1993 NBA PLAYOFFS: Suns (1) vs. Lakers (8) First Round

Suns vs. Lakers

This was an exhausting opening series for Phoenix. Despite coming into the playoffs with 62 wins and the top overall seed, the Suns needed Oliver Miller of all people to squeak by an ever so pesky Lakers squad that just didn’t want to end their season just yet.

These were teams in very different stages of their roster build. Phoenix had the right mix of stars, complimentary vets and impactful rookies that coalesced into a Charles Barkley MVP and the best Suns team many of us younger fans had ever seen. Beginning the previous summer in Barcelona, Chuck started to shed the damaging image of a malcontent brawler into a focused superstar with perhaps the most unique game in the league. This was the crest of his development as a player and he found the perfect balance between his go-to core strength and his refined passing and jump shooting.

The Lakers, on the other hand, were like the Celtics in that they found themselves with a gaping void where a hall-of-famer had resided for over a decade. Magic had the whole HIV thing, the comeback, the Dream Team and now he was either stumbling through calling games as a color commentator or goofing around with Arsenio courtside. James Worthy was still there but firmly accepting the twilight of a glorious career by that point. Byron Scott had publicly announced he would not be returning to LA the next year, making for an awkward last run with the Lake Show. And then there were the relatively new guys to the cast: a young Vlade Divac coming into his own, a younger Elden Campbell that could jump over many defenders, a scrappy new Doug Christie, a hurt Anthony Peeler. Mix in a trigger-happy Sedale Threatt running point and you have a strange group of characters that slogged through a underwhelming regular season (39-43).

Yet when these two ships passing in the night bumped into one another in the first round, it made for a very quality five games of spirited play by LA and nervous energy from Phoenix.


Sir Charles

Now 27 years later, it’s easy to forget what Charles Barkley the basketball player was really like. The man has become such a generally warm-hearted public character of smiles and chubbiness, that to take him seriously as anything fierce is almost silly. But in 1993, when Chuck would sprint down the court in transition, get the ball at the top of the key and lower his shoulders as he crashed through the paint, no one in the lane was laughing. He was rough, but not out of control. He had delicate hands that would tip rebounds all over the glass to himself, while he let his huge shoulders and chest deflect 7-foot men off him like they were made of paper.

He had a steady jumper, could switch off on any frontcourt player in the league, and had tremendous court vision and passing. His around the back pass to Oliver Miller on the break late in Game 5 made my entire day after having watched it. He is a pure hall-of-fame talent with the heart of a champion, despite never attaining one. He would be excellent in today’s league and would show everyone how silly comparing him to Draymond Green really is.


The Bigger O

This series was in serious jeopardy for Paul Westphal and the Suns. Los Angeles had showed an indifference to the teams’ records and defiantly stole the first two games in Phoenix. Kevin Johnson sat out Game 1 with a sore knee and the Suns turned the ball over a lot without him. Also Threatt went unconscious from midrange and finished with 35 points. Game 2 was Vlade Divac arriving as a go-to offensive focal point along with effort play from AC Green and Elden Campbell. The problem was that Phoenix wanted to run in transition against the bigger Lakers but Tom Chambers and Mark West were slowing things down. In Game 3, Westphal went with Olive Miller instead, and the series turned around because of the adjustment.

Miller is a strange animal in the basketball world. Here is an overweight, kinda short center with really long arms and a shot-blockers mentality that can shoot from pretty good range and gets frustrated a lot. His defensive play was monumental in the overtime Game 5 win that moved Phoenix to the next round, and after the game Barkley said that Miller won the series for his team. He and Chuck mixed well with good interior passing to one another and hard charging sprints down the floor in transition. You know, just a couple of fat guys that like to run a lot.


Rookies

Miller wasn’t the only rookie to play well in the series. Campbell looked like a terrific young piece of LA’s future with his play in the series, but only became more frustrating for Laker fans than anything else. Doug Christie played lots of minutes and looked pretty NBA prepared already.
The most interesting of the bunch, though, may have been Suns springy forward Richard Dumas. I remember a lot about 90s basketball, but I didn’t really remember Dumas at all (so much so that I had to read his Wikipedia page which is a doozy and well worth the read). Dumas was a classic young forward of the era: strong, lots of leaping ability, and not much of a shooter. He averaged 15 a game during the season and was the perfect kind of dunker for the style of play the Suns preferred. It’s a shame his career basically derailed after that season, but in 93 he was an excellent fit on the squad.

