Warriors Game

Near the end of the Warriors' historic, all-time-great regular season, K-Pop took K-bao took Oracle Arena to see a game in person.

While yet to develop a true deep-seated passion yet for playing basketball, K-bao has become quite an avid fan of the game, especially the Warriors. She knows to be nervous when Andre Iguodala steps to the charity stripe, even though he is excellent from downtown. She throws up her arms and exclaims "Come ON!" when she sees silly fouls being committed or bad passes thrown.

The Warriors were hosting the Celtics, and the game was a tight one. K-bao was nervous throughout. So nervous, in fact, she had to step out and get some major sweets to last her through the fourth quarter.

Unfortunately, the Dubs couldn't quite hold it together, and ended up losing to the Celtics for the second time this season, and also marking their first home loss in their NBA-record-home-win-streak of 54 games.

Despite all that, K-bao found plenty to cheer and be silly about, as evidenced above. Curry was his otherworldly self, hitting 3's from all distances and angles, and the energy in the stadium was superb. Not that our little one needed any.

Birthday

Happy birthday K-bao! Our not-so-little-one has turned 7.

K-bao had an active day. The morning was filled with a basketball game with her team, The Cats. Here she dribbles the ball upcourt before handing the ball over to a teammate for a blown assist.



After a big brunch, she and the fam were joined by Uncle Calvin for an afternoon of bowling.

Checking out the scoreboard with a concerned look

Check out that professional bowling stance

After dinner at a local Vietnamese restaurant, where she enjoyed garlic noodles, the family had a modest celebration at home with some of K-bao's favorite desserts, courtesy of Uncle Calvin. (We won't mention on these pages how much of these desserts she was actually able to partake in today due to other dessert consumption choices earlier in the day, of course).

Thanks for the sweets Xiao Jiu!

Sharing some hugs with K-Pop and K-Mum below.

Dubs Fan

To K-Pop's delight, K-bao has adopted K-Pop's favorite sport as her own.

Part of it has certainly been driven by the Golden State Warriors' postseason success this year, which coincidentally followed K-bao's first exposure to hoops through her kindergarten basketball camp. K-bao has enjoyed watching the games with K-Pop through the playoffs (including tonight when the Warriors tied up the series with the Cavs 2-2).

Not only has she become a major Steph Curry fan - asking the rhetorical question "Is Steph Curry the best shooter in the whole wide world?" at least 3x a game - she actually is starting to internalize all the rules (24 second shot clock; offensive fouls; three point plays, etc.), and really gets into the ebb and flow of the game. What started at the beginning of the season as "Do you want the white team to win or the blue team" has evolved over time into "Draymond Green is definitely going to make both free throws. He is a great free throw shooter...Wait, I can't believe he missed!"

K-bao also made it to the court herself last week for some offseason (for her) drills.




And here she is practicing her dribbling - with her off hand, as challenged by K-Pop.

Human Hoop

Here is why K-bao loves her Uncle Calvin.


That's right. Since K-bao isn't quite able to reach the standard height basketball hoop, Xiao Jiu (aka Jiu-Jiu aka Uncle Calvin) constructed a hoop for the little one by putting his body on the line. This also entailed allowing his face to be used as the backboard.

With this construct, K-bao made a decent number of baskets and is excited to play again.

(Don't ask whether K-Pop was on the side encouraging K-bao to "bank it in off the backboard").

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

#JLin7

Guess who's my man?


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Air Space

K-Pop hopes that K-bao lives life above the rim, and introduced her this morning to the art of the dunk. K-bao took to it like a fish to water, putting down tomahawk two-handed jams pretty much immediately and asking for more.

Bball

K-Pop has been slowly introducing basketball to K-bao. This time, however, he was waylaid by Cousin Justin, who succeeded in both personalizing and emasculating the sport at the same time.

Gym Time

This past fall, K-bao was a regular, twice-a-week visitor to a MyGym facility in the Dogpatch. K-Mum took her there to socialize, learn some structure and expend a few joules. Unfortunately during the sessions she mostly ignored her fellow toddlers, and the structure thing also didn't quite work out (instead of sitting quietly during circle time, K-bao would inevitably run wildly around the room like a little Tasmanian devil, with poor K-Mum chasing after).

K-Pop made the visit once and was pleased to find little K-bao getting a head start on her playground basketball skills. Here she is putting down a Dominique-esque two-handed jam. In the other two pics, K-Pop forced K-bao to "socialize" with some others on a tire swing, which K-bao quickly took over with her broncos-style swinging.

Ballin'

K-bao's early attempts to interact with her first basketball reflect a passion but not a skill for the game.

As you can see below, things are looking good for rowdy bleacher fan but not so good for varsity point guard.

(Incidentally, you will notice the ball has a Harvard logo on it. No, we are not trying to send our child any subliminal messages. The ball was a gift to K-Pop almost ten years ago by the esteemed JOQ, Esq.)