Death of a friend

When someone dies following an illness, the obituary often reveals the deceased "was surrounded by family and friends." The line is an affirmation that in their final moments, when they left this life and death arrived, they were with those who loved them most. It can also provide at least a shred of comfort to the survivors during a tragic time.

Last Saturday, Janesville native Keith Wiste died at the age of 39 in Mankato. He took his own life, after battling depression for years. He left behind his devastated parents, older brothers Paul and Rob, younger sister Catherine, nieces, nephews and countless friends. Anyone who knew Keith liked him, and those who knew him well loved him. The thought of Keith being alone in his final moments is unbearable, the mental images something out of a nightmare. It rips at your guts, brings tears to your eyes and an ache to your heart.

Even in a town of 2,000 people, it's not quite true that everybody knows everybody. But everyone knew Keith and his family. Keith's dad, Ron, owned Wiste's grocery store, a renowned meat market that had been a fixture in Janesville seemingly since the time the town first appeared as a dot on a map.

Growing up, I looked up to Keith, who was three years older than me. Like small towns everywhere, sports drove life in Janesville. Keith played football, baseball and basketball. At his parents' house, Keith, his brothers and dad hosted countless basketball games at the hoop in their backyard. Every kid in town knew about the hoop at Wistes and had an open invitation to shoot anytime they wanted.

When I was younger I couldn't beat Keith or the other older kids who would one day go on to star at our local high school. But I tried. Keith graduated in 1990, a member of the first graduating class from the newly formed Janesville-Waldorf-Pemberton. He graduated from Southwest State University in Marshall. Over the next decade, he coached girls' and boys' basketball teams at numerous schools in southern Minnesota, staying involved in the game he'd loved since childhood. For a few years he coached at his old school, JWP, a tenure filled with difficult losses and even tougher times, but even that did little to dampen Keith's enthusiasm for a life on the sideline. Coaching was in his blood. He also umped and reffed. It wasn't just coaching - sports were in his blood.

He also owned his own successful business, Wiste's Continuous Concrete Edging; of the numerous online tributes to Keith, many include comments from customers, who remember him for his work ethic, craftsmanship and personality.

Those are just a few of the facts of Keith's life.

Keith the man? He was funny, generous, personable, outgoing, helpful, quick-witted, empathetic and owned a smile that lit up his whole face and any room he was in. He loved his nieces and nephews. He had one maneuver - a point and smile - that he executed so often and so well, a friend noted online that it was a "patented" Keith move. He was...alive.

And he suffered from depression. Keith endured a couple of debilitating bouts with the dreaded disease, but had been doing well for more than a decade, committed to taking the medications he knew helped him stay healthy. But his latest, final battle with the disease came after he had stopped taking the medicine. He reached out to his family, who, like always, rallied to his side. By the time he started back on his medication, the darkness must have been too overpowering. Suicide was the cause of death, but depression killed him, as surely as cancer and diabetes kills its victims.

His wake on Tuesday brought hundreds of people to the Janesville funeral home, situated along the old Highway 14. The people came to remember Keith and to offer comfort and support to his grieving family. Scheduled to run between 4 and 8 p.m., the wake lasted until just before 10 p.m., the line of people stretching out the door practically from the time it began until it finally ended six hours later. The people who stood in line were his friends, or knew his folks, or shopped at Wiste's, or graduated with his sister or worked with his brother or hired him for a job. So often, when a person commits suicide, their life becomes defined by the way it ended, instead of how it was lived. Those people made their way to the funeral home because Keith died, but they were really there because of the way he lived.

It's impossible to fully understand the pain that drives someone to suicide, just as it's equally difficult finding the words to describe what was lost. Anything besides "I'm so sorry for your loss" sounds inadequate. You could search the writings of prophets and poets and still never find the words that adequately explain the pain the victim felt or the hurt that crushes those left behind.

His funeral on a cool, rainy Wednesday packed the Lutheran church in Janesville. Those who crammed into the pews and balcony said goodbye to Keith and listened to the thoughtful, comforting words of pastor Larry Griffin, who attempted to explain the unexplainable. But not even the heavens can ever truly answer the question we'll never stop asking: why?

Death brings small towns together, physically and emotionally. There's comfort in numbers, or at least a bit of support. You see people you grew up with and thought you'd grow old with, before college and relationships and jobs and...life separated you from them and your town. You gather to mourn, while regretting that it took the death of a friend to bring everyone together. At Keith's wake and funeral I talked to people I haven't seen in 15 years, sat next to folks I've barely spoken with since graduating 18 years ago. It was like an all-school reunion. If you took all the old basketball talent that gathered together you would have had an alumni team that could compete against just about anyone. Of course, we would have been missing the guy with a potent outside shot - Keith.

I last saw Keith over Christmas, when I was home from New York and attended a basketball tournament in Mankato. As I walked out of one of the gyms at Bethany, I spotted Keith near the exit, standing, watching hoops and smiling, a scene that had taken place hundreds of times in his life and one I'd seen dozens of times. I stopped to say a quick hello, how are you? Figured I'd slide out of that gym and head to another one for a different game.

Two hours later... I never left that gym and never actually budged from my spot near the doorway, next to Keith. We spoke about our lives and old times, about basketball, the games we played and the ones he coached. We laughed. We talked about our dads. We talked about our jobs and a few of our goals. We said goodbye and promised to stay in touch. Maybe catch a game the next time I was in town. The regrets about never catching that next game will surely linger, but not as long as the memories of that night and of his life.