1993 NBA Playoffs: Charlotte (5) vs. Boston (4) First Round

Games Watched: 1,3,4

Heir Apparently Not

I knew what happened to Reggie Lewis. I didn’t remember it was this game though. In the first quarter of Game 1 in Boston, Lewis had already took control of the game and scored multiple buckets when he collapsed while running down the court, causing him to bang his knee hard against the floor. The announcers weren’t sure what happened. After seeing the replay of Lewis just wobble and tumble over, one of them joked “that looks like the way I jog sometimes.” Lewis got up and walked to the bench. The game carried on and when the camera cut to him on the sidelines, he looked completely weirded out about what had just happened. He looked scared.

The weirdest part was that he checked back into the game in the second half and scored easily and fluidly. His stat line after the game showed 17 points, 13 minutes, two rebounds and one heart attack. I can’t imagine how the conversation must have gone with the team doctor.

“So what happened out there, Reggie?”

“I guess I fainted.”

“Has that happened before?”

“Yeah, once.”

“Sounds normal to me. How about firing up a few more jumpers before calling it a night?”

Clearly, no one took it seriously enough; Lewis died three months later from heart irregularities practicing for the ‘94 season.

Basketball-wise, the Celtics needed Lewis, not only for the Hornets series, but for the team’s foreseeable future. Larry Bird had just hung it up, and McHale and Parrish were operating at a permanent 38 percent battery life. There was no young hotshot ready to take Boston by the horns and make Lewis a number-two option. When Reggie Lewis lost consciousness that night in the Garden, it began the complete overhaul of the team that would first bottom out and then lead to draft picks like Paul Pierce and Antoine Walker which helped turned things around a few years down the road.

Anyway.

ZO!!!

Alonzo Mourning might always be stuck in the ever-expanding shadow of Shaquille O’Neal, but the guy came into the NBA as a fully-formed manchild, ready to be an All-Star from day one (he actually held out briefly, so maybe like day 12). Even the top overall pick from the previous season, Larry Johnson, wasn’t as advanced in his development as Mourning was by the time the Hornets reached their first-ever playoff berth. With both men strong and healthy, Zo and LJ overwhelmed the aged Celtics with their youthful athleticism.

Mourning started the series draining 18-footers and forcing Parish to come out on him. Zo would then do his long-striding, sweeping layup moves that looked both explosive and goofy at the same time, but proved deadly. His buzzer-beater in Game 4 to clinch the series showed that the guy wasn’t shy about his greatness, but after that moment, he never really demonstrated being truly great again. Still, looking at him in 1993 as he smeared blocked shots all over the backboard and showed a warrior’s rebounding mentality, he and LJ looked like the bruising tandem that would be battling the Bulls, Knicks and Pacers for the next handful of years. Instead, taking out a Boston team with geriatric stars and middling role players would be the squad’s proudest moment.

Other Notes:

Dee Brown was a 6’6” guard in a 6’1” body. The series showed that he was more than just extreme leaping ability, but it also showed that he wasn’t ready to knock down the big shots in crunch time.
Kendall Gill looks like the spitting image of the generic 90’s basketball player. Very smooth and looks good doing everything, but in the end is a more of a tease than a great player.
Larry Johnson can shoot mid-range jumpers, but it’s such a waste when he does so. Here is a 6’7” shoulder monster with good handles, an instinctive passing ability and big time power hops shooting and missing sort-of contested jump shots. His team, especially Muggsy Bogues, missed him with great post position in the paint multiple times and you can see it start to annoy Larry more and more throughout the four games. Even if his back wouldn’t have limited the prime of his career, I’m not sure Larry would have elevated his team very much without Zo or some similar level of star to pair with him.

Blazers (4)/Spurs (5) are next. Follow along and watch the games with me on the YouTube links on my Instagram bio.

My Music Video

The video would take place in Latonia, an old-school Covington suburb crisscrossed everywhere by train tracks. It would be a nice blue-skied afternoon, very warm. I would be sitting in the driver's seat of an old 80’s Buick, or something similarly spacious for the camera to have enough room in the backseat for all of the fancy shots I wanted. I’d be wearing something very normal, probably a Reds hat and a Sons of Silverton t-shirt, and the music playing would be the eighth track of the album called “Bringing Your Pop Pop Back Isn’t One of Them”.

