For most of my life, I've spent considerable time playing various sports. Baseball, football, competitive swimming and diving, years and years of golf (if you consider it a sport, because I'm not sure I do.) But overall I think I played more basketball than any of the others.
Aside from playing hoops as often as possible, I also followed the pro's, rooting avidly for the NY Knicks. To this day I still believe their 1970 NBA championship team was the brightest group of people to ever take the court, and there's not an intellectual slouch in the bunch.
Forward, "Dollar" Bill Bradley, went on to the U.S. Senate from New Jersey. Center, Willis Reed, became the General Manager & Vice President of Basketball Operations for the New Jersey Nets. Another forward, Dave DeBusschere, wound up as Commissioner of the American Basketball Association. Guard, Earl "The Pearl" Monroe, later served as a commentator for Madison Square Garden and as commissioner of the New Jersey Urban Development Corporation.
Another forward, Jerry Lucas, at retirement ranked fourth all-time in rebounds per game to Wilt Chamberlain, Bill Russell and Bob Pettit. After basketball, he took up a role as an educator and memory expert writing books and producing television programs on the subject. Three of his best sellers are, The Memory Book, co-written with Harry Lorayne, Ready, Set, Remember, the basis of many of his other writings, and Remember the Word, for memorizing portions of the Bible. His educational programs on image-based memory development are now being used in some Ohio school systems.
Then we have, Dick Barnett, another guard, who holds a PhD in education from Fordham University and is now retired from teaching Sports Management at St. John's University in New York. One more who played on that team was, Phil Jackson, who later became head coach of the Chicago Bulls, 1989 through 1998, winning six NBA titles (with a little help from Air Jordan). Then on to the Los Angeles Lakers, winning five NBA titles from 2000 to 2010. In total, he holds the record for most championships in NBA history as a player and a head coach.
Lastly, there's my personal favorite, "Clyde." Nicknamed after Bonnie's boyfriend, Walt Frazier was one of the smoothest, slickest dudes to ever take to the court. He stole the ball more often than anyone else I've ever seen, making ball theft an art form. For many years he held many Knick franchise records, such as: most games (759), minutes played (28,995), field goals attempted (11,669), field goals made (5,736), free throws attempted (4,017), free throws made (3,145), assists (4,791) and points (14,617).
As for me, I lost interest in the professional game about 15 years or so ago when the rules went out the window in order to permit higher scoring games. That's when guys like Michael Jordan could take as many steps as they wanted, because ref's rarely called walks on him. Added to that you have the thugs, especially no-talent blobs such as Barkley, who's more of a Sumo wrestler than NBA talent, and guys like Latrell Spreewell who came to the Knicks after trying to kill his coach P.J. Carlesimo at Golden State.
And then this morning I read an Associated Press article about how far the NBA has really sunk. Because it seems the Obama re-election campaign is using more than two dozen current NBA stars for a fundraising basketball game next month. Tickets range from $100 to $5,000 for courtside seats. The money will go to the Obama Victory Fund, a joint fundraising account by the Democratic Party and Obama's re-election campaign.
The reason the article caught my attention was its illustration of how far the intellectual capacity of basketball pro's has sunk. Years ago, as I wrote above, the players were not only gifted athletes, they were extremely bright, their future endeavors proving that point.
But today's players, who are likely to miss this whole season due to a ridiculous strike, don't understand that even if they finally play some games, most people can't afford the price of NBA tickets. And the reason for that is, the administration's broken the fan's financial backs. Most don't have money for fuel or food, so how will they pay to attend games or even join the NBA cable networks?
Consequently, these basketball bozo's are going to donate their time, efforts and accomplishments to help re-elect the very same guy who's putting their league out of business by strangling the economy altogether. And I guess what all this goes to prove is that not only has the game gone down the tubes via relaxing rules, so have the player's IQ's.
That's it for today folks.
Adios
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