Keith Wiste died on September 17. He was laid to rest on September 21. He was surrounded by his loving family, his friends, a town that loved him, a town that will miss him and a town that will never be the same.

*****

More on Keith

NBA Flashback: Benson, Breuer and more

I'm resigned to the fact I probably won't get to watch another live NBA game for about five or six months. Normally when October rolls around and the nation's sports fans are focused on the NFL or Boston or New York or one of those other cities that are home to Major League Baseball franchises that are recognized by Bud Selig but not Fox Sports, I'm gearing up for the NBA season. I'm ordering the NBA TV package. I'm scouring message boards or debating on Lakers forums about whether it really would be in the best interests of the team to trade Kobe Bryant and Pau Gasol for a future first-round draft pick. I'm throwing out everything that's green - including money and recycling bins - in our household in preparation for another year of Celtics hatred.

But this year, thanks to the lockout, I'll probably do none of that. And with nothing in the present and a bleak future, I'll retreat to the past. There I'll find old NBA tapes tucked away and discover magical YouTube clips. Or, like I did tonight, I'll spend four hours watching NBA-TV and classic games from the league's past.

Tonight the network carried several "playoff gems," games that included a vintage performance from George Gervin, a Randy Breuer sighting in a Bucks-Sixers playoff game and Vinnie Johnson's unbelievable scoring binge against the Celtics in the 1985 Eastern Conference semifinals.

Ah, the NBA in the '80s. There's still nothing quite like it, even though I, unlike many others, still love the league as much today as I did back then. But now, let's roll back the videotape, pull out the history books, and in the voice of that guy who narrates the formerly omnipresent VH1 shows, let's rediscover why we loved the '80s. A potpourri of hoops from the glory days.

* The Vinnie Johnson game was amazing. He scored 22 points in the fourth quarter in Game 4, against the defending champs. This is why he was the Microwave. For the game he hit 16 of 20 from the field, most of them on tough jumpers with that odd form from that oddly shaped body.



A few months later, Vinnie's effort led to one of my favorite narration scenes in NBA history and surely the most awkward. I've written extensively on the Return to Glory video before. My campaign to have it win a retroactive Emmy remains in full effect - I'll send another letter to the committee after this blog goes up. It's all about the Lakers finally defeating the Celtics, the begoggled wonder, Worthy's dunks and Magic's passes, paired with creepy, inspiring music from the 1980s. But early on in the video, while recapping the Celtics-Pistons series, Dick Stockton describes the action by well, talking about a lot of Johnsons. I won't embed the video for fear of violating obscenity laws in 22 states. Here's the link. Go to the 5:20 to 5:52 mark. And here's the transcript:
"For Chuck Daly, Johnson was right on target. Johnson's heroics also baffled the Celtics, for it wasn't Detroit's three All-Stars who evened the series, but an unheralded, happy-shooting man named Johnson. Appropriately, the Celtics had a Johnson of their own. Dennis Johnson, another guard who sparkles in the playoff limelight. DJ's aching wrist made him miss the morning practice. But no injury could slow him down from a 30-point evening. Daly turned to his own version of Johnson."

Oh, Dick.

* That game also featured the work of Kent Benson, the No. 1 overall pick in the 1977 NBA draft. That previous sentence is completely accurate, though perhaps the word featured is a bit much. But the Milwaukee Bucks really did take Benson No. 1. The former Indiana star averaged 9 points and 5 boards in his career. He also famously used his mug to break Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's hand when the Captain's fist struck the young center's face. Benson's face should have been suspended. That's not the only time the word bust was used in connection with Benson. The next seven players taken after him had higher career scoring averages. Some of the guys taken after him? Otis Birdsong, Marques Johnson, Walter Davis, Jack Sikma, Bernard King, Cedric Maxwell and Norm Nixon. Yes, it's safe to say Benson didn't work out as well as Milwaukee's previous No. 1 overall pick - Kareem. The Bucks had a thing for overachieving Hoosiers who underachieved in the NBA. A year earlier, they took Benson's old teammate, Quinn Buckner. Somehow they avoided Scott May.

* As I mentioned on Twitter, it was odd watching the 1986 Bucks-Sixers game. The Sixers crew handled the broadcast. The analyst had a familiar voice but I couldn't place it. I finally figured it out - Doug Collins.Then I also realized why it took me so long to place him: I'd been watching for 20 minutes and not once had he mentioned he coached Michael Jordan.

* On NBA-TV it was a big night for tall white guys from the Midwest. The Bucks game also gave a glimpse at the giant Minnesotan, Randy Breuer. The Lake City legend battled under the boards against Charles Barkley. At one point, after a collision in the lane, it appeared, just for a second, that Barkley might be capable of snapping the skinny Breuer with just a bump from his ample ass. By the way, big Randy is no longer the all-time leading scorer in Lake City history. That honor now belongs to Lance Meincke. Still, Breuer did lead the school to back-to-back state titles. Unfortunately, there weren't a lot of people videotaping Minnesota prep games back in the late '70s. There were people videotaping NBA games in the 1980s. And here's one of the few online clips of Breuer as Michael Jordan viciously dunks in the tall fellow's stunned face - or, if you prefer, posterizes him.



