Let me preface this by saying this is no way shape or form a complaint.

Ok I’m lying it is a complaint. However, it’s not a complaint about my life and what it entails. It is a complaint about the stereotypes involved with it.

Today’s post was first inspired by a conversation I had a with a friend a few months back.  They found out I was in Japan and as soon as I told them, here came the onslaught of questions...Where have you been? What have you seen? How was Tokyo? How’s the night life? Did you visit this? Did you take a picture with that?

Those were all valid questions but I had to find a very polite way to bring them to the simple realization that as much as those were valid questions I wasn’t in Japan on vacation.  On that day, I decided that I should make a PSA and it would be done via a blog post.  The blog post would be about being overseas and what people automatically thought when I told them what part of the world that I was.  Suffice to say I hadn’t gotten around to writing it or it would have been up before now.  Then last week I saw an article online in which someone had so eloquently described the very sentiments that I felt about this topic.  While reading, it was like the writer was in my head and then left to go write it, then didn't tell me about it.  So instead of paraphrasing, or summarizing or just flat out repeating what she said in the article, here’s the link.

The Truth About Playing Overseas by Tiffany Clarke.

It is written by a fellow blogger and overseas hooper.  I’m sure all my other overseas athletes can thoroughly agree and identify with these sentiments.

Read, enjoy, and feel free to share your thoughts and opinions as well.

Thanks

Magnificent Su

Yea yea yea I know it's January. I should've been done with this video a while back but for one reason or the other I didn't get it done. Now it's done and here it is.

As you can already tell by now I'm playing in Japan this season. It has been a great experience thus far. My teammates are great. I enjoy playing with them and we have great chemistry with one another. On top of that we're winning. You already know how I feel about winning. Makes life that much better.

But on to the point.  This video is comprised of highlights from the games played in October and November.  I was going to do October, November and December and have it be highlights from the whole first half of the season but I haven't gotten my hands on those games tapes yet.  Plus I felt like I was due to at least put something out.

So as always, please feel free to comment and critique the video.  It could be basketball related or it could be related to my video editing skills. Either way I'm open to it and I want to work to get better. Especially the basketball part.

Thanks

Magnificent Su

Hello everyone,

This is just a quick update. All is well (or magnificent as I like to say).

The season is going well so far. I like my teammates and we're developing better chemistry and camaraderie  everyday.  As of right now we're gearing up for the first of two cups.  The first is the Heir Apparent Cup which starts in two days, followed by the Emir Cup after.

As far as the regular season, we finished tied for first place in the league.  We won the tie breaker by virtue of points so we in fact were the regular season champions.  In the playoffs we beat El Jaish in a 3 game series 2-0, but we lost in the championship (one game, winner take all) to Al Sadd who had finished the season in 2nd place after the tie breaker.

Personally, I think I'm playing well but I can always do better and I will do better.  I enjoy winning and I hate losing so I'll be doing everything in my power for us to avoid the latter.

Below is the 3rd installment of my Highlight Tape series.  It shows a few highlights from the season thus far.  It also helps me fine tune my video editing skills. So please WATCH, ENJOY, COMMENT, & CRITIQUE.   

Thanks

Magnificent Su

If you’re a basketball player you definitely know a thing a two about ankle sprains.  I know I do.  This is not to say other athletes or people in general don’t know anything about ankle sprains but being that I’m a basketball player myself I know other basketball players can easily identify with what I’m talking about.

Recently, I along with some of my friends seem to have been hit by the ankle sprain bug (we were all wearing the same brand of shoes so like Spike said...”it’s gotta be the shoes”...ha).  On a serious note though, I happened to be the lucky one out of the crew.  I limped around for a couple of days and I was back on the court in a week.  It only took a week because I decided to take a couple extra days off to let my body rest.  My friends on the other hand haven’t been so lucky.  Their recovery process, though good, has been much slower than mine (this is usually the part where they relate my speedy recovery to me being African but that’s a story for another day).  This prompted me to go online and do some research on the fastest way to recover from an ankle sprain.

I saw it all.  From the good old ice and rest to the crazy technologies that exist today that help speed recovery in ankle sprain or any other muscle in the body that can be sprained.  Through all that, I found one method that was quite interesting. I liked it, and I’m going to share it.

I could paraphrase or copy and paste what I read onto this post but that would be plagiarising. So I’ll just provide the link to the page and let you read for yourself.  It’s actually from another blog, and being that I’m an up and comer I felt it was only right I provided the link and hence sent some traffic their way since I would hope & expect my fellow bloggers in the bloggisphere to do the same for me.

Here it is ... http://flipcatch.wordpress.com/2007/08/06/ankles-tricking-sprained-foot-fix/

Enjoy

Magnificent Su

Around this time last year I put out my 1st highlight tape that consisted of clips from my last two seasons of college basketball at Rice University.  Well a year later and a year into my professional basketball career, we now have the 2nd installment of highlights.

This 2nd highlight tape consists of clips from a couple of games that I played while I was in the NBA D-League with the Rio Grande Valley Vipers.  I added a couple of sound effects and some background music this time to make it a little more interesting to watch since the last time around some people said it was too plain.  I wasn't as good with my video editing software back then, so seeing as this is my second go around creating this video I did a lot of playing around with the software.

I'd appreciate some feedback on this.  Anything and everything is appreciated.  From the highlight clips themselves to the videography, sounds, etc.  Also since the background music isn't mine, I have to give credit to Jay-Z and Kanye West for their contributions (I'm sure they appreciate the shout out).

Without further ado...enjoy.

Thanks

Magnificent Su