Author: Mark

Players chip in to save coach’s life after Clippers decline medical coverage

Seven years ago, former Los Angeles Clippers head coach Kim Hughes was diagnosed with prostate cancer, and the ensuing aftermath will change the way you feel about several NBA types significantly.
Up until Tuesday afternoon, the only functional knowledge I had of former Los Angeles Clippers head coach Kim Hughes was that he was, in fact, a former Los Angeles Clippers head coach, and that he once touched his elbows on the rim in a lay-up line at a high school tournament in Illinois, which really impressed my father.
Beyond that, nothing. Until Tuesday afternoon, when Howard Beck brought this column to Trey Kerby’s attention, and he brought it to our attention. And now we’re passing the feel-good savings on to you, in the form of an anecdote that reveals that NBA players Corey Maggette(notes), Marko Jaric(notes), Chris Kaman(notes) and Elton Brand(notes) all chipped in to pay for expensive life-saving surgery for Hughes, after the Clippers organization (read: Donald Sterling, noted worst person in the world) declined to cover the costs.
Declined to cover the cost of a surgery that would save their employee’s life. While playing rent-free in an often sold-out arena in America’s second-biggest television market. Unyieldingly evil.
Gary Woelfel has the original story:

“Those guys saved my life,” Hughes said. “They paid the whole medical bill. It was like $70,000 or more. It wasn’t cheap.

“It showed you what classy people they are. They didn’t want me talking about it; they didn’t want the recognition because they simply felt it was the right thing to do.”
Hughes said he will be forever grateful to Brand, Jaric, Kaman and Maggette. In fact, Hughes said every time he runs into any of them, he thanks them from the bottom of his heart.
Maggette said that was indeed the case, laughing how he has repeatedly told Hughes over the years it wasn’t necessary.
“Kim thanks me every time he sees me; he does that every single time,” Maggette said smiling. “I’ve said to him, ‘Kim, come on. You don’t have to do that. You’re good.’

No, you’re good, Corey Maggette. You’re pretty fantastically good. And so are you, Marko Jaric, Elton Brand, and Chris Kaman.

I have probably watched 50 hours of college basketball  the past couple of weeks.  Love college hoops although they are bearing an uncanny resemblance  to the pros–at the level of individual morals and rampant self-centered avarice (ego plus bucks–the era of individuals dealt with as a commodity: bought. sold, traded. Loyalty? A forgotten virtue by all sides). I wonder what the real dollar cost of college basketball and football programs really is. How about the message sent to all constituencies about institutional priorities?

Can’t stand professional basketball games these days because of the players’ outrageous commercialism and their inability to stay on the right side of the law–and often able to get away with it.  [For examples see Melo and Kobe.] I could  level the same accusations at pro football players, of course, but somehow my naive mind wants to accept the illusion that football (by its nature) draws a rougher, less disciplined, and minimally law-abiding cast of locker room warriors than basketball.  My idealism combines with my cloudy memory to call up adolescent visions of basketball as a “true” sport played mostly by gentlemen (more like cricket vs. rugby, for example) and mostly for the love of the game.

I guess my thoughts are thoroughly  tainted by vivid memories of those long humid afternoons (even after dark many nights) on Dundee Road when I shot baskets by myself, from a series of places just outside the foul circle, over and over, until I could “hit” regularly from specific points marked in chalk in a half circle on the

asphalt. I used to pray that Adolph Rupp would drive by and spot my talent as I sank a 25 ft. one hander (no jump shots then). Of course, Rupp would offer me a full scholarship to play at UK and join the Fabulous Five (later, in keeping with today’s game, that team was indicted and had its season suspended for throwing games). During practice hours I amused myself by delivering a mock radio announcer’s coverage of my game: “Mark drives in, shoots a one hander from just outside the circle,  and tickles the tassels for two!”  The silent applause was deafening–at least in my ears.

