The first team I ever paid any real attention to ended up winning the Super Bowl that year. It was 1986, and the New York Giants came in to my consciousness thanks to my friend Sten. He had a jacket and a couple of painters caps with the Giants logo all over them. This was the newer logo with the word GIANTS in block white letters against a deep blue background. I thought it looked great, and I was very excited when he offered me one of the caps. Right then and there they became my team. Throughout the course of that year, I got to know Simms, Taylor, Morris, Banks, Bavaro, Carson, Johnson, Burt, McConkey, Marshall, Landetta (a series of names that even today I don't need to look up) and especially Bill Parcells. I liked them all, and I really liked Bill. It seemed like he was throwing a year long party, and we got to watch all the fun. Unaware of how many people follow teams for years and years without seeing a championship, I watched with delight and entitlement as my guys waltzed to the Super Bowl, and handled Elway and Denver there to take the title.
I really enjoyed that experience, but I don't remember it being a very social one. I watched the games alone, or maybe with my Dad (I was only 12 at the time...). Still, I could see how many other people wanted the same thing as me (for the Giants to win) and that felt good. It wasn't until a couple of years later that I began to see how much fun sports could be as a shared experience with friends. I learned this lesson in a place you might not expect - High School.
At Weston High School, the administration must have been huge fans of college basketball because every March, during the tournament, they would wheel out a big TV from the A/V office to the front lobby and tune in CBS somehow so that we could watch the games. Students would gather there between classes or during free periods to catch as much action as they could. Word would spread like wildfire from class to class if an upset was brewing, and it must have seemed to teachers that we were drinking much more water and soda than usual, because bathroom trip requests were through the roof.
Living in Connecticut before the real rise of UConn, we had a wide range of fandom to choose from. Sure, many kids were faithful to the Big East and the New York schools like Syracuse, St. John's and Georgetown. But lots of us looked farther away for our hoops allegiances, and that really served to spice things up. Everyone knew who the fans of each school were, and your daily fate was tied to your team. Win, and you walked down the halls with respect. Blow a game, and the teasing would be merciless. It was a whole new kind of fun for me. I really fell for March Madness.
A little while after the Giants became my football team, I realized that I had a sweatshirt from UNC Chapel Hill that my aunt had given me when I went there to visit her. I remember thinking the place was lovely at the time, but it didn't have a huge impact on me. Now, I took a look at the then current state of the Tar Heels and their history, and on the grounds of my personal connection and in house paraphernalia, they quickly became my basketball team. It wasn't hard to like them what with Jordan, Worthy and so many others. The more I found out about them, the more I liked what I saw. Like the Giants, the Tar Heels had a leader, and he became one of my first heroes. Dean Smith is responsible for a lot of little things about the game of basketball that have become second nature. Smith was among the first to use multiple defenses in a game. He was the first to have his team huddle before free throws, he pioneered the use of a raised fist when a player needed to rest. He helped bring the dunk back to the college game after it was banned for several years. On a larger level, he even had a lot to do with bringing integration to the south.
Smith was responsible for an immense family of standout basketball players and coaches over the years. I've read accounts of how even the bench players from back in the beginning of Smith's 36 year career would get calls every year on birthdays and cards on their kids' birthdays. Dean Smith was a coach who knew that the real value of a player is in supporting his or her teammates. One of my favorite Dean Smith innovations was the act of pointing to the player who had passed you the ball after a score. It's a simple act, and it spread around the basketball world like wildfire at all levels. It spoke to the heart of the twisting, fluid improvisation that basketball is. It was polite, and it sent a clear message to the other guys. It said, "We're in this together. If you want to win, you'll have to beat all of us."
No comments:
Post a Comment