During my fourth grade year I did two significant things, I played on my first basketball team (St. Bernard) and I got a best friend – Adam.
Adam and I had the same home room that year and while I had known him for the first three years of school I didn’t really know him that well. We soon struck up a friendship over basketball, and we did so probably out of dislike for the other’s favorite team. Adam was a UofL fan and I was a UK fan. And to make things even better, we didn’t even like the same pro basketball teams. That year I had adopted the Philadelphia 76ers as my favorite team, because I loved the way Dr. J played, while Adam liked the Los Angeles Lakers. Still we got along great. Adam was the first friend whose house I ever spent the night at, and vice versa. We would stay up late watching music videos (what was that new thing, MTV?) and talking, mostly about basketball and how bad UK would beat UofL or vice versa. Well, we finally got our wish that year, but unfortunately for me, UofL beat UK 80-68 in the “Dream Game” on its way to the Final Four. (But my 76ers beat his Lakers in the NBA Finals a couple of months later).
Well that summer Adam asked me to go to overnight basketball camp with him at UofL. While I didn’t like Louisville at all, I still agreed to go to its basketball camp because my love of basketball was stronger than my hate for UofL. Plus, I thought, how fun would it be to spend a week playing basketball with my best friend?
As I packed to get ready for camp, so I prepared like any kid my age would, I packed up everything I had. But it was going to be just like going off to college for a week, we even had our own dorm room, so I made like a college student and took my TV too. It was my first extended time away from home, but I had spent plenty of nights at Adam’s house, so I wasn’t really worried about being away from home. I did, however, have to give my mom 100 kisses before I left to make up for the 20 that I usually gave her each night before I went to sleep.
We checked into camp the first day and it was just like spending the night at Adam’s house, we stayed up late talking basketball and watching TV. We watched the first USFL championship game in our room that night, as the Michigan Panthers beat my beloved Philadelphia Stars (since I picked up the 76ers I decided to pick up every pro team from Philadelphia as my favorite that year and it worked out well too, considering the Phillies made it to the World Series before losing to the Baltimore Orioles-sorry about your baseball card Rick Dempsey). But sadly Kelvin Bryant, Chuck Fusina and Jim Mora couldn't beat Bobby Hebert and Anthony Carter.
We basically ate, slept and drank basketball.
In the mornings we’d have breakfast, then go to daily stations before breaking for lunch, then coming back for games and speakers in the afternoons. After that we’d have dinner, then we had night league games before wrapping up around 8 or 9. It didn’t leave time for much else, except maybe the occasional video game or two. The camp did a good job of keeping us on-the-go pretty much all of the time. The only real downtime we had was at night.
A couple nights later, though, before going to bed, we had some down time and I started to get sad. I was homesick. I missed my mom and dad and I must have been bored. I became a little upset and started to cry. “You’re homesick,” Adam told me.
I didn’t know what to do so I said I was going to go down the hall and call them from the payphone. “Hurry up, I think I’m getting homesick too,” Adam said as I walked out the door.
I went down the hall and called home. My mom answered the phone and I almost instantly burst into tears, I told her I wanted to come home and I wanted to come home tonight.
She tried to talk me out of it, my dad got on the phone too, but by that time I was crying pretty good. I was in new surroundings and didn’t know many people and was probably kind of scared too. I was still talking to my mom when I noticed someone came up behind me. It was the floor counselor, everyone called him "Mad Dog."
He asked me what was wrong and I told him. He asked if he could talk to my parents and I said yes. ”Hang on mom, Mad Dog wants to talk to you," I was able to push out.
"Who?" she asked, sounding both concerned and startled.
He got on the phone and talked to my mom and dad and told them that he would look after me and make sure I was okay. He was a really nice guy, who was kind of chubby, but I never knew why they called him Mad Dog because he was being really nice to me.
He invited me into his room and I asked if I could go get Adam too, so I did and Adam brought his video basketball game and I started playing it. After a few minutes there was a knock on the door and in walked Lancaster Gordon, a starting guard for UofL and a future first-round NBA draft pick. He and Mad Dog were friends and Mad Dog introduced Adam and I, so then I started playing the basketball game again and this time I started using the names of UK and UofL players and announcing the game as I played it. I was actually letting Louisville do pretty well, especially Lancaster Gordon, he made plenty of shots that night. Even though I was a UK fan I still knew Lancaster Gordon was a good basketball player and I knew that it was cool to be in the same room with him, so it was pretty exciting for me and for Adam too, who was a big UofL fan. (Darrell Griffith also came to speak to us at camp too).
