playing one more game next week. But we had our chances, we hit some big shots and made a lot of hustle plays. We just didn't make enough of them today.

It was a great season. We're moving forward. We'll have, hopefully, some 13U scrimmages in the next month against ILH intermediate teams. By January, we'll start playing again (CAL middle school division). There will be a bunch of ILH intermediate teams in that league, I'm told, so the competition will be great.

By March, we'll be rolling with 17U, 15U and 13U. By July, we'll be playing in mainland tournaments, God willing, as well as summer leagues (varsity, JV, NJB, Aiea?, CAL). Another 119 games or so. That's a lot of fun to look forward to.

All in all, I'll always lub this game. You should, too.

Next up: Season Pau Hana party.