Word: naismith
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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MICHAEL JORDAN Will the gentlemen of the jury rise and state their verdict? Magic Johnson: "When you talk about beautiful basketball, the way Mr. Naismith drew it up to be played, you're talking about Michael Jordan." Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: "F. Scott Fitzgerald said the rich are not like the rest of us. Well, Michael's athletic skills are not like the rest of us." Charles Barkley: "The one player I'll accept losing to if I have to lose." Shaquille O'Neal: "I'll tell my grandchildren I got to play against him." Phil Jackson: "He represented our personal...
Platitudes about regaining the fans' support notwithstanding, professional basketball is putting out an inferior product, riddled with ugly structural crises and unwanted addenda to Dr. Naismith's game...
...then, in a way, he was. As Tom Butters, the athletic director of archrival Duke, said last week, "Coach Smith made college basketball better. Excellence begets excellence." The lineage of basketball is even more specific. James Naismith, literally the father of the game, begat Phog Allen, the Kansas coach, who begat Dean Smith, who begat not just Jordan and scores of NBA players but also such notable coaches as Billy Cunningham, Larry Brown, George Karl, Roy Williams and Eddie Fogler. Almost all his former charges remain intensely loyal to him. Jordan, in fact, still wears his blue Tar Heel shorts...
...expense of occasional brilliance. "Dean is the best teacher of basketball that I have observed," UCLA legend John Wooden once said. And that teacher provided Jordan, who helped Smith win his first NCAA title in '82, with the lessons he needed to become a player not even Naismith could have dreamed...
...Crimson could have--and perhaps should have--won this game, but Harvard didn't play terribly. Yes, the free throw shooting was particularly gross, but the defense did a great job of holding down the Tigers. At worst, it was a subpar game, not an abomination to Dr. Naismith...