The Buick would be idled at a train-crossing as rusty, haggard train cars lurch along in front of it, blocking my pass. The camera cuts to me, only marginally irritated by the delay, nodding to the beat and gazing out of the window. I look over to the passenger seat, and the camera follows my eyes. In it is Waldo from Cincinnati, also nodding and looking out of his own window. Waldo’s civilian name is Scott; he’s a close friend, a partner in beats, and my favorite producer anywhere, so it seemed only natural that he be in it too.

I then look back at the train, camera focused on me again. I sigh and hit the vape pen. The viewer sees a hand tap me on the shoulder, and I give it the pen. The camera follows the hand back to its owner and we see that it’s Dren AD. Adrian and I became best friends after about 15 minutes of hip-hop discussion in the 6th grade. It was 1990 and there was much to talk about. He rips the pen, coughs and hands it back all while looking at his phone. He laughs and holds the screen up for me to see.

Camera cuts back to me smiling at whatever it is he’s showing me. The train, if anything, has actually slowed its pace. I tug on the bill of my hat and lean further back in my seat. I look back over again, and this time it’s Ill Mil seated there. Mildred is my favorite rapper that I've worked with. We first met in journalism school at UC, we both wrote for the college paper and years later made a couple of tracks together. We’re both traditional in our craft: boom bap and bars. She seemed like the right choice for the last passenger in the scene.

And then, so perfectly timed, the train would come to an end (without a caboose, of course, these are never cabooses), the flashing wooden gates would lift up, the car drives away, the beat fades out and the video ends with an ascending drone shot of the car making its way through Latonia.

There, you got to see it after all.

The Day The Dogs Caught a Groundhog

Yesterday, I was sitting in my attic writing when I heard some dogs barking below. My attic is very high in the air, taller than all the other houses around it. Dogs bark all the time. There is an especially neurotic collie that lives a few doors down and barks sharply and often through the the bedraggled tree line that separates our properties. As it continued, however, it occurred to me that all the fuss may have been coming from my dogs, and when it didn't cease but rather became more amplified as the seconds went by, I set down my coffee mug, sighed and lumbered down the stairs wondering again why I even own the damn things in the first place.

Halfway down I heard Melanie loudly addressing them in the yard with more urgency in her voice than normal.

"Jade! Dusty! Jade! Dust...," and then the clatter of the screen door slamming shut and then silence. It didn't sound right.

I got to the back deck and she filled me in of the situation before being asked.

"Jade got a cat I think," she said pointing across the yard near the fence line.

By the time I strode across the grass and made it to the scene, there was apparently a lull in the fight. On the ground was not a cat at all, but a pudgy brown groundhog on its back. It had a pathetic hold of Jade--the small black pit-bull mutt we saved two years ago that has never made it fully into my heart--and had its little groundhog teeth clutched on to the loose skin of her face. The bite was clearly not bothering Jade in the least. Jade had the thing's leg in her mouth. Dusty, our other dog, a blonde 70-pound retriever of some kind, was just barking and leaping about. He's always kind of been a flighty dog that gets by on his looks and runs pretty well after tennis balls.

My addition to the scene however seemed to spark something in the dogs, as if their time to kill was coming to a close and that they'd better get on with it before the tall human starts yelling again. Jade released the groundhog's foot and went for the more vital bits of neck and belly. I guess Dusty was getting in there somewhere too, it was hard to tell, but he has a soft bite and was bred to retrieve already dead things so he was the secondary concern.

I did yell, a lot, and growled their names, but the taste of blood had whipped both dogs into such a frenzy that they heard nothing but their primal wolfish instincts to make a gruesome example of this groundhog. It would serve as a message to all other yard vermin that if they dare enter the fence, this would be their fate as well. I stopped yelling.

I remember thinking of how the dogs weren't being very efficient in this slaughter. We had a much larger pit-bull a few years back that had snatched and killed one within seconds like a true professional. This in comparison was certainly amateur hour and I felt embarrassed to own dogs incapable of killing cleanly. They can't even do that right. I wasn't going to reach my hands into the fray under any circumstance, so I turned my back and walked the other direction, assuming my dogs would sooner or later finish the job.

