Category Archives: Basketball

Basketball, Rocky Mountain News

No, Michael

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Bernie Lincicome
Rocky Mountain News
10-31-01

NEW YORK — Who was that unmasked man? Michael Jordan? No, way. No, sir.

Please tell me that was, oh, Danny Glover pretending to be Michael Jordan. Or Billy Bob Thornton having a wicked Halloween laugh. Or the Maytag repairman killing time.

That thick-necked, heavy legged, wide backed, play trailing, jump shooting, game dawdling, stationary, inflexible traffic cone wearing No. 23 was not Michael Jordan. What’s that on his shirt? Wizards? Figures. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

This was Ali in the Bahamas, Mays mystified by fly balls, Unitas running out the clock.

“I feel good about myself and I feel good about my game tonight,” said Jordan.

We had to look. Now we do not have to look any more. We have seen what Jordan is, just another player, without magic, without expectation. We look away and wish it were not so.

We do not want to see seven of 21 for 19 points, playing more minutes than any other Wizard. We do not want to see him with the ball in his hands, with a chance to win, and not win.

“The shot was kind of rushed,” Jordan said. “I didn’t have a real good look. It could have been a great situation.”

We still applauded Sinatra when his voice was a murmur and he couldn’t remember the words, but we had his records at home. We tried not to notice Elvis’ pot belly. We will take what Jordan has left and always weigh it against what was.

We have Jordan, too, I guess, on tape, in memory, where he belongs. We’ll always have Utah, the last shot, the perfect ending.

And the shot that started it all in Cleveland, Jordan’s tears on the first trophy in LA and the carcasses of Patrick Ewing and Charles Barkley and Clyde Drexler and Karl Malone and Gary Payton and the all the rest who had the misfortune of occupying Michael’s time.

We do not need, as Doug Collins was trying to explain, Paul Pierce and Antwon Walker challenging the old legend, stealing with their youth what time has taken from Jordan.

“Guys will measure themselves against Michael,” Collins said. “He’ll be under pressure every night. Everyone will be coming at him.”

This night it was Laetrell Sprewell, if half-heartedly, looking more like Michael than Michael, allowing Michael to look like the muffin man.

Some 30 seconds to play, Jordan’s team down to the Knicks by three. Jordan has the basketball. Jordan loses the basketball. He loses the ball, his third turnover of the game.

The Wizards get the ball back. Sixteen seconds to play. Providence has a sense of humor. Jordan will get another chance to win the game. He used to need only the one. Jordan has the ball. Jordan shoots the three. The ball dares to clank off the rim. The ball did not used to do that.

“When he threw that trip up,” said Knicks coach Jeff van Gundy, “I thought it was in.”

Knicks win. Jordan has chipped the first chunk out of his statue.

I did not expect His Airness to come back as his acrobatic, gravity defying, breath stealing self, but I also did not expect him to come back as Will Perdue. Jordan is going to have to change his logo, from all soaring, long arms and spread legs to someone leaning on his elbow.

“Six assists, four steals, five rebounds, he makes a few more shots and we say, wow, what a game,” said Collins.

No, we do not say that. We say not bad for an old man, or not bad for a rookie, or not bad for Nick Van Exel. We do not now need to stretch the standard that Jordan invented.

This was not the third coming. This was the Antiques Road Show. What am I bid for this floor lamp? I skipped the World Series to see Michael Jordan return to us as a potted plant.

This was like Picasso coloring inside the lines, Pavarotti in biofocals reading the words, Baryshnikov in sequins moon walking. This was Sir Edmund Hillary going back up Everest on an ATV.

“I was trying to get my teammates involved,” said Jordan, and it sounded more like an alibi than a tactic.

I have seen more air under a garden gnome than under Jordan. I’ve seen better defense from a head waiter. And they move faster, too.

“Teams are not playing us,” said Collins. “They’re playing to beat Michael.”

