Random Comments

 Random Comment #1: NBA average free throw shooting percentage: 77.2%; WNBA average free throw shooting percentage: 80.2%

Random Comment #2: PGA of the Tee 290 yards; LPGA of the Tee; 254 yards. Makes one think that if LPGA gals were allowed to tee off 40 yards in front of the men, they could compete at every other level. Make that happen, and wouldn't a competition between genders knock the socks off of any previous golf tournament TV ratings?  

Random Comment #3 Does Ben Simmons  of the Philly 76ers, have no shame? How does a guy pulling down this amount of $ shoot so dismally? 23 % from the field. Less than 30% from the free throw line. Come On, Ben!!!

Random Comment #4: Happy to read the NFL is being sued by Saint Louis folks for the team relocating to LA. through the use of some pretty slimy tactics. How about Seattle filing a suit against the Oklahoma Thunder's owner for his slimy relocation tactic moving his newly bought team to OKC. (When he bought the team he said he wouldn't move it, Right. Liar, liar, pants on fire!)

Random Comment #5: In todays The Athletic, evaluating 2021 NBA draftee: About 3 pt shooting Corey Kispert from the Zags: "Kispert is 22, which is a fossil relative to the other players available. . . "  Takes me back to 1961 when I was drafted #1 by the Philadelphia Warriors (San Francisco Warriors/Golden State) I was a 22 year old fossil and gave the NBA and my teams ten pretty damn good years of production. I'm not sure what the diff between 10 years and 15 years means in the NBA. Lots of first round draft choices who are teens wind up in the G League being paid first round draft choice salaries while not helping the home team at all. I'm thinking of a knock-down shooter like Kisspert and another 24 year old from U of Oregon by the name of Chris Duarte. Both can come in and produce right now, not three years from now. 

Random Comment #6: As per John Hollinger in The Athletic talking about Free Agency: As a result, teams are likely to pump the brakes on a max deal for Lonzo Ball. Something in the range of 100 million over 4 years seems more likely. As my wife said, "Awh, poor baby, how will he ever manage?"

Random Comment #7: Big ATTABOY to Jacob Stenmstz, the first Orthodox Jew to be drafted #1 in the MBL. Reminds me I need to re-read Chaim Potok's The Chosen. The first part of the book takes place on the baseball field.

Random Comment #8: Nigeria and now the Aussies beat our boys in red, white and blue. And the Argentinians pushed USA hard. Now JaVale Magee joins the team. Really???? 

Random Comment #9: Congrats to Natalie Diaz for winning a Pulitzer Prize this year for poetry for her Post Colonial Love Poem, published by Greywolf Press. Natalie played basketball for Old Dominion and pro ball in Europe and Asia. Makes one think basketball players should write more poetry. 

Natalie doesn't write poems about basketball as far as I know. She does start one stanza on the Teotlachco ball court. If you're scratching your head, the Aztecs invented basketball. 

Instead of a poem, here's one of a series of Why Indians are Good at Basketball written by Nicole Tower, a journalism student at Arizona State University

We know how  to block shots, how to stuff them down your throat because when you say, "Shoot!" we hear howitzer and Hotchkiss and Springfield Model 1873.

Nigeria Beat USA + Nostalgia

 I just finished watching Nigeria's Olympic Basketball Team defeat our Team U.S.A. in a practice game in prep for the real thing in Japan. It was a first effort by both teams and could easily be an indicator of the teams' strengths and weaknesses. It was clear to me that this game was not being taken lightly by both teams. I was cheering for our guys, but by the fourth quarter when it appeared that Nigeria might upset us, I suddenly found myself cheering for the Nigerians to win. That's exactly what happened. The green and white beat the Red, White and Blue. 

 A team from the continent of Africa has never beaten a basketball team from the Untied States before. How good must the Nigerian players feel being the first. Forget, this was a practice game. It was a W. The Nigerian players will not only be heroes in their own country but in all the countries of Africa. It is probably a good time to be sure all my readers understand, there was no dearth of NBA players on the Nigerian team. Over the years the countries of Africa, primarily of West Africa, have sent the NBA some fabulous athletes, beginning with legendary Hall of Fame center for the Houston Rockets, Hakeem "The Dream" Olajuwon. And I should point out that many of the great European basketball players that played in the NBA in recent past and play now have West African family roots. 

I was not being disloyal pulling for Nigeria to win, I was remembering fondly and with a modicum of pride, that I was one of the first NBA players to bring basketball to West Africa. In the Summer of 1963, Bill Russell and Bob Cousy of the Boston Celtics, as part of a joint NBA and United States Information Agency (USIA) good will project, traveled to West Africa to hold basketball clinics. They worked only in the country of Senegal. The following summer, John Havelick, KC Jones, and I made the same trip to Senegal and to three additional countries: Mali, Ivory Coast and Liberia. To say basketball was in its infant stages is an understatement. Many of the young men and women we coached didn't have athletic shoes. Some played in their bare feet. Many shot the ball with two hands.The following summer I went back to West Africa with Siugo Green, point guard, of the Saint Louis Hawks, to coach again. And after I retired from the NBA in 1971, I returned for four months to West Africa in the fall of 1981, By then,  our earlier coaching lessons had taken root and many of the players were demonstrating great promise. In the 21st century, the NBA has benefited greatly from that promise.  

That was the last time I was in Africa, but I've traveled there often over the years in my memory and in my heart.  So, right on Nigeria! Right on West Africa! I'll bet you Hakeem The Dream watched tonight's game and was smiling at the outcome.

I wrote this poem for my third book of poetry, Sweat: New and Selected Poems About Sports. 

Hakeeem Olajuwon

           aka Hakeem The Dream

In Africa each morning practice starts
with warm-ups. The youngest on the team,
perhaps sixteen, always the first waiting for me,
sit in the thin shade below the backboard, 
reading the latest article about Hakeem.  
We stretch hamstrings, then slow jog
around the court. He keeps pace, all the while
talking about The Dream. "Dis donc," he says,
"With The Dream we would defeat Senegal
and be Champions of West Africa   
"Que pensez vous, entraineur?" What do I think?
I can't think about anything other than the red
and smoky sun rising over the opposite basket,
the heat already seating my shirt, and how
the rains suddenly begin half way through practice.
I shag his jump shots, the ones he says 
are like Hakeem's. He says he too will attend
the University of Houston, later play in the NBA.
"Vous m'assistez?" But his shots are ugly, too flat;
they lack the back-spin, the softness of the Dream's.
I nod my head, whatever I can do - my best shot,
I am in the country of Burkina Fasso.
Its name means Land of Up-Right people.