Melanie was on the deck watching it all. I shrugged at her and she shrugged back and went inside. I meandered over to the other side of the yard where I keep my hose and started dragging it back over to the murder scene. The cheap plastic apparatus that keeps my hose coiled and out of the way is such a piece of shit that rather than feed me more of the hose as I pull on it, it invariably tilts over onto its side, completely defeating the thing's only purpose. I find myself cursing at it whenever I need it.

My concern at this point, wasn't whether they had killed the large rodent by now, but rather getting its innards all over their faces and coats. I stormed back over to the hose and yelled out for Melanie inside. "Feed this to me," I barked when she came out, pointing at the toppled hose-roller-thing.

On the spigot of the hose, there are options of what type of stream you'd like to employ. I chose jet, and as soon as I was close enough, I lasered a sharp beam of water into the faces of my deranged canines. It worked surprisingly well as both dogs were broken from their murderous trance and seemed to see me there for the first time. "Get outta here!" I screamed, spraying them further away from the victim. They reluctantly retreated back across the yard and up the deck. I gave each one a once over and rather than them being splattered with groundhog blood and licking their open wounds from the fight, each were unscathed and their fur guts-free. Jade had a small red scrape on her snout but there was no real active bleeding.

Once both of the brutes were corralled into the house and the yard was quiet again, I allowed myself a deep inhale and a sigh, before going into my barn to fetch my snow shovel and a rake. I sauntered back over to the creepy brown pile of fur and braced for the up-close rawness of death. I stopped about five feet from the critter and had a look. It was still breathing.

Fuck.

I don't own a gun. If I did, I think I could probably fire it in my yard on a Saturday afternoon in Cincinnati without much recourse from scared neighbors or nearby cops, especially once they are informed of the humanitarian reason for the shot, but alas, it was not to be. I thought about crushing its little head with a cinder block to put the little shit out of its misery, but that was so archaic and messy that it felt a bit over-the-top. I walked inside to ask Melanie what she thought. She was in the kitchen inspecting the dogs closer with latex gloves on. Each of the bastards were panting and looking pretty proud of themselves. I explained to her that it was still breathing but was also still on its back and not looking too good. She brainstormed about possibly drowning it somehow, but how the hell would we do that? I floated my cinder block suggestion out and she made a horrified face. I thought that even suggesting something so brutal might have changed her whole outlook on me forever.

So, still without much of a plan, but convinced that crushing its skull would be the least painful method and would certainly get the job done, I halted in my tracks as I looked across the yard to the body only to see that it was now upright and looking directly at me. This brought on a whole new set of questions. What now?

Melanie came out and I pointed at the little groundhog head lifted over the high grass (I'm grossly overdue to cut my grass). I decided I should get a little closer to examine the extent of its injuries. I don't know what good this could have done, but it seemed like a practical fact-finding thing to do. A few steps in its direction was enough to spook the poor injured mammal to muster up what life it did have and it limped away into the neighbor's yard.

I felt bad for the guy. When it scurried off, I could see real damage to its body around its neck and underarms. It wasn't doing well and probably wouldn't last that long out in "the wild". Sure, I live in the city, but Mt. Airy park and all of its 1,480-acre glory is only a few hundred yards from my house and plenty of predators lurk about the woodsy neighborhood at night. Maybe, and I don't know if it's worse or not than getting eaten by something bigger, the groundhog would find the closest shady secluded spot to curl up in and decide that since it can't really move well or eat well or run well, it'd be better off just to lay there and die.

This story may not be finished. It wouldn't surprise me to encounter this poor sap's corpse in a much worse state than what my dogs had done to it. Or, maybe I will be in my attic writing again and look out through its dirty windows down to the yard and see a haggard, limping brown ball of fat fur trot across the property and sneak into my barn where I am convinced a metropolis of the bastards have made an underground city for themselves. Even a healthy groundhog only lives a couple of years, so our tragic figure in this tale doesn't have long either way, but at least he gets a little prolonged memory of his life in the virtual pages you're reading here and isn't that what any of us wants? To be remembered for a while?

