Slam Dunk Central

Back in April Pritchard said he was ?optimistic? that the physicians would rule that Miles is physically unable to play, and his NBA career would be over. (Pritchard ?Optimistic? Miles Can No Longer Play.) Frankly the statement made my skin crawl! I would like nothing better than to see? Darius play 11 games, just to stick it to Pritchard. Kevin, Karma will get you every time! D-Miles Has Impressive Workout For Celtics

I want to thank legendary Portland Tribune columnist Dwight Jaynes “Oregon’s Godfather of professional sports reporting” for including a link to Slam Dunk Central? in his July 29, column. The link was to our original story on Darius Miles in Mr. Jaynes column entitled “More on Miles and the HIPAA, minus the emotional outbursts.”

?(http://portlandtribune.com/sports/story.php?story_id=121728641118861100)

Mr. Jaynes has forgotten more about sports than many in my profession will ever know! To say that it is an honor that Mr. Jaynes would use Slam Dunk Central?as a reference source is an honor is a severe understatement! It is also gratifying to know that Slam Dunk Central?has gotten the reputation across the USA, and around the Planet. And that is due to you, our daily reader, and your continued support. I humbly thank you.

? Copyright 2008 thesackattack.net

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On Saturday July 5, I wrote the following story Could The Grizzlies Be Seattle?s New Team??The story was based on a report by ESPN NBA beat reporter Ric Bucher. In his report Bucher revealed a clause?in the deal that the NBA made with the city of Seattle, that had gone unreported.?The city of Seattle will be owed an additional $30 million if they do not have a new NBA franchise in five years. Bucher believes that the NBA Board of Governors do not want to put another expansion team in the Association. So that would mean a current team would have to move it?s local. Bucher believes that the Memphis Grizzlies could be the team to fill the vacuum. The Grizzlies have already located once in their brief existence, coming from their original home in Vancouver. It is widely believed that team owner Michael Heisley wants to sell the team, and the fan base has not ever really been totally supportive. Saturday was the day after the July 4, holiday it was an extremely slow news day on the NBA front. If the same story had appeared in April or May, I probably would not have even printed it! However Bucher, being an impeccable source, and the lack of stories on that particular day, led me to?write the article. To me it was a nothing story, and I truly doubted that it would even cause a ripple, in the sea of NBA news.

I was totally unprepared for what would take place on Monday July, 7!

A Memphis Grizzlies website, picked up on the story, and set up a direct link to the article on??Slam Dunk Central.? Suddenly that “nothing story” became the epicenter of a fire storm! It has turned into one of our most widely read stories in the past couple of days. The other thing it did was bring out Memphis fans to defend their team. I have not seen such passion from a fan base since the NFL allowed the Cleveland Browns to move to Baltimore in 1995. Grizzlies fans defended their team like a mother bear defending her cub! There are some comments that are posted under the original story, unfortunately many did not make the cut because of language! My e-mail box has also been deluged by Memphis fans, what you?see is barely the tip of the iceberg. If the sampling of responses that I have received is a true indication of a Memphis Grizzlies fan, than they are far more supportive of their team than Bucher gave them credit for!

Grizzlies fan, you have earned my respect! There is nothing on the planet that I admire more than passionate people! And if Commissioner Stern does decide that the Grizzlies are indeed the team to fill the vacuum in Seattle, judging by what I have seen he will have a Battle Royale on his hands!

? Copyright 2008 thesackattack.net

Within each true sports fan lurks an 11 year old child begging to be released. I think it is especially true of those of us who are blessed to work in the media. If you are going to be any good at this job, you have to have a?part of you that is a fan. In order to have any legitimacy, you have to have a vast knowledge of sports. How could you possibly learn all that information if you were not interested in it? Aren’t people who are mechanics kids, that used to tinker on cars all the time? Aren’t people who are scientists those kids that used to blow up accidentally the chemistry labs in junior high? No matter how acerbic, and critical of sports some of those in my industry get, there still has to be a part of them that is a fan of the sport. There is that 11 year old child within each one of us. We are just waiting for something special to happen, so that that child can be released.

