a blog by Ian Kennedy
Whenever I want to describe my appreciation and admiration for the athletes in the NBA, I pull up this clip from a game last year.
Look how Luka steals falls down as he steals the ball and looks up and sees Kyrie. Luka passes it off to him with a casual, over-the-shoulder backhand and then Kyrie runs it down the court for what would seem to be a dunk but, sensing someone is behind him is a quick tip up so his teammate can slam the alley-oop.
Here it is again, in slow-motion.
How do you squeeze that extra bit of effort when you’re already at the highest levels of a sport? Top athletes have a competitive streak that they can tap on demand to push them beyond. Having the ability to summon that competitive drive and harness it to drive you to further heights is the secret to a sustainable athletic career. A top athlete must respect the power of competition and that begins with respect for your opponent who is the source
We saw this respect the other night as Jimmy Butler and Grant Williams locked horns in the final minutes of Game Two in the playoffs at Boston.
Listen to Jimmy Butler’s response to a reporter asking about the incident and the respect he has not only for the power of competition to drive him further but also the respect he holds for his rivals that he pushes against to get him there.
And here’s Grant Williams on the other side,
I have such admiration for those that have the confidence to transform adversary into motivation. It’s not about right or wrong, good or evil, it’s about driving each other to be better. We could all learn for this.
I am really looking forward the next chapter tonight at 8:30 in Miami. #goceltics!
Rising star Kaoru Mitoma scored an amazing goal in the final minutes of Brighton’s match against Liverpool to knock them out of the FA Cup. What was amazing about his goal is that Mitoma had the presence of mind in those final minutes to bobble the perfectly placed cross just enough to throw off the goalie so he was not prepared when he ultimately slammed the ball into the net.
Such was the speed of the movement, and such was the quality of the execution, that the ball did not even make contact with the floor between those touches. A ‘keepy-uppy’ goal, against Liverpool, in the final minute of a thrilling FA Cup tie: Mitoma continues to go from strength to strength, from defining moment to defining moment.
Kaoru Mitoma’s juggling goal knocks holders Liverpool out of the FA Cup
Reminiscent of another amazing goal, in another sport.
Ko Yamaguchi is causing such a sensation in the Japanese High School Baseball tournament that even the Major League Baseball blog has a post about him.
This savant from Japan is taking switch-hitting to a new extreme. He switches which side he hits after EACH pitch. Literally every pitch! Though perhaps we should put “hits” in quotes since it’s unclear if he actually swings the bat based on the limited footage.
Righty or lefty? This batter switched after every pitch!
When I shared this clip with my co-workers, I was instructed to “Google Eddie Gaedel” (thanks Rich!) which led me to this wonderful Wikipedia entry that included this passage:
Gaedel gained recognition in the second game of a St. Louis Browns doubleheader on August 19, 1951. Weighing 60 pounds (27 kg) and standing 3 feet 7 inches (109 cm) tall, he became the shortest player in the history of the Major Leagues. Gaedel made a single plate appearance and was walked with four consecutive balls before being replaced by a pinch-runner at first base. His jersey, bearing the uniform number “1⁄8“, is displayed in the St. Louis Cardinals Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum
Eddie Gaedel – Wikipedia, retrieved July 26, 2022
That’s one way to play the game.
There was that wonderful story of the football coach from the early days who had all his team wear a jersey that had the image of a football on the front so it was hard to tell who was carrying the ball.
Remember when Tim Ferriss won the Chinese Kickboxing National Championship?
Any other instances of people “bending” the rules to win?
So the Warriors won, again.
More accurately, the Celtics lost. Tyler re-introduced the family to this year’s team and we watched them battle their way through the playoff. After they swept the Nets, we threw our support behind them fully as they took on Giannis and the Bucks and Jimmy Butler and the Heat and scraped and clawed there way to a spot in the Finals.
An NBA Finals between the Oakland San Francisco Warriors and Boston Celtics was the perfect match up. Our old home vs. the new. To me the Warriors are like an Italian racing car – well-funded, perfectly tuned, and unstoppable. On the straights when everything is running smoothly there is no contest. Contrast that with this young Boston team, playing rough around the edges, adjusting to their opponents and squeaking out wins after having their backs pushed up against a wall. This young team fought their way through a tough East Coast division to take the regional title. To me, the Celtics were the sand that would get into the Warrior’s drive train, I really thought this young and scrappy 2022 Celtics team might have a chance.
