ATLANTA -- With less than a minute left, the ball came off the rim and Andre Hutson rose to it like, well, like a Spartan. His big hands clamped, his elbows swung, and he owned that ball, he owned it, never mind that three Temple players tried to get it away from him, three men in black shirts, pulling, swiping, tugging, it was his, the ball was green, the score was green, the day was green, and the lights to the Final Four were turning green, too.
First come the words: "SPECIAL REPORT."Then comes a TV anchor, pushing on a small earpiece, breathlessly informing you there has been another shooting in a high school.Next comes a map. It shows where the high school is located.Then the aerial view, from a helicopter.Next comes a voice, from a local TV affiliate: "Our initial reports are sketchy, but there has apparently been a shooting in the school ...at least three people are believed hit ...we do not know the shooter's identity . . ."Next come the camera shots.Images of kids running away.
Maybe they're trying to be nice.Maybe they need a bigger vocabulary.But have you noticed how the broadcasters for these NCAA tournament games seem hesitant to call things as they really are -- especially if they are the slightest bit ...negative?Example: A player dribbles the ball off his foot, then bounces it off his head, then runs the wrong way and shoots at the opposite basket.Announcer: "He's struggling today."Example: Team A falls behind by 30 points. Team A hasn't made a basket since last week. There are four minutes left.
My freshman year at college I lived in a dorm, next to a guy on the basketball team. His last name was Carrington. He was funny. He kept bragging to everyone about how good he was, how the Celtics were going to give him a tryout, but when we went to the games, he didn't even start. He came off the bench.
MEMPHIS, Tenn. -- The uniforms will not do it. No one is impressed. The Michigan State Spartans may be defending national champions, but no opponent is going to fall over at the sight of them.The names will not do it. No one is impressed. Never mind that Charlie Bell, Andre Hutson and Jason Richardson were part of a title run last year. No opponent will quake in its boots, swallow air, go all goose-bumpy when they take the floor.
They called it "getting the wood." It was a paddle or a stick several inches thick, and the coach gave it to you smack across the butt, sometimes alone in his office, sometimes in front of the whole team. The number of whacks depended on what you did, and how badly you did it.Joel (Tony) Blankenship got the wood in his day. He attended Detroit's Murray-Wright High School in the late '80s. He took his whacks, like most of his teammates. It never bothered him or scarred him emotionally. Parents didn't complain.
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.
