Justice Is Served

Bob Feller: An authentic American hero dies

2010-12-17T16:18:24Z

He was an authentic American hero, not the made-for TV kind that those of us who watch SportsCenter, surf Fanhouse or read Sports Illustrated have grown accustomed to cheering.

No, that would be the right way to look at Bob Feller. He was a hero in the historical sense of the word.

So it saddens those who got to know Feller to hear that Wednesday, on a frigid Cleveland night, he died in a hospice. He was 92.

"Bob Feller is gone," Indians owner Larry Dolan said in a statement team that officials issued. "We cannot be surprised. Yet, it seems improbable. Bob has been such an integral part of our fabric, so much more than an ex-ballplayer, so much more than any Cleveland Indians player. He is Cleveland, Ohio."

That's all most people cared to know about Feller, the most iconic figure in the history of Cleveland baseball. For unlike some famous athletes who jilted this city, discarding its affections so cavalierly, he never did. Feller was all that was good about athletes from the golden age of sports. To those men, fans mattered; an athlete's standing in the public's eye accounted for something; it wasn't all about the benjamins or the Nike ads or the starlet on his arm.

For if it were, Feller could have had those things - some of them, anyway. But they didn't mean much to him. Sure, he had the adulation; he made plenty of money in his life, too. Yet none of it meant as much to Feller as knowing his country came first.

Nobody can doubt he was an American hero, though most people would ascribe his fame to his ability to throw a baseball harder than anybody else in his generation. Feller was mindful of the fame that gift from God brought him; he was proud of it. His ability to throw a baseball drew crowds to him and earned him a plaque in Cooperstown.

But were you able to spend a couple of minutes talking to Feller, and he would have told you that all the achievements he had in baseball, grand as those achievements were, palled in comparison to what he had achieved for his country.

Feller would tell you no one in baseball or any sport was a real hero. How could anyone be when he had risked nothing? Yet Feller had risked all that he was - all that he might ever become - for his country.

After the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941, Feller, 23 then and the best pitcher in the game, left his home in Van Meter, Iowa, drove up to a recruitment center in Chicago and, with former boxing champ Gene Tunney doing the swearing in, enlisted in the U.S. Navy.

"There's a lot of things in my life I would do differently," Feller once told as he and I waited for an Indians game to start at Progressive Field. "But volunteerin' is not one of 'em."

In World War II, 11 million men served America. Blacks, whites, Hispanics, Asians, Native Americans, each of them played roles in winning the war. About 450 of those men were professional ballplayers. Their names were Greenburg, Williams, DiMaggio, Robinson ... and others. They fought as their brethren had in World War I; they fought to save America.

"I coulda stayed out of the whole thing - milked cows, planted corn, worked the farm or played baseball," Feller said. "But there were some draft dodgers. Well, I don't call 'em draft dodgers; I call 'em traitors.

"You see, if you're physically and mentally capable of helping your country in a situation like that, where the freedom and sovereignty of this nation was at stake, it's about time to get busy - either fish or cut bait."

So Feller fished. Refusing a stateside assignment, he fought with the Third Fleet off the coast of Saipan. He was all in on the war effort. If it meant never returning home alive or never playing in the big leagues again, Feller would accept those terms for freedom.

"You always know there might be one of those bullets out there with your name on it," he said.

Bullets missed him, and he returned home in 1945 to resume a career that brought him more fame than anything he did for his country.

He never once considered baseball as more meaningful to him than his country and his decision to defend it. While the war might not have brought Feller the public acclaim, he derived a satisfaction from it that trumped anything sports brought him.

Yet he saw no heroism in what he did for America. He sought no ticker-tape parade down Fifth Avenue or fistfuls of medals for valor. He needed none; nor did he ask for any symbols of heroism.

"I'm no hero," he once told me. "Heroes didn't come back. I said that all the along. The survivors returned. I came back."

He came back to remind all of us the importance of country. He came back to finish the work he had began as a teenager. He was a baseball player then, and he was a baseball player till the end, which is how most people will remember him.

Not me. I'll always remember Feller, "Rapid Robert" as he was called, as a man of conviction, as a man of strong opinions and as man who cared more for his country than he did about baseball.

Yes, his name will be revered in baseball circles forever, but fans do him an injustice when they forget who Bob Feller was: an American hero in the historical sense of the word.

You can follow Justice B. Hill on twitter at sportswriting and on Facebook at sportswriting. His website is czarjustice.com.

Pryor's no Newton, which is too bad for Buckeyes

2010-10-24T15:18:57Z

Listen as I do to college football analysts, and you hear raves about Cam Newton, the fullback-like quarterback at Auburn, so I wanted to see for myself what the big to-do was about.

I watched Newton play Saturday against LSU. I wanted to compare the 250-pound Newton to the fullback-like quarterback who lines up behind center for Ohio State. I figured Newton, the frontrunner for the Heisman Trophy, would give me an indication of what Terrelle Pryor should be doing at Ohio State.

Newton did.

I found in Newton what I hadn't seen in Pryor since the Rose Bowl. Newton had a buccaneer's heart, showing he was unafraid to make plays with his legs when his eyes couldn't find an opening. He was shifty, elusive when he ran, something I haven't seen in Pryor this season.

For whatever reason, he's turned into something he can't be: Andrew Luck or Ryan Mallett. What Pryor can be and should be is a clone of Cam Newton, and he must be like Newton if Ohio State is to remain in contention for the Big Ten title.

But Pryor showed none of that against Purdue, which like Minnesota is one of the dredges of the conference. Don't let his 49-0 win over the Boilermakers make you think otherwise. His performance was efficient, but he lacked the excitement, the derring-do and the flair a person expects to see in an athlete who came into the season as the leading candidate for the Heisman.

]]> The Heisman hype stopped in Wisconsin a week ago. Even before then, it had proved more overblown rhetoric than anything of substance, because he'd done nothing to warrant Heisman consideration. His statistical line this season looks no better than what you might see on a team with a 4-3 record. Pryor's work, for example, palls when stacked next to Denard Robinson's.

Robinson isn't a serious Heisman candidate either. Not really, not for a team like Michigan, a team with no real chance of landing a major bowl bid. He's playing without much pressure on his shoulders, so his performance is discounted.

Newton's performance cannot be, though.

For Newton has Auburn knocking on the door of glory. His Tigers are unbeaten. They are a team that's playing in the toughest conference in the country, and he's excelling against players with more speed, more power and more quickness than what Pryor sees in the Big Ten.