I stayed in Mad Dog’s room for probably an hour, maybe a little less, until I was tired, then Adam and I went back to our room and went to sleep.
The next day, though, the homesickness came back. My dad dropped by during our early morning stations to see how I was doing and the second I saw him I started to get upset. He took me out into a hallway outside the gym where I told him I wanted to go home. I begged him to take me to Granny’s house. I started crying so hard in fact that my nose began to bleed. Dad took me to the bathroom and eventually my nose stopped bleeding, but he wouldn’t let me go home. I had planned with Adam to stay the whole week, so I was going to stay, he said.
On our floor at the dorm I became known as the homesick kid. It seemed that people were nicer to me. Adam’s mom and sister came over one night for a visit and his sister, Amy, who was three or four years younger than us, said to me: “I heard you were homesick.”
Other things didn't help. One afternoon I was playing a video game on the ground floor of the dorm and I was doing well, then a group of kids came along and messed with me and my game, ending it. It was things like that that every kid goes through in life and are forced to deal with on their own that just added to the troubles I was having.
Friday, the final day of camp, couldn’t come soon enough for me, but by then I was feeling better anyway, even though it probably was because I knew I was going home that day. Since it was the final day of camp we had individual competitions during our stations and I actually didn’t do too bad. In one shooting competition, where you had to alternate shooting behind chairs at the free throw line I started making lots of shots in a row and after I got done shooting I had the best score (somebody would come after me and beat it though). Afterwards one of the kids came up to me, surprised by how well I had shot, and asked me who I thought I was.
"Dr. J," I responded like any kid would quickly come up with the name of their idol.
"No, I know who I am, I was asking who you were," he retorted quickly.
When camp ended later that day I got some ribbons, a new T-shirt that read, “Scooter, Rodney and Me, Albuquerque 1983" and a good sense of what it was like to be on my own and not have my parents around to protect me all the time. I learned more in that week than I probably had throughout most of my life up to that point, you know what, I’ve still got that T-shirt too.
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
Sunday, January 28, 2007
Basketball diaries, part 5: I'm in the UK locker room!
It wasn’t too long after my parents reconciled that the three of us went on a weekend trip to Lexington for some fun and probably to celebrate our reunion as a family. We planned it after one of my mom’s friends from school had come up with three tickets to a UK basketball game. I looked forward to that trip for weeks in advance because I knew it was going to be great to see UK play (it was during the 1982-83 season when the Wildcats eventually lost to UofL in the one, and only, Dream Game) and I knew we had good seats.
After having lunch together my dad and I got ready to go to the game, while my mom got ready to go shopping. As we prepared to leave my dad realized something – he didn’t have the tickets. He asked my mom if she had them, so she checked but she didn’t have them either. So for the next 15 minutes or so we scoured our hotel room looking for the tickets. After we had exhausted all of our options, including the trash, I was getting very nervous at that point, time was ticking down until tip-off and we still couldn’t find our tickets. Was I going to be able to go to the game, or not?
“What are we going to do?” I asked my dad.
“We’ll try and get some from a scalper,” he replied.
Now up until that point that word was foreign to me, so my dad had to explain to me that that was someone who sold tickets to the game outside of the arena. Sometimes you have to pay a little bit more, he explained.
So we drove to Rupp Arena, parked and began looking for people selling tickets.
“It’s illegal in Kentucky,” my dad explained, so most of the time the people selling the tickets couldn’t do it out in the open or be obvious about it. Knowing that I would’ve given up any, or all of the money I had in my piggy-bank for a ticket, it didn’t take long before my dad found a pair of seats for sale. He gave the man the money and we went inside.
Rupp Arena was just as I remembered it – huge! Besides being one of the biggest basketball arenas in the country, and usually sold out for games, I thought it was kind of like a big, over-sized barn that featured some seats that had restricted views due to beams being right in front of them. Of course I got to see most of it that day because when we started looking for our seats we realized that we had quite a ways to walk.
