We're at the midpoint of the regular season, so we'll have the standings up any minute (day?) now. I don't put them up; my computer genius of a son does that and he actually has a job, so the TBL comes second. Over the many years, we have occasionally endeavored to be clever with the names of the various Divisions. Other times...not so clever. 

You may not know this, but I'm kinda' old. No, really! I graduated from high school in the late 1960s!!! Like most Baby Boomers, I was a huge music fan and there was a lot of great music around. I have always been an R&B and blues kinda' guy, so growing up, it was a lot of Motown and Southern soul (Otis Redding, James Brown, Aretha Franklin) for me. However, I grew up in L.A., so you couldn't escape the Southern California sounds of The Beach Boys with their urgent pop rhythms and elegant harmonies. And I LOVED the raucous funk of Sly and the Family Stone (one of the favorite bands ever). A sober Sly Stone was Prince decades before Prince. Unfortunately, a sober Sly Stone was also a unicorn. I saw that band in concert at least five times and never once saw Stone...not stoned. It was so disappointing because the band was tight.

So, when Sly Stone and Beach Boys savant/leader Brian Wilson both died about a week apart recently, I thought I'd honor their bands by naming our Divisions after their members. Each band had six original members, but since we have 13 Divisions, I included John Stamos, who can be seen playing percussions on the Beach Boys video for "Kokomo."

Both Stone and Wilson have been dubbed as "geniuses," a term that is thrown around a bit too much. But, why are so many people like that so incredibly f--- messed up in their real lives? Does being a genius automatically prevent someone from being relatively normal? One thing that amazed me: Both Wilson and Stone lived to be 82 after each consuming copious amounts of drugs for more than a half-century. If I could lose a few pounds, after having gone my whole life without ever having consumed any alcohol or drugs (or medicine, for that matter), I should live to be 137.

--Sunday's games got off to a roaring start. Equipo is a team consisting of our uber-talented scorekeepers and two venue employees--one a former college player, the other a current college player. They got off to a quick start against Side Loaders and held the lead at the midway point of the first half. But then the Side Loaders went on a monstrous run and opened up a 15-point lead at the half. The lead grew to 20 points early in the second half, but then Equipo (Spanish for "Team") started chipping away. Strong inside play from Navine Mallon and Dominique Acosta helped cut the lead down to single digits inside of five minutes. Equipo caught up with 20 seconds to go and then a steal and a layup gave them the lead with five seconds left. A Side Loaders timeout gave them the ball at halfcourt. They threw it in and a player who shall remain nameless took a 25-foot, no-look shot that hit dead bottom at the buzzer. An absolutely great game (and one that was really well-officiated).

--The Basketball Junkies suffered their second loss of the season, an exciting 62-61 loss to Southern Arizona Military Basketball (a bunch of guys from the Air Force base). The Military team got balanced scoring, with four p[layers in double figures, helping to overcome the Junkies' Jason Timpf, who had 24 points on six threes.

--[Enter Team Name Here] got 20 points from Anthony Saunders and it was just enough to hang on for a 56-54 win over Prestige Worldwide. Luis Torres had 25 points in a losing effort.

--Ryan and Marcus Valdez combined for 42 points to lead Storm to a 62-59 win over Fleet. Sam Okougbo had 30 points for Fleet.