Good basketball is where you find it. At long last, it is here again.
This must be especially gratifying for those of you, and you know who you are, who have stayed the course through thick and thin. I salute you, one and all, from DT on down.
And especially galling to those of you, and you also know who you are, who, well, you know.
As for me, I do not have full standing. I never stopped going, I never stopped watching, and I never stopped caring. I just don’t care as much.
There are reasons for that. All things in their time. Most of all, there has not been much to care about. Somewhere on one of my old Bob Dylan album covers, the Nobel Laureate explained: “the purpose of art is to inspire.” There has been precious little that has inspired these past few years.
There is now.
And just because I don’t have full standing does not mean that I don’t have any standing. When I was a small child, I shot a basketball into a neighbor’s laundry tub listening to the Panthers with Cal Sheffield and Tim Grgurich. That was sixty years ago. Basketball has been a defining part of my life ever since, and, for better and worse, it always will be. I did write a book, after all.
This love of basketball blends seamlessly with weightier subjects. Flying home from visiting grandchildren last night, reading the surprisingly enjoyable “Wilt, 1962” offered to me by an old friend, I learned that Tom Meschery, who I remember as a rugged but artistic forward for the Philadelphia and San Francisco Warriors in the 1960s, came from a Russian noble family whose original name was Mescheriakoff. Meschery’s ancestral cousin was one of the greatest writers in human history, Leo Tolstoy. His grandfather, Vladamir Lvov, had served in the Duma and had once asked Alexander Kerensky to step aside and had been jailed instead in the Winter Palace, a fact Meschery’s father had in mind the night he and some friends crashed a car into a wall at Stanford, where Kerensky (who somehow lived to see the 50th anniversary of the Russian Revolution) was lecturing, carrying, per the book, “a loaded pistol, two swords, and a photograph of Czar Nicholas the Second.”
This terrifying but hilarious anecdote called to mind a major highlight of what has now been nearly 2800 consecutive days and over 25,000 miles of walking prior to and during the pandemic, the truly brilliant Revolutions podcast by Mike Duncan to which my nephew, a major Pitt fan from Boston, directed me in 2020. I have listened to every one of the 350 or so episodes on ten different revolutions and I have listened to the more than 100 episodes on the Russian Revolution twice. That, Professor Timothy Snyder’s likewise excellent course at Yale on the history of Ukraine, also available for free in the magical world of podcasts, and far more attention to post-Great War Germany than anyone would consider healthy, has provided highly useful context for current events here and elsewhere. And, on the weighty subject of weightier subjects, this odd but effective approach to advanced middle age also has enabled me to lose about 100 pounds without surgery and keep them off for over seven years, despite a nutritional approach that is not without its redeeming qualities, but which of late also has featured over 1000 Hershey Kisses each month. Along with my beloved walking partners, I feel that I am a strong candidate for NIL, on behalf of both New Balance and The Hershey Company.
I digress. Having now caught up the small and ever-diminishing number of people who might be vaguely curious, the important thing is that, having thus been occupied these past few years, I don’t know anything about Zoom sets, the Spanish Pick and Roll or any of the other exotica that have infiltrated this board. The last plays that caught my interest were the UCLA high-low and Dr. Tom Davis’s baseline entry bounce pass at Boston College. And the Packer sweep at Indiana that brought football to basketball and the end of civilization. None of those were in the last 40 years.
But, to paraphrase another link in the long chain of history, 1940’s America Firster turned 1960’s Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, I know good basketball when I see it. I like all kinds of college basketball, from Pete Carril to Paul Westhead. What matters to me is teamwork, unselfishness, intelligence, effort, energy and mental toughness. The things we are seeing now with this Pitt basketball team.
It has been pleasure to see this group of misfit toys come together. Picked for 14th even before losing their leading returning scorer and rebounder, their highest rated recruit in a decade, and a young but experienced role player who is offensively challenged but an able and useful defender, this team somehow finds itself tied for first in the ACC 14 games into the conference season, with a real chance to win it.