We climbed step after step and we kept getting higher and higher, but I wasn’t about to look back because I was a little scared of heights. But I knew we were getting high when I saw the alphabet ending (V...W...X...Y...Z) and the double-alphabet beginning (AA...BB...CC). We finally found our seats, just a couple of rows from the top.
“These are what they call the nosebleed seats, because they’re up so high,” my dad explained.
Because we thought we would have good seats we didn’t bring binoculars, but we sure needed them then. I couldn’t really tell the difference between the players, other than the color of their jerseys, they all looked like Smurfs to me. I remember being afraid to stand up during the national anthem and at some points during the game, because I thought I was going to just fall forward and straight down to the court, but I stood anyway.
UK won a game that was otherwise forgettable, but what happened after the game was one of the most memorable moments of my life.
As we had in our previous trip to Rupp Arena my dad and I lingered afterward. We walked down from our seats and made our way down to court level. It’s every kid’s dream in Kentucky to one day step on the Rupp Arena court and I was no different. But when we got down to the court they wouldn’t let us walk on it. I was a little disappointed, but I got to see the court up close so I was pretty happy about that. After being turned away from the court we started walking through the halls of Rupp, I’m not sure my dad knew where he was going, but soon we found ourselves outside the UK locker room.
There were probably 20 or 25 people out there, some friends and family as well as some other kids with their parents just hanging out. Suddenly a big fan opened up the locker room door and said, “Okay, let the kids in.”
I looked up at my dad and he gave me a nod and said, “Go ahead.”
“Sorry, just the boys,” the big man added. I looked next to me as I walked toward the door and a little girl turned around and walked back to her father.
I had never really done anything like this before on my own, walking into a room where I didn’t know anybody, much less in the Kentucky locker room to see players I had only seen on TV and who I loved and adored. I had taken my program with me and some of the other kids were going around and asking players for their autographs, so I decided to do the same thing.
Mostly I just walked up with my pen and program in hand and handed them in the direction of the player I wanted to sign. Some times I stammered, “Can I have your autograph…,” but most of the time I just held out my pen and the program and they knew what to do, they were pretty experienced at giving out their autographs. How cool it must be to have people ask for your autograph, I thought. I made my way around the room to different players.
Suddenly there they were right in front of me and in the flesh, some of them literally, and larger than life. Big Melvin Turpin, who earned the nickname “Dinner Bell” Mel because of his prodigious eating habits; Jim Master, a sharp-shooter from Indiana, who was probably my favorite player at the time; Kenny Walker, a skinny freshman who was playing a lot; and even injured star Sam Bowie (who later would have the dubious distinction of being drafted ahead of Michael Jordan in the 1984 NBA Draft) who was in his second redshirt season after breaking his leg. Some players were sitting and some were standing and some were even getting out of the shower. I walked around to most of the ones I knew and held out my pen and program and asked them for their autograph.
Some were in different stages of undress, some were just drying off from getting out of the shower and some were getting dressed, while others were still in their uniforms being interviewed by reporters (that would be me in about 20 years). Being small I was able to wedge myself between reporters, in some cases, and thrust my pen and program in a player's direction.
I got most of the ones I wanted, including Master, Turpin, Walker and my dad's favorite player, Tom Heintz, a bench warmer. I got several autographs, that afternoon but the one that still stands out to me was the one I received from Derrick Hord. Hord was a 6-4 swing forward who was a McDonald’s All-American out of high school, but who had had a productive, but unspectacular career at Kentucky. Word was that he was a great practice player, but in games he was just an average player. But he will always be an All-American in my book. That’s because as I approached him he was talking to a couple of people around him, but when he saw me he stopped and took my pen and program.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
I was completely in shock. In those days, and still in some cases today, basketball players, especially at UK, were treated like Gods, now suddenly one of the Gods was asking me a question.
“J-j-j-osh,” I stammered.
He scribbled something in the program, smiled and handed the program back to me.
I can still remember what it said: “Good luck Josh, best wishes Derrick Hord."
Looking back it really impresses me that he took the time to ask me my name and include it in a personalized message. I don't care how he finished in his career at UK. I don't care if he didn't live up to the hype, Derrick Hord will always be an All-American in my book.
For many years I considered that to be the best day of my life.