The Boston Celtics are a huge part of the reason that I became a sports reporter. If you are a regular reader of mine you are aware that I covered the Indians, Browns, and Cavaliers, as a radio team beat reporter from 1995-2006. From 1997-2006 I was Sports Director for Metro Networks in Cleveland. I?also was credentialed last year through the NBA to cover the Cleveland games of the 2007 NBA Finals for Slam Dunk Central. It is true what they?say?it sure beats working for a living! For 11 years I got to sit in the Press Box at Jacobs Field, Cleveland Browns Stadium, and the Q? Arena. I watched games for free, and got paid for doing it! (America is a wonderful country!) After the?games?I would go to?interview the coach/manager, and then into the locker room to interview the players. I have interviewed every big name athlete from the NBA, the NFL, and MLB in the last decade.?I did in game updates as a reporter?for ESPN Radio, and did reports locally for a Cleveland radio?station. For three years?I was a monthly contributor to the Cleveland ABC affiliate WEWS-TV, on their Saturday night show “Sports Night Extra” with my good friend John Chandler. I lived a blessed life for 11 years before family obligations took our family to the Rochester New York area, and in turn to Slam Dunk Central. ?If you ever hear someone in the sports media complain about there job, please do me a favor and hit them upside their head! And tell them it’s from me!???

What you may not know about me is I was born and raised?in Boston, Massachusetts, and lived there the first 25 years of my life. As a child I was consumed by the Red Sox, the Patriots, but especially the Celtics. I was born in 1956, the Celtics started their dynasty in 1957, what an incredible time to grow up. Boston lost in 1958, but?they won every other season until I was 11 years old. That was the year my heart was broken not once but twice. No not by an adorable little girl, I would develop that interest about?two or three years?later. It was the Boston Celtics and the Boston Red Sox, that would do the deed!

1967 was the “Summer of Love” in the San Francisco area, but it was the Summer of the “Impossible Dream” in Boston. The Red Sox being in the pennant race for the first time in my lifetime helped to console me after an unthinkable event?occurred in the Spring. The Boston Celtics had lost! For the first time in my memory (sorry the Celtics losing in 1958 when I was two is not in my memory banks) the Celtics had not won the NBA Championship.? It was like losing Santa Claus all over again!

Up until 1967 this was the natural?order of things in the world of sports in Boston. The?Patriots were a joke, the Red Sox were lovable losers, and the Celtics were the best team in the NBA, it was a given! My world was turned upside down when the Philadelphia?76ers sent the “Green Team” home for the Summer without the Championship. It was as if you suddenly proved to me that the earth was flat, it just couldn’t happen. Eventually I came to grips with the fact that although?we were guaranteed Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, nowhere in the Constitution did it say the Celtics were guaranteed to win the NBA Championship.?

?Celtics coach Red Auerbach, a true genius of the sport, and the architect, and motivator behind the franchise decided that he had enough of traveling, and retired as coach at the end of the 1966 campaign. He remained as the team’s General Manager and named center Bill Russell as the team’s player coach. The Celtics were eliminated by the Philadelphia 76ers who went on to defeat the then San Francisco Warriors for the title in 1967. The Globe righted itself on it’s axis the next two seasons as the Celtics would win 11 titles in 13 years.

?Russell retired after the 1969 season, when I was then 13. Boston would not win again for an eternity until 1974, when I had the world all figured out at 18 years old. A new center emerged Dave Cowens, who along with the man who was literally the prototype of the sixth man John Havelicek made the team fun to watch again. They would win title number 13 in 1976 the Nation’s Bicentennial and my 20th year on the planet.

A man who was born one day less than nine months after me on December 7, 1956 would be the guy who would take the Celtics back to the NBA Valhalla. The “Hick from French Lick“, Larry Joe Bird along with Robert Parish and Kevin McHale were the nucleus of a team that would win three more NBA Championships.

My then girlfriend, who is now my beautiful bride of nearly 25 years, and I were moving to the West Coast in 1981. She had been accepted as a graduate student at Stanford University, we found out in January and told nobody else. After making it to the Eastern Conference Finals in 1980, the Celtics were a legitimate contender to win their first title since 1976. We had no idea if we would ever leave the West Coast, at that point of our lives. I had one wish before we would leave in August of that year, that the Celtics would win the NBA Championship. It literally consumed me that year, I lived and died with each win and loss.