It is very much in fashion, especially here where the nose if not the eyes reminds us of a world changed forever, to wish to turn back the clock. We can not turn it back to Sept. 10 and we can not turn it back to 1997.

Nor can Jordan. He can only indulge whatever impulse has brought him back. He can only do what he can do and it is not longer what it was he did. He will have his moments, he will have nights like Tuesday night.

“If he plays well,” said Collins, “he’ll be the old Michael. If he doesn’t, he’ll just be old Michael. That’s just the way it is.”

Today’s vote is old.

Basketball, Chicago Tribune, College

OUR LOCAL PRODUCTS GROW IN STATURE

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The Battle of Chicago, such as it was, went to the locals from Loyola, those basketball players who do not need a road map or a flashlight to find Lower Wacker Drive.

Local knowledge being what it is, Loyola also did not have to ask directions to find the basket, though De Paul, the visitor on its home floor at the Horizon, could have used a Seeing Eye dog or a tour guide and not found it.

The final accounting of Tuesday night’s tussle was 78-71, which is either a victory for home cooking or a loss for imported talent, maybe both.

Whatever deeper significance there is in that must be left to sociologists and recruiters, not necessarily the same people, though the emphasis of the two programs was clearly decided in favor of Loyola’s home- grown strategy for one night at least.

“We are the Chicago team,” said Loyola’s Alfredrick Hughes. “We wanted to prove it tonight.”

“They (De Paul) are a Chicago team, too,” said Loyola coach Gene Sullivan, which can only be interpreted as a compliment from a man who recruits only as far as his eye can see.

It was not quite civil war, not that it was a happy block party, either. It was more like your average neighborhood clock cleaning. Both sides walked away more or less friends and no blows were struck in anger.

“This game was personal,” said De Paul’s Marty Embry. “I guess you could say it was for bragging rights this summer. We’re just going to have to wait one long year.”

“The local products really wanted to beat us,” said De Paul’s Dallas Comegys.

Most notable of those were Loyola’s Hughes and Andre Battle, who threw balls into the basket at times and from places on the floor no one could have expected, least of all De Paul.

Hughes and Battle finished first and second in scoring for the night with 28 and 23 points, Hughes, in fact, becoming the eighth-highest scorer in college basketball history.

“It’s nice being known as the best player (in Chicago),” Hughes said. “But you want to be on the best team. I think I’m on the best team.”

In his four years of playing against De Paul, Hughes has scored 27, 26, 42 and 28 points, for which he may expect the entire Meyer family to be at his graduation, wishing him well. And good riddance.

It took Hughes a little longer to get his act together this last time. He had only nine points at the half, as did Battle, with Hughes playing mostly at center. In the second half, Hughes moved farther from the basket and found it more easily.

“You can’t keep Mr. Hughes down all game,” said Sullivan. “You can’t keep Mr. Battle down all game.”

Still, how Loyola accomplished all of this is not quite clear, since the Ramblers were shorter than De Paul and outrebounded the Demons 54-47, and they shot from much farther away and hit 42 percent of the time to De Paul’s 33.

“If you don’t put the ball in the hole,” said De Paul coach Joey Meyer, “you can’t win basketball games.”

Not one De Paul player made as many as half of his shots, with Tyrone Corbin getting only 4 of 13, Embry getting 5 of 15 and Comegys 5 of 13.

“I thought we had good shots,” said Meyer. “They just didn’t go in.”

And when they didn’t, it was usually a Loyola player who got the ball, rather than someone from De Paul.

“I thought the key for us was Ivan Young in the first half,” said Sullivan.

Young replaced starting center Andre Moore barely four minutes into the game when Moore picked up three fouls. Young scored eight points and got eight rebounds.

“Once Moore went out,” said Comegys, “that was when we should have destroyed them inside.”

De Paul should have done lots of things this season, but hasn’t, having now lost seven games, and two of those at the Horizon. At 15-7, De Paul looks like a less desirable NCAA invitee than does Loyola at 17-5.

