Free Press columnist Mitch Albom spoke with Dennis Rodman on Thursday morning before Rodman departed for Texas. Here are excerpts from that conversation.Q -- Is it true you don't want to play for the Pistons anymore? A -- It's not like that. I don't want to do anything against Ron Rothstein, but what he and Jack (McCloskey) did to Chuck Daly was wrong. Chuck did so much for this team, and they basically pushed him aside and said, "OK, we got a man to take your place."
WIMBLEDON, England -- Ivan Lendl will keep coming back here until they cut his arms and legs off. And he'll never win this tournament. He can practice at his mansion until the servants go home. He can fly to Australia for special training on grass. Heck, he can start sleeping with a Toro lawn mower for all it matters. It won't matter. He is not taking this title.
He had taken so many hockey shots before. None hurt like this one. It was the Olympics, it was overtime, a shoot-out, two teams, five men each, one goalie to beat.He had the last shot, his country's last hope in the sport it worshiped. Brendan Shanahan skated in on the goalie, a guy named Dominik Hasek, and faked, but it didn't take. Hasek went with him, stopped the shot, the crowd roared, the Czechs had their upset, and that was the end of Canada's 1998 gold medal dream.
Let me get this straight. Jenna Bush, the 19-year-old daughter of President George W. Bush, a woman who has been all over TV, all over the newspapers, who appeared on the campaign trail, who danced with her father before a million flashbulbs, and who, outside the Dallas Cowboys, might be one of the most recognizable faces in Texas, tries to buy booze in Austin using a fake ID?It isn't her liver we should be worrying about. It's her brain.But college freshmen will be college freshmen. I'm more intrigued by President Bush's stance, which is silence. Indignant silence.
Jenna Franklin wanted a birthday present. She asked her parents. They said OK.Jenna was about to turn 16.She wanted new breasts."You've got to have breasts to be successful," she told a British tabloid.Her mother, who already had breast enlargement, liposuction, a nose job and a cheek job, agreed."There are so many young girls who are depressed about the way they look," she said, "if you can do something about it, that's great."
LATER TODAY, the Pistons will name Joe Dumars their president of basketball operations and George Irvine their coach. This is interesting news, maybe even good news. But it is pretty much like saying, "We've got the tanks and the maps; all we need now are the soldiers."In the NBA, as in war, the soldiers are the story.
By now the U.S. Olympic men's basketball players have put away their bronze medals (deep inside the sock drawer) and probably are wondering why they bothered to go in the first place."One of them told me he felt let down because people back home were rooting against them," Swin Cash, a member of U.S. women's gold-medal team and the Shock, told me.Well, that's a shame. No athlete should sense his country rooting against him. As defenders of this Dream Team have said: "Don't get mad at these guys. They're the ones who gave up their summers."
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.