Damn, I Love The Tams

For some reason I can't take my eyes off of the Memphis Tams.  Maybe it's those garish green-and-yellow ABA throwbacks they sport during the retro nights, or perhaps it's because their mascot is a hat but whatever it is, I am fascinated with this team. 

Of course, for the vast majority of the season they are the Memphis Grizzlies which is not only a geographical paradox, it is also the nickname of a failed business endeavor  in Vancouver.  I feel the franchise should embrace the Tams image and instill a true sense of belonging to the people of Memphis rather than that of a bear who lives far, far away. 

All that aside, my interest is piqued in this bunch because they are in an awkward phase of basketball adolescence, where the basics have been firmly established but the subtleties of their collective game must now emerge.  Greatness is within reach of the individuals involved, but only time, experience and familiarity will provide the finishing touches of a truly impressive postseason run in the future. 

What I like most about them is that there is always a sense of calm within this group, a belief that they can always come back.  Whether that is the influence of head coach Lionel Hollins is not for me to know, but whatever the case, the Tams stick to the plan and are poised up until the end of games.  I think other than just being young and headstrong, their confidence stems from the knowledge of the rigidly defined roles Hollins has carved out for each player.  Because the unit has bought into the scheme, what most see as a pretty average collection of talent is now 17-14 and sits sixth in the West. 

The cast of characters is a weird one. 

There are the scorers, Rudy Gay and O.J. Mayo.  Gay is a sleepy-eyed slasher extraordinaire who consistently gets good looks at the rim but doesn't have the all-world shooting ability to put him in the elite scoring range; he is Durant the Lesser.  Still a blooming talent, Gay combines effortless athleticism with a growing shooting range and an early mastery of the backboard.  He is a rangy, loping player that excels more in an uptempo environment.  Maintaining a level of consistency is Gay's final frontier and that only comes with time. 

Mayo (North College Hill High, Cincinnati) comes off the bench and hoists shots anywhere and anytime he touches the ball.  From a distance he looks like a deranged gunner who is blind of teammates, but he is instructed to spray shots at will, and while he grumbled about it at first, his role of bench shooter now suits him just fine.

There are big men.  All-star Marc Gasol is a distribution center of offense who towers over everyone else and holds the ball in one hand ready to fastball it to a cutter at the rim, or stand-on his tip-toes while shooting an 18-footer.  He has great hands, a good basketball instinct and a developed sense of finesse that comes with most European players.  To me, he looks like a Spanish Wookiee who dominated the Kashyyyk league before joining the NBA.

Next is Marreese Speights, a polite but slow-witted young man who is there for rebounding and put-back scoring.  Every so often, Speights will put the ball on the floor and complete an impressive spin-move lay up to the left, or knock down the open 20-footer himself, but for the most part, he's there to clean up the garbage around the rim.  He does have the size and make up of a promising power forward for the future and has given Memphis quality minutes since injuries forced him into the starting lineup.  He is an interesting pick up and is arguably underrated.   

The ball-handling on the team is primarily made up of Mike Conley.  Finding a consistent shooting ability is still the career goal for Conley, but he has made strides in that area already in the first half of this season and is another youngster coming into his own.  He is developing into a crafty left-handed floor manager who looks comfortable running both the break and the half-court offense.  He plays good defense and stays under control.  Conley still isn't great, but he is more than serviceable and getting better everyday.

Lastly are the eclectic energy guys.  There is no better energy player in the league than Tony Allen.  The man is hell on wheels, Captain Chaos, and his effort alone leads to the rapid dismantling of the opposition's plan of attack.  He is a defensive stopper and a thorny physical player that wears most men down, but he is also a very controlled offensive player on the break and even a fairly clutch outside shooter.  He is a coaches dream and a key ingredient in a playoff series. 

The other energy bursts off the bench are forwards Dante Cunningham and Quincy Pondexter.  Cunningham is good on the glass and is tall enough to defend big men in the post, while Pondexter is deceptively thick and often plays bigger than his 6'6'' frame.  These two have the most impact with their hustle and both are important to the season's remainder, particularly Cunningham.

Yet for all that praise, there are still a few loose threads on these Tams.  