“This game had lots of local interest,” said Sullivan, “but it had a national significance, too. We are both after at-large bids to the NCAA and whoever got the loss would be set back.

“I think we’ll get a bid and I think De Paul will get one, too. They’re a good team. We’re a good team.”

“We just can’t seem to turn the corner,” said Meyer. “When the offense plays well, the defense falls apart. When the defense is on, the offense is off.

“The road just doesn’t get any easier.”

Basketball, Biography, Chicago Tribune, Professional

SAMPSON JUST IMMEASURABLE

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Dateline: INDIANAPOLIS

Let’s not ask the real Ralph Sampson to stand up, please.

Sampson in his underwear already is 7 feet 4 inches, an altitude with which the rest of us are unfamiliar, except on those rare occasions when someone might ask us to stand on a ladder to wash an elephant.

But the world of professional basketball would like to see just how far Sampson can stretch, for when that happens, as it did in inspired moments of Sunday’s National Basketball Association All-Star game, the sport becomes something never imagined by Dr. James Naismith or any of his heirs, who all now apparently live in Indiana and are convinced they know more about basketball than the rest of the world put together.

“Sampson is still growing,” said Los Angeles Lakers’ and West coach Pat Riley. “Growing in his basketball life, I mean. You look at him now and you just say, ‘Wow.’

“And then you think of what he can become, and you cannot imagine where he’ll be, where he’ll take basketball. He will have an impact no one else has ever had on this league.”

Or, to quote Mr. Magic Johnson of the Lakers, many of whose 15 assists went to Sampson in the West’s 140-129 disposal of its geographic opposite in the Hoosier Dome: “You bring the ball up, and you take two guys into the paint with you, and then you just flip it over your head and here comes Sampson. Woooo. Woosh. Wham.

“You can’t wait to give it to him again. You say: ‘Let’s do it. Let’s go again. Here it comes, big guy.’ You look up and there he is, so high, and you know the game is changing. Whooeee.”

“Playing like that,” allowed Sampson, “is a lot of fun.”

K.C. Jones, the East coach from Boston, mused: “You coach against a team like that and you try to do a halfway decent job on Kareem (Abdul-Jabbar). That’s a maybe. And then Magic, that’s a maybe. And George Gervin hits 10 of 10 or 20 of 20, and still you think there’s a chance.

“Then you see a guy like Sampson, a guy that tall filling the lane, bringing the ball up, getting offensive boards, playing defense, blocking shots. Sampson was kind of awesome today.”

Awesome translated into numbers is 24 points and 10 rebounds in 29 minutes of play, all of them in motion.

As long as there are so many people saying such nice things about him, or the press voting him the most valuable star of stars, Sampson will never have to speak for himself, which he has always had a tough time doing, though he tries to prove his education at Virginia wasn’t wasted.

“I just want to be able to do what there is to do,” Sampson said.

Which is? “Drive, dribble, shoot, whatever has to be done,” Sampson said. “I’d love to play point guard.”

The point is, Sampson is not supposed to be gyrating like a playground punk, juking and jamming and driving. He is supposed to be standing right under the basket, like all 7-footers before him, maybe skyhooking when the mood is right but mostly reaching over the rim while pygmies claw at his waist.

That’s the way he did it in college. That’s the way he did it in Houston last year, his first season as a pro. That’s the way he might have done it forever had not Houston drafted another 7-footer, Akeem Olajuwon, to take the interior pounding and free Sampson to be the best that he can be.

“Ralph is a better forward than center,” said Johnson.

“He is too versatile to just play in the pivot,” said Abdul-Jabbar. “It limits him.”

The votes of NBA fans put Sampson in the West’s starting lineup, but Riley’s sense of history kept him on the same floor with L.A.’s Johnson, who knows how to make ordinary giants look great, and what we saw on a snowy Sunday in Indy was just a hint of things to come.

“I would have to think in my own mind that he would be much better if he played with me,” said Johnson. “If I played with him all the time, I’d have 25 assists a game.”

