Don't call it college. It's not college if you don't even declare a major. It's not college if you needn't bother finishing your second semester. It's not college if you spent most of your time in the gym, or on a plane, or being interviewed. It's not college just because you wore a uniform with the school's name on it.We are hearing lately about all these freshman basketball stars - Kevin Love of UCLA, O.J. Mayo of Southern Cal, Derrick Rose of Memphis, Michael Beasley of Kansas State - leaving college to jump to the NBA. Leaving college? Please. They were never really there.
"We're gonna get back to playing the way we're supposed to, or we'll get our butts kicked by a young, hungry team."- Lindsey Hunter, after the Pistons' 90-86 loss in their playoff openerSo here, in the final minute, was Jason Maxiell, stretched high as if on a rack. Remember, if Maxiell were a tube of toothpaste, he'd be squeezed from the bottom and all balled up near the top. Thick chested, broad shouldered, he is a mountain of a torso, and mountains are damn hard to move.
He gets the best parking spot. That's one perk. Over the years, he jokes, his space has moved "closer and closer" to the Joe Louis Arena door and now "I only get bumped for two people.""Mr. Ilitch being one?" I say."And his wife being the other," he laughs.
Don't try this at home. Ben Wallace takes his left wrist in his right hand and squeezes. The wrist shifts, making a soft cracking noise that sends a shiver down an observer's spine.And that's his good hand."That's what happens when I'm shooting free throws," he says, flopping the right hand now - the one that has been injured for years. "I can shoot 10 straight good ones. On the 11th, it just slips out. I don't know when it's gonna happen.""And you have to fix it," I ask, "right there on the free-throw line?""Yeah.""You just pop it back in?"
The day he signed here, as an NBA rookie fresh out of Duke, his father had to race off and purchase a razor and shaving cream to get rid of his son's "college peach fuzz." Grant Hill had never used a razor before - always used electric - and all through the news conference, "my face was killing me."
Joey Harrington sounded like a kid who had just gotten his acceptance letter to college."I'm going to Miami," he crowed.He was speaking on a cell phone from Washington, a city he had never visited. He was doing the tourist thing, he said, standing in front of the Jefferson Memorial. It's a place kids go on their class trips. But for Harrington, the longest tour of his life finally had concluded. He'd found a new team. He'd settled on a new city. All that remained was the legal separation from Detroit.
He had tried the slapshot. He had tried the rebound. He had tried the quick flick. So when he came down the ice early in overtime, puck on his stick, crowd on its feet, Johan Franzen, with eight failed shots on the night, made a decision for No. 9."I was gonna try," he said, "and deke him and go backhand.""Why that?" he was asked."Well, the other shots didn't seem to work."
He had tried the slap shot. He had tried the rebound. He had tried the quick flick. So when he came down the ice early in overtime, puck on his stick, crowd on its feet, Johan Franzen, with eight failed shots on the night, made a decision for No. 9."I was gonna try," he said, "and deke him and go backhand.""Why that?" he was asked."Well, the other shots didn't seem to work."
Mitch Albom writes about running an orphanage in impoverished Port-au-Prince, Haiti, his kids, their hardships, laughs and challenges, and the life lessons he’s learned there every day.
