Almanac Basketball: The Craft of Hephaestus

Graeme Willingham wrote the book NOT BAD THANKS in 2018 and continues his vigil over Not Bad Thanks Basketball Club, founded on April Fools’ Day, 1980. Not Bad Thanks plays on, in Melbourne Central Association’s B Grade at MSAC’s Thursday night comp. Among the hundreds of archived NBT Bulletin game reports are the headlines ‘Axe sharpens his elbow’ and ‘Bullitt fires first shot’, based on the on-court exploits of players Axe and Bullitt. In a recent Bulletin, though, Axe and Bullitt are stars together in a story that’s taken the highly anticipated match report – and basketball journalism generally – to a new intellectual level. It is penned by Not Bad Thanks’ Court Captain, Czar.

 

 

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According to Hellenic mythology Hephaestus performs the role of the god of smithing. He is the God of the Axe. Our Axe, according to NBT lore, is OUR God of Axe. Note: there is no ‘the’ here as Axe is not ‘the’ representative of axes, he IS AXE.

 

Ancient Hellenic mythology is based in narrative. And so is NBT. Over two thousand years ago, ‘the return of Hephaestus’ was a popular theme for the the vase-painters of Ancient Attica. As the story goes, Hephaestus had been thrown out of the heavens (Olympus). In order to get him back to where he belonged, Dionysus, the god of wine (perfectly once described by a Czar-colleague as ‘the god of all that spurts’; surely a god close to NBTs’ hearts) plied Hephaestus with wine to the point he was marched back to the heavens unconscious on the back of a mule.

 

Last night presented a different narrative. Perhaps it could be titled: ‘heroic return of Axe.’ Not that he ever left. The ‘Craft of Axe’ may be a better fit. Axe was never in, nor thrown out of the heavens, but last night’s performance could certainly be considered ‘heavenly.’

 

Against CC Sharks, NBT as a team – and we were a team; unlike our opposition – was not heavenly, but we did enough to win. The game was won mostly at the start. NBT took advantage of their having four players and piled on the points. By the time CC Sharks had five players and had employed a more challenging man-on-man defence, NBT had a decent lead. They came back in the second half, but NBT steadied the ship – just in time, it should be said – to come away with an excellent win.

 

But Axe was magnificent. He was crafty. Inspirationally, he took two solid handle-breaking charges. In the second half when they were making an assault, Axe got the ball in the post and zipped a turn-around jump shot. They were sunk.

 

As magnificent as Axe was, the highlight of the game belonged to Bullitt. With bullet-like speed towards the end of the game Bullitt cut across the key and received the ball. Over the outstretched arms of their athletic 6’4″(ish) centre Bullitt looped his full-speed lay-up. It hit the top face of the backboard and went in. As a spectator, it presented a highlight. It would have presented a highlight at any level, not just Thursday night amateur competition. The original Olympians would have rejoiced. A bull might have been sacrificed. Instead, at the clubrooms, with all players in attendance (Axe, Czar, Flash, Bikkies, Bullitt, Doktor and Blake), a few potatoes were sacrificed to make the NBT ritual bowls of chips.

Willingham adds that Bullitt was also a headline act in another recent Game Report by Czar.

 

(Bullitt was originally Bullet, a Club name bestowed on him in recognition of his dad who played as Scuds, a nickname linked to long-range three-point baskets. For a time Scuds held the NBT World Record for consecutive three-pointers, with five. Czar topped that with seven. Bullet and Scuds were on the court together for NBT’s 2007 premiership. Bullet became Bullitt in 2017 when New Era Players decided to change his name to Bullitt, ‘as in the 1968 pistol-carrying cool cop Steve McQueen movie character, because it better reflects Bullet’s super-cool and collected demeanour’.)

 

This report was simply headed: Bullitt’s Theme Song and carried a youtube link to the movie’s music theme.

 

It read:

Three or four times on Thursday night, the ball spurted out into open space. In footy terms, it would be coined a ‘loose ball’ that was free to ‘get’. Every time this happened, one player dramatically burst towards the ball: Bullitt. Out of the blocks – or barrel – Bullitt was never initially closest to the ball. The opposition was. But like a bullet out of a gun he got there first, making everyone else look stationary. Our ball. NBT wins.
At the clubrooms, a fill-in player confessed he studied jazz, specifically the French horn, a medieval instrument. For those instrumentally minded, they would be aware that jazz-French horn is a particularly idiosyncratic combination, a bit like playing lawn tennis with a Real tennis racket.

Lalo Schifrin, the brilliant composer best known for the Mission Impossible theme song, also composed the soundtrack and the music for the film Bullitt. In the theme song, horns produce a perfect back-up roll.

Substitute the trumpet for the French Horn and one would find the perfect acoustic summation of NBT’s splendid jazz-infused orchestral win over 3D Finsters on Thursday.

 

 

 

 

 

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