No doubt Pryor is a special talent; no doubt either that he's a flawed talent. He hasn't produced the greatness that had been forecasted for him. He came into college football with a reputation, and that's what he continues to live on - a reputation.

Like with everybody, a reputation is a hard thing to shake, which is why Pryor got so much hype heading into the season. People wanted to believe that he would show what made him the No. 1 recruit in the country when he left high school in 2007.

Pryor hasn't. What he has shown is that he's a decent college quarterback, and decent ain't a bad thing to be. To compare Pryor to Newton, however, is the kind of mistake that comes with a regional bias.

It is that bias that keeps Pryor's name in the Heisman discussion; it is not his performance. That fact should be clear to anyone who spent last Saturday afternoon watching Pryor and Newton play.

The better performer was Newton, who kept his name high on the Heisman list in a win over LSU.

As for Pryor, coach Jim Tressel and anyone who clings to the thought of Pryor's winning a Heisman, they ought to take 30 minutes to watch film of Newton, because they will get a glimpse of what a legit Heisman candidate really looks like.

He doesn't look like Terrelle Pryor.

Pryor, No. 1 Ohio State show their flaws in big game

2010-10-17T03:53:47Z

The 31-18 loss Saturday night isn't much to discuss. People who followed Ohio State this season should not have been surprised; they should have realized earlier that the Buckeyes were a flawed team.

The biggest, of course, has been its inability to run the football, a fatal flaw in the grind-it-out world of the Big Ten. While the pass is a dandy hammer to have in the toolbox, the pass alone won't bring a team a championship, a fact that can't be lost on those who root for the Buckeyes.

Their bid for a National Championship and perhaps a BCS berth ended on a crisp Saturday night in Madison, Wis., against a team too big, too strong and too disciplined to allow Jim Tressel's unimaginative offense to do it in.

For past two seasons, Tressel has relied on Terrelle Pryor to be everything for the Buckeyes. A healthy Pryor often showed he could be that kind of talent, but if limited in any way - and he was limited against Wisconsin -- he made the Buckeyes look like a middle-of-the-pack team from the 1980s. They had no running game that could lighten the burden on Pryor.

To ask Pryor's arm to win against top-notch competition is asking more than it could possibly deliver, which is all the explanation any Buckeye fan needed for this loss to Wisconsin.

]]> No one can doubt his talent; he has plenty. But Pryor is hardly a classic passer in the Ryan Mallett, Sam Bradford, Matthew Stafford or Andrew Luck mold. At his best, Pryor is closer to Tim Tebow. Being like Tebow isn't necessarily a bad thing to be. But quarterbacks like Tebow have their limitations, and Pryor's limitations are a lot more than Tebow's.

Some of those limitations are a product of Tressel's system.

For all the hoopla that surrounded his coming to Ohio State, Pryor hasn't found an offense that plays to his strengths. He is a risk-taker, a Vegas high-roller who wants to double-down on everything.

Tressel, however, detests taking risk. His ultraconservative philosophy has hurt Pryor's efforts to achieve greatness. Tressel's failure to find a powerful running back to line up behind Pryor doomed these Buckeyes to being a good team and not a great team.

Greatness is what they had to display in a hostile environment like Camp Randall Stadium. They needed to be more than one-dimensional; they needed to be more than Pryor alone. They weren't.

Now, their overblown talk of a National Championship is silenced, and so is all talk about a Heisman Trophy for Pryor. He won't be going to New York City for the award ceremony. He should not have been in that conversation in the first place, though. For potential isn't what the Heisman is awarded on; it's earned for elite production.

Carve and cut Terrelle Pryor's body of work however you like, but all you get are glimpses here and there of what he might be able to accomplish if he could ever master the trade. In the end, Pryor's production in two-plus seasons as the Ohio State quarterback hasn't proved Heisman-worthy.

So here the Buckeyes are, another season of grand expectations now wallowing in disappointment. Sure, they can set their sights on the Big Ten championship, a sporty consolation prize. Yet what are the odds they can win that title with a road game in Iowa and a worrisome Michigan team ahead?

At least Pryor will have next season to chase his Heisman. Unless he plays with more daring and a shows more competence, the Heisman will elude him as will a National Championship.

In Delhomme, what Browns saw is what they'll get

2010-09-13T16:03:01Z

A lousy quarterback is a lousy quarterback, and a change of scenery won't turn him into the second coming of Otto Graham, Joe Montana or Peyton Manning. A lousy quarterback is what a lousy quarterback is, so come to peace with his presence and don't bemoan the fact he's the man who lines up under center.

That's all Browns fans can do now, because it became clear to them Sunday that Jake Delhomme is a lousy quarterback. They watched Delhomme unravel in the Tampa game, a game the Browns should have won. Delhomme wasn't playing against the New England Patriots, the New York Jets or the New Orleans Saints; no, he was playing against the Buccaneers, one of the worst teams in the NFL.

And what does that loss tell you about him and the Browns?

As sorry as the Bucs were -- and they were plenty sorry, indeed -- they were the better team. They were better because, no matter what anybody else thinks of the inexperienced Josh Freeman, the Bucs didn't have Delhomme as their quarterback.

So this began the Mike Holmgren era. So this is what the Browns will be like this season, eh?

Yep, apparently.

]]> The Holmgren era looked much like the Eric Mangini era, the Butch Davis era, the Dwight Clark era. But, then again, why would his time in Cleveland bring any more success than his time in Seattle brought that city? Holmgren might be a decent NFL coach -- he has a Super Bowl ring as his bonafides -- but his portfolio as a team czar is littered with failures.

He did such a pitiful job of running the Seahawks that the team owner took Holmgren's duties as GM away.

But that Super Bowl ring was intoxicating to a franchise that longs to win just a playoff game. It banked its future on Holmgren, who stayed the course with Mangini as coach. It was Holmgren, however, who turned to Delhomme, a reclamation project that wasn't a much better option than Derek Anderson or Brady Quinn.

No reason to dredge up those names again. Both Anderson and Quinn are elsewhere. Browns fans are stuck with what they have, which isn't much in Delhomme.

Now, no one should say this is a hasty judgment. It isn't. Delhomme has a track record to consider. He has kicked around the NFL awhile; he has had his successes and has faced challenges before. He's no rookie at this job of quarterbacking a NFL team, which is the saddest part of watching his play Sunday.

