Dan the one man no one can stand

An unprecedented and seemingly inexplicable delay in the announcement of the date for PCTI IIIII has many within the league wondering if a leadership change is needed for one of the country's most widely heralded pick up basketball weekends.

PCTI boss Danny Krow has delayed an announcement for months, prompting speculation on his capability to lead. Krow is the puppet master of the “bored of directors” but lately has been too preoccupied with non-basketball affairs to pull the strings. Keeping with a long held personal tradition, Krow has once more evolved in to the type of person he has previously ridiculed. After years of lambasting anyone who used work as an excuse for...anything, Krow has disappeared in to the bowels of big business produce distribution. Some wonder if “Dan the one man corporate yes man,” thinks of PCTI as anything other than a networking tool he can use to mine for potential corporate talent.

Krow's excuses for the delay in a date are so inadequate that many wonder how he can even deliver them with a straight face. The one time respected leader has offered up three excuses for the delay, each seemingly more absurd than the other. For starters, Krow has tried to unfairly redirect the ire of impatient PCTI participants on to Scott Donley. Donley and his wife are expected the couple's first child in early 2014. Puzzlingly, Krow speaks of the exact time frame of the forthcoming arrival of Baby Donley as an unsolved mystery. It doesn't take recent first time parents (though Krow is one of those, too) to know that a baby's due date is usually “revealed” in the seconds after the baby's existence is confirmed. Still, Krow gives the impression that he and Donley are speaking regularly, waiting for news to break on his availability for PCTI. A decision that could have been made – and on Donley's end, probably was made - months ago.

Then there's the issue with Dan's number one pawn and cohort on the “bored” the scholar and man of letters himself, Anthony Hopkins. As if figuring out when a baby is going to be born isn't going to be difficult enough, Krow has the added task of trying to crack the code of when Hopkins will graduate. Certainly Hopkins knew the approximate time of his graduation before he ever logged in to his first graduate level webinar, yet somehow his impending graduation has PCTI in a holding pattern.

But both of these excuses make like Joe Thompson and pale in comparison to Krow's third date conflict he's juggling, the infamous Bryan McKinney fishing trip. Going in to his fifth year in PCTI, only two things have elicited any sort of emotion from McKinney: colorful language in the Rancho and Cilantro High School gymnasium and fucking with the dates of his fishing trip.

This is how I picture it.

A nervous Krow walks through a plate glass door and in to a nondescript, sparsely decorated State Farm office in Arizona. He faces a large wooden desk, meticulously clean. Behind the desk is a large leather chair, it is turned so Krow is facing its back. The blinds are closed and only creases of sunlight peak in the otherwise dark room.

Slowly, the chair turns around. A straight faced McKinney, dressed in chinos and a button up shirt, resembling a white Cliff Paul, lifts his chin up and peers through Krow with an unblinking stare.

After several seconds of silence that feel like hours, McKinney breaks the stare and looks at the wall, where a mounted Blue Gill hangs.

McKinney: That's a nice fish isn't it, Danny?

Danny: Ahh, man you know I don't...

McKinney, cutting him off: I'm not going to tell you the story of how I caught that fish, Daniel. You know fish stories...people tend to exaggerate....say things they really didn't do....sometimes things they...can't do. I'm not that kind of guy, Daniel.

(McKinney spins the computer monitor on his desk so it is facing Danny and silently motions Danny to look at the screen)

McKinney: Get in close, real close.

(McKinney with his left hand cups the back of Danny's head, moving it inches from the screen. Using his right he opens his Outlook Calendar to a week in the summer.)

McKinney, talking to Krow as if he is a child: See this week, Danny? This is the week for my fishing trip. Don't. Fuck. With. My. Fishing. Trip.

(McKinney lets go of Dan's head gently and slowly spins his chair back around)

McKinney: Now get the fuck out of here.

This is the only way I can conceive of this conversation happening. How else could the single quietest and easy going guy in PCTI have such influence over the date of PCTI? Certainly both he and Krow know everyone else takes other vacations during the course of the spring and summer months. But yet here is Krow, seemingly paralyzed by fear, incapable of considering a date until he knows with absolute certainly that it won't conflict with....pause again for emphasis....a got damned fishing trip.

So as the league waits, where does PCTI IIIII stand? Obviously the off season schedule has taken a major hit. How can we know when is the appropriate time to train, talk trash, buy plane tickets, etc. until we know when the off season ends?

One could argue that this PCTI more than any before it needs a date set. Do not forget that it was Krow himself that went against everything he had stood for previously (and perhaps his better judgment, though he's unlikely to admit it) to send this year's event to Denver. A daring and potentially reckless move considering weather could be drastically different in the spring versus the summer. Also, while he wowed the league with his presentation, this PCTI is in the hands of Abe. Read that last part of the sentence again before continuing. That's the guy who in years past didn't know who was on his team or bothered to book a flight until days before tip off. Now we're trusting him to plan an event that as of Thanksgiving, still doesn't even have so much as a preliminary date set.

Maybe PCTI is overdue on making two important decisions. Picking a weekend for IIIII and picking a successor to their distracted, incapable leader.