The unquestioned leader is the inestimable Jamarious Burton, a point swingman in the rich tradition of Brad Wanamaker and Lamar Patterson and maybe even the hallowed Jaron Brown, through whom the offense is run. They are chock full of old guards, shooters with old man’s games, and one old guard, Nike Sibande, whose game is explosive and at times erratic but anything but old. Today, he entered the fray with two jaw-dropping turnovers but, undeterred, he exploded in the second half and, with Burton, led them to their sixth ACC road win in seven tries.
I confess a special fondness for Nelly Cummings and Blake Hinson. In Nelly’s case, I am a small enough person to admit that I take a special satisfaction in thinking back on the endless keystrokes devoted on this board to belittling him as beneath our Power Five Panthers, which he is not. I also like him because he is from here, and because he evokes fond memories of pudgy Panther points of days gone by. Most of all, he is our grandson’s favorite Panther.
As for Hinson, the minute I saw him, and every time since then, I have had the same reaction: Blake Hinson is an ABA player. 6-6 , 240 and ready to let it fly. Anyone who ever watched a Condors game on a January night in front of 500 people knows exactly what I am talking about. In the immortal words of Chuck Person, who, alas, was born too late for his true ABA calling, “when I get off the bus, I’m open.”
But my greatest pleasure in watching this team are the undernourished big men, for whom I can only suggest a strict regimen of 1000 Hershey Kisses per month. They play with joy and are a joy to watch. I keep waiting for them to wear down but instead they are getting better. Credit to them and also to the assistant who works with them, Tim O’Toole, who must be doing a fantastic job.
Still, I retain a measure of detachment. From that vantage point, I have been of the view that the obvious limitations – lack of elite athleticism on the perimeter and lack of muscle inside—will eventually catch up to this team. They have won more than their share of close games. They have stayed pretty healthy. I never saw this team going deep into the NCAA tournament, assuming they can overcome the computers that hate them and the tarnished brand under which they are trading to participate at all. Now I am not as sure. But, regardless:
So what? There will be plenty of time for the miserable to have their moment of recriminations. Our Pitt Panthers are playing good basketball and they are getting better. Enjoy it, for as long as it lasts. For you, the truest of the true-blue Pitt fans, the small band of brothers and sisters who know who you are, you’ve earned it.
Best regards,
17-15
This must be especially gratifying for those of you, and you know who you are, who have stayed the course through thick and thin. I salute you, one and all, from DT on down.
And especially galling to those of you, and you also know who you are, who, well, you know.
As for me, I do not have full standing. I never stopped going, I never stopped watching, and I never stopped caring. I just don’t care as much.
There are reasons for that. All things in their time. Most of all, there has not been much to care about. Somewhere on one of my old Bob Dylan album covers, the Nobel Laureate explained: “the purpose of art is to inspire.” There has been precious little that has inspired these past few years.
There is now.
And just because I don’t have full standing does not mean that I don’t have any standing. When I was a small child, I shot a basketball into a neighbor’s laundry tub listening to the Panthers with Cal Sheffield and Tim Grgurich. That was sixty years ago. Basketball has been a defining part of my life ever since, and, for better and worse, it always will be. I did write a book, after all.
This love of basketball blends seamlessly with weightier subjects. Flying home from visiting grandchildren last night, reading the surprisingly enjoyable “Wilt, 1962” offered to me by an old friend, I learned that Tom Meschery, who I remember as a rugged but artistic forward for the Philadelphia and San Francisco Warriors in the 1960s, came from a Russian noble family whose original name was Mescheriakoff. Meschery’s ancestral cousin was one of the greatest writers in human history, Leo Tolstoy. His grandfather, Vladamir Lvov, had served in the Duma and had once asked Alexander Kerensky to step aside and had been jailed instead in the Winter Palace, a fact Meschery’s father had in mind the night he and some friends crashed a car into a wall at Stanford, where Kerensky (who somehow lived to see the 50th anniversary of the Russian Revolution) was lecturing, carrying, per the book, “a loaded pistol, two swords, and a photograph of Czar Nicholas the Second.”