To call Delhomme's performance in Week 1 disappointing would be to call Warren Buffett rich, Usain Bolt fast or Manny Ramirez eccentric. To use a word like "disappointing" on Delhomme would, however, be overly charitable. For the word seems to suggest the expectations for him were greater than what he produced. They were not. He produced what his recent record said he would produce: a performance unfit for winning a football game.

While Delhomme had his moments Sunday, those moments were so brief they can't be remembered in the face of all the interceptions and misguided passes and his stumbling around in the pocket. He isn't just an "experienced" quarterback anymore; he's an "old" quarterback, not someone to count on -- short or long term.

That's the mistake Holmgren made. It isn't his only one since he rode into town on Trigger and took over the Browns, and it surely won't be the clown's last one either. But even Bozo should know he can't build a solid structure with twigs if he expects it to withstand a windstorm.

Yet that's what Holmgren has tried to do. He brought in a flimsy talent like Delhomme and asked him to quarterback the Browns. When you get right down to it, what you saw Sunday is what you'll get from Jake Delhomme all season.

Anderson and Quinn don't look so bad anymore, do they?

Cavaliers fans to King James: Go directly to hell

2010-07-25T01:54:46Z

His legacy will live on in Cleveland, except it won't live on the way LeBron James had wanted it to. No, his legacy will live in infamy, as the bright star who broke a city's heart.

It's not easy to unbreak a heart, not when a person has left that heart in shards. And in Cleveland, those men and women with broken hearts won't see theirs fixed. Their anger is too visceral to discard, and if anyone doubts that, just look around the city or listen to the talk on the streets or check out made-for-the-moment websites: It's LeBron James everywhere, 24/7.

In the streets around Progressive Field and The Q, vendors hawked T-shirts last night that said "QUITNESS" or something about James' momma too crass to mention. One Internet site has been peddling a particularly telling T-shirt for $13.99. It reads: "I WITNESSED NOTHING."

That's only half true. Nobody can say that James didn't treat Cavaliers fans to seven seasons of incredible performances. He was an MVP twice; he took the Cavs to the NBA Finals; he won a scoring title and an Olympic gold medal; and he made basketball matter in this football-crazed city.

]]> Yet his arrival foretold more. So did James himself. He often talked about winning championships, how important bringing one to Northeast Ohio was to him. James knew the region's sports history; he would talk about the region's half-century of bittersweet successes and abject failures. He intended to change all of that, he said. He asked fans here to be his witness.

And they were. They witnessed and marveled at James, anointing him as a savior: the hometown boy who would bring championships, ticker-tape parades and sports glory to Cleveland. That would be his legacy, doing what Michael Jordan did for Chicago, what Magic Johnson and Kobe Bryant did for Los Angeles, what Bill Russell, Larry Bird, John Havlicek and Red Auerbach did for Boston.

Sit back and witness it. Witness the second coming of Jordan. That's all those Clevelanders who loved James longed for - that and a nod, a handshake or some recognition that their love meant something to him.

But it is hard for a man to love others when his goals in life are as shallow as a puddle, so no one should have been surprised that James left town for what looked like a quicker route to a championship. To become the billionaire he's wanted to be, James figured he'd need as many championship rings as Kobe, Michael, Russell, Bird and Magic have.

One thing he forgot along the way is that he didn't have to leave to achieve those championships. James could have won here, in this smallish NBA city, as Tim Duncan won countless times in San Antonio. But James lacked the patience to wait. In his era of immediate gratification, he sensed he had to win now.

Could James become a billionaire without winning titles? Perhaps.

But what is ennobling about having extraordinary wealth as a goal? Besides, how much money does James need in his life? He was from Akron, Ohio, born into poverty -- the only child of a teenage mom who shuttled her son off to whoever would care for him.

Yet he overcame all of that, thanks to a gift God blessed him with. He doesn't need a billion dollars for him and his entourage to live like kings, because at some point it's unseemly to have so much with so many in the world getting by with so little.

Money might not be the root of all evil, but it certainly leads to curious decisions in a person's life. It can buy a lot of things, money can; it can't buy happiness or class or self-respect. The race isn't about how much money a man can earn but what can he do with that money.

Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, billionaires who are titans of American industry, have resolved to give all of their money away. Neither Gates nor Buffett lives the extravagant life of entertainers and star athletes, but they seem richly satisfied with their stations in life. Each man could have more, if having more mattered to him.

Extraordinary wealth is made on the backs of others, and too often rich men have had to compromise their values, play ruthless games to crush opposition or bend ethics to achieve their successes. Call it capitalism if you'd like. That's what it is - the American way, of course.

Playing the empty-headed capitalist, James compromised the few principles he had. Never a man of substance, he turned his back on the love and the adulation that men, women, boys and girls in Cleveland showered him with.

Now, they have turned their backs on him. Their hometown hero has become the hometown pariah. His past successes will never erase the anger his leaving led to in the present. The anger rages like a blast furnace.

His fans have witnessed a betrayal, and for that betrayal, they show James not a trace of forgiveness in their words and in their deeds. They will never forgive a man who broke their hearts.

A salute to 'The Boss': Steinbrenner did it his way ...

2010-07-13T18:59:28Z

George Steinbrenner was stubborn and tempestuous, an emotional powder keg who often went kaboom without a warning. That kind of emotions defined the Steinbrenner persona. He was fast to act and react because he cared. He cared like few other owners have in the history of American team sports.

His passion helped the New York Yankees become the most valuable franchise in sports. His passion fueled seasons after seasons of success. He was candid about what he demanded from his ballplayers, for his fans and from himself.

Above all else, George Steinbrenner -- "The Boss," as foes and friends alike called him -- wanted to win. Is that such a horrid legacy for a man like him to have etched on his tombstone?

What words will make it on that tombstone is not my place to guess. I never met Steinbrenner, which was my loss. But I do know that sports, the team he built in his image and its fans will never forget him or what he stood for. Steinbrenner, a real-life Yankee Doodle Dandy who was born on the Fourth of July, died this morning after a heart attack. He was 80.

His 80 years were a whirlwind, packed with more emotional highs than lows. Now, Steinbrenner did have his share of the latter, including with the baseball team he often lorded over like Attila the Hun. He showed no patience for mediocrity or for managers and GMs who produced it. They would fall in and out of favor with Steinbrenner on his whim. Listening to them, you might think that Steinbrenner preferred to manage the Yankees himself rather than leave the team in somebody else's hands.

