He missed his first two shots -- on ESPN they don't mention that specifically, but they do say that his first basket was "that third trip down the court". He went seven for thirteen; six for ten from the three point line. That's really impressive, especially for being in the game so short a time.

For a cool apples-to-oranges comparison, here's how some NBA players are doing from the three point line (it's the column labeled 3P%.)

http://www.nba.com/statistics/player/Scoring.jsp

Not that I really know anything about the subject, but basketball might be a good sport for the autistic, because there's such a lot of opportunity for obsessive solo practice. On the other hand, it's also a game that requires exceptionally fluid thinking, with people constantly coming at you from all directions and heavy demands on your ability to read body language (is he going to shoot or pass? Will he try to dribble left or right?) I guess the way around that would be to make your awesome autistic shooter the team free-throw expert.

-- JeffBoulier - 04 Mar 2006

I wish they'd told us how much practice he'd had.

-- CatherineJohnson - 03 Mar 2006

How many did he miss?

My impression was that he missed the first, then kept hitting - I'll have to watch again.

-- CatherineJohnson - 03 Mar 2006

Figures that ESPN would do a great job on this! I've seen it a couple other places, and they were not mentioning any of his misses after the first two. For example, I think that the ABC story implied that he hit seven shots in a row. That's frankly unbelievable, and in fact gave the impression that he'd been 'allowed' to score -- you'd have to be paying careful attention to the video clips to realize that that wasn't the case.

-- JeffBoulier - 02 Mar 2006

Did you notice what he said about how the basket became a big 'bucket'??

Ed said he thinks this kid had some weird perceptual distortion going on for that period of time that made it almost impossible for him not to hit the basket.

-- CatherineJohnson - 02 Mar 2006

I read about this in the paper, but it is really cool to see the video.

I am so glad I finally got a high speed connection!!

-- AnneDwyer - 02 Mar 2006

a boy in the zone

his story



Ed said tears were streaming down this face when he watched this. (Click on the 'play' button to see the video.)


-- CatherineJohnson - 02 Mar 2006

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• Posted by: CatherineJohnson
• LogDate: Mar 01, 2006 @ 19:29

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