Remind me again, when does basketball start being fun to watch??

There are few things in life as painful as watching city league basketball.  The offensive strategy tends to be: if you have the ball...shoot.  There is no passing, lots of traveling, and really bad reffing.  But, like many other unpleasantries, it is impossible to avoid.

The first game of the season, Colin's team was down by about 20 points; it felt more like I was watching a rugby scrum than a basketball game.  Colin (if you have forgotten, Colin has some anger issues), after being bumped, scratched, slapped, pushed, and elbowed, received his first flagrant foul and game ejection.  I immediately attributed his behavior to Brian's genetic contibution. Then, I remembered a few people with Nilsen DNA (Randy, Colton, Nickole, Kicker, etc.) that may have gotten caught up in their "competitive spirit". Man, maybe it's not his Tudor side.
I'm not sure what happened, but a couple weeks later the refs called EVERYTHING; the normally 40 minute game lasted 1 hour 15 minutes.  After that things really calmed down, and the game started to look a little more like basketball.  Each game, we were still able to catch a glimpse or two of Colin's temper, but he never let it boil over.  Colin evolved into a mad shot-clocker and a rebounding machine.  He, frequently, enjoyed disputing calls with the refs. (Colin...It's city league, not the NBA!!)  Even though I feared during each game that I might be asked to take my son and never come back, Colin started to really like basketball, and I survived another year of city league basketball.

On a side note, Colton had his coaching debut (filling in for one game) and led the team to a one point win, without beating up his brother.