]]> I doubt that was the case, though. His bluster notwithstanding, he understood his role too well, which was to open his wallet, buy the best talent and bring it to New York. Sure, The Boss meddled some, more than his managers wanted him to. His meddling served as a constant voice screaming into their ears. The voice was telling them over and over and over and ... : take that talent and win with it.

Win, and Steinbrenner had no quarrel with what his managers or players did. Lose, and they faced his wrath.

That's a fair bargain, however. For unlike many franchises, the Yankees under Steinbrenner had no excuses for losing. They had an owner who never hesitated to buy them the best. They also had an owner who stood on center stage. Make no mistake, the Bronx Bombers were Steinbrenner's. They were made in his image: hard driving, ruthless and impassioned. They enjoyed a good fight, although not nearly as much as The Boss did.

In a childhood shaped by the Great Depression, Steinbrenner learned his values from those hard times and from the war years of the 1940s. Not that he grew up in poverty; he didn't. His father was a shipping magnate whose company moved freight through the Great Lakes, and his deep pockets opened opportunities for his son.

But George Steinbrenner, an Ohio native, didn't thrive off his father's reputation, because as successful as his father was, he accumulated none of the wealth, the power and prestige his son did.

And the son's power and wealth in the shipping business never brought him the prestige that owning the Yankees did. He bought the team in 1973 from CBS, and he put his imprint on it straightaway. He soon returned the Yankees, the most storied name in team sports, to prominence.

He signed big-name talent to big-dollar contracts, and Hall of Famers like Reggie Jackson, Catfish Hunter and Dave Winfield turned Steinbrenner's dollars into World Series wins.

As much as anything else, those World Series wins (seven in total) will be what most people will remember about Steinbrenner. As they mourn his passing, they will forgive the man's fits of rage and his public chastising of his stars. All of that is trivial, the byproduct of his longing to win at whatever he did.

Winning drove George Steinbrenner. It will be, as much as anything else, the legacy he leaves. People might not have liked his politics or his personality or his power, but men like him often face gossipmongers and critics. Yet even his critics have to admit The Boss ran a baseball organization as well as anyone else in baseball history, and he did so his way.

Local media let 'King James' play them for fools

2010-07-12T03:48:28Z

You probably missed this headline Sunday if you didn't live in Cleveland and subscribe to the city's major daily. The headline read: "We're fooled by a different James."

The words didn't get it straight. What the headline should have said was that the fawning over a star athlete let the city dream dreams it wasn't entitled to dream. It sat back and allowed media to play cozy with LeBron James, and they focused too much time on trying to get James to like them but never did get to know him.

Yet he was right there in front of them all -- the real LeBron James, the petty and self-possessed and pathetic character they now know: the crass and shallow kid who rooted for the Yankees and the Cowboys and whose smile disarmed the media without letting any of them get close to him. Oh, they all thought they knew James. Some of them had covered him since high school, back at those AAU and Nike summer camps; they had hounded James' friends, trying to get inside his cloistered circle, wanting a glimpse that he was unwilling to give them.

So, as journalists and as men and women hired to chronicle the life of a famous athlete, they settled for less. They hero-worshiped; they forgot to do their jobs; they held LeBron James and his entourage accountable for nothing, acquiescing to their whims. For five minutes of James' time, the media would have traded their homes, their cars, their spouses for a story nobody else could get.

Others enabled all of this, too.

]]> Start with the Cavaliers themselves. Owner Dan Gilbert, the front office and coaches seemed as fearful of upsetting James as the local media were of offending his sensibilities. The PR staff, former general manager Danny Ferry and fired coach Mike Brown shielded James from anything he didn't want to be bothered with; they demanded nothing he wasn't willing to give, including his best effort.

They had seven years to get to know James, the team did. The local media had more than a decade. He left for Miami last week with the media here knowing as much about him after 10 years as they did when his name first made headlines in the 1990s.

All the signs of who he was were there -- all of them, if the media had bothered to dig right down into it. They didn't, not the people who covered him season after season in Cleveland. They played court jesters to King James. What they saw wasn't what they got.

And what did they miss? The most telling sin of all: his greed.

A man doesn't have much ambition if he makes being a billionaire his target. If a man covets money, he'll never have enough of it, because $1 billion isn't enough when somebody else has $20 billion or $30 billion. What can all these billions buy a man if his needs are as pedestrian as a James' are? How many Bentleys and million-dollar mansions and bottles of Dom Pérignon Rosé does he need to live a king's life?

The media here never figured that out. They never wondered aloud what his game plan was, never looked into what was the reason behind his quest for enormous wealth and never questioned his reluctance to open his world a bit for people to peek inside.

His is a public life, as any star's life is. Few stars as bright as James have kept the paparazzi and the adulators and the hangers-on and the public at such a marathon's distance. It was only his close-knit band of brothers from Akron, Ohio, that knew him well and stayed tied to his success, to his wealth and to his obsessions.

It would be pointless and wrong to criticism James for being loyal to his boyhood friends, because a man should keep his friendships in good repair. Those friends are his safety net, his lifeline that protects him from those spying eyes of outsiders, especially when those spying eyes are those of journalists.

Those eyes never spied. They believed what they saw in James, but they didn't seem interested in seeing much beyond the superficial. They knew they had a star in front of them -- a once-in-a-generation star. So they kowtowed to his wishes; they accepted less from him because they wanted to win his favor.

In the end, his favor wasn't worth winning, which is why the soul-searching goes on now in Cleveland. The media should never have stopped doing what journalists do. They should have been covering the self-styled King - the man Sports Illustrated anointed the "Chosen One" -- as they would have covered any celebrity or any public official.

Had the media done so, they would have found out earlier who LeBron James was before his Royal Highness broke the city's heart and then spawned all this introspection that comes too late to serve a meaningful purpose.

Heat is on: LeBron breaks his city's heart

2010-07-09T03:34:42Z

Now what, Clevelanders?

Your 18 months of angst and anticipation have given way to disappointment and disgust. You had allowed yourself to fall madly in love with LeBron James, the man you anointed "The Chosen One." He never returned the love.

Unrequited love hurts - hurts like hell, too. It makes you feel like a fool for having poured your soul into a romance that wasn't genuine. You were merely LeBron's mistress, to do with as he pleased.

The bizarre relationship this city and its people had with their native son was destined to end like Tiger Wood's marriage: in an ugly divorce. For LeBron James, his entourage and their global aspirations couldn't find happiness here - not in Cleveland, not among the blue collars that had idolized James since his schoolboy days.