Somehow fate smiled upon me that Spring, a buddy from work had two season tickets to the Celtics. Before the Eastern Conference Finals began he gave another friend and I?his two tickets to game five of the series. I would be in the Garden to?see Boston take on the 76ers, it never even dawned on me that if the series went only four games, the tickets would be nothing more than keepsakes. Again Providence was in our favor as there was a game five with Philadelphia leading the series 3-1. Boston was behind late in the game, but reserve guard Gerald Henderson made a key steal late in the game, and the Celtics came back and won it. I was deliriously happy, and because the Garden had no air conditioning soaked with sweat! Our voices were gone from screaming, but our hearts were full knowing deep down that the “Green Team” would beat the odds, and come back and win the Series. Amazingly the Celtics did win the series in seven games, and went on to defeat the Houston Rockets? for? the NBA Championship. I could leave Boston with no regrets.

We would move back to Boston in the Spring of 1986, which coincidentally was the last Championship won by the “Big Three“. We moved to Cleveland in 1992, and in my late thirties I went back to school and started my career in Broadcasting. I think because I came to be a reporter after actually working for a living since being in my teens, I appreciated what I was doing more than if I started it doing in my twenties.

I was corresponding with a reader from Japan?this morning?(the Internet is incredible when you think about it’s reach.)?I explained to him that the thrill of interviewing athletes wears off after about a year on the job. I have? had the pleasure?of meeting some incredible people, and some of the?nastiest people in the world as well. I have seen some?pretty lousy things go on in professional clubhouses, after a while it is tough for even the biggest sports fan not to get?jaded.

I have developed some great working relationships with many?Cleveland athletes over the years. I have never deluded myself that I was friends with any athlete, we are not from the same generation, or the same economic universe. However I?have developed a good working rapport with a lot of athletes, you are not doing the job correctly??if you don’t! When I was in that locker room, I was a conduit, a pipeline of information. I was your eyes, and ears, and asked the players questions that I? thought you wanted the answers to. If you do not establish a rapport, how can you get the athlete to trust you? With out that trust? all you will get is generic “jock-speak“. Because I had established that working rapport I could ask tough questions in a diplomatic manner, and get truthful answers.

I always prided myself for maintaining an objective demeanor at the arena, stadium, or ballpark.?However it would amaze me that certain members of the Cleveland media, had no affection or? loyalty to Cleveland teams. I know certain members of the Cleveland media, who are proud of their disdain for the teams they cover. All people are entitled to their opinions, and have the right to do the job the way they see fit (unless they were working for me!) But I can not understand how you can cover somebody, 41, or 81?times a year, and not feel some bond. I never rooted openly for the Cleveland teams, but I did want them to win, except when they played Boston teams. Again, I always made sure that?I never allowed my feelings to show, but covering the Indians against the Red Sox, or the Cavaliers against the Celtics were pretty tough games for me.

I was originally scheduled to cover the NBA Playoffs this season for Metro Networks in Cleveland. My former boss and good friend Terry Groden had me credentialed? to cover the Cavaliers home games at the Q. Unfortunately a family emergency precluded me from doing it, and I had to back out at the eleventh hour. The way things turned out it turned into a blessing in disguise, for the first time since 1995 I was able to watch strictly as a fan.

As you are well aware, Cleveland and Boston met in the Eastern Conference Semi-Finals. As much as I would have enjoyed the professional experience, and it would have been another highlight of my career, I’m kind of glad I didn’t cover it. I watched every game strictly as a fan, I groaned when I was upset, and cheered when I was happy. And although I did cover the series for you at Slam Dunk Central, it’s a lot easier to appear objective writing about the series, than to have to reign in your emotions, ten?minutes after the game is over?to ask the players and the coaches questions.

Tuesday was almost anti-climactic for me, because in my mind Boston won the NBA Championship last Thursday when they beat the Lakers in game four. At the end of that game, I sat in an empty room while my wife slept, and slowly started clapping in front? of my television. But it wasn’t really me who was clapping, it was that 11 year old child cheering once again for his team.

? Copyright 2008 thesackattack.net??