Sometimes you play basketball, sometimes it plays you. Maurice Taylor knows this. He remembers the airport a few years ago, waving good-bye to his mother, who was moving to Tennessee for a better job.Taylor wanted to go, too. A self-described "mama's boy," he couldn't imagine a day without her, even though he had been living with an aunt in Detroit for several years, because his mother's east side neighborhood was not the place for a budding basketball star.
First of all, Michigan basketball players, their coaches and fans must understand one thing: The game didn't begin with them. There is a bad news history in this sport, and much of it has to do with fancy cars and hidden envelopes of cash and outsiders who get too cozy with the players.
Like many people, I have trouble picking a favorite movie, a favorite food or a favorite song. But I have always been able to pick a favorite possession:My passport.It has long been at the top of my list, ever since I got my first one as a teenager on a trip to Paris. I had never been overseas before, and at the airport, when I slid my passport under the glass, the French officer said, "Vous ete Americain?"And I said, "Oui."And he stamped my entrance to his country.
Lindsey Hunter tried. Man, he tried everything. He bumped him. He thumped him. He put a hand in his face, he put a hand near the ball. He pressured him and harassed him and breathed on him and forced him into the air in an awkward, falling-back fashion, the way a man is forced off a cliff.And it didn't matter.
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.
