I Almost Won the First $500k Winner-Takes-All Open Basketball Tournament

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I felt like I had been hit by a truck. My left calf twitched, an unrelenting ache lived somewhere within my right ankle, and the thought of stairs made me quiver. I fidgeted on my barstool unable to escape the discomfort.



We were driving back to New Hampshire following an overtime loss in the semi-finals of The Basketball Tournament (TBT), a startup 32-team, single-elimination, $500,000 winner-takes-all tournament in Philadelphia. The first of its kind. And the finals are Saturday.

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We exited 95 in New Haven, Connecticut and stopped at the first sports bar we could find. Game Two of the Spurs vs. Heat series was on — my brother (Matt Bonner) was playing on the biggest stage basketball has to offer, the NBA Finals. Meanwhile, I tried to make sense of the past month: temporarily escaping my sedentary office lifestyle to play in one of the most unique, bizarre and mind-boggling basketball tournaments few but hardcore basketball fans even knew about Read more...

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