After having lunch together my dad and I got ready to go to the game, while my mom got ready to go shopping. As we prepared to leave my dad realized something – he didn’t have the tickets. He asked my mom if she had them, so she checked but she didn’t have them either. So for the next 15 minutes or so we scoured our hotel room looking for the tickets. After we had exhausted all of our options, including the trash, I was getting very nervous at that point, time was ticking down until tip-off and we still couldn’t find our tickets. Was I going to be able to go to the game, or not?
“What are we going to do?” I asked my dad.
“We’ll try and get some from a scalper,” he replied.
Now up until that point that word was foreign to me, so my dad had to explain to me that that was someone who sold tickets to the game outside of the arena. Sometimes you have to pay a little bit more, he explained.
So we drove to Rupp Arena, parked and began looking for people selling tickets.
“It’s illegal in Kentucky,” my dad explained, so most of the time the people selling the tickets couldn’t do it out in the open or be obvious about it. Knowing that I would’ve given up any, or all of the money I had in my piggy-bank for a ticket, it didn’t take long before my dad found a pair of seats for sale. He gave the man the money and we went inside.
Rupp Arena was just as I remembered it – huge! Besides being one of the biggest basketball arenas in the country, and usually sold out for games, I thought it was kind of like a big, over-sized barn that featured some seats that had restricted views due to beams being right in front of them. Of course I got to see most of it that day because when we started looking for our seats we realized that we had quite a ways to walk.
We climbed step after step and we kept getting higher and higher, but I wasn’t about to look back because I was a little scared of heights. But I knew we were getting high when I saw the alphabet ending (V...W...X...Y...Z) and the double-alphabet beginning (AA...BB...CC). We finally found our seats, just a couple of rows from the top.
“These are what they call the nosebleed seats, because they’re up so high,” my dad explained.
Because we thought we would have good seats we didn’t bring binoculars, but we sure needed them then. I couldn’t really tell the difference between the players, other than the color of their jerseys, they all looked like Smurfs to me. I remember being afraid to stand up during the national anthem and at some points during the game, because I thought I was going to just fall forward and straight down to the court, but I stood anyway.
UK won a game that was otherwise forgettable, but what happened after the game was one of the most memorable moments of my life.
As we had in our previous trip to Rupp Arena my dad and I lingered afterward. We walked down from our seats and made our way down to court level. It’s every kid’s dream in Kentucky to one day step on the Rupp Arena court and I was no different. But when we got down to the court they wouldn’t let us walk on it. I was a little disappointed, but I got to see the court up close so I was pretty happy about that. After being turned away from the court we started walking through the halls of Rupp, I’m not sure my dad knew where he was going, but soon we found ourselves outside the UK locker room.
There were probably 20 or 25 people out there, some friends and family as well as some other kids with their parents just hanging out. Suddenly a big fan opened up the locker room door and said, “Okay, let the kids in.”
I looked up at my dad and he gave me a nod and said, “Go ahead.”
“Sorry, just the boys,” the big man added. I looked next to me as I walked toward the door and a little girl turned around and walked back to her father.
I had never really done anything like this before on my own, walking into a room where I didn’t know anybody, much less in the Kentucky locker room to see players I had only seen on TV and who I loved and adored. I had taken my program with me and some of the other kids were going around and asking players for their autographs, so I decided to do the same thing.
Mostly I just walked up with my pen and program in hand and handed them in the direction of the player I wanted to sign. Some times I stammered, “Can I have your autograph…,” but most of the time I just held out my pen and the program and they knew what to do, they were pretty experienced at giving out their autographs. How cool it must be to have people ask for your autograph, I thought. I made my way around the room to different players.
Suddenly there they were right in front of me and in the flesh, some of them literally, and larger than life. Big Melvin Turpin, who earned the nickname “Dinner Bell” Mel because of his prodigious eating habits; Jim Master, a sharp-shooter from Indiana, who was probably my favorite player at the time; Kenny Walker, a skinny freshman who was playing a lot; and even injured star Sam Bowie (who later would have the dubious distinction of being drafted ahead of Michael Jordan in the 1984 NBA Draft) who was in his second redshirt season after breaking his leg. Some players were sitting and some were standing and some were even getting out of the shower. I walked around to most of the ones I knew and held out my pen and program and asked them for their autograph.
