orion-suh!

basketball exists in south korea. i just thought i should mention that before posting a bunch of basketball pictures. it might startle some of my more skittish readers. daegu's team is named after a cookie manufacturer in south korea, orion (not pronounced 'o-ryan' but 'o-ree-un'). they're called the orions (again, this is pronounced 'o-ree-un-suh' because 's' by itself is not a proper syllable although that probably means nothing to anyone so ignore, ignore, ignore!). i have been to 4 or 5 games at this point because they're cheap, the gymnasium is smaller than nippert stadium and even some larger high schools so every seat is a good seat, and they have a lot of shows/games during the breaks. korean basketball is more or less the same as basketball in the u.s. (fouls work slightly different but i'm not really sure what the rules on them are yet) but they have some funny rules in place mostly involving foreign players. each team is allowed to have 2 foreign players. these are almost always (maybe always) big black guys who play power forward or center (the reason should be pretty obvious). koreans are actually really good shooters. i'm sort of curious what the shot percentage is like but i imagine its pretty high. anyways, out of these two foreign players only one can be on the court at a time. so usually they'll have one guy play the first half and the other play the second. a curious exception to this rule are korean-americans who they count as full-on koreans. the daegu orions, for instance, have a korean who grew up in america and played college ball in florida. he doesn't count as one of the two allowed foreigners though.

a typical play goes something like this: the korean guards will pass the ball around a billion times around the perimeter looking for a way to feed it into their big black guy. when the big black guy gets the ball he tries to out-maneuver the other team's big black guy to get an easy layup or fade-away jumper. a variation on this has the big black guy dishing the ball out to a korean shooter on the wing who puts up a 3-pointer (usually making it).

like i said earlier, i've been to a handful of games, but i've yet to see a win. daegu's probably in last place at this point. at least their baseball team is good? at least it's not cincinnati sports?

daegu orions' two foreigners: glen mcgowan (pepperdine) and george otis (headband, louisville). guy with the white headband is lee dong jun, the korean-american (not to mention korean lady killer).

time-out free throw contest. he won!

no idea whats going on here. the cheerleaders have at least 3 outfit changes a game.

the mascots are elves? i guess? they breakdance. breakdancing elves.

the other team's coach was having a bobby knight moment.

their heart pom poms say daegu on them.