One concern surrounds Zach Randolph—the 20 points 12 rebounds guy—who is due to return from a knee injury in the next month or so.  Z-Bo flashed in the playoffs last year, pairing with Gasol as a low-post scoring machine that dispatched San Antonio from last year's playoffs in remarkable fashion.  It was perhaps Randolph's greatest stretch of play and caused quite a buzz around the league at the time.  During the run, Memphis played a deliberate half-court set that relied on the high-low game of the skilled big men underneath. Rudy Gay was out then with an injury himself, so the team went through the post to win instead.

Four games into the season, Randolph hurt his knee and the mixing of styles between Gay and Z-Bo was again put on hold.  Since then, Memphis has sped up their play and prefer a fast-break offense predicated on the many steals they force.  It serves the team's youth, energy and speed, but Randolph isn't known for any of those qualities and one has to wonder how Hollins will go about placating Zach without disrupting the others when he comes back.

The other problem facing the team now is a lack of a back-up point guard.  The two rookies off of the bench, Jeremy Pargo and Josh Selby, are cannon fodder for the league mostly, and neither are guys you want to give many minutes.  Pargo seems quiet on the court which isn't always a bad thing, but also doesn't provide a ton of job security, while Selby is just brainless with the basketball far too often to rely on.  To Selby's credit, he is very young and isn't used to playing point guard but as of now he does not look NBA-caliber.

These problems are minor and this is not a franchise that needs three more years to compete for a championship.  Many of the pieces are in place and now it's time to see them all work together.  It feels presumptuous to consider them championship-caliber this season, but I do expect more heads to turn and check out those hideous uniforms worn by the wily Tams, challenging the big dogs of the West.  Perhaps not quite a success story, I expect the rest of the season for Memphis to be a later chapter in a coming-of-age novel where the protagonist realizes he or she really can do it after all.  So if you're looking for an underdog sleeper team to slay a few dragons this April, tune into Memphis and cheer on the hats! 


Mojokong—we river cities stick together.

The Crosstown Punchout

I wasn't at the game—didn't even watch it on TV—but that doesn't mean I didn't feel it when I saw what happened. Like a shock wave that emanated from the Cintas Center on Xavier's campus, I too was swept up in the chaos' aftermath, despite my most resolute intentions to ignore the whole fiasco.

The game I refer to was the 79^th Crosstown Shootout—an intra-city event that has produced a lot of stuff to feel good about—but sadly, the 80^th may have to wait some time before the rivalry resumes. Today marked a sad day for Cincinnati. The tension between the Bearcats and Muskies had been brewing for a few years now. The crop of personalities on both sides formed a perfect storm of fists and trash talk that many times prior had boiled over in the city's prominent summer league games, the Deveroes League played at Woodward High School. There, Yancy Gates and Kenny Frease would shove each other around on a regular basis and Tu Hollaway would just get mad at everyone so he could play well. Those three guys, plus Tu's little Pomeranian, Mark Lyons, are all you need to start a gang brawl on a basketball court.

Before everything came to an unfortunate end, it's important to look closely at these individuals. Here is Yancy Gates, a little boy in a grown-ass man's body. He's the local cat with more to live up to than most UC star recruits and he and everyone around him is openly frustrated that he hasn't developed into the beast he should be. The bottom line with Yancy as player and as a person is that he is soft, and the reason he punches people first is to prove that the opposite is true. He's the biggest little man you'll ever come across, but you'd better keep your distance when you see him in person.

Then there is Kenny Frease, another wide-bodied load that looks like the big hairy orange thing that hangs out with Marvin the Martian on those cartoons. With good hands but terrible feet, Frease too has frustrated scouts and onlookers. Plus he's the token Palooka on the team—just a big dumb white boy whose best attribute is the five fouls he starts with. Kenny Frease is usually the first guy getting punched in any brawl and that proved to be true today.

Tu Halloway is next. Here is a nasty little dude. Some players like T.J Houshmandzadeh , for instance, have to be angry to play at their best; Tu is one of these guys. I don't know why he is most successful when in a disturbed frame of mind, but from what I've seen, if he isn't pissed off at somebody, he's bored. Overtime, angry guys become permanent assholes, and this is the fate of Terrell Halloway, I'm afraid. A terrific talent, but completely unlikeable.