* What's America's longest-running punchline? Historians can help me out here. What's something that could get a laugh decades ago and still could today? My vote: The San Diego/LA Clippers. If it seems like you've been making fun of the Clippers forever, it's because you have. Fathers pass the jokes down to their sons who pass it on to their sons who pass it on to their sons. At some point, daughters get in on the joke. The Clippers. They've changed cities, but rarely their fortunes. And guess what? In the 1980s? They were really bad.

1989: 21-61
1988: 17-65
1987: 12-70 (!!)
1986: 32-50
1985: 31-51
1984 (San Diego) 30-52
1983: 25-57http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif
1982: 17-65
1981: 36-46
1980: 35-47

The most frightening thing about that 1987 season is that the Clips started it 3-3. So they finished a tidy 9-67. They actually dropped from 3-3 to 3-15, lost 12 in a row. And how about this? After they won to snap the losing streak, the Clippers then lost 16 in a row. So a 1-28 stretch. They also finished the season the way you want to finish it if you're really trying to make a mark as being one of the worst teams in NBA history - they lost the final 14 games of the year. Of course, since they are the Clippers, they pulled off the Timberwolvesesque achievement of missing out on the first pick in the lottery, which turned into David Robinson. Instead they took Reggie Williams with the fourth pick. He failed to change the franchise's fortunes.

* The 1984 season ended in heartbreaking fashion - at least for Magic Johnson and 9-year-old Shawn Fury. In Game 2 of the Finals, Magic forgot how much time remained in regulation and the Lakers failed to get a shot off, while Kareem stood on the block, arm raised, waiting for a pass that never came as the Lakers waited for a title that never came. But before that, the Lakers benefited from someone forgetting about the scoreboard. In this case that player was young Dallas guard Derek Harper, who, in Game 4 of the Western semis, thought his team led the Lakers even though it was tied. The tough-to-watch footage - even for a Lakers fan it's hard to watch someone publicly shamed like this, perhaps because we now know what was down the line for Magic - is here, starting about the 3:40 mark. Yes, the Lakers won in OT. Just like the damn Celtics did a few weeks later.



And since I can't end on a downer about the Lakers and Magic, there's this:

Jack, Nikita & some nukes

I don't remember when we learned about the Cuban missile crisis in school. Probably in 8th grade, likely in the final 10 minutes of the hour-long class, perhaps after the 11 minutes spent on the Korean War. The teacher likely left us with a message of, "And tomorrow, we'll cover Vietnam, Watergate and the Iran hostage ordeal."

The story always fascinated me, even when I only knew the broad strokes and simplistic version: Dastardly Soviets sneak nukes onto Cuba; U.S. discovers it; John F. Kennedy appears on TV to tell Americans they'll all die; generals want to invade the island; blockade; Soviets back down; America wins; USA! USA!

Learning about the crisis nearly 30 years later made it impossible to really understand what it must have been like in the country during those days. It was laughable thinking about my parents hiding under school desks as a mushroom cloud rose outside of Fulda - "True, these shoddily made desks collapse under the weight of our heftier students, but they will shield our youngsters from a thermonuclear device." Kids still feared nuclear annihilation, primarily because of the TV movie The Day After. But the Soviet Union's eventual collapse meant there was no longer an ever-present enemy waiting to hit the button and send us scurrying into bunkers or under desks. We had 30, 40 years of living with Mutual Assured Destruction and most people felt confident leaders for both countries really did understand the theory. Students felt scared because of what happened to Jason Robards on TV, not because of what nearly happened in real life three decades earlier. At that stage, America seemed protected, isolated from danger, if not the world.

Certainly September 11 changed that view. But even in the aftermath of the horror of the worst day in the country's history, I didn't ever feel - and I don't think the majority of people did either - that the entire country was in danger of total destruction. In so many ways the danger was more terrifying than the Cold War, because it was random, unpredictable, and could seemingly happen anyplace, and at anytime. Even with that, there wasn't the fear that the entire country - the whole world, for that matter - could be brought down in the matter of hours, with just a push of a button.

That was what I imagined life was like in the early '60s, as the United States and Soviet Union escalated their arms battle and it all came to a (war)head in Cuba. But still I only knew the children's book version.

Several years ago I watched - and thoroughly enjoyed - the movie Thirteen Days, though I was somewhat surprised to learn Kevin Costner (or at least his character, Kenneth O'Donnell) had saved the world back in 1962. For the most part, the movie received praise for its accuracy. There were a few notable exceptions, the main one probably being that O'Donnell, who served as Kennedy's special assistant, didn't have much of a role during the two-week drama, even if he had a big one in the subsequent two-hour one that came to theaters.

Still, entertaining flick.

But now I finally feel like I've read the definitive account of the crisis. Michael Dobbs' One Minute to Midnight came out in 2008 and has been called "extraordinary," "fast-paced, suspenseful," and a "welcome introduction to that perilous time." Those were some of the official reviews and I can't add much to those. The book filled in any missing gaps I had and shed new light on old issues I thought had been settled long ago. It's literally a minute-by-minute account of the crisis. Half of the book focuses on one day - Saturday, October 27 - when the world really did come close to witnessing a nuclear exchange between a pair of superpowers who would have been anything but in the aftermath of another world war.

Dobbs' book puts the reader in the moment. Now I feel like I do know what it was like and why it was so terrifying, even though the most frightening aspect of the book isn't necessarily the fact the world came so close to the brink, but how it came so close to destruction.

