basketball Archives - Page 3 of 4

Basketball’s Phil Jackson is 70

Life in the Continental Basketball Association was tough, especially on the road.

You may have heard of Phil Jackson as the coach of the Chicago Bulls, who won six National Basketball championships in nine years, thanks in no small part to Michael Jordan. Then he led the Los Angeles Lakers, with Kobe Bryant and, for a time, Shaquille O’Neal, to five championships.

I was first aware of Jackson, now the president of the New York Knicks, as the bespectacled “sixth man” (first man off the bench) for the Knicks in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

But my greatest appreciation for him developed when he became the coach of the Albany Patroons in the minor-league Continental Basketball Association. The team played its home schedule in the tiny Washington Avenue Armory. The games were always standing room only, and the crowd helped make it more exciting. In those days, the Patroons led the league in attendance.

Jackson was hired to coach the Patroons because Jim Coyne, an Albany county executive and president of a new Continental Basketball Association franchise more than a quarter-century ago, had a thing for [Red] Holzman’s championship Knicks and especially for their role players. “He telephoned Jackson during the 1982-83 season to offer him the job that a former Knicks teammate, Dean Meminger, was about to lose.”

On the road

Life in the CBA was tough, especially on the road. Jackson described one doozy of a trip thusly: “Leave Oshkosh [Wisconsin] at 4:30 in the morning. Snowing like crazy. Drive to Milwaukee. Take a plane to Atlanta [Georgia]. Wait forever for a flight to Evansville [Indiana]. Fly to Evansville, sleep in a dive right along the highway for an hour, and play that night. Immediately get in a van and drive to Cincinnati [Ohio]. Get in at 5:30 in the morning.”

Jackson led the Patroons to a CBA title in 1984, his first full year as a head coach. “He then sent Coyne… a polite but firm list of contract demands. Among them: raising his annual salary from $25,000 to $30,000 and increasing his road per diem by $7. ‘I would never put a team in monetary stress for a few more bucks, but I do think you know that I am worth that much,’ Jackson wrote to Coyne, in a letter Coyne still keeps today. Jackson got his raise.”

The Washington Avenue Armory is half a block from 21 Central Avenue, where FantaCo, the now-defunct comic book store where I worked, used to be. So I got to see Jackson and the Patroons quite often during that first championship season.

March Rambling: a quintillion or a trillion?

Fred Hembeck talks about a compilation of his Marvel work, House of Hem.

Delayed exoneration of a death row inmate, after 30 years.

9 Things Many Americans Just Don’t Grasp (Compared to the Rest of the World).

“The phone rang. It was my college rapist.”

What Happens When Mein Kampf’s Copyright Expires?

Building Equity: Race, Ethnicity, Class and Protected Bike Lanes.

Giving Homes to the Homeless is Cheaper Than Leaving them on the Street.

Man vs. Machine. A guy walks into a bar. He finds a video poker machine – run by the Oregon state lottery – which dealt him a strange hand.

Re: NCAA men’s basketball March Madness, the odds of a perfect bracket? It’s not 1 in 9.2 quintillion. Not incidentally, 10^18, or one followed by 18 zeroes is in the English system, one trillion. In any case, 9.2 quintillion is NOT 9.20000000000000000000, as NBC Nightly News showed earlier this month; THAT number is equal to a number smaller than 10.

Dustbury explained +/- (plus/minus) in basketball to me: “It’s based on the changing score during a player’s actual time: if, during a six-minute period in which he plays, if his team scores three points more than the opposition, he is +3. This of course varies greatly with substitutions, but electronic box scores update every minute or so.”

John Oliver won’t be your therapist: How he torpedoed the reassuring tropes of fake news.

Selma: the tragic anniversary of the death of Viola Liuzzo and Underground Railroad Project remembers the March.

Joseph Skulan on Wisconsin Mining Bill AB486 (2.17.12).

Major League Baseball’s Dirty Little Secret and Through the No-Looking Glass and Professional Ice Cream Taster.

25 maps that explain the English language.