This terrifying but hilarious anecdote called to mind a major highlight of what has now been nearly 2800 consecutive days and over 25,000 miles of walking prior to and during the pandemic, the truly brilliant Revolutions podcast by Mike Duncan to which my nephew, a major Pitt fan from Boston, directed me in 2020. I have listened to every one of the 350 or so episodes on ten different revolutions and I have listened to the more than 100 episodes on the Russian Revolution twice. That, Professor Timothy Snyder’s likewise excellent course at Yale on the history of Ukraine, also available for free in the magical world of podcasts, and far more attention to post-Great War Germany than anyone would consider healthy, has provided highly useful context for current events here and elsewhere. And, on the weighty subject of weightier subjects, this odd but effective approach to advanced middle age also has enabled me to lose about 100 pounds without surgery and keep them off for over seven years, despite a nutritional approach that is not without its redeeming qualities, but which of late also has featured over 1000 Hershey Kisses each month. Along with my beloved walking partners, I feel that I am a strong candidate for NIL, on behalf of both New Balance and The Hershey Company.
I digress. Having now caught up the small and ever-diminishing number of people who might be vaguely curious, the important thing is that, having thus been occupied these past few years, I don’t know anything about Zoom sets, the Spanish Pick and Roll or any of the other exotica that have infiltrated this board. The last plays that caught my interest were the UCLA high-low and Dr. Tom Davis’s baseline entry bounce pass at Boston College. And the Packer sweep at Indiana that brought football to basketball and the end of civilization. None of those were in the last 40 years.
But, to paraphrase another link in the long chain of history, 1940’s America Firster turned 1960’s Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, I know good basketball when I see it. I like all kinds of college basketball, from Pete Carril to Paul Westhead. What matters to me is teamwork, unselfishness, intelligence, effort, energy and mental toughness. The things we are seeing now with this Pitt basketball team.
It has been pleasure to see this group of misfit toys come together. Picked for 14th even before losing their leading returning scorer and rebounder, their highest rated recruit in a decade, and a young but experienced role player who is offensively challenged but an able and useful defender, this team somehow finds itself tied for first in the ACC 14 games into the conference season, with a real chance to win it.
The unquestioned leader is the inestimable Jamarious Burton, a point swingman in the rich tradition of Brad Wanamaker and Lamar Patterson and maybe even the hallowed Jaron Brown, through whom the offense is run. They are chock full of old guards, shooters with old man’s games, and one old guard, Nike Sibande, whose game is explosive and at times erratic but anything but old. Today, he entered the fray with two jaw-dropping turnovers but, undeterred, he exploded in the second half and, with Burton, led them to their sixth ACC road win in seven tries.
I confess a special fondness for Nelly Cummings and Blake Hinson. In Nelly’s case, I am a small enough person to admit that I take a special satisfaction in thinking back on the endless keystrokes devoted on this board to belittling him as beneath our Power Five Panthers, which he is not. I also like him because he is from here, and because he evokes fond memories of pudgy Panther points of days gone by. Most of all, he is our grandson’s favorite Panther.
As for Hinson, the minute I saw him, and every time since then, I have had the same reaction: Blake Hinson is an ABA player. 6-6 , 240 and ready to let it fly. Anyone who ever watched a Condors game on a January night in front of 500 people knows exactly what I am talking about. In the immortal words of Chuck Person, who, alas, was born too late for his true ABA calling, “when I get off the bus, I’m open.”
But my greatest pleasure in watching this team are the undernourished big men, for whom I can only suggest a strict regimen of 1000 Hershey Kisses per month. They play with joy and are a joy to watch. I keep waiting for them to wear down but instead they are getting better. Credit to them and also to the assistant who works with them, Tim O’Toole, who must be doing a fantastic job.
Still, I retain a measure of detachment. From that vantage point, I have been of the view that the obvious limitations – lack of elite athleticism on the perimeter and lack of muscle inside—will eventually catch up to this team. They have won more than their share of close games. They have stayed pretty healthy. I never saw this team going deep into the NCAA tournament, assuming they can overcome the computers that hate them and the tarnished brand under which they are trading to participate at all. Now I am not as sure. But, regardless:
So what? There will be plenty of time for the miserable to have their moment of recriminations. Our Pitt Panthers are playing good basketball and they are getting better. Enjoy it, for as long as it lasts. For you, the truest of the true-blue Pitt fans, the small band of brothers and sisters who know who you are, you’ve earned it.
Best regards,
17-15
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