Sampson with Johnson certainly impressed Riley, whose chief regret is that he has but the one.

“You can’t help marveling at the novelty of both,” said Riley. “Here is Magic, a 6-9 point guard, and there is Sampson, a 7-4 small forward.

“Nobody really knows what to do with either one, yet. They are just too unorthodox. They are stretching the perimeters of the game.”

“I really don’t know what I can do, what my limits are,” Sampson said. “All I know is I can do a lot more than I do now.

“I just want to get better and enjoy the days to come.”

So say we all.

Basketball, Chicago Tribune, Professional

NBA PUTS MONEY WHERE MOUTHS ARE

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Dateline: INDIANAPOLIS

Alex English opened his mail and $5 fell out. He read the enclosed letter, printed neatly in a novice hand. “I want to help the people in Ethiopia,” it said.

“Chills went through me,” English said. “It was like she was in tune with me.

“She was 6 years old. How much does $5 mean to someone who is 6?”

How much does $2,500 mean to the winner of Sunday’s National Basketball Association All-Star game? Or $1,500 to the loser?

To the wealthy warriors of America’s climate-controlled arenas, probably less than to the generous child English had touched when he first went public with his concern for unfortunate humans a half-world away.

But added up, 12 winners and 12 losers, the total is $48,000, and with a supplement from the NBA, it will mean that $100,000 will be sent to the pained citizens of Ethiopia, though none may know English, the man or the language.

“For what they need,” said English, “it’s still not much.”

You’ve seen the pictures, the heart-stabbing pictures of skeletons that are still children, of mothers crying over dead babies and the raw, unforgiving African land that has dried up and stolen the future.

English saw them, too, after a full meal last October in his generous home in Denver, where he works as a shooting forward for the Nuggets basketball team.

“I wanted to do something,” English said.

English is a sincere and sensitive man, a published poet, if the truth be known.

He grew up poor in South Carolina.

“Nothing like the people of Ethiopia are going through,” he said.

For the last five years, English has sent $150 a month to fight world hunger, his private contribution to anonymous bellies, but Ethiopia was real, in nearly living color on his television set, and English felt its cruelty.

“It was the kids,” English said. “I have kids of my own. The kids I saw starving wouldn’t make it through the day. I knew I had to do something.” What English did was call Larry Fleischer, who runs the pro basketball players’ union, of which English is a vice president. English suggested that this year’s All-Stars donate their pay, even though he did not know who the All-Stars would be or even if he would be one.

“These are the same people who are thought of as harsh, stingy and selfish,” English said. “I’m just one guy. It took all these others to be willing, and I commend them on the gesture. I’m proud to be in the NBA just because of this.”

Pro basketball is not the first sport to embrace charity. Having a social conscience is an established and foolproof image-booster.

But basketball may be the first pro sport in which the athletes actually took money from their own pockets, or didn’t put it in, as the case may be.

“Okay,” English conceded, “this doesn’t hurt our image, but that’s not why we did it. We weren’t out to prove anything to anybody. This wasn’t for purposes of publicity; it was just a way to get people involved doing something about a serious situation.

“There are millions of starving people over there. This goes beyond color or religion or politics. It is more important than race or where it is.”

Pat Riley, coach of the Los Angeles Lakers and the West All-Stars, said the coaches’ association was considering a contribution also.

“What a magnificent thing this is,” Riley said. “Nobody forced the players to do this. It is from the heart.”

“I guess this shows that today’s athletes aren’t just bottom-liners,” said Bob Cousy, the legendary Celtic here for the old-timers’ game Saturday.

“The players of the NBA are truly capturing the spirit of America by demonstrating their whole-hearted support for the people trapped by the crisis in Ethiopia,” said NBA commissioner David Stern, who made sure a press release with his endorsement was handy.

Whatever motives are behind the effort will make little difference to the famine victims it will help.

“We’re hoping to do more,” English said. “We may run some all-star games this summer to raise more money.”