Jaquandor: Writing Outside the Lines: on outlines. Plus the beer-drinking, 1970s sitcom DVD-watching Hank Speaks: How I Edit.

Dustbury hears voices; I’ve experienced this, too.

Gordon’s eight years in Chicago.

For all you lovers of the dance: here is an explanation of the influence of Africa on modern dance – if you have three hours to spare.

The Beatles or the Stones: Which Side Are You On? “If the Stones resented the Beatles’ cultural primacy, the Beatles resented the Stones’ unassailable coolness and sexual heat.” The Beatles themselves were like other men, but the music and lyrics channeled through them contained magic and messages from beyond the mind.

“Back when L.A.’s recording scene was a hit-minting machine that ruled the airwaves,” the Wrecking Crew worked up to four three-hour sessions a day. Here’s a review of a film about them.

Not only Diana Ross but also Mary Wilson turned 71 this month. 10 underrated Supremes songs.

SamuraiFrog ranks the Weird Al Yankovic songs: 165-151 and 150-136 and 135-126 and 125-116.

Art Spiegelman and jazz composer Phillip Johnston: “Wordless!”

Swamp Thing music.

The cover art on your favorite band’s album is awesome. It’s even better with cats. Must show the Daughter.

My friend Fred Hembeck is interviewed, and talks about a compilation of his Marvel work, House of Hem.

Irwin Hasen, R.I.P., the artist of the comic strip Dondi. Here’s the New York Times obit.

Trailers for 2015: The Best Animated Short nominees.

Muppets: Jim Henson Company and the ‘Into the Woods’ Movie that Could’ve Been and the message of “Rainbow Connection’ and Cookie Monster, Life Coach and Cookie Monster is making unboxing videos and Animal’s Whiplash.

How To Make The IDEAL Chocolate Chip Cookie: Add A Pinch of Science.

Getting more mayonnaise and toothpaste out of the container.

Dominoes and Etch-A-Sketch.

Srinivasa Ramanujan’s Magic Square.

Welcome to the Inauthentic Paper Detector. “Paste any text in the textbox. The chance that your submission is a human-written authentic scientific document will be output. Text over 50% chance will be classified as authentic.” Here’s the paper about it. Everything I write is inauthentic.

GOOGLE ALERT (me)

Chuck Miller: Welcome to the club, Roger Green!! Apparently, I have posted 1000 times on my Times Union blog. I had no idea. Also, Another win for the TU Community Bloggers.

My blog post re: the Barber Adagio was linked to EvilGeniusVic’s Capital Region.

Sharp Little Pencil: Outhouses and Holes We Dig, for Wisconsin governor Scott Walker.

Jaquandor’s Sentential Links (the Leonard Nimoy edition).

ARA: Sports and superheroes

I know all the Presidents, year inaugurated and political party.

Chris Honeycutt asked:

Do you like sports other than baseball? Which ones?

I like to play volleyball and racquetball but haven’t played either for a while. I like to bowl, but my knee is inhibiting that.

I enjoy watching football, and believe it is the PERFECT sport for instant replay. But I tend to follow the NFL, rather than college, and generally only from the end of the World Series on.

Basketball I don’t watch until the games leading to the men’s college basketball March Madness, pretty much after the Super Bowl. Used to follow the NBA, but not much since Michael Jordan retired.

There was a period I was really into tennis, in the early 1990s, when there was live, free pro play at the Schenectady Open. I’m off it, mostly, but will watch the semifinals and finals of the majors, if I get the chance.

I’ll view track in the Summer Olympics.

Almost every sport I would rather see live, none more so than soccer and hockey, which I HATE watching on TV, but find much more interesting in person.

What random fact are you most proud of that you could just recall it by choice?

I know all the Presidents, year inaugurated and political party; there were four Whig Presidents, who held the Oval Office for only eight years, all in a twelve-year span. I can name the two years we had three Presidents, and of course, who they were. (Can you?) I know the vote in the House in the disputed 1876 election was RB Hayes 185, Sam Tilden, of New York, 184.