So, in front of ESPN cameras and edgy emotions, James cast his lot with Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh to form an All-Star lineup that might bring James the title he couldn't win in Cleveland. But his decision to leave surely undid the affection the people in his hometown felt for him.

Oh, and one more thing his joining the Miami Heat did: It showed how little class James had.

]]> For nearly two months, he played the whore, peddling his hoops talent on the corner like a hooker. It wasn't all about the dollars. I think everybody can understand that now. For if it were, James would have stayed with the Cavs, a team that could offer him more millions than the Heat could.

But he wanted to play someplace where he can win championships, wanted to play somewhere that allows him to enhance his stature in the discussion about the greatest players ever. In some ways, he's been chasing Michael Jordan's shadow or, more likely, Kobe Bryant's.

Those shadows have weighed on James. He's wanted to be more than Jordan or Kobe. But he couldn't be more if he didn't have a single championship ring he could point to, and he never seemed to believe he could win one here. In truth, he had taken this franchise as far as he could, a franchise that had been his alone: It was his team, his talent and his persona that had brought the Cavs to the edge of glory. His decision to play elsewhere has left them a dispirited wreck, a decent enough team to avoid the NBA lottery but not good enough to compete for a championship.

Is a championship worth all the broken hearts LeBron James left in his wake last night? Are two or three championships worth dismantling the legacy he had so carefully constructed?

Soon enough, the people who believed in him and worshiped him and lorded over him can resign themselves to what his leaving means. They have had practice at it. For in Cleveland, sports fans have felt the deep disappointment before of a star athlete forsaking them. They have seen Albert Belle, Manny Ramirez and Jim Thome do so. They all left, however, for more dollars and not for anything else.

Yet none of them were homegrown - none a native son who went from rags to an embarrassment of riches in front of people who had cheered for him since adolescence. When Belle, Manny and Thome left, they didn't leave behind the hurt that James did.

Love, of course, is a hurting thing, so is betrayal. And the latter is how this city - LeBron's city - will look at his decision to sign with the Heat: He betrayed it.

People here won't remember all the warm memories LeBron left them with. Nor will they remember his youth camps and his generous work with local charities. They will remember what they never wanted to discuss about LeBron James: his aloofness, his petulance and his me-above-the-crowd attitude.

They will remember, too, that he left them with a shell of a team, a team Danny Ferry and Dan Gilbert had built to accommodate him.

There's a lesson here for Clevelanders, though. It's a hard lesson, one that they should never forget: be weary of who you fall in love with. To do otherwise is to risk having your heart broken.

And what becomes of a broken heart isn't much.

The madness about LeBron stops tonight

2010-07-08T05:13:07Z

Call it a going-out-of-business sale, because that's what it will be around 9:30 tonight when LeBron James closes all the rumor mills that have sprouted like dandelions across the sports landscape.

All the false prophets, the unidentified sources and the unnamed NBA insiders who peddled bogus stories to newspapers, talk shows and gossip magazines from Cleveland to California and across the coastal waters have turned this into the "Summer of LeBron." If anything has grown more tiresome than listening to them, I don't know what it would be. OK, maybe mindless talk about the BP oil spill would belong ahead of it, but if it is, at least it's a topic that matters.

How Americans can obsess over where a self-absorbed athlete -- Chris Bosh and Dwyane Wade, too -- will earn his next $100 million begs for an explanation. Someone has to say what the fuss is about, because no matter where LeBron James lands, he won't create 10,000 jobs or put a foundering local economy on still waters.

And there lies the problem with this LeBron James obsession in a Rust Belt city like Cleveland: Its priorities are misdirected.

]]> The region has plenty of larger issues it needs to have its focus on, but for some inexplicable reasons, it has decided to bank its well being on an athlete - on one man, the prodigal hometown hero -- whose ability to do marvelous things with a basketball has enthralled it. Politicians, business leaders, teachers and technicians, doctors and lawyers, bricklayers and goldbricks, all have cast their lot with LeBron and on what his decision tonight will be.

But their obsession with LeBron underscores society's misplaced values - or, at least, Cleveland's misplaced values. Cleveland has never been a city confident in itself. It has always been a city trying to find itself, a city trying to clean up an image that has been kicked around like a soccer ball. It is a city that has never been good enough or proud enough or resilient enough to be a destination.

So it wants to pin whatever it is on LeBron James. It has pleaded for him to stay home. It has promised him its undying love, if only he can show the city a little love of his own.

At some point, a Midwest boy outgrows the Midwest. And maybe LeBron with his global brand has done so. He now knows he can't persuade other megastars to join him here. This city doesn't have Harlem or South Beach or the Miracle Mile; it's the Euclid Corridor, University Circle, West Sixth and Parma, which aren't much to be.

Please excuse LeBron James if he's unwilling to settle for Cleveland and its Cavaliers anymore. At 25, he has already given Northeast Ohio plenty of exposure, the kind of exposure this economically and culturally bankrupt region can't buy even if it had the money to spend on building an image. It had tied too much of what it wants to be to a star athlete and his fickleness.

Tonight, he might spurn its feckless pandering. King James might well abdicate his throne here, leaving in shambles all the dreamy, water-colored hopes of NBA championships that his arrival had divined.

That thought worries an entire region. For if James leaves for a bigger market, the city he abandoned will become irrelevant. As a sports town, it will become little more than Richmond or Raleigh or Rochester, decent-sized cities without the élan that goes with a global reputation. These places are what they are, so why should they strive for anything more?

Neither should Cleveland, no matter what LeBron announces on TV tonight. Rather than bemoan his leaving, if that's what his decision is, the city and its people should make peace with this region's image; they can't count on LeBron to do what nothing else has done.

They waged the good fight to keep him. They tried websites and wacky promotions and pickets and petitions, billboards and beards to sell LeBron on staying put. Perhaps nothing would have been enough to keep him.

The world will find out shortly. Surrounded by cameras and journalists and his entourage, King James will speak tonight. And once he does, all the excesses that went into the courting of an icon can be discarded like all those rumors that had him headed for places near and far.

And if it's anywhere other than Cleveland ... well, wanna buy my nephew's LeBron Bobblehead?

The Fed's reign is over forever

2010-06-30T18:06:37Z

He's no longer "Darth Federer" or "The Fed," two popular nicknames that fans and foes alike have attached to Roger Federer. Those nicknames have given way today to a less flattering but more apt one: "Dead Fed."

That's a harsh name to slap on Federer, the man who for almost a decade ruled men's tennis like a king. The emerald lawns of Wimbledon had always been Federer's kingdom, his fiefdom.

