sport it ain't

Getting back to Rennes after the weekend away, there was a game of boys' basketball on: cadets, I think, which is under 16s or thereabouts. Rennes had apparently won the away leg by 13, meaning their opponents had to win by a similar margin in Rennes. Come the end of the match, the visitors were leading, but clearly not by enough to win by 13. At some point it became noticable that the teams were not trying hard to score, and then the visitors started doing weird things, throwing free throws off the backboard. Finally, someone tried to put the ball in their own basket, in an effort to score points for the opponents, and it became clear that they were trying to tie the game in order to force overtime and try to recover the 13 points there.

Not. Sport. I have never seen anything so ridiculous on a sporting field, and that any coach would allow or worse encourage 16-year-olds to engage in such unsporting behaviour, I find disgusting.