In general, anything on JEOPARDY! that nobody gets but I know pleases me greatly. The truth is that I know so many obscure things that I don’t even know what I know until I’m called upon to produce them.

Any opinion on new superhero movies vs. old superhero movies?

Haven’t seen that many.

Saw the first two Superman films with Chris Reeve, and mostly enjoyed them, but haven’t seen one since.
Saw the Batman movie with Jack Nicholson; too much Jack. Haven’t seen the others, I don’t believe, except the Adam West version, which, of course, was pure camp.
Saw the first Fantastic Four film; pretty much hated it.
Saw the second X-Men film on cable, at a hotel. Liked it, but haven’t seen the others, or the Wolverine films.
I saw and LOVED the first two Spider-Man films with Tobey Maguire. Didn’t see the third one or the reboot.
Saw the movies leading to The Avengers film on video. Liked Captain America and the first Iron Man. Less taken by the second IM and Thor. Still haven’t seen the Avengers.
Didn’t see either recent Hulk film, the Ghost Rider series, Daredevil, Watchmen. What am I forgetting? Howard the Duck wasn’t a superhero, was he?

If you were a superhero, what would be your costume? Cape or no cape?

Well, CLEARLY it would be green. With an infinity sign. Yes to the cape.

MOVIE REVIEW: Ballin’ in the Graveyard

While the term “the graveyard” was meant to define a “do or die” level of play, that section of Washington Park indeed was a cemetery.

I took off from work early one day last month, and the Wife and I saw the documentary Ballin’ in the Graveyard at the Spectrum Theatre in Albany. Early on, the participants explained that some of them have played street basketball in various tough neighborhoods in New York City and around the country, yet no game is as intense as the ballin’ in Albany’s Washington Park, less than a dozen blocks from the theater, BTW. These are in-your-face players who do trash-talk to gain an advantage and occasionally will make a bogus call to even up the score.

But the film is only partially about sport. Their success on the court is shown in relationship with meeting the challenges of everyday life. Their court swagger belied the often tranquil demeanor at other times.

While the term “the graveyard” was meant to define a “do or die” level of play, that section of Washington Park indeed was a cemetery, with sections for the city’s black and “stranger” population until 1868, when those bodies were exhumed and reburied. mostly in Albany Rural Cemetery.

The documentary was produced and directed by Paul Kentoffio and Basil Anastassiou, the latter a longtime player, and co-produced by Spectrum owner Keith Pickard.

My wife liked it more as it moved away from basketball and more into their private lives, noting that it was both local and universal. But she also appreciated the notion of the culture and tradition passed down to the next generation. I liked it all.

The movie trailer.

A review by Amy Biancolli

Favorite sports (and version) QUESTION

It seems that half of the NBA gets into the playoffs anyway, making the regular season almost meaningless.

Simple query this time: what are your favorite sports? Are there versions or levels of the sport you enjoy more (or less)?

For instance, I like baseball. I like Major League Baseball, like watching it on TV, though I hate the fact that the National League has 16 teams and the American League has 14, for reasons Scott discussed here. But I really enjoy attending Minor League Baseball. College baseball’s interesting, but they still use those aluminum bats, which I find to be sacrilege at that age level. If the Little League World Series happens to be on, I’ll watch it.

I like football. I like the NFL, and particularly how the divisions are even. The league has found a way to distribute money more equitably so that there is more parity than in the college game. While I like the college game, I hate how it’s become a quasi-professional league, which in turn has caused several teams’ victories to be voided. Alabama and Ohio State (disgraced coach Jim Tressel, pictured), and several other teams have had their wins vacated in the past couple of seasons, with the expectations of it continuing in the future.

College basketball can also be subject to fraud. But the March Madness scheme, allowing teams from “weak” conferences to compete with the “major” conferences, unlike in football, makes the season more exciting. Meanwhile, it seems that half of the NBA gets into the playoffs anyway, making the regular season almost meaningless.

What are your sports favorites and dislikes?