184 Olympics 1

Ola saw this chance as he dived for the ball and quickly called timeout before the away team point guard could even react to what had happened. I gave Ola a thumbs up for the good job and for the smart play. Everybody else would have held the ball and tried to pass it, but he called timeout right away. It seems like he was quite intelligent too.

After the time out, Ola passed me the ball and I brought it in as I slowly walked towards my defender. He was standing at the three-point line while I was close to the half-court since he left me so much space I decided to take the shot from the logo which surprised him. I jumped up and flicked my wrist, the ball left my hand and straight into the hoop with a splash.

Now we're only down by one point, surprising the away team as they wondered how I was able to make that shot. Their coach called timeout right away, frustrated and yelling at his players for not playing enough defense and letting our team come back.

My coach already knew this was coming when the next play had started. We defended well, but they were able to score, giving them the three-point lead with one minute left on the clock. 

Ola brought down the ball and saw that two defenders were on me, so somebody was open and noticed that it was Alika, our small forward who was free of any defenders so Ola passed the ball and he took the shot from the mid-range, bringing us back down to one point. I had drilled that shot into him so he better had not missed it. 

The second went down, the Lithuania coach was yelling at them to keep this lead and score the next basket, but I told the guys to foul them as they were now under pressure, so they were bound to miss one free throw. The point guard went to the free-throw line, took two shots, and made it. We received the ball and were down by three once again.

Ola brought down the ball. He called ISO as everybody cleared out. He passed his defender and went and laid it up, and now there were only 10 seconds left, and we're down by one point. We fouled their point guard once again as he went to the line. He was nervous; I could tell he shot the first shot, missed it, and then the second one went in. Now they were up by only two points with 5 seconds left on the clock.

I made a signal to Ola to try out this play that I had taught him, so Ola ran around behind me and left the ball behind, I caught the ball. His defender thought that Ola still had the ball as he ran behind me, so he chased after Ola, taking my defenders with one second left and nobody in front of me. I took the shot since they all thought that Olay had the ball.

They could have won that game. I was honestly not too sure if that was going to work, but even if my defender was there, I was still going to take the shot, so we were guaranteed a win no matter what unless he blocked me.

My teammates surrounded me as they started cheering me on and doing some strange dances around me. I started laughing at this, Coach looked like he was about to cry as he had tears of happiness in his eyes. He thought that play was merely beautiful and wondered where I learned it from, he was taking notes after that.

That night the team celebrated hard as if they had just won the championship. They had never beaten that team before, so beating them felt pretty good as they face-off against them before and lost badly.

This was the first win in the exhibition round. 

...

Hours before the game we had finally reached the 2008 Olympics stadium. It was being held in London, so when we got there our bus had to take us to where the Olympics was being held, using that opportunity I decided to get some sleep, so I didn't see the destination as in where and how the building looked like. 

When we reached we were in a tunnel, and late for our game, so we quickly went to check-in and dropped off our stuff in our hotel rooms before going to the changing room to change quickly before going to the court. 

…..

After the game I used my free time to look around the Olympic grounds. I noticed different kinds of athletes when I was there. This was my first time going to the Olympics so it was a big deal to me. There was a lady there that was even taller than me. I'm pretty tall myself but seeing a lady more elevated than me felt kind of weird.

I don't remember watching the Olympics growing up, but I knew there were future Stars within the people that I passed on that day after the game. Tope looked for a place we could party in to celebrate; I honestly wasn't interested in going out, but the guys were too excited. I didn't want to ruin the mood by not going with them since I was the captain now.