One of the primary strengths of the book is it tells the story from all perspectives - American, Soviet, Cuban. Dobbs gets into the heads of Soviet soldiers in Cuba and leaders back in Moscow. He takes you inside the cockpit of a U-2 and into the White House. He explains Fidel Castro's motivations and the obsessions of the politicians who were determined to eliminate him, seemingly at any cost.

The book opens with some amazing anecdotes, which any conspiracy theorist would read and exclaim, "Told ya so!" On the first pages, Robert Kennedy meets with a group focused on eliminating Castro. These were the folks who brainstormed the idea of using "chemical agents to destroy Castro's beard, so that he would become a laughingstock among the Cuban people." It's not known if a night of heavy pot use prompted that idea. But Dobbs reports on how far the U.S. was willing to go to rid itself of the former baseball player turned ruler:

"The State Department drafted plans for the sabotage of the Cuban economy; the Pentagon came up with a scheme for a wave of bombings in Miami and Washington that could be blamed on Castro." Fake bombings blamed on a stooge? Okay.

RFK was meeting with that group when the missile crisis started. From there, Dobbs meticulously documents why events escalated, culminating in "Black Saturday," when nuclear war seemed possible.

The American generals were eager for some action. General Thomas Power told an aide to defense secretary Robert McNamara, "The whole idea is to kill the bastards." If there were "Two Americans and one Russian" left alive at the end of the war, "we win." Dobbs writes that McNamara's aide replied, "You had better make sure the two Americans are a man and a woman." And, preferably, attractive ones.

At the time, the United States did possess an advantage in sheer number of nukes. We could have blasted the Soviets and "won" a war, while losing tens of millions of Americans. And, terrifyingly, some in the military seemed all right with that proposition.

Looking back, it's frightening to see how a little thing could have led to a big war, whether it was the Soviets shooting down a plane in Cuba or an American spy plane accidentally venturing into Russian airspace. Imagine WW3 starting because of a befuddled pilot. It's absurd. And was completely possible. Fortunately, John Kennedy also spent time looking back during those crucial days. He reflected on how World War I started because of "mistakes, misunderstandings and miscommunication" and how that unleashed "an unpredictable chain of events, causing governments to go to war with little understanding of the consequences."

If nothing else, Dobbs' book is a great reminder about the benefits of civilian control over the military. Support the troops? Sure. But make sure you oversee their leaders. Their job is to win wars, but it's the politicians who have to be trusted with knowing when they should begin.

And that goes for the Soviets too. Nikita Krushchev, like Kennedy, fought to control a situation that had first spiraled out of control because of his own actions. For eventually pulling the missiles out of Cuba, Krushchev was basically labeled the loser in the event, by people on both sides. What a wimp! Didn't have the guts to go through with a war! Actually, he helped save the world, after almost helping destroy it. Just like Kennedy.

Dobbs writes:

"The question the world confronted during what came to be known as the Cuban missile crisis was who controlled history: the men in suits, the men with beards, the men in uniform, or nobody at all. In this drama, Kennedy ended up on the same side as his ideological nemesis, Nikita Krushchev. Neither man wanted war. They both felt an obligation to future generations to rein in the dark, destructive demons they themselves had helped to unleash. ...Something more than dumb luck was involved in sidestepping a nuclear apocalypse. The real good fortune is that men as sane and level-headed as John Fitzgerald Kennedy and Nikita Sergeyevich Krushchev occupied the White House and the Kremlin in October 1962."

We should all be thankful for Krushchev? I think we missed that part in school.

Update: New post on TVFury, new post coming here

Today on TVFury, we had an interview I did with former SJU quarterback Tom Linnemann. As always, Linnemann was extremely entertaining and very willing to share his opinions on a wide range of subjects. Check it out here:

The Fury Files: An Interview with Tom Linnemann.

Later Thursday night I should have a new post up here on shawnfury.blogspot. Nothing too long - probably not 4,000 words on basketball movies from the '70s - but a little book review about the Cuban Missile Crisis. It'll be just like history class!

And Friday on TVFury, we'll have our links post up - The Tapes - and perhaps my podcast with Terry Vandrovec.

Robby Benson, a tutor, a basketball, and a red-hot poker

Any child of the '80s who dreamed of becoming an NBA star, or even only fantasized about hitting a game-winning jumper in the state tournament while under the guidance of a crusty old coach who just got off a boat, surely watched Hoosiers dozens of times. It remains the standard-bearer of all sports movies, and is certainly the best hoops movie ever made.

But another basketball film, released a decade earlier, probably maintains a spot in the heart of those same future hoop stars, especially if those players were a bit more mature — and a lot hornier.

One on One starred a young, floppy-haired Robby Benson, who also co-wrote the film (his dad, Jerry Segal, was the other writer). Last night, after midnight, just as I was headed to bed, I stumbled upon the movie on NBA TV. Despite having to wake up at 6:30 in the morning, I stayed up until 2, watching Robby overcome tough odds, an abusive coach, disdain from arrogant hippies, bullying teammates and his infatuation with a red-headed tutor.

The movie came out in 1977. When I was younger, One on One always seemed to pop up on TBS about once a year, usually on a Saturday afternoon, probably before a 4:05 Braves game. Back then, I felt frustrated at the lack of basketball scenes in what I thought was a basketball movie.