English hopes to go to Ethiopia and film a TV documentary about the problem.

“We would really like to see it snowball,” he said. “The important thing is to get others to join in, to make the general population more conscious of the situation.

“We should all be ready to reach back and help people. One person can’t do much, but if you can get the masses together, anything can be done.

“Maybe the hockey or baseball or football players could do the same thing with their All-Star games.”

Has English spoken to them about it?

“I don’t know any baseball or football players,” he said.

That’s their loss.

Keywords: ALEX ENGLISH BIOGRAPHY

The last name of Larry Fleisher is mispelled in this story. The Tribune regrets the error.

Basketball, Chicago Tribune, College

JOEY? HOW ABOUT EARLY RETIREMENT?

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The thing for Joey Meyer to do, obviously, is to announce he is retiring as De Paul basketball coach at the end of the season, not an original strategy but nonetheless worth a try. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

It worked for his father Ray, who only lost half as many games as Joey has lost already with the same team.

Besides, all the common motivators are used up. Revenge didn’t work. Dayton whipped De Paul worse the second time than the first, and paid its own way here to do it.

The Horizon winning streak is gone, dead at 36. No longer can De Paul depend on the home-hangar advantage, which has always been greatly magnified by the astonishment of visitors realizing they did not have to dribble around parked aircraft or dress like Mr. Goodwrench.

Defending a high national ranking is a memory. That incentive was half gone before the latest loss and is sure to disappear completely the next time AP voters express an opinion on the Blue Demons. There may not be enough fingers on the starting five to count De Paul’s position among America’s college basketball elite.

Even the threat of losing a bid to the NCAA tournament is inconclusive. So many teams are invited to join the march through March that even twin- hyphened colleges that get their mail RFD have booked rooms with running water in Lexington, Ky., where the four finalists will gather in eventual resolution.

By winning just half of its remaining eight games, De Paul can expect at worst to be exiled to some remote tournament outpost, playing the late game against the top seed, a fate usually reserved for the Ivy League sacrifice or any school that has Baptist as a last name.

And who can say that, just as this season has gone exactly the opposite of what was expected, the usual tournament results will not be reversed, too? De Paul losing early is not quite as unusual as De Paul losing late, though it has been done that way, too. In fact, the last time De Paul made the Final Four, that is precisely the way it was done. With eight games remaining in the 1978-79 season, De Paul had already lost four, including one each to Dayton and Western Michigan, a pair of familiar curses.

Edgy about missing the then considerably smaller NCAA tournament field, De Paul worried its way into an invitation, not losing (to Loyola) until it had been anointed. Indiana State and Larry Bird subsequently disposed of De Paul in the semis.

Mark Aguirre’s considerable presence at the time may be enough to make present comparisons seem foolish, though Dallas Comegys and Tyrone Corbin have big enough feet to wear one each of Aguirre’s shoes, and Comegys alone has enough room to share the question mark that Aguirre has never quite been able to erase.

Having Kenny Patterson running the De Paul offense has not proved to be lethal, but one suspects that as a senior, Patterson has somehow regressed to the point where he might not even be recruited by De Paul today.

The important thing for De Paul to realize is that it doesn’t have to look any further than the school yearbook to find the recipe for redemption.

Joey Meyer has gallantly taken the blame for all of this, which is the least he can do, even if he was in the most unenviable of all positions for a first-year coach. Meyer had to start his coaching career without benefit of a single excuse.

Other coaches inherit the mistakes of strangers. They get three years to be repairmen before judgments are made. Meyer took over a winner from a relative. He did not have to introduce himself to his players or his players to his methods, which immediately removed the most handy alibi for failure.

The biggest move he had to make was one seat up on the bench. He assumed a 26-3 team with exactly the same players save Jerry McMillan, who no one imagined would be missed.

Meyer’s mission was to not botch things up, and there is not enough evidence yet to determine whether he has or not.