Lose there, The Fed? Impossible.

No, not the king of men's tennis?

The king is dead, ousted Wednesday from the biggest event in men's tennis 6-4, 3-6, 6-1, 6-4. He lost to Czech star Tomas Berdych in the quarterfinals, a loss that should surprise no one because Federer should have lost in the first round to unknown Alejandro Falla, a player ranked so low that you couldn't find a scent of him with a bloodhound. Falla's game had little remarkable about it; it had produced no significant wins - not even a whole lot of scares.

Federer survived Falla in five sets. He didn't, however, survive Berdych, the No. 12 seed. He proved Federer's superior. He overpowered the defending Wimbledon champion. Berdych's strokes were sounder; his nerve held up under the intense spotlight of Centre Court. He didn't unravel like a spool of yard.

Federer did.

]]> He displayed a strange listlessness, a performance as utterly unbecoming of a reigning all-time great as his play against Falla was. Like a weekend hacker, Federer produced unforced errors from the opening game to the last game. His serve was as shaky as a straw house in a hurricane. So were his nerves. Federer looked like the lower seed, not Berdych.

Disregard the fact Federer steadied himself after losing the first set. His overall performance against players like Berdych was the real story. In the past 18 months, Federer has had an almost inexplicable apathy to his play. He has seemed distracted. Yes, he's won events - a couple of big events too: the 2010 Australian Open, 2009 Wimbledon and the coveted '09 French Open last season.

But he's started to lose to men he'd seldom lose to in past seasons. The 6-foot-5 Berdych, a player with a monster serve but little quickness, put his name into that category. Federer couldn't defuse that power, not the way he used to when he lorded over men's tennis. How much does The Fed have left in his game when he can't beat Berdych?

It is hard to see him winning another major. It's hard to see Federer, now 28, winning any of the big tournaments. The king of tennis isn't Federer anymore. Rafa Nadal has snatched that title from him. Nadal reigns supreme - on grass, on hardcourt and on clay.

Now, Federer will lose even his No. 2 ranking. When the ATP reports its rankings next week, he will drop to No. 3, his No. 2 spot going to Novak Djokovic. Wimbledon itself looks as if it might be Nadel's to win again, though either Andy Murray or Djokovic might test Nadel.

Who can stop Rafa? Not Federer. He doesn't have the game to stop him, not anymore.

The decline of a great athlete like Federer is difficult to watch. For his majestic play seems to stick in a person's mind as if fixed there with Velcro. Who can forget the final years of Muhammad Ali, Willie Mays, Ken Griffey Jr. and Brett Favre?

And if any aging athlete was a more pathetic figure than Mike Tyson, name him. To watch greatness in decline is a reminder that nothing is forever, and Federer's reign atop the men's game is proof of it.

He's no journeyman yet, but the road there is one Federer is traveling at a breakneck pace. He can't stop his career from careening where he doesn't want it to go.

No athlete can stop the ravages of aging, not even the game's best. For at some point in a man's career, his legs will give out on him; his nerves will betray him; his serve, his backhand and his groundstrokes will become evermore unreliable. His resolve won't be what it once was, because it, too, will give way to the onslaught of a younger, stronger, faster and more assured performer, athletes with more gifts than Berdych and Falla bring to the game.

So Darth Federer is dead. Long may his memory stick with people who appreciates the beautiful art that men's tennis is.

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Against the Wall: Colleges must end 'one-and-done'

2010-06-24T12:55:39Z

I have never liked one-and-done. I have detested, actually. The practice mocks higher education; it allows basketball players with no academic bent to attend college for one or two semesters and then leave campus with nothing more than a stronger hoops resume.

One-and-done is a bad bargain for both sides.

Think about it: What did John Wall, Derrick Favors, Derrick Rose, 'Melo Anthony and Greg Oden gain academically from spending a single year or less in college? What did their presence do for the concept of a student-athlete? Did their early exit prove dismissive of the term?

I understand that some athletes are gifted enough to play in the NBA earlier than others. I don't begrudge them that talent. God blessed them with this splendid gift, and a man has a right to profit from it. But I also know that for college coaches to waste a scholarship on a player who cares not a whit about what happens in the classroom is the sort of wrongheaded practice that debases higher education.

Are Wall and Oden any more prepared for the real world and all its complexities after one year of college?

]]>

Not to pick on either of these men, though. Others fit into this category of athletes who took a cavalier approach to higher education. But if college has value - and all evidence suggests it does - university presidents, the NCAA and athletic directors should frown on a recruiting system that allows an athlete to treat college like the minor leagues.

A mind is a terrible thing to waste, and so is scarce scholarship money. The thousands of dollars that went to Wall, Oden and Rose could have been funneled to a legitimate student who happened to have basketball skills. The next physician or accountant or lawyer could come from investing that money in a real student.

The world is not short on basketball players or on boys who aspire to careers in the NBA. What do these athletes really add to American society? They do nothing aside from entertaining us, although entertainment has significant value. But so do Tom Cruise, Chris Rock and Lady Gaga, but are we throwing full scholarships at anybody who longs to follow in their paths?

All along, colleges had a solution, one that has value for both the athletes and the institutions. They can mimic what Major League Baseball or the NFL has done: mandate how long a student-athlete must remain in college. Dismantle one-and-done.

For the athlete, he has options: He can join the NBA Developmental League, attend a junior college, try to sell his talents straight to the NBA or play ball overseas. All of these allow him to work on his game without having to tax himself with trivial pursuits like studying Shakespeare and learning to solve complex math problems.

But for college educators, they have an option as well. Allow one-and-done to remain in play, but tell any coach who signs a player that the scholarship slot must remain in that player's name for three years. If the player bolts for the pros early, the coach can't fill his slot.

How attractive would a surefire one-and-done talent like Wall have been to Kentucky, North Carolina, Ohio State or any other college? Do you think Roy Williams, Bill Self, Thad Matta or Coach K would risk a scholarship slot if he knew he'd be tying up that slot for three seasons?

Yes, the coach would miss out on a brilliant talent like Wall, who will be the No. 1 overall pick in tonight's NBA draft. (I enjoy the dude's game.) But a coach must ensure that he's recruiting men who focus first on education and not the NBA. College shouldn't be looked at purely as the training ground for the next wave of NBA talent, unless that training is tied tightly to an education in the classroom.

In one-and-done, it isn't, which is the shame that Division I colleges must confront these days until their presidents demand an end to a practice that cheapens higher education.