Alas, since then the sports world has changed, even faster than I have. Lately, we’re accustomed to watching millions of dollars in salary and benefits and bonuses be dealt out to professional “players”  who seem very comfortable with conspicuous consumption of luxuries, the company of hot sleazy women, homes with 10,000+ square feet, and the worshipful plaudits of the masses who try to identify with their heroes by wearing their numbered jerseys and $100  “sneakers.” All these appear to be more important to the “players” than enjoying the sport they are playing. (And I thought I’d seen it all when corporations paid people, mostly men, to fish from sleek fast boats and pull in as many big bass as possible to stuff in their coolers in a measured amount of time. Whatever  happened to my old metal Shakespeare casting rod, my Pflueger reel (back-lashed every cast), and Heddon lures [remember the River Runt?]). Mom probably gave them away, along with hundreds of my comic books, when she and dad left the house I grew up in for a more commodious dwelling in Cherokee Gardens.

As a Bronco fan, for months I  have been watching  the NFL owners and players fight over how to split up proceeds measured in the billions, yes, billions of dollars.  Civil discourse and backroom deals produced no results. Apparently, the issues will have to be adjudicated in the courts, and orchestrated by attorneys; accordingly, I have little hope of there being a pro football season 2011-2012. I hope I am wrong because I have come to love the game, especially as played by our Denver Broncos–where the excitement of the games is matched, often exceeded,  by the off-field shenanigans of the owner,  players, and coaches. I relish the high drama and will miss it if there is no season this year.

Yeah, and what will I do Monday night? Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights? BI guess I better re-subscribe to Book of the Month Club and Netflix. And put away my orange #15 Tim Tebow jersey with some mothballs until the new season begins, whenever that is.

In the beginning…logos AND pathos

Book recommendation:  just picked up Richard Louv, Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature Deficit Disorder. Workman Publishing Company, 2005, 2008.

Here are a couple of quotations which Louv uses to preface chapters;

            “There was a child went forth every day,
      And the first object he look’d upon, that object became,
And that object became part of him for the day or a certain part of the day,
            Or for many years or stretching cycles of years.

             The early lilacs became part of this child,
And grass and white and red morning glories, and white and red clover,
                  and the song of the phoebe-bird,
          And the Third-month lambs and the sow’s pink-faint litter;
                           and the mare’s foal and the cow’s calf…”

-Walt Whitman-

Whitman’s words remind me of me and my experiences as a little boy, and the words also bring to mind the many gifts that Nature has given to me, as an adult,  and also to  my family when we created a little farm ex nihilo in suburban Connecticut.

Here’s another of Louv’s quotations, this one from John Muir, which pretty much describes my state of being here in Colorado:

                               “I am well again, I came to life
              in the cool winds and crystal waters of the mountains…”

Hmmm,.. An observation and reflection.

As I write this blog, in contrast to Whitman’s observations, I am watching the destructive part of Mother Nature, the earthquake and tsunami, which have just devastated Japan.  Mother Nature displays her Shadow side and reminds me that She is controlled by no one.  This is a good reminder to me that I also have a Shadow: that balancing (sometimes overbalancing) my jocular,  empathetic,  compassionate side is my also uncontrolled Shadow– my myriad complexes, selfishness, and destructive impulses.

Thus, as I look around me, and even at myself, I am amazed that what initially seems so simple (whether something like Nature or like me)  often  proves to be incredibly complex. I am equally astounded at my almost instinctive propensity to reduce complexity by ignoring it–so that it will be more easily manageable.

I need to keep remembering old lessons.  For example, in the old days, when tackling problems that someone suggested would be easy or a piece of cake, my father-in-law would say emphatically: “Nothing is simple;”  How right he was!  Richard Niebuhr, another of my mentors,  often reflected that “if you think any problem or situation is simple, you have failed to understand what is really going on.” He was right as well.

I have to keep reminding myself that what I perceive initially as “simplicity” is more often complexity in disguise! I also need to keep in mind Niebuhr’s words:”On the back of every good rides and evil, and vice versa.” I’ll try to think of Nature and of the Japanese disaster that way.