Never far from Halloway is Mark Lyons. If Halloway is genuinely a shitty dude, than Lyons is faking his shittiness and that's even worse. He's not even tough; he just runs his mouth and makes faces a lot. Aside from bouts of brainlessness, there's really nothing wrong with him as a player, but he will always be Tu's little lapdog, yapping away in my memory.

With the cast of characters out of the way, some back story is needed.

As mentioned, the summer league games were often heated, and the previous shootouts were always good for a shoving match for a loose ball, but nothing to the degree of what took place today. Earlier in the week a local reporter asked Bearcat shooting guard Sean Kilpatrick if he thought Tu would start on UC. His response was stately and well thought out. “With the guys we have now,” he said, “I would say no.” Not necessarily inflammatory stuff there. The reporter served it up to him, he essentially was asked to compare Tu to his teammates, and he sided with his teammates. No story there.

But...

Tu Halloway took offense to this and confirmed as much after the brawl. Instead of ignoring what anyone—especially the other team—had to say about him, Halloway decided that the comment mattered and he wasn't going to leave it be after a twenty-point victory. As the seconds ticked down in the game, he started barking to the UC bench, then at an opposing player on the court and then pushed said player to the ground. Shortly before all of that, Tu also asked Xavier beat reporter Shannon Russell, to tweet her followers that “XU put them in a (presumably f-word) body bag.” This to me is a shit-talker gone mad. This is going beyond the realms of a game. If such a fueling of misguided testosterone happened in a night club or an automobile, someone may have been killed.

Nobody disrespects the little angry guy, though. No one talks shit about the 5'10'' toughy without getting what's coming to them. My God! How old are these people? And the funny part is, as soon as the fight broke out, Tu was safely restrained by the referee while his carnage erupted around him.

Yancy Gates acted very cowardly with his solid right hand to Kenny Freise's jaw. Frease was not squared up with him and looked to be acting more of a peacekeeper than an instigator. He wasn't even looking at the punch that floored him and where I'm from (and where Yancy's from), that's called a sucker punch. Yet, to one up such a cowardly move, the big Senegalese UC center whose name sounds like Mooge, stomped Kenny on the ground with his giant basketball shoe. Stomping someone on the ground. That's prison behavior.

Friese wound up with his face split and bloodied, and a bunch of yelling and shoving and breaking up ensued. Yancy looked the most aggravated of everyone and ended the fracas by throwing air punches at pretty much anything.

Eventually, long after the teams left the court and the violence-charged crowd filed out of the building, some kind of order was restored and press conferences were made manageable.

Mick Cronin's statements were good. He talked about how society as a whole puts sports on too high of a pedestal. He tried to convey to us and to his players and maybe even to himself that none of it is that important. He aired his concerns of getting fired over the brawl and said he made all of his players take off their jerseys. He looked shaken, angry and mortified.

Then Tu and his mutt took the mic on their side and embarrassed themselves even further. Tu talked about how his team is made up of “gangsters”, and of how he felt disrespected by Kilpatrick's comment. He clarified his comment to Shannon Russell when he said his team “zips them up” in body bags to close out games—he said it was the team's motto. He was really fixated on body bags that game. Then Lyons yapped about how the media expected a brawl from the teams because of the hype the press created around the Crosstown Shootout. He pointed out that if someone put their hands in his team's face, bad things would happen to them. What class acts.

Days after the fight, the city couldn't stop talking about it. I overheard old guys on the bus recounting the incident blow-for-blow, librarian ladies in the break room trying to decipher who started it and even grade-school kids pretending they're Yancy Gates and Kenny Freise in slow motion.

Suspensions were levied: six games for Yancy, Mooge, and some guy named Ellis. For X it was four for freshmen Dez Wells and Landen Amos, two for Lyons, and one for Tu. Obligatory apologetic press releases were issued by both universities and their respective conferences. UC dragged their participants in front of a microphone for a public apology later in the week where Yancy gave a tearful lament of how he was now mostly referred to as a thug after the fight.

Meanwhile, basketball rallies on. Both teams now have short-handed lineups and have to make due with the ends of their benches. Fortunately for each program, this stretch of the schedule is always cupcake row with teams like Oral Roberts and Wright State coming up next for X and UC respectively. Halloway said that everyone will forget this even happened in a day or two and I'm sure everyone affiliated with the teams hopes that were the case, but it isn't likely to happen. The Crosstown Brawl of 2011 will be remembered in Cincinnati for at least a half-generation if not a whole one.