Some were in different stages of undress, some were just drying off from getting out of the shower and some were getting dressed, while others were still in their uniforms being interviewed by reporters (that would be me in about 20 years). Being small I was able to wedge myself between reporters, in some cases, and thrust my pen and program in a player's direction.
I got most of the ones I wanted, including Master, Turpin, Walker and my dad's favorite player, Tom Heintz, a bench warmer. I got several autographs, that afternoon but the one that still stands out to me was the one I received from Derrick Hord. Hord was a 6-4 swing forward who was a McDonald’s All-American out of high school, but who had had a productive, but unspectacular career at Kentucky. Word was that he was a great practice player, but in games he was just an average player. But he will always be an All-American in my book. That’s because as I approached him he was talking to a couple of people around him, but when he saw me he stopped and took my pen and program.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
I was completely in shock. In those days, and still in some cases today, basketball players, especially at UK, were treated like Gods, now suddenly one of the Gods was asking me a question.
“J-j-j-osh,” I stammered.
He scribbled something in the program, smiled and handed the program back to me.
I can still remember what it said: “Good luck Josh, best wishes Derrick Hord."
Looking back it really impresses me that he took the time to ask me my name and include it in a personalized message. I don't care how he finished in his career at UK. I don't care if he didn't live up to the hype, Derrick Hord will always be an All-American in my book.
For many years I considered that to be the best day of my life.
Saturday, January 27, 2007
Basketball diaries, part 4: How basketball got my parents back together
Basketball has been something very strong in my life that has had a big affect on me and my life. Of course it is my love of basketball that also had an affect on the love of two of the most important people in my life – my mom and dad. That’s because I believe that my love for basketball (in an indirect way) is the reason that my parents, who had divorced early in 1978 (the year of UK’s fifth national title), got back together and eventually remarried. But a kitchen floor helped too.
It was a Friday night in 1983 (I was in the third grade) when my mom went to take a bath, to wash away the stresses of the week, and I decided that that was an opportune time to practice my dribbling in the kitchen. So I hit the kitchen in my usual indoor basketball uniform – shorts, a T-shirt and tube socks. However, that’s the last thing I remember.
The next thing I know is my mom is slapping my face, frantically crying, as I lay on the couch.
“Josh, are you okay?!” she screamed.
“Yes, I’m fine,” I replied, not too sure why she was slapping me.
Then she told me that she came in the kitchen and found me unconscious on the floor, evidently I had slipped and fallen and knocked myself out cold. I was still breathing, so she didn't call an ambulance, but she did call my dad. My mom was still frenzied when my dad arrived a few minutes later. I still wasn’t sure what all the excitement was about, I mean I had a little headache, but that was it. They took me to the emergency room and I got X-rayed for the first time in my life. I tried to talk them out of taking me to the ER, but they did anyway. The doctors couldn't find anything wrong with me on the X-ray, so they released me that night. I think they both tucked me into bed that night, something that hadn’t happened since I was very little. I’m not sure if my dad stayed over that night, but he soon began coming around more and more and he started staying overnight and on the weekends and soon he and mom were back together. And a short time after that they got remarried. And to me, basketball will always deserve an assist for that.
It was a Friday night in 1983 (I was in the third grade) when my mom went to take a bath, to wash away the stresses of the week, and I decided that that was an opportune time to practice my dribbling in the kitchen. So I hit the kitchen in my usual indoor basketball uniform – shorts, a T-shirt and tube socks. However, that’s the last thing I remember.
The next thing I know is my mom is slapping my face, frantically crying, as I lay on the couch.
“Josh, are you okay?!” she screamed.
“Yes, I’m fine,” I replied, not too sure why she was slapping me.
Then she told me that she came in the kitchen and found me unconscious on the floor, evidently I had slipped and fallen and knocked myself out cold. I was still breathing, so she didn't call an ambulance, but she did call my dad. My mom was still frenzied when my dad arrived a few minutes later. I still wasn’t sure what all the excitement was about, I mean I had a little headache, but that was it. They took me to the emergency room and I got X-rayed for the first time in my life. I tried to talk them out of taking me to the ER, but they did anyway. The doctors couldn't find anything wrong with me on the X-ray, so they released me that night. I think they both tucked me into bed that night, something that hadn’t happened since I was very little. I’m not sure if my dad stayed over that night, but he soon began coming around more and more and he started staying overnight and on the weekends and soon he and mom were back together. And a short time after that they got remarried. And to me, basketball will always deserve an assist for that.
