CHARLOTTE, N.C. — We start with the pigs.
Oh, they may not call themselves pigs. They may call themselves Hogs, or Razorbacks, or President of the United States, but they sure look like pigs, don’t they, with those snouts on their heads? See them over there? Cute, huh? Some even wear a whole pig face and little curlicue ears, and they walk around making “oink!” sounds.
Others just vomit from beer.
Watch your step, folks.
DALLAS — The last shot was an air ball by Jalen Rose, which, given the circumstances, was appropriate. The Michigan miracles were gone now, no more time, no more magic, nothing but the weak breeze of a missed jumper. The president of the United States was coming out to high-five the opposing team, and the arena was an Arkansas chorus, roaring for the Wolverines to get off the court. Ray Jackson ducked toward the bench area, trying to exit the fastest way, but a security man stopped him with an epitaph for the Michigan season: You can’t go out the way you came in.
DALLAS — Here we are, standing by the window, craning our necks. A Korean couple in matching red sweatshirts, a middle-age woman with curly hair the color of breakfast cereal. A college student, with long blue shorts and a sweatshirt that reaches his thighs.
We are all wearing headphones, attached to portable cassette recorders, listening to a tour guide voice say, “Look out the window now, and you will see Dealey Plaza. This is the where the presidential motorcade turned . . .”
DALLAS — There are nights when they drive you crazy with their excess, and nights where you want to slap them for their arrogance. And then there are nights when you really believe anything is possible with these Michigan kids. When you watch them dangled over the alligator pit, losing two starters to early foul trouble, facing a no-win situation against a darling underdog, and what do they do? They not only win, they put on a most unexpected clinic.
DALLAS — Steve Fisher is aging like a president. The crow’s-feet seem to multiply each year, the jowls seem to droop as if a world war was tugging them down. The hair is thinning, the eyes seem more tired. You look at pictures of Fisher when he first got this head coaching job five years ago. Compared to now, he looks like a kid.
WICHITA, Kan. — It’s funny, sometimes; the ones you expect to grab never do.
Juwan Howard had that right. To grab. From the day he came home from the hospital — and his teenage mother put him in a clothes drawer because she didn’t have a crib — Howard was on the debit side of life. Short on money. Short on comforts. Short on love and, quickly, short on parents, as both mother and father left him to be raised by his grandmother.
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