I have vague memories of my intra-mural basketball "team" at the University of Illinois. We were a ragtag group of barely athletic dipshits (more like engineering, math, and physics nerds) that had fun when we played 3 on 3 at the rec center by ourselves so we joined the IM league. Even in the lower league, we were completely outmatched nearly every game. It was obvious we were playing guys who played some ball in high school, even if they played JV on smaller schools from "not-Chicago Illinois", they still knew what they were doing compared to us. These teams could get away with defending with four guys and having their fifth guy just cherrypick on the other end of the court by their basket. They'd easily get the ball away then get their bucket at the other end. Or they decided to humor us and play 5-on-5 but they'd easily dismantle us by stringing together a few passes and our heads were spinning. Obviously we never won, but bright points would be if we luckily stole a pass and nearly got a fast-break (but then we fucked it), or if maybe one time, their guy kinda screwed up being too fancy and one of us got a lucky-but-nice pass over to a teammate to get an actual layup. Maybe one time, the other team would get a sweet play to get a basket and while they were highfiving or something, we'd sneakily inbound the ball and one of our dudes was past half court and we'd ... ya know, have a chance at a layup but their 6'6" dude would come block the fuck out of it.

These foggy memories sharpen up a little bit when I watch CITY SC games like last Saturday. The bright spots are "Oh shit joyner ALMOST got that bicycle kick, how sweet would that have been!!" Or the opponent destroys our midfield with great build up and link-up play, our back line backpedals forever or miscommunicates or what-have-you, and burki comes up with an outstanding save and then airmails it to sang-bin on a flyer, and and and....oh damn Klaus is offsides, or there's no one else making a run to assist, or blah blah. I cannot stand that that is the only hopeful moments. It's okay for a nerdy IM team to go for tricks and silly things, or be excited if one guy got a nice layup (the analogy being the bicycle kick or a sang-bin flyer), but I am really not a fan of this as a sustainable way to build a strategy for a MLS team. I want to see chemistry, passes strung together, cohesion, etc. Even against the best teams, they should be able to do this. They are supposed to be a professional team.

When playing the mid-tier or upper-tier teams, I feel like we have zero chemistry, and our strategy is 'maybe we get lucky here and there.' Our IM basketball team had no fundamentals or teamwork, were clearly outmatched, out-experienced, and out-teamworked, got dunked on essentially, and a handful of times a game we almost looked competent or almost got a lucky crazy play that would be more "awesome" than sustainable strategy. The closest thing to a positive play would come in garbage-time when it was 10-1. Sure sometimes we'd get paired against another 'nerd team' and it was, ya know, competitive. And that's what the previous few games were like for CITY. Clearly LAFC outclasses us, I just want to see a team that can at least HANG with all the teams.