LAKERS-PACERS? A prediction?No problem.* GAME 1: The opening tip is delayed 90 minutes due to a limousine backup outside the Staples Center. Because so many movie stars are there -- Jack Nicholson, Dustin Hoffman, Denzel Washington -- scalpers' prices soar to $10,000 a ticket. Several Lakers scrubs, realizing they're not going to play anyhow, sell their seats, leaving Kevin Bacon, Jim Belushi and Ben Stiller actually sitting on the LA bench.
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.
Nobody died. No one got sick. But this is a sad story just the same.It is about a phone booth. In the Mojave Desert. "The loneliest phone booth in the world," they called it. It sat by itself, miles from anywhere, in a dusty stretch amidst scrub brush and dirt. Its windows were shot out. Its door was long gone. Its hinges showed decay from the harsh desert climate.But it worked.The phone booth, not far from Death Valley, originally was installed many years ago so that miners could have contact with the outside world in case of emergency.
To his friends and supporters, I am just another dumb critic of Bobby Knight.To his friends and supporters, I am just another sheep who says a coach who chokes a player shouldn't be a coach.To his friends and supporters, I am another rube taken in by a videotape that shows Bobby Knight grabbing former player Neil Reed by the throat. I obviously can't understand the circumstances that would make Knight's actions perfectly acceptable because I am not -- as his friends and supporters will tell you -- a successful college basketball coach like Bobby.
For years, I have been trying to get my mother into computers."You can e-mail me," I say."I can call you on the phone," she says."You can send pictures," I say."I can visit you in person," she says.Once again, as with pretty much everything in life, mother is proving to know best.
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.