Instead, Robby's character, Henry Steele, spends his time on the bench, riding the pine while pining for his tutor, played by a fetching Annette O'Toole. Watch the trailer again. How would anyone even know the movie focused on a basketball player? It looks more like young Mr. Steele stumbles upon a swingers compound. If the movie is a porno, he certainly seems to have an appropriate name for such a role. "The story of a winner." A winner in what?

Benson attends the generically named "Western University" and struggles to adjust to the large campus. He doesn't help matters by speaking in a voice that's one level above a whisper. What kind of guidance did the director give Robby before his scenes? "We need you to speak like a frightened 11-year-old girl. All the great guards, from Maravich to Robertson, do this. Not only is it great with the ladies, but it's a fine way of inspiring your teammates as their floor general."

Yet he becomes something of a ladies' man. At one point an intoxicated older woman gives him head while Robby drives a car and, to paraphrase Lou Reed, he never loses his head, creatively bribing a police officer who had pulled him over for speeding by offering up a pair of tickets to the big Notre Dame game. It's the last time anyone was excited about Notre Dame basketball.

It's Robby's on-court life that proves to be a nightmare for much of the movie. He fights for playing time. The intensity bothers him. During one practice, his friend gives him speed. As a "Say No To Drugs" performance, it ranks up there with the famous Dragnet episode about the dangers of acid. Robby acts like a cokehead as his embarrassed teammate, who provided the drugs, realizes perhaps he should have first introduced the small-town rube to pot. Once he gets back on the court, Robby continues his out-of-control ways, just the type of performance you'd want from a point guard. It does give him a bit more quickness, but at what cost?

Veteran character actor G.D. Spradlin has the best role in the movie. Spradlin portrays the old-school coach, Moreland Smith. Throughout his long career, Spradlin — who worked as an attorney for an oil company before getting into acting - specialized in playing ruthless, uncaring, occasionally evil men. He was the sleazy senator in The Godfather Part II, the leader of an assassination attempt against the California governor in Nick of Time and a corrupt sheriff in the classic Tank.

In One on One he mentally abuses Robby. He allows the other players to do it physically.

To his credit, Robby refuses to back down. He's Henry Steele, damn it, and that means he's strong. Sure, he looks like a 98-pound weakling out on the court with the men - and probably weighed 108 pounds in real life - but he will not allow coach Smith to break him, even as he's occasionally breaking down.

Another classic scene. Weirdly, this is the same speech my junior college coach, Mike Augustine, gave to me. Making it even stranger? We didn't even have scholarships.


In the end, of course, Robby/Steele wins the girl and the big game.

About that game: Overall, the hoops scenes in One on One are to basketball what the kiss between Norman Dale and Myra Fleener was to romance. In the final game, the one where Steele comes in off the bench in the final 3 minutes to rally Western to a rousing victory, the opposing team hits approximately 23 consecutive layups in the final moments. It's shocking to see an intense coach like Smith lead a team that plays defense like the 1991 Denver Nuggets. Steele scores, opposition gets a layup. Steele nails a jumper, opposition gets a layup. Steele dishes, opposition gets a layup. Yet somehow Western narrows the deficit, although they still trail by 5 with less than a minute to play. After Steele slices it to 1, Western again steals it and gets the ball on the sideline with four seconds left. Steele hits the winning layup after an improbable series of events leaves him wide open under the hoop, a sequence that could have only been accomplished in four seconds if the timekeeper from the 1972 Olympic gold medal game manned the scoreboard clock.

The basketball scenes are at least played on a real college court, in a real arena at Colorado State University, unlike so many TV shows and movies, when the action is compressed onto a 30-foot court that makes the athletes look like oafs.

Young Henry feels pretty cocky after those three minutes of stardom. Three minutes. To that point he'd shown next-to-nothing, other than an inability to hold his uppers. His jumper still looks shaky, he needs a year in the weight room or a week with BALCO, and he falls for any girl who looks him in the eye and says hello. But like he was back in his Colorado hometown, he's now the man. And he tells coach Smith what he can do with that scholarship, in probably the best part of the movie.

The first reviews are fun to look back on. Take the one in The New York Times, which says the ending includes a "smashing basketball game." Well, that is one opinion, especially if a British reporter wrote it.

It's impossible - at least for me - to watch One on One, or any basketball movie, and not think about Hoosiers, even if one movie was more about getting laid than layups.

Compare Henry to Hickory star Jimmy Chitwood. On the court, there's not much comparison. While Henry plays for a Division I school and we only see Jimmy at little ol' Hickory, Jimmy is the superior player. There's a decent chance he eventually landed at Indiana, or perhaps Purdue. Better jump shot, better basketball build, smarter player, moves without the ball much better, underrated ball-handler. Off the court, though, Jimmy probably would have dreamed of having Henry's life. Beer! Car! Speed! Chicks!

Both guys labored under a tutor. But while Jimmy studied the War of 1812 under the angry, bitter eyes of Myra Fleener, Henry learns about the origins of World War I from Janet Hays, who wants to explore the finer parts of anatomy while also discussing history. I remain convinced that Jimmy never kissed a girl, much less got lucky with one. Who knows, maybe he flamed out once he landed at Indiana - or Purdue - when he, like Steele, discovered women. Steele proved he could balance women and ball. Jimmy still hasn't.

One on One attempts to show some of the corruption of big-time college athletics, but someone watching this movie 30 years after its release has been desensitized by sports scandals, whether it's money in the mail, point-shaving, payouts, abusive coaches or...tutors who do everyone's homework - but don't hook up with the players. One on One has a message and a good one, but a message never trumps an underdog story, especially one that's still referenced every March anytime a plucky club upsets a superior foe.

