Recap

This game was pretty much over about 8 minutes in. Blue looked energetic and excited to be there. Grey looked like their team color should be Brown. Blue got to almost every loose ball, hit the offensive glass hard, turned Grey over repeatedly, and frankly ran them out of the gym.

Pre-season Grinders MVP candidate Mike “too many L’s in my last name” Milicki did nothing to hurt the hype.  Mike is considered by many to be the best player in the league and generally his stats bare that out. Mike had an easy 19/19/8/4 stat line dominating the game from start to finish. As a matter of fact the Grinders Analytics Player Estimation  (GAPE) had Mike rated at the most effective player from Week 1. Mike wasn’t a 1-man show though. The rest of the Blue Squad were pretty effective too. “The Franchise” Todd Nixon added 14 pts on over 50% shooting, Helmet kicked in 9 points including a Steph Curry range 3-ball, and Mark “O’Doyle Rules” had an efficient 10/4/3/2 game. Oh, and Witt played too contributing with his team’s worst shooting percentage (.285 on 6/21). Yikes.

You could tell Team Grey really hadn’t done a thing during “The Vid” except eat, drink, sleep…….and buy pants with elastic waists. I think I saw more bellies than basketballs. There was some legit pre-season hype around “Open Run” Vaillancourt transitioning his phenominal play to the regular season. That went about as well as playing leapfrog with a unicorn. During times in the game Vaillancourt was seen sucking wind and drinking a roadie instead of actually being on the court. AK47 made a dynamic return back to the Grinders scene after missing the better part of a decade. AK dropped 8 points and was the team’s best shooter. The man known as “E” was nowhere to be found. Frankly Team Grey needs E as his hot shooting and playmaking skills are a game changer. Eric Carlson was looking to make a name for himself in the Grinders game. Many an astute pundit thought he could be a dark horse for 1st team Grinders honors. I’m not sure if you can play your way off of the all-Grinders team in a week, but he may have. 6/24 is just not going to cut it from a guy with that kind of talent. Right now he’s just Curt’s little cousin.