All that is known is that these players are not performing for the son as intensely or effectively as they did for the father. The present danger is that the De Paul basketball season will come down to an argument against heredity.

PHOTO: Joey Meyer.

Basketball, College

KNIGHT BENCHES HIS INTEGRITY

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The basketball coach of Indiana University is a fool, as well as a phony, and thankfully has nothing more sinister to do than to bully other people’s children and occasionally give away conference games to the University of Illinois.

If the Indiana coach were doing something truly vital, such as your laundry or mine, he might be a perpetual irritant, but he is seasonal and avoidable, like poison sumac.

In fact, there are many citizens who think of the basketball coach of Indiana about as often as they do insurance, and with equal fondness.

What amusement there is in paying the least attention to the man comes from wondering what new and original way he can make a jerk of himself, though such curiosity is as pointless as wondering whatever happened to your first bicycle.

None of this is a startling discovery to have made on a cold Sunday afternoon while watching the coach of Indiana insult Illinois and the rest of college basketball, a sport he pretends to protect, for his own private amusement.

The greater surprise would have been if he had not done something to confirm his loutishness, though the last thing anyone expected was that he would play to lose.

The coach of Indiana has won national titles and was only recently the headmaster of our Olympic effort, which resulted in gold medals all around from stomping foreigners without remorse, hardly a challenge.

Maybe the only thing he had never done in the game was lose on purpose. And now he has.

Unless, of course, the coach of Indiana has simply allowed his ego to disengage him completely from reality.

Ordinary coaches can win with their best players, their starters. That’s the way it’s done every day. But only the most exceptional coach can win with the very bottom of his roster, and only the most arrogant would try.

The coach of Indiana tried. He played six freshmen against Illinois, the point being not their ability, of which there was precious little, but their age.

He was apparently teaching his regular players a lesson in humility, or defense. Maybe he was merely making some insane point for the guardians of Illinois athletics, in whose house he was playing and whom he considers unrepentant pirates.

Maybe he thought it beneath him to play games with crooks. Which it was is not important to anyone but him.

It could be that he was showing everybody who is in charge at Indiana, who is the boss, a question that needs to be posed but has never been raised except possibly in his own curious mind.

All that is known right now is that he did it in public, as only a fool or someone overly enchanted with his own legend would do.

He did throw in one regular senior starter, who stands sometimes without falling at 7 feet 2 inches. One imagines he did that so that when the pictures come out, it will look like a real basketball team was on the floor.

Otherwise, the team that represented Indiana was as unkempt as a teenager’s room and had no more chance of beating Big 10-leading Illinois than it did of finding a clean shirt under the bed.

His explanation was not as amazing as the fact that he bothered to explain at all, even in his fashion, which was to pretend like nothing unusual had happened at all.

“I enjoyed watching our kids today,” he said. “They played defense.”

And even the coach of Illinois lied right along with the coach of Indiana.

“Different coaches have different ways of handling their players,” Lou Henson said. “I am not complaining.”

What Henson ought to be doing is calling for an investigation, or at least an apology. This wasn’t college basketball, this was an inexcusable fraud.

It was a man tripping over his own mania, which is that only he knows what is good for himself and for everyone else.

The coach of Indiana has lately and loudly expounded on the evils of his sport, accusing without proof almost every other basketball program in the nation of the most terrible things.

The danger in calling into question the integrity of others is that you must be above reproach yourself, and that was the edge he enjoyed.

His honesty and his concern for the game had never been an issue until now. But the evidence of Sunday is that the coach of Indiana cares as little about the integrity of college basketball as he would have us believe everyone else does.

Which is worse, to buy players in order to win or to use players who have no chance of winning?

Choosing up sides on this issue is as appealing as trying to decide whether to sleep with a weasel or a warthog.

One of which is Bobby Knight.

PHOTO: UPI Photo. Brian Sloan, one of 4 freshmen who started for Indiana in its loss at Illinois, flips the ball between Bruce Douglas (25) and Efrem Winters.