544: Pep Talk

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Pep Talk

Title text: Listen! They said a team of chess players coached by someone with no understanding of basketball would never be competitive in the NBA! Well, it turns out they're pretty perceptive.

Explanation

Another comic where Randall takes a less than serious look at sports.

The halftime pep talk of a basketball game is commonly used by coaches to inspire his team to either turn the game around, or to defend the lead, and to make strategic changes that will help them do so. Unfortunately, the basketball coach Cueball has absolutely no fundamental understanding of the sport, and has pulled his team (of Cueball-like players) into the locker room while the game is still in progress, not during halftime, enabling the other team to score at will.

He could have tried to get a time-out, but still he would not have been allowed to take his team down to the locker room.

The title text parodies a common plot of, especially US, sports movies in which an inexperienced team (and sometimes coach) still manage to win a title after a highly motivational pep talk (see for instance Hoosiers). These Pep talks usually take place during regular pauses of the game, and can lead to a come back from a seemingly insurmountable deficit. In this case the players are not even just poor basketball players but rather chess players and the coach knows nothing of the sport, the opposite of what is usually the case in said movies. And, of course, in this case those pessimistic about their chances were proven right.

Transcript

[Coach-Cueball stands at the end of a double row of benches in the players locker room. He speaks to his team of five Cueball-like players, two are sitting with towels on the left bench, one stands behind them, and two are sitting on the right bench, one of them resting his head on his hands.]

Coach-Cueball: Okay, team. We're sixteen points down. If we want to come back from this—

Offscreen: Woo!! Score!!!

Coach-Cueball: Okay, now we're eighteen points down. ...Listen—I'm starting to think we should only take these breaks at halftime.

Trivia

• In 1392: Dominant Players Randall compares basketball with chess.

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Discussion

There is a community portal discussion of what to call Cueball and what to do in case with more than one Cueball. I have added this comic to the new Category:Multiple Cueballs. Since there is only one Cueball that "talks" it is obvious to keep him listed as Cueball. Just made a note that the other guys also looks like Cueball. --Kynde (talk) 14:43, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

I think Cueball plural should be Cueballs. Anonymous May 8 2020

This explanation is definitely incomplete. Someone add tag please. 172.70.85.15 18:48, 2 December 2024 (UTC) (UTC)

You can do that. Assuming somebody hasn't just removed even the newest comic's tag, go and look at the current format (or, even if they have, see what 'THE BOT' put in the new-page edit) and use that as inspiration if you aren't sure of the markup format. But it's basically {{incomplete | ...your reasoning for the incompleteness... }} at the simplest. Or check the {{incomplete}} template page for the definive explanation.

Also, you (and Anonymous, above) seem not to have signed with the ~~~~ markup. Might be intentional, or you edited your configuration, but always nice to see linkable username attributions. As well as (what you did manage) a proper timestamp. 172.70.163.109 00:16, 3 December 2024 (UTC)

My bad, I didn't know exactly what you needed to type to add an incomplete tag and that thought didn't cross my mind. I thought I did sign my comment correctly but apparently not, thanks for telling me 172.70.85.15 00:24, 8 December 2024 (UTC)

When you sign with the four ~s, it puts a valid form of "who, and when" (whether you're an anon-IP, like us two, or a signed in user like Kynde, above "My 8" anon's item).

For this post, four tildes (which I'll repeat at the end) give me "172.68.205.92 01:17, 8 December 2024 (UTC)".

I could also have done three tildes, to give me "172.68.205.92" (just the "who" bit) or five tildes, to give me "01:17, 8 December 2024 (UTC)" (just the "when" bit). A common error is to mis-duplicate the tapped-in tildes. Although you can (and maybe you even originally did) do "NAME WROTE THIS" and the five, to give "NAME WROTE THIS 01:17, 8 December 2024 (UTC)". It's not exactly wrong, but it's a kind of a claim to identity that you really can't ever back up.

And this is always the current "who" and "when". I've let you get away with the "new who" of replacing the awkwardly signed "This explanation is definitely incomplete..." statement with a new four-tilde magical replacement, but (if anyone cared to look at it), it looks rather odd to have a comment timestamped as sometime on 8/Dec/2024 being replied to by one timestamped as a 3/Dec/2024 contribution. If you forget to sign, immediately realise and then go back to add in a signature then it really doesn't matter too much. But understand that the back-end replacement of the tildes with the timestamp (especially, but also possible the identity in some other cases) isn't really something you want to do when it's 'already history'.

If you want to be totally correct when back-correcting, check the "diff" page for the edit which added the (originally) unsigned/mis-signed comment and copy the timestamp (and identity, if necessary) from there. It's also what I do when I add {{unsigned}} or {{unsigned ip}} details to something, but that's another lesson. For things you know to be 'yours', obviously you just want to make it 'better looking', not to add a reminder to yourself that you should have originally used the ~~~~ signature. And it's because of the apaprent self-awareness you now have already gained of your initial error that I'm not using the "unsigned" pester-tag. But I have put it back to indicating when it was originally written (a certain time on 2/Dec/2024). And decided to try to make sure that your understanding of how to correct your errors isn't itself slightly in error. ;) It's all a bit pedantic, I know, but I only have explained it more fully because you seem willing to get it right.

...the simplest way to "get it right" is, of course, just to remember to use the four tildes to sign any (Talk-page) contribution. It becomes almost second nature. And if you do momentrily forget, you (or someone else) can easily do something about it. Perhaps in a way that nobody actually realises that it was ever not-quite-right in the first place! ;) 172.68.205.92 01:17, 8 December 2024 (UTC)