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A U.S. miracle in World Cup soccer? Oh yeah ...

2010-06-23T17:29:46Z

Amazing, simply amazing!

Maybe it's the kind of ending that makes for good Hollywood theater, but such endings don't happen on the international stage in soccer, not this deep into a game the U.S. team had to win. Never.

Write a story like this, and it would go under fairytales. Not even the Wizard of Oz could say this was anything but something from Dorothy's imagination. But with the clock ticking off stoppage time, the U.S. Soccer team produced a miracle like the one that millions of Americans can still remember from U.S. hockey during the 1980 Winter Olympics.

Do Americans believe in miracles? Yes!

Off the golden foot of midfielder Landon Donovan, the team's brightest star, the United States advanced Wednesday to the knockout round of World Cup play. His goal in the 91st minute was a shot Donovan couldn't miss - not so much for himself but for a nation that pines to be a marquee performer on the international soccer scene.

]]> His goal from six yards away - a tip-in, really -- gave the United States its 1-0 victory in Pretoria, South Africa, over Algeria. One gigantic opening, one late opportunity on the pitch, one dramatic ending - all of it came together to create the delicious thrills that soccer fans in the United States needed.

This is what they had dreamed about for the boys who wore the red, white and American blue. So much had been stacked against those boys; so much had been in their favor, too. They knew their fate was in no one's hands but theirs.

Attacking the Algerian defense early, the United States found an opportunity to forge ahead. Clint Dempsey, another U.S. star, held the World Cup hopes of the United States on his foot in the first 45 minutes. Dempsey's shot hit the goalpost.

Damn bar!

The rebound came to Dempsey, but he skied it.

Bad luck or manifest destiny -- which one was it?

Then, later on, Dempsey scored what looked like a sure goal. But the referees ruled him offside. No one could fault Dempsey here; the replays showed the call was bad. No one should blame the refs; the breakneck pace of play can lead to a missed call like this one.

It didn't deter Dempsey or his U.S. teammates. They showed a resiliency that was worthy of advancing to the knockout round. They played with urgency, attacking, attacking, attacking the goal from start to finish. They had to have a victory. They were desperate for a victory. They understood what a tie meant - win or go home.

They won, and their '10 World Cup hopes survive.

The team moves on to a more difficult round of play. It moves on with this spirited and inspired victory in tow. The U.S. team and its fans expected much, and advancing was their minimum goal.

The national, regional and youth federations have poured millions of dollars and endless hours of manpower into developing soccer, but in so many people's eyes, the United States remains a second-tier country on the international stage.

The effort is paying off. Its soccer has improved, allowing the country to harbor dreams of a grander prize.

While a miracle in the order of turning one loaf of bread into a meal to feed a village might be needed for the U.S. team to win the 2010 World Cup, the team showed that soccer, American-style, isn't anything the world can dismiss anymore.

Do you believe in miracles?

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U.S. Soccer: Its near future is right now

2010-06-18T16:25:00Z

Alexi Lalas had it right. The United States had to beat Slovenia, and if the U.S. team couldn't do so, it had no business being in the World Cup, said the free-spirited Lalas, a onetime World Cupper and a mainstay of American soccer for more than two decades.

Well, the U.S. team didn't beat Slovenia; it tied the Slovaks 2-2 Friday, which was the preferred option if the United States couldn't win. But a tie comes close to being a loss for U.S. team. It was a distressing way to showcase soccer U.S. style, so much so that the United States is basically back to Ground Zero in its development of the sport. Its program has a lot more building to do.

Since the World Cup was played in the United States in the summer of '94, the U.S. Soccer Federation has made trying to put life into American soccer its priority. Under the guidance of several men, the Federation has poured millions into youth programs across the country and helped strengthen college programs. It has played a part in starting a professional league here, a league that brought soccer legends like David Beckham to the country in an effort to increase the sport's profile.

All of these moves were supposed to benefit soccer in America.

Now, it was time to show how much U.S. soccer had progressed, and the best place to show it was on the biggest stage in sports: the World Cup. Striker Landon Donovan, perhaps the best U.S. player ever, defender Jay DeMerit and goalkeeper Tim Howard were expected to lead the Americans deep into Cup play.

]]> Theirs was an urgency to prove to the world that U.S. Soccer had arrived.

Instead, coach Bob Bradley and his players proved little to the world in South Africa, aside from their resolve. They again displayed an incapable to embrace greatness on a big stage. They shattered like fine Irish crystal under the pressure of a World Cup match.

Facing the smallest team in the tournament, the United States played as if it were in a purple haze. It had its defense stretched early, and its defense broke down twice in the first 45 minutes, allowing the Slovaks to jump ahead 2-0. It was the sort of performance that has become too typical of U.S. Soccer, though it did come alive to earn a tie.

With two points, the U.S. team left itself with flickering hopes of moving beyond group play. Bradley can almost start having the equipment men pack his players' gear and get ready for their return flight to the States. It doesn't look as if they will be coming home to a hero's welcome; they will be coming home with bags filled with disappointment, a team unable to play to its ability.

Bradley will get the blame for it, and he should. But what will pointing blame at anybody do for soccer in America? The men and women now at the top of the U.S. Soccer Federation will have to do what others tried to do after 1994: put pieces in places for long-term success.

But success hasn't visited America, not the way those who love the sport wanted to see. Its team looks as if it might have to sit and watch as other countries vie to win the Cup. With one game left to play, its most important of the tournament, the United States will have everything at stake. If it falters here, it will wonder why its plans for success went badly.

Its ability to keep a clean slate early in this game is a must. The team can't play catch-up game after game and expect to end up with a result it wants. Unlike basketball, baseball or football, pro soccer isn't a sport built for comebacks. Success is built around steadiness and consistency, and the U.S. team has been neither steady nor consistent in its two games in this 2010 World Cup, which is the pity of it.

Now, what U.S. Soccer is will be decided in its next game. It needs a win, for if it doesn't win, the team will have four years to prepare for the next Cup. Bradley surely won't be the coach in 2014; nor will Donovan, Howard and Clint Dempsey likely make the roster, too. What will be there, if the U.S. team qualifies, is a team that is the outgrowth of this disappointment.

For failure and disappointment teach invaluable lessons, and after what the U.S. team showed early against Slovenia, it has plenty of lessons it needs to learn if the aim is to be a player on the international soccer scene.

