Ben Wallace wore his hair in the Afro, and when a man's hair rises, can the man do any less? So Wallace stood up Thursday night, nearly taking the game over, and Rasheed Wallace, bad foot and all, stood up, too, and Rip Hamilton stood up and Chauncey Billups stood up. They all stood up and stared into the snarling dragon of this Game 7, then they dropped baskets down its throat until it choked.
MITCH ALBOMEAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. -- The final buzzer sounded, and the Pistons hugged in the eerie silence of a disappointed crowd. Or maybe it wasn't hugging. Maybe, after what they had done -- enduring those swelling and dwindling leads, snaring an exhausting victory, saving themselves from the fires of elimination -- maybe they were just holding each other up."If there was ever a doubt about this team's heart," Joe Dumars, the Pistons' president, said when this was over, "they answered it tonight. They never gave up."Dumars looked tired. And he didn't even play.
How outraged should an outraged American be?This became a question last week thanks to Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe. When he took the microphone at the hearings on Abu Ghraib prison, he did not begin with a question for the military man seated at the table -- which is what he was there to do.Instead, like too many senators -- Democrat and Republican -- he began with a speech.And in his speech, he said he was "more outraged by the outrage" than by the treatment depicted in photographs from Abu Ghraib.
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.
