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Take Pounding the Rock with you wherever you go on your Android powered phone. This app will quietly run in the background and alert you when a new story has been published here at Pounding the Rock.

The price is FREE. You can't beat that, even with a hamburger with mayo.

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For those of you who have browsers with adblocker plug-ins, Samsung is a pretty big sponsor of SBnation and, by extension PtR. This means that sometimes, very cool things can happen. And if you're someone who likes to enjoy electronic equipment, then this could be a your cool thing.

Here's the link. I'd love for a £er to be the one to get this bad boy.

That is all.

This week, for the first time in years, I've been playing an NBA video game. How I came by the game (and which one it is) is a story for another day. But while I've been pouring time into trying to get better, I realized that it wasn't just the controls I was attempting to master, it was the X's and O's too.

The last time I went video game crazy was way before I joined PtR. And while I'd been watching basketball since I was a youngster, and even played for my high school team, it wasn't until I started reading and commenting here regularly that I realized that I didn't really understand the game half as well as I thought I did. Now, going back and playing again is a new experience, and I'm thinking about entirely different things than I used to.

All I used to care about on offense was whether the point guard was fast enough to beat his man off the dribble and break down the defense for an easy layup, or passing out for an open three pointer. As long as I had two of those guys (a speedster and a bomber) then I could score all the points I needed. But the games are designed better now, and I'm challenging myself to compete in the same way that an actual NBA team would.

And, in the same way that I learned more about the game from blogging, the time I've spent playing a video game is also informing my ability to better comprehend what I see when I watch the Spurs. Which makes me wonder about those of you who play NBA video games. What have you learned from playing? What kinds of things do you see while watching a game, that you learned to watch for while playing? And what kinds of things do you notice while watching, that help you play better?

For those who don't know, I wasn't always a Spurs fan. I grew up in Houston where, as I told you last week, my father introduced me to sports in an up-close-and-personal way. I got to walk the sidelines of an NFL gridiron and jog warm ups with major league baseball players. Basketball wasn't even my first love; that was football. It wasn't until I had turned ten that I started paying much attention to the NBA.

That was the year of the Rockets' first trip to The Finals and, of course, it ended in tears at the hands of the Celtics. Half a decade later and trip number two ended the against the same team, and with the same result. By the time I had grown into adulthood, and got engaged, I'd become a somewhat tortured sports fan. All three of my teams had, each in their own way, raised my hopes only to come up short. The Astros fell to the Mets in extra innings. The Oilers blew the biggest lead in NFL playoffs history against the Bills. And Hakeem could never solve the riddle of the Supersonics and George Karl's defenses that I will, to this day, still argue were illegal.

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This is the other story I promised when I did my running diary of the Thunder vs. Spurs preseason game.  The what-JRW-saw story that some have expressed an interest in.

So, follow me beyond the jump into the land where sports is a job to be done, not a leisure activity. Where a humble Austinite (no, not that kind) and fan of the Spurs can pretend to be a media maven while trying not to embarrass anyone and learn the ropes. It's a land of catered food and bland decor where a small piece of paper is the most important thing you wear.

I can haz media credentials?

Image by transgojobot

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