|
Monday, March 26, 2007
That Was Then, This Is Now
From reader RGM, a NY Times story about how O.J. Mayo, a high school basketball star, wound up committing to USC, a school known more for football than hoops: A stranger walked into the University of Southern California basketball office one day last summer and asked to speak to the head coach. The stranger did not make an appointment. He did not call ahead. Tim Floyd, the U.S.C. head coach, cannot explain why he agreed to see him... “Have you heard of O. J. Mayo?” the man asked. Of course Floyd had heard of him. Everyone in basketball had heard of him. Mayo was first mentioned in Sports Illustrated when he was in the seventh grade. He was considered a future lottery pick by the time he entered high school. He once talked trash to Michael Jordan during a pickup game at Jordan’s camp... “O. J. wanted me to come here today,” the man told Floyd. “He wanted me to figure out who you are.” ...“Why aren’t you at Arizona or Connecticut?” Floyd recalled asking. The man explained that Mayo wanted to market himself before going to the N.B.A., and that Los Angeles would give him the best possible platform. “Then why aren’t you at U.C.L.A.?” Floyd asked. The man shook his head. U.C.L.A. had already won 11 national championships. It had already produced many N.B.A. stars. Mayo wanted to be a pioneer for a new era. “Let me call him,” Floyd said. The man shook his head again. “O. J. doesn’t give out his cell,” he said. “He’ll call you.”
As RGM put it, "The new era of high school has arrived." Indeed. Compare this with Robert Lipsyte's article in the Nation about the underbelly of college hoops: My first exposure to college basketball took place on May 4, 1965, when Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, then known as Ferdinand Lewis Alcindor, Jr., barely eighteen years old and slightly taller than seven feet, held his first press conference in the gym of his Catholic high school, Power Memorial, in Manhattan. Several hundred journalists were there to hear him announce his choice of college: U.C.L.A. (#2 West). We didn't know much about Lew. His high-school coach had never allowed him to be interviewed. He was just a black guy expected to dominate in college the way he had in high school... As it turned out, he seemed like a sweet, thoughtful young man. I cringed when a colleague asked, "Are there any liabilities in being tall in basketball?"--and kindly, without irony, Lew replied, "None that I can think of." And I was delighted--after a few of us stayed on to talk with him--to learn that he was sports editor of a neighborhood newspaper and was considering a career in journalism. We urged him to take as many courses in television as he could. He thanked us politely and excused himself to go to his Russian history class.
Damn, sh*t done changed.
Posted by Judah in:
|
RSS Feeds