One on One is no Hoosiers. In some ways it's hardly a sports movie. But it's a good film for anyone who loved hoops, girls or hoops and girls at the same time.

If you don't agree with that? You can take this blog, find a red-hot poker and, well, you know.

New post on TVFury

I have a new post up on TVFury. Surprisingly, it's about basketball.

A new adventure

A brief announcement.

There's now yet another place to read me online. The world needed this.

I've teamed up with my old friend and former colleague Terry Vandrovec for a site called TVFury.

Check it out here.

My first post is up here.

We were going to wait until August 1 to launch the thing and I suppose that's still the official start date. But, well, it's basically launched, so please check it out when you get the chance. We're still not sure exactly what will all be on the site but basically it'll be us writing about whatever. Primarily sports, but other things too. Sort of like my blog here.

I'll still be posting here on my own blog so don't abandon this one.

But TVFury should be pretty fun. We had heated negotiations about the name. I fought for Fury to be first. Lawsuits were mentioned, but things settled down. For now.

We're going to update the site throughout the week. Once August 1 hits we've talked about each of us having a post a day three or four times a week so we'll see how that works out. We're also going to have podcasts so you'll get to listen to our radio-ready voices.

Terry is a kick-ass sports reporter at the Sioux Falls Argus Leader, where he covers South Dakota State University and writes about 95,000 words a week with stories, blogs, live chats and tweets. I've known him since 2000, when I started working at The Forum in Fargo. He was attending Concordia at the time and was something of a wunderkind. He's had the same work ethic since he was in school - extraordinary - and is an extremely talented and passionate writer. He's all right for a Cobber.

He's so passionate he just couldn't wait until August 1 to start writing on TVFury. And I couldn't let him have all the glory, could I? So there we are and there we'll be. Hope you enjoy it.

For those on Facebook - I know, pretty much everyone but me - there's a Facebook page: Facebook.com/tvfury

And we're on Twitter.

But how would Gandhi handle the sales staff?

Nelson Mandela turned 93 today. One of the most important figures of the 20th Century continues to inspire a decade in to the 21st, though he long ago gave up his official power in South Africa.

Like so many of her fellow South Africans, Louise reveres Mandela. She vividly remembers his release and fears the day when the country loses the man who symbolized and led one of the world's greatest human rights struggles.

Pick up a copy of his autobiography Long Walk to Freedom for all of the stunning details of his life. He's of course known for his 27 years in prison, but there was so much before the incarceration and so much he did after his release.

Perhaps the most important thing he ever did came after he left prison, when he played the key role in preventing a civil war in South Africa after apartheid died and white rule ended while black leadership began.

But forget saving a country. Perhaps Mandela's most important achievement was inspiring a new generation of IT people.

Check out this three-year-old blog entry.

Nelson Mandela avoided a civil war. IT Managers can learn a lot from how he did this. So what's a CIO or tech manager to do when they get plopped down in the middle of a battlefield?

If you saw Invictus - and you're an IT manager (I'm going with the lower-case on managers, they have big enough egos as it is) - you'll know the answer involves rugby. So, anonymous IT manager stuck in a cubicle or, if you're lucky, an office, take heed of Mandela's strategies. Implement them the next time some co-worker or underling begins to annoy you.

"It was Mandela who said "You don't address their brains, you address their hearts." IT managers can learn a great deal from all of this. When placed in a situation where there are multiple warring sides, a good manager needs to move quickly to diffuse the situation."

Perhaps if Mandela ever releases another book in his final years, he'll reveal how he made it through the inhumane conditions at Robben Island by wondering what an IT manager would do. Those lessons learned would have led him to being bored, dismissive, arrogant or incredulous. He would have shook his head in pity at someone who failed to do the most basic of tasks. He would have cracked bad jokes and probably been unsocial.

The blog - with the awkward, and somewhat unsubtle headline W.W.N.M.D? What Would Nelson Mandela Do? - is at least a temporary break from tough-talking businesspeople who quote Sun Tzu's The Art of War (or does that only happen in movies?). You wouldn't find many world leaders who would serve as a better example for tech geeks and the employees who frustrate them. No one wants to work under an IT manager who sports a yellow bracelet that wonders what Gaddafi would do.

Mandela is one of the most remarkable people of the last 100 years and one of the most important. He's inspired millions, in dozens of countries. No one should ever take him for granted, and his birthday is a perfect time to appreciate him. And, of course, the next time your work computer freezes up and Bill from the IT department gets into an argument with Joe about the cause, but finally relents when their manager intervenes and reminds them that everyone's on the same team and working toward the same goal, you might want to say thanks to Mandela. Yeah, he saved a country. But he might have also saved your desktop files.

Magic's 1996 comeback: Not a complete disaster

If I had to make a list of iconic images from Magic Johnson's career, I'd come up with the familiar ones known to Lakers everywhere: mauling Kareem after The Captain's game-winning hook in Magic's first game as a pro; the hug after Magic's 42-point performance in Game 6 of the 1980 NBA Finals; the bullet pass to Worthy for a dunk in Game 6 at the Boston Garden in 1985; the no-look, behind-the-head pass to Worthy against Golden State; the junior, junior skyhook; flinging the ball downcourt against Portland.