Basketball diaries, part 3: My first game
My first college basketball game was a memorable one.
I was probably in the first or second grade when my dad took me to a UK game at Rupp Arena. We lived more than an hour away from Lexington, so I’m sure it was a very excited car ride for me. I don’t remember how we got tickets or who UK was playing, but I know it wasn’t somebody very good. Actually my memories from that first game were big, literally. I just remember everything being so big! Rupp Arena itself was huge, it was like a big shopping mall to me. I remember first riding the escalator up, and later riding it down, and when I did I could look into what I remember as a huge toy store.
Of course once I got into the Rupp Arena itself I realized just what big was. I mean 23 or 24,000 people together in one place with one common goal – cheering the Cats on to victory – it was amazing! I know the team UK played was bad, and that they were winning the game handily because I remember late in the game the crowd was chanting “Booooo” for little-used reserve Bo Lanter and I remember the same cheers going up when another human-victory-cigar Chris Gettlefinger, who like me then had bright orange hair, went into the game.
Afterward I remember we stuck around for a few minutes and looked around at the huge arena as we walked out – it was big and so was that night! It was one of the biggest, and best, nights of my life to that point.
I was probably in the first or second grade when my dad took me to a UK game at Rupp Arena. We lived more than an hour away from Lexington, so I’m sure it was a very excited car ride for me. I don’t remember how we got tickets or who UK was playing, but I know it wasn’t somebody very good. Actually my memories from that first game were big, literally. I just remember everything being so big! Rupp Arena itself was huge, it was like a big shopping mall to me. I remember first riding the escalator up, and later riding it down, and when I did I could look into what I remember as a huge toy store.
Of course once I got into the Rupp Arena itself I realized just what big was. I mean 23 or 24,000 people together in one place with one common goal – cheering the Cats on to victory – it was amazing! I know the team UK played was bad, and that they were winning the game handily because I remember late in the game the crowd was chanting “Booooo” for little-used reserve Bo Lanter and I remember the same cheers going up when another human-victory-cigar Chris Gettlefinger, who like me then had bright orange hair, went into the game.
Afterward I remember we stuck around for a few minutes and looked around at the huge arena as we walked out – it was big and so was that night! It was one of the biggest, and best, nights of my life to that point.
*****
My real religious love of basketball probably began when I was in the fourth grade and that’s when I started to memorize all the facts and the teams and the players, but before that I still loved the sport and loved to watch the games. I mean I remember bits and pieces of basketball stuff before then. I remember watching some of the local celebrations for UofL’s 1980 national championship team on TV. I remember the day that President Reagan got shot, but I don’t really recall watching IU beat North Carolina that night for the national championship. The following year I remember talk that UK and UofL might play in the NCAA Tournament, but that quickly disappeared after UK got beat by Middle Tennessee State (who?) in the opening round and a couple of weeks later I remember seeing highlights of North Carolina’s win over Georgetown in the national championship game and some skinny kid (who could that be?) hitting the game-winning shot.