Whether the rivalry will continue is still up in the air. Yes it would be a shame to cancel one of the city's premier annual sporting events, but everyone would understand if it was temporarily halted until some fresh faces appeared on each bench. Yet, I think these same groups have learned some kind of lesson here. With strong reactions coming from all angles, I would almost think a rematch with these two teams would lead to a clean game without incident. Then again, perhaps simply seeing the opponent would raise the hair on their neck and the mouth would begin to froth once more. In the end, it's just basketball and not really a big deal to the rest of the world. Cronin hit the nail on the head when he said we make this crap more important than it is, but it's these kinds of primal distractions in society that spice up our routine and predictable lives. It could be considered sad that we obsess over public fisticuffs like this, but such is human nature. The depravity in all of us sometimes rises to the surface, even in the harmless confines of college basketball.

Mojokong—play to the whistle.

Mojo the Mighty

Not an ordinary dog, Mojo had the strength of many men and could crash through drywall for a tennis ball. In his prime, he was a beast with a hemi V8/400 horsepower engine. His playing weight was around 88 pounds, but he could hang with the fastest dogs on the block no matter what the size. Obstacles? Over or through them. Objective? The ball. Nothing stopped him and his career lasted a solid eight years or so of high-caliber play and an unmatched tenacity to make catches. He is, without question, the greatest I've ever seen and my all-time favorite.

He was a German Shepard-rottweiler puppy, six-weeks old, on the east side of town and he was handed to me by a man I had never met before or since. The man wanted him to go to a good home and I gave him my word. Once Mojo grew out of his fluffy, awkward puppiness, he almost right away became the legend we remember him as today.

The routine trips to the park weren't much of an option for me. A day without going meant a day of him blasting around the apartment being too big and too excited to ignore. So we went. Every day for years and years and years. There he turned his haunches into muscly pistons, his front legs into those of a race horse's, and would thrash the turf between himself and the ball with supernatural force. Our areas quickly became either swampy mud islands or clouds of dust from his powerful running style. And, during his athletic peak, I could never wear him out. Never. I could throw the ball until my arm fell off and he would be back with it at my feet smiling up at me with his obscenely large tongue, waiting for the next throw.

He was never a frisbee dog; he didn't have the patience to wait around for it to land. And he would chase the kong, but didn't like the unpredictable bounces it took—even though I did. The tennis ball was his obsession and he went through hundreds of them. The sport was that I throw it and he catch it on a bounce. For a long time I couldn't over throw him, he was a bullet. A large black bullet.

It wasn't just at the park either; Mojo also had an indoor finesse game that he constantly tricked human beings into playing. His placement on people's laps, on armrests, on the very ledge of an end table, was most impressive. Once the ball had been expertly placed, the human would be distracted by conversation or television or whatever and lightly toss the ball to Mojo. He was a master at getting his way in this regard. He tricked me a million times or more.

There were a couple of ways he played indoor. If it were a close range toss right at him he would snatch it with no problem. In fact, you could put a little heat on your throw, and release it as close as a foot from his face, and he would envelop the ball like a first-baseman's mitt. If it were a lob intended to lead him into a certain direction, that too was no problem, as he could make over the shoulder snags, shoe-string catches and leaping grabs (but only when he had to). He was respectful of wires and electric fans but disregarded everything else around him. Many, many spilled drinks and other disasters came about because of Mojo's recklessness, but it was part of who he was and I rarely stopped him.

If the game was a kicking one, he showed excellent blocking technique by moving his broad chest low to the ground and spreading his legs out wide. He was especially good at using his paws to deflect kicks attempted to go past him. I also enjoyed watching him roll the ball around on the ground for a while with his foot, smash the ball into the floor until it squirted out and then collect it on the backspin he anticipated. It reminded me of a skateboard trick, or spinning a basketball on your finger—pointless, but cool.

Eventually, he slowed down some in the twilight of his life, taking things easier but never giving up all the way. Up to the very end, he played ball at the park and still loved it.

There might be stronger dogs and faster dogs in the world, and many of these will have decent ball skills themselves, but to find another dog with the combination that Mojo possessed is damn-near impossible. That dog could play. The best of all time.

He stays in my heart.