All of those moments took place between 1979 and 1991. I could probably list 200 moments and games before I'd ever list one that happened during the 1996 season. The comeback. Like many Lakers fans, I've ignored details from Magic's 1996 return to the game, treating it the way De Niro fans must treat the last 10 years of his career. It was the year after the Lakers' surprising run in the 1995 playoffs and the year before the Shaq-Kobe era began. It was a pretty young team whose most famous player was an old guy who hadn't played in five years. The season ended with an ugly playoff loss and that was - finally - it for Magic's career. It wasn't as disastrous as Magic's talk show, but it wasn't a whole hell of a lot better.

I saw one game that season, when the Lakers drilled the Timberwolves in Minnesota. But for the most part I've blocked out much of that season, even though it was the final one for my all-time favorite athlete. You'd think I'd remember more about the actual end of his legendary career.

The last few days I've been looking back a bit more at that 1996 season, reading old stories and watching old games. And maybe it's time for me to re-assess that half-season. The season didn't add to Magic's legend, but it didn't necessarily detract from it either. He was no longer one of the top two or three players in the league, but he was still plenty good for a 36-year-old who sat out four-and-a-half seasons. He was older and slower, grouchier and, at times, a bit angrier. He wasn't the Earvin Johnson of old but there was still a touch of magic.

In 1995, the Lakers finally emerged from the mediocrity that afflicted the franchise after Magic's 1991 retirement and went 48-34, before upsetting Seattle in the playoffs and losing to San Antonio in six games. The team had young talent, with Nick Van Exel, Anthony Peeler and Eddie Jones emerging as legitimate players. Cedric Ceballos turned his career around and averaged 21 a game. They had a flopping Vlade at center, Elden Campbell - or, as he was officially named The Enigmatic Elden Campbell - at power forward and decent depth. But they struggled at the start of the 1996 season. They started the year 13-13. They were 24-18 after a victory over the Nets on January 27.

And that's when Magic returned. This classic Gary Smith article tells much of the story of Magic's decision. There was the All-Star game return in 1992, the Dream Team and then an abbreviated comeback in the fall of that year, which basically ended when Magic got cut during a game and the video of him bleeding on the court became yet another iconic image of his career, only this one didn't leave anyone smiling.

But in 1996 he returned, and not just for one game or a few exhibition contests. He returned in the middle of a season to a team that was 24-18.

The first game was at The Forum, the site of so many classic moments, against the Golden State Warriors and rookie Joe Smith. The Lakers won 128-118, a flashback game that looked more like one from 1986 than '96. Magic played 27 minutes and had 19 points, 10 assists and eight boards, a decent night for any player, an extraordinary performance for a guy coming off the 1,800-day disabled list.



At the 1:20 mark of that video comes perhaps Magic's most famous play that season, the fake pass that left Latrell Sprewell bewildered and the crowd delirious.

Reality, for the team, hit a game later, when the Bulls - who came into the game sporting an absurd 40-3 record - rolled to a 99-84 victory in LA. Following the game, Michael Jordan - who was in the middle of a triumphant comeback but would eventually attempt his own ill-advised one - proved something of a prophet when he said he told Magic he had a killer instinct look in his eyes but his teammates didn't.

If there was any question about that, it was proven when Ceballos - apparently forgetting that he was Cedric Ceballos - left the team in March, upset about playing time. He eventually returned but the team was seemingly divided. Later, Van Exel was suspended for bumping a referee. Magic, being the leader he was and wanting to show the younger guys how to properly intimidate the stripes, did the same, albeit a bit softer, a few games later and earned his own suspension. And once the playoffs began, it seemed almost inevitable that the two-time defending champion Rockets, despite not having homecourt, would eliminate the Lakers, which they did in four games.

But there were plenty of highlights, despite the fact I've blocked many of them over the last 15 years. And many of them are online. YouTube user nonplayerzealot is one of the best online historians of all-things Lakers and he has a huge collection of games from that 1996 season.



This game against the Jazz was something of a grudge match, four years in the making. When Magic first returned in 1992, Karl Malone expressed reservations about playing against someone with HIV. Malone took some heat for the comments, though he was only expressing thoughts that were surely shared by many other players at that time. Magic prevailed on this night, though, scoring 21 points to go along with seven rebounds, six assists and one Showtime flashback at the 2:30 mark.

Here against the Bucks, Magic finished with 20 points and eight assists.



The Lakers had some impressive victories in the second-half of the season. They handed Orlando its first home loss of the season, after the Magic had won their first 33 games at home. After Magic joined the team, LA went 29-11, basically a 60-win pace. Magic averaged 14 points and seven assists a game. One of his signature moves during his comeback came in the post, where he often tossed lobs to Jones or Ceballos who cut through the lane while Magic backed the defender down into the paint. He still had the hook, he still possessed the set shot from deep. He still smiled. And, on occasion, he could still lead a break, running it at 36 like he did when he was 26.

Perhaps the most frustrating aspect of Magic's 1996 comeback is that it showed what the Lakers lost when he left the first time. Magic was still great in 1991 and was still good in 1996. How far could he have led the Lakers in 1992 and beyond? His knees had a lot of mileage on them but in 1992 the Lakers had finally signed a decent backup point guard in Sedale Threatt. Magic would have changed his game but remained effective and, likely, dominant for at least a few more seasons. He still would have been the smartest player on the court and few backcourt players would have had a chance against him in the post. Maybe the Bulls don't have their first three-peat if Magic stayed around. But then they probably don't get Shaq or Kobe and who knows where the franchise would be today.

