E-Man's 1st NBA Live Victory

E-Man's 1st NBA Live Victory

Growing up in the 80s playing sports since a child... we were probably the first generation of kids to really respond to sport video games.  I'm talking about video games like Tecmo Bowl, Double Dribble, Pro Wrestling, Bad News Baseball, Mike Tyson's Punchout, Blades of Steel, Jordan vs. Bird One-on-One, All-Pro Basketball, the Track & Field with the Nintendo Power Pad, Nintendo Volleyball, Skate or Die, Excite Bike, RBI Baseball ... the list goes on and on, especially when Sega Genesis dropped...I mean the Sega console just TOOK OVER in so far as what we'd balance our time with between ruining front lawns playing hoop, hitting tennis balls from bats or sticks over someone's fence, or running down the edge of avenue pavement towards the stop sign for a touch down.  Besides the sweat & fun of outdoor sports under the El Paso sun, as kids we balanced the Sandlot life with the indoors of whomever could afford the consoles, controls, and video games we'd try to destroy each others egos through...games like NBA Jam or Coach K's College Basketball or Bill Walsh College Football or Evander Holyfield Real Deal Boxing and on into the legacies of games like NBA Live and Madden...  as adolescents we grew up at the same time video games were growing up.

Fast forward more than two decades and that energy is still there through my younger siblings.  Long gone are the childhood friends from up the block who's TVs we'd crowd around to talk trash while pressing directional buttons, like A's, B's, or the C buttons on Sega and later the shapes of square, triangle, circle, and X that controlled the Playstation moves.

To make a long story short, fast forward to this Sunday and I get beat by a kid in elementary school.  I just turned 34 and he's barely going to turn 9 this month.  He's my nephew and we call him E-Man.  Amongst my two brothers, me being the oldest, the rule has always been to be cool, whether you win or lose. That comes with age though as I can't say I was always like that when I lost... but it's a simple lesson that never fails to play itself out whether young or old in our own lives (at a pick up game, a city league game, a school event) or even in the sports world.  Most recently, we saw this manifest itself in the way a Kentucky Wildcat star responded during a press conference to a question about the Wisconsin Badger athlete that was a major factor in their loss and quite possibly the biggest March Madness upset of our time.  

On April 5th, E-Man legitimately beat me down in a video game I've prided myself as being pretty good at... NBA Live.  For the record, I don't give chances.  If we're going to learn, we'll do a practice run, but as E-Man got older, we went ahead and put his name up on the NBA Live records board.  He started showing an understanding of the game and proved he could run a few quarters during his early initiation to be able to say he had "next".  Since we started playing NBA Live 15 this past winter, E-Man was taking hella loses, often giving up what would've been close games by the third quarter.  But today was different.  By the second half I found myself down by double digits and was able to inch my way back closing in the lead by two.  But it wasn't enough and I took my first L to E-Man, who is officially on the board with his first big win for NBA Live.  Knowing he was given 0 chances, he definitely let me and the whole cook out hear it.  

It was a really cool moment, because of how much it reminded me of when I was a kid.  Especially since I never got the chance as a kid to beat someone that's nearly three times older than me.  I can't even comprehend those kind of props at 9 years old.  So today, we send this shout out to E-Man's first big win against Lee95', now 11-9.  And if you into numerology, ain't that a trip?  I get my 9th defeat to a 9 year old.  Props to E-Man.

 

Keywords + Tag =Nintendo | NES | Double Dribble | Tecmo Bowl  | Sega Genesis | Playstation | Andrew Harrison | Kentucky Wildcats | Frank Kaminsky | NBA Jam | Sandlot | RBI Baseball | Bad News Baseball | Jordan vs. Bird | All-Pro Basketball | Blades of Steel | power pad | NBA Live | NBA Live 15 | Portland Trailblazers | Cleveland Cavaliers | Evander Holyfield |Mike Tyson's Punchout | Skate or Die | E-Man | Lee95' | Big Man | BB.Josh | RBros