Basketball diaries, part 2: Favorite team
“Who’s your favorite team? Do you like UK, UofL or IU?” It’s a question that comes up in these parts a short time after, “Hey, what’s your name?” on your first day of kindergarten. That’s just how life is in this college-basketball crazy area. There are no professional sports teams, so everyone bases their sports allegiances on their favorite colleges. Growing up in this area you had to have a favorite college team. Some times your allegiances are already pre-determined for you (there may already be a UK or UofL or IU jumpsuit waiting for you upon your arrival home or maybe even at the hospital) and other times you get to choose on your own, but more than likely you’ll be influenced by those around you. But make no mistake about it, you can’t be both a UK and UofL fan, or like IU too and claim that you cheer for all three local schools, you have to have a favorite, and most of the time you won’t be taken seriously around here until you reveal if you bleed blue, red or crimson. From as far back as I can remember I bled blue for UK. I’m not sure why, but it could have been because blue was my favorite color. Actually, most of the Big Blue influence in my life was from my Granny. She was a sweet, small (under 5-feet tall) Italian woman who loved UK basketball probably more than she loved Italian food, but of course less than she loved her grandchildren. Granny, was a big influence in my life, and she was a huge UK fan too. She was especially a big fan of Kyle Macy, a guard from Indiana who helped UK win the 1978 national title. She would watch all the games she could and I loved to watch them with her too because she would get so excited and yell at the TV and I thought that was great. Often times when I was younger I would spend the night at her house and we would watch UK games, or at least try to, that were on delayed telecast. Most of the time I would go over to her house on a wintertime Saturday night and we would play games (I think she usually let me win), we would eat chocolate, we would watch shows like “The Love Boat” and “Fantasy Island” and then we’d both try and stay up and watch the UK basketball games that were tape-delayed after the 11 o’clock local news. We would watch the news first (this was back in the day when we had three local channels, the NBC, ABC and CBS local affiliates) and during the sports portion of the broadcast they would always tell a little bit about the game then they warned that they were going to be flashing the final score up, so if you didn’t want to see it you should not look. I often closed my eyes as tightly as I could, never wanting to know the final score before I watched the games (to me it was like opening your presents on Christmas Eve instead of Christmas Day, you just didn’t do it). But Granny always watched the score and afterward I could usually tell the outcome of the game by looking at her face. If she was smiling really big that definitely meant a win, and if she wasn’t smiling too big they had lost. Some times I would break down and ask her who won, but more often than naught I didn’t and I doubt she would have told me anyway. Of course I’m not sure I ever made it to the end of a single game, so most of the time the first thing I did after I woke up was go hunt for The Courier-Journal sports section and read all about the game and study the box score, and look at the statistics, as hard as I could (of course this would come back to haunt me 20, or so, years later). But before I did that I would wake up and the first words out of my mouth would be: “Did Kentucky win?”
*****
If I would have had to pick my favorite team by its success I might have had a hard time choosing during my younger years (the mid to late 70’s). That’s because all three had their moments during that time. At UofL young coach Denny Crum was building the Cardinals into a national power. He was within a whisker of beating his alma mater UCLA in the 1975 national semifinals, and facing UK in the national championship game.
But probably the best team during that time was IU, which lost one game over two seasons – to UK no less. With arguably the best team in the history of college basketball the Hoosiers went undefeated – the last Division I team to do so – in the ’75-76 season.
Friday, January 26, 2007
Basketball diaries, part 1: Intro
I was born Aug. 2, 1973 in Louisville, Ky. I was born into the basketball Bermuda Triangle, so there was no way that I couldn't love the sport.
Bob Knight had just finished his second season at Indiana University in which he took the Hoosiers to the Final Four. He was in the process of building a team that would be the last undefeated national champion.
Denny Crum was at the University of Louisville. He was a little more than a year removed from leading the Cardinals to the Final Four in his first season, 1971-72.
And at Kentucky, Joe Beasman Hall had just completed his first year A.R. (After Rupp, Adolph Rupp that is, who retired as the winningest coach in college history in 1972). Joe B., as he was better known, had led the Wildcats to the regional finals in his first season. An achievement that would be major at any other school, but was almost considered a failure by the lofty standards of UK fans.
All three college programs were on the threshold of greatness.
It's the Bermuda Triangle of college basketball hoops because no matter how hard to try to get away you can't...it just sucks you in.