No, there no iconic moments from that comeback season. But there were just enough Magic moments in 1996 to conjure up memories of the '80s and to remind people of what was lost in 1991.

Life at camp. Or not

Lots of talk about camps these days. Friends are sending kids to swimming camps. Others are going to basketball camps. Teenagers we know are headed to acting camps. They're all sleepaway camps, a chance for young kids to stay away from home for the first time and an opportunity for teens to leave the nest and enjoy some freedom before returning back to their parents, a nice preparation for life after college.

My parents never had any desire to send me off to any camps other than basketball ones and for that I'm forever grateful. I understand their appeal. City-dwellers pack their little ones off to camps in the country where they see real pigs and real crops. Suburban moms and dads load their kids onto a yellow bus that takes them to a green lake where they get to be around water for the only time all year. They learn how to interact with other kids. They learn, I don't know, woodworking skills, so when they return home they can show off the shabbily made hat rack they constructed at camp. It boosts their self-esteem, at least when it's not being stomped out of them by a goon named Billy and his giggling 11-year-old henchmen.

I dreaded the idea of those types of camps as a kid.

Here's how I spent my summers during my elementary school years:

Shot baskets at the city park for five hours a day. Pepper with friends at the baseball field. Played quarterback or wide receiver in pickup football games. Stood on Mott Street alone, throwing a tennis ball against a rock wall for hours at a time, practicing my fielding. Ran around the tennis court for three straight hours, took a half-hour break, went back for two hours. Rode my bike around Janesville, including trips to Lake Elysian. Bought cheap baseball cards at Wiste's with my friend Brandon. Beat everyone in town who had the guts to challenge me in ping-pong.

And I was supposed to give that up for a week or two or three spent at some lake with dozens of kids, none of whom I knew, many of whom likely displayed sociopathic tendencies when lodged in poorly constructed cabins and supervised by horny teens who look the other way at camp shenanigans while getting to second-base with their fellow counselors? Certainly the fact I was not an outdoorsman played into my perhaps-ignorant disdain for camps. I loved being outside, but not if it involved fishing, hunting, fires, tents, bugs, hikes or treks. I wasn't a Boy Scout, at least not an upper-case one.

Only once did I ever come close to going to a real camp. In the summer before sixth grade, I learned I'd been selected to attend the school safety patrol camp in Legionville, near Brainerd. The camp - which supposedly is the only one of its kind in the United States - lasts a week and teaches kids to be crossing guard captains. It's on a lake. I wanted to remove myself from consideration, but I don't know that anyone had ever been done so in the program's history, which goes back decades.

Crossing guards are apparently a Minnesota invention, like Bisquick and the Green Giant. At the camp you learn safety patrol essentials, although I'm not sure what the essentials are: how to hold the flag, how loud to yell at students who walk outside the lines? You learn how to lead your fellow crossing guards. But you also swim and canoe. The camp apparently works, as does Minnesota's attention to school safety patrol. According to this trooper, "since the school patrol began in 1920, there has never been a fatality at a crossing where the school patrol has been on duty."

It's a great achievement. Still, I'm not sure if the camp deserves all the credit for that great safety record. Specifically, how does canoeing and swimming help the junior safety patrol members? What's the connection? Do they teach crossing-guard training at swimming camps?

I fortunately never found out what exactly happens at the crossing guard camp. My parents had already planned a vacation for the week in question, a trip to Kansas City to see my uncle Jerry. Later I heard some stories about the camp, some of which I believed involved depantsings of weaker children. Instead of spending that week in Legionville, I spent it in K.C., taking in a Royals game in their beautiful stadium, seeing Top Gun on the big screen and watching the Celtics clinch the NBA title. All right, so not everything about the week went well.

I missed the camp and missed out on my chance to be a captain. In fact, I didn't become any type of crossing guard, though I did enjoy their efforts as they helpfully kept us safe on the mean streets of Janesville.

My prejudices weren't restricted to sleepaway camps. For a few years, Janesville's Catholic church, St. Ann's, ran a little camp early in the summer, where we gathered with other little Catholics from other little towns for a week of bible study and games. It was as boring as it sounds - sorry, Mom. And with the church one alley away from our home, I had no chance of avoiding the camp or scripture.

Finally, in the summer before seventh grade, I went to my first sleepaway camp. A Pacesetter basketball camp. A week-long camp where I knew no one and had to show off my Janesville skills in front of southwest Minnesota's young hoopsters. It wasn't too stressful, though. The camp was in Fulda. And instead of sleeping in a bunk bed with a snoring roommate, I stayed with my grandma, in an upstairs bed. Instead of eating burnt marshmallows, I ate French toast and bacon - every morning - and hamburgers, roast beef and chocolate shakes at night. It was the type of sleepaway camp I could handle.

Louise didn't have much time for camps as a kid either. She hated the sports and other activities but did manage to capture one honor - the prestigious Boy Chaser Award. She still has the certificate. As parents, we'll probably ignore our own youths and pack our bawling children off to sleepaway camp, where they'll learn crafts and woodworking and improve their self-esteem. They'll swim and canoe and write letters home, telling us how much they love the camp, or at least that's the letters we'll read once the camp censors are finished with their edits.

Or maybe we'll schedule some family vacations for those weeks.