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.
Not about race. Not about color. Not about image. Not about style. Brian Ellerbe is about to be fired as Michigan's basketball coach for two reasons and two reasons only. Wins and losses. The lack of the former and the preponderance of the latter.Never mind what some people are saying, that four years is not enough of a chance, that he is being unfairly judged, that because he is black, that the administration did not hand him the same things to work with as his predecessors.
Take a kid. A skinny, mixed-up kid. A kid who feels picked on, persecuted, bullied -- a kid who vows revenge.Now add a gun. A gun kept in his house, by his father, in a glass case. One morning, when whatever crazy, unloved portion of that kid's brain fires the wrong synapse, he takes that gun to school and opens fire, killing two classmates.Now take that same kid. But subtract the gun. He gets up that same morning and something snaps. But there is no firearm at hand. What does he do? Maybe he takes a knife? Or a brick? Or a can of spray paint?
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.
