The 1st Annual Residents vs. Attendings basketball championship took place Sunday September 7th 2014 at the Abramson Pavilion. The championship game stipulations were set to a 4 vs. 4 matchup on the hardtop. Game to 11 points by 1’s, with “make it take it” rules in effect.
The lineups for the attendings featured the formidable duo of Guttentag and Donnelly in the paint, flanked by the crafty Abramson and Lipnik at the wings, with Omary commanding the point. Needless to say, the attendings were savvy enough to bring an extra substitute (which may have been foresight for their poor conditioning!).
The resident lineup featured a more haphazard lineup of players with no particular positioning. This included Mississippi Mark, Chief Nichols, Lefty Harty, and MJ Shanahan. Despite an overall complete lack of resident conditioning, the residents felt no need to bring an extra substitute but instead to tough it out on the court (apparently lessons learned on call in the ER).
The stage was then set for gametime. The crowd was raucous consisting of radiology families through the generations. The attendings unfortunately were unable to hit the shot for ball, and as such the residents took the opening tip, and immediately went to work (as residents do). The residents quickly jumped out to a 2-0 lead. Unfortunately for the attendings, nearly just as quickly Guttentag’s glasses came flying off his face during a scramble and were irreparably damaged (the attending would later claim this was the reason for their entire team’s poor vision and field goal percentage). From there the game was a hard-fought (and ugly) battle of two poorly conditioned teams struggling just to stand as the game neared a close. The attendings shuffled substitutes in and out like clockwork trying to take any advantage they could. The residents had a late lead at 10-7, but the attendings managed to trim this to 10-9. The game was at a standstill at this point for several possessions, as both teams fired up exhausted terrible shot after terrible shot…which luckily for everybody involved are not available via replay to laugh at. But then the game came down to one mistaken attending pass, which the residents were eager to intercept utilizing their patience and acuity learned over 4 years of residency. And from there it was the practice obtained only through hard resident work that they finished them off with a simple classic layup, to bring home the championship for the residents!
Overall it was a blast, and the post game celebration included BBQ and beers (Thank you to Dr. Abramson and his wife, also Dr. Abramson). The day was absolutely a lot of fun, and I know the residents would never turn down a chance to stuff their attendings in a basketball game, including the chair and program director!
Note from the editor: As you can tell from the above synopses, no resident bias is present in this article.