I’m not sure why basketball was my first love, but it was, probably because that was all I knew growing up in the hoops hotbed of Louisville, Kentucky and Southern Indiana. It was hard not to be a basketball fan when coming of age during one of the best periods in history for all three of the local college powerhouses – the universities of Kentucky and Louisville and Indiana University – all within 160 miles and a three-hour drive of each other at the most. From the time I was old enough to dribble, from my mouth that is (I walked well before I talked), I loved basketball. I’m not sure if “ball” was my first word, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was. Most of the memories I have from my childhood, adolescence and even into adulthood coincide with basketball. I remember the first time my father talked to me about sex, it was after we watched a basketball game. I remember the first day we got cable TV and watching a basketball game on ESPN that day. I remember my afternoon in the UK locker room when I was a kid. I remember where I’ve watched every Final Four game since 1983. I remember the night I lost my virginity I was missing an NBA Playoff game on TV. I remember coming in from playing basketball with some buddies one day and watching the infamous O.J. Simpson White Ford Bronco chase on TV, which also interrupted the Knicks-Rockets NBA Finals game. Basketball was the one support I had in my life. Sure I had friends and family, but when I wanted to feel better there was one cure-all – basketball. There was something soothing about shooting basketball by myself. I was an only child, so instead of playing with a brother or sister when I was a kid most of the time I played basketball. Over the years the sport, or my love of it, was how many of my friendships began, and were strengthened, and was the focus of many of the most important relationships in my life, including those with my maternal grandmother, Granny, and my father. Basketball was also something that I turned to when I had problems, or wanted to forget about something, like my parents’ divorce when I was 3. From that time, until I was about 9, I would see my dad every other weekend and a lot of what we talked about, and did, back then was play basketball, go to basketball games and talk about basketball (and that still holds true to some degree today). In fact I will always believe that basketball was one of the main reasons that my parents reconciled (I’ll explain more later) and eventually remarried when I was around 10. And when my parents split up and divorced again when I was 14 basketball was there again. It has been with me through good and bad times, like a good friend. Basketball has had a great influence on my life and as I’ve grown it has taught me several life lessons along the way too. In this blog, over the next few months, I’m going to share some of my favorite basketball memories and experiences in my life.
Bob Knight had just finished his second season at Indiana University in which he took the Hoosiers to the Final Four. He was in the process of building a team that would be the last undefeated national champion.
Denny Crum was at the University of Louisville. He was a little more than a year removed from leading the Cardinals to the Final Four in his first season, 1971-72.
And at Kentucky, Joe Beasman Hall had just completed his first year A.R. (After Rupp, Adolph Rupp that is, who retired as the winningest coach in college history in 1972). Joe B., as he was better known, had led the Wildcats to the regional finals in his first season. An achievement that would be major at any other school, but was almost considered a failure by the lofty standards of UK fans.
All three college programs were on the threshold of greatness.
It's the Bermuda Triangle of college basketball hoops because no matter how hard to try to get away you can't...it just sucks you in.
I’m not sure why basketball was my first love, but it was, probably because that was all I knew growing up in the hoops hotbed of Louisville, Kentucky and Southern Indiana. It was hard not to be a basketball fan when coming of age during one of the best periods in history for all three of the local college powerhouses – the universities of Kentucky and Louisville and Indiana University – all within 160 miles and a three-hour drive of each other at the most. From the time I was old enough to dribble, from my mouth that is (I walked well before I talked), I loved basketball. I’m not sure if “ball” was my first word, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was. Most of the memories I have from my childhood, adolescence and even into adulthood coincide with basketball. I remember the first time my father talked to me about sex, it was after we watched a basketball game. I remember the first day we got cable TV and watching a basketball game on ESPN that day. I remember my afternoon in the UK locker room when I was a kid. I remember where I’ve watched every Final Four game since 1983. I remember the night I lost my virginity I was missing an NBA Playoff game on TV. I remember coming in from playing basketball with some buddies one day and watching the infamous O.J. Simpson White Ford Bronco chase on TV, which also interrupted the Knicks-Rockets NBA Finals game. Basketball was the one support I had in my life. Sure I had friends and family, but when I wanted to feel better there was one cure-all – basketball. There was something soothing about shooting basketball by myself. I was an only child, so instead of playing with a brother or sister when I was a kid most of the time I played basketball. Over the years the sport, or my love of it, was how many of my friendships began, and were strengthened, and was the focus of many of the most important relationships in my life, including those with my maternal grandmother, Granny, and my father. Basketball was also something that I turned to when I had problems, or wanted to forget about something, like my parents’ divorce when I was 3. From that time, until I was about 9, I would see my dad every other weekend and a lot of what we talked about, and did, back then was play basketball, go to basketball games and talk about basketball (and that still holds true to some degree today). In fact I will always believe that basketball was one of the main reasons that my parents reconciled (I’ll explain more later) and eventually remarried when I was around 10. And when my parents split up and divorced again when I was 14 basketball was there again. It has been with me through good and bad times, like a good friend. Basketball has had a great influence on my life and as I’ve grown it has taught me several life lessons along the way too. In this blog, over the next few months, I’m going to share some of my favorite basketball memories and experiences in my life.
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