Stern warning to stars: Keep game in mind

2010-06-06T16:01:12Z

The summit of the NBA stars won't happen. Whether the decision to forgo the free-agent gathering came in an edict from commissioner David Stern or was a simple rethinking of a bad idea doesn't matter.

While LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, Chris Bosh and others have the right to meet and plot a strategy that benefits them, they have a larger obligation: the state of the game.

They need to worry about that first.

For the NBA is in financial trouble, a point Stern has been stressing since the U.S. economy took a turn south. In the past year, the NBA lost a reported $400 million, hardly pocket change. Even a championship-caliber team like the Cavaliers saw its balance sheet land in the red. The Cavs sold out all their games at The Q, and the team had King James. Yet all of that didn't translate into a fat return on investment for owner Dan Gilbert.

Now, what happens to Gilbert's franchise if LeBron signs somewhere else? How attractive will the NBA product be overall if two or three free-agent stars cast their lot with a mega-market team like the Knicks or the Nets or the Bulls? What might their deck-stacking do for franchises like Memphis, Golden State, New Orleans, Cleveland, Atlanta, Milwaukee and Minnesota?

Again, what does their ham-handed attempt to alter the balance of power in favor of building one super-franchise do for those lesser markets?

Here's the answer: nothing good.

]]> If Memphis can't draw now, it will be less attractive to its fans, from game to game, when a vanilla, star-less franchise like Minnesota or Atlanta comes to the FedEx Center in February.

These aren't the issues fans should be talking about as the Lakers and Celtics revive a storied rivalry in the NBA Finals. The narrative for this series should be guiding coverage of the league, but the title games run second or third to all the contract issues and coaching moves that are grabbing daily headlines.

That's hardly what Stern wants. In his reign over the game, he has seen difficult times before. He has handled them deftly, steering the league to years and years of prosperity. Revenues have streamed into the league, which has become more and more of a global force.

While the NBA is not soccer, the league has its footprint all over the world. It has stars whose faces are recognizable from Shanghai to Siena. Aside from the NFL, the NBA has long been a model for other pro leagues to follow. It has been a civic asset in cities across the United States, and no sport promotes its stars better than the NBA does.

But a handful of stars seem bent on driving the league forward, and putting the league in their hands is like putting a 9-year-old behind the wheel of Ferrari and letting him drive his best friends to school. The idea has disaster written all over it.

No one is suggesting that players like LeBron, D-Wade and Bosh have no role in charting the fortunes of the league. They should play a role, but they are not equipped to look at the broad view of it. How prepared is the unschooled James for the business end of basketball? Is he listening to his own counsel or weighing the advice of his entourage? Are their interests the same as Stern's or Gilbert's or Mark Cuban's interests?

All of this is disturbing to men and women who follow the game. People have grown weary of listening to where LeBron or D-Wade will end up playing next season.

They want this prattle to stop. So does Stern.

He has the game's showcase event in front of him, but he's been confounded by the distractions that are marring what should be the focus of the sports universe. The last thing that Stern needs is a self-serving "Gang of Four" trying to take the game somewhere it does not need to go.

If the stars want to help the game, then build support in their home markets and stop conspiring to win a championship. Build one the old-fashioned way: making the team they're with competitive.

Wizard of Westwood: R.I.P., Coach Wooden

2010-06-05T04:14:59Z

Coach John Wooden died last night. His passing saddens me.

Not that I ever met Wooden face to face, because I never did. Our paths never crossed during my 25-year career as a sports journalist. So what I know about the legendary UCLA coach comes mostly from media accounts of others or through the fables that have made Wooden such an iconic figure in college basketball.

Oh, I do have one of those stories, a story that tells as much about the man as anything else I can think of.

Andrew Hemminger, a soon-to-be grad of Bowling Green University at the time, had an idea for a book. Andrew and his best friend wanted to travel the country in an old Honda and interview big-name coaches about basketball. The list of coaches the two road warriors sought and got an audience with looked like the "Who's Who" of the coaching profession. From Tubby Smith to Coach K to Rick Pitino to Jim Calhoun to Tom Izzo, nearly every coach of significance -- aside from Bob Knight -- agreed to talk.

Andrew had on his list a dream coach he and his friend hoped to include in their book. They wanted John Wooden, who seemed unreachable. The coach was well into his 90s, his 10 NCAA titles and his UCLA days long behind him; they couldn't expect Wooden to free his schedule and turn 20 minutes of his day over to strangers, could they?

]]> To be sure, theirs was a long shot, but so was getting an audience with the coaches they had already landed.

Nothing from nothing left nothing, so what the heck, they thought to themselves. They would go for it.

Through contacts Andrew had made along the way, he got Wooden's phone number and called the coach one day. Well, he was shocked that Wooden himself answered. He told Wooden what he was trying to do. Impressed, the coach invited the two strangers to his home. Three of them had a nice talk, and they were able to include Wooden, the catch of catches, in their book: Destination Basketball: A Once in A Lifetime Adventure to Meet the Best Coaches in College Hoops.

What coach would have invited two strangers into his home? Knight? Jim Boeheim? Bill Self? Dean Smith?

I doubt Wooden saw his hospitality as anything more than "a teachable moment" for a coach who'd spent his adult life teaching. He must have realized that the young men had a wonderful project, and he had not choice but to help them succeed.

Isn't that what he'd done throughout his career?

Basketball, which earned Wooden his 15 minutes of fame, was what brought college-aged men into his world. I understand that, but basketball wasn't what made men who came into his world stick around for the long run.

Under Wooden's influence, those men were shaped into citizens of the world. The coach made all of them better and more complete people.

While it's conjecture on my part, I think if one of his players had to stamp a label on John Wooden, "coach" wouldn't be the player's first choice. Rather, that first choice would be a word like "teacher" or, perhaps, "mentor."

Both, however, fit Wooden like a pair of custom-made loafers.

But all of those good men - champions in life and in basketball like Bill Walton, Walt Hazzard and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar -- will be asked today to find words for their old coach, because others will want to know as much about the real Coach Wooden as they know about his myth.

The myth can't possibly measure up to the reality.

Putting perspective to this reality will be what these men Wooden coached will be asked to talk about. People will want them to share those private moments that none of us were privy too.

We might be disappointed.

For we never earned the right to go much deeper into their relationship with Wooden, the "Wizard of Westwood." This is their time for reflection. This is their time to thank their old coach; this is their time to shed tears over his passing.

This is their time to mourn and to remember the lessons they learned from the best teacher of young men who ever lived.