But they did not.
After the Celtics pulled off one win at home and another in San Francisco, the Golden State machine re-calibrated itself and there was no stopping them. With the unstoppable efficiency of a Japanese Gundam, the threes rained down mercilessly.
“They faced the Golden State Warriors in a rematch of the 1964 Finals, which the Celtics won in five games in an attempt to win their 18th championship and first since 2008. However the Celtics would lose in six games despite taking a 2-1 lead.” The Wikipedia summary of the post-season is brutal in its judgement.
While it was the turnovers that ultimately caused Boston to lose, it was those uncontested threes from the Warriors that really hurt. Swish…Swish…Swish – they put microphones on the net so the sound comes through loud and clear on the broadcast. The sound of a basketball going in without hitting the rim is the most visceral sound for a basketball fan, it’s the sweet sound of victory for one, the dagger of defeat for the other.
It was even more painful to be back in San Francisco, first at a San Francisco Giants game and then a second time, in a bar in downtown San Francisco. Everyone around me couldn’t figure out why I was pulling for the bad boys from Boston.
Misery loves company so it only makes sense to finish with this excerpt from Bill Simmons recalling the defeat of his Celtics to LeBron James at the 2012 Eastern Conference Finals.
I don’t know what happened. I just know the shots wouldn’t stop going in. After about the fifth dagger in a row (he made 10 straight), the crowd started groaning on every make — shades of Philly’s Andrew Toney ripping our hearts out 30 years ago. If you’ve ever been in the building for one of those games, you know there isn’t a deadlier sound. He single-handedly murdered one of the giddiest Celtics crowds I can remember. Thirty points in the first half. Thirty! All with that blank look on his face. It was like watching surveillance video of a serial killer coldly dismembering a body and sticking the parts in the fridge. Only we were right there.
You can’t imagine what this was like to witness in person. I know Michael Jordan had similarly astonishing games, and others, too, but not with stakes like that. This wasn’t just an elimination game. This was LeBron James’s entire career being put on trial … and it only took an hour for him to tell the jury, “Go home. I’m one of the best players ever. Stop picking me apart. Stop talking about the things I can’t do. Stop holding me to standards that have never been applied to any other NBA player. Stop blaming me for an admittedly dumb decision I never should have made. Stop saying I’m weak. Stop saying that I don’t want to win. Stop. Just … stop.”
As a Celtics fan, I was devastated. As a basketball fan, I appreciated the performance for what it was. One of the greatest players ever was playing one of his greatest games ever. He swallowed up every other relevant story line. Needless to say, the Celtics couldn’t match him — especially Pierce, who’s worn down from four weeks of battling Andre Iguodala, Shane Battier and LeBron on one leg and appears to be running on fumes of his fumes’ fumes at this point. The fans were so shell-shocked that many (including me and my father) filed out with three minutes remaining, not because we were lousy fans, not to beat the traffic, but because we didn’t want to be there anymore. We wanted to get away from LeBron. He ruined what should have been a magical night. We never really had a chance to cheer, swing the game, rally our guys, anything. He pointed a remote control at us and pressed “MUTE.” It was like being in a car accident. LeBron James ran over 18,000 people.
The Consequences of Caring
Nothing but respect for the Warriors. Italian racing machine that they are, there is no doubt they were impressive. Painful as it was, they are an amazing team to watch. They are an experienced Finals team
Check out this clip from The latest episode of the Draymond Green Show where Draymond explains why he thinks the Celtics will be back again.
Time to reset. I’ll be rooting once again next year, for the Brooklyn Nets, then the Celtics. See you then.
On March 20, 1967 Japanese runner Shizo Kanakuri crossed the finish line on a marathon he started over 50 years prior with a time of 54 years, 246 days, 5 hours, 32 minutes, and 20.3 seconds. Guinness World Records recognizes this as the longest time to complete a marathon.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
In 1912 Japan sent its first team to the Olympics, held that year in Stockholm, Sweden. Japan’s team consisted of only two athletes, a sprinter named Yahiko Mishima and Shizo (this year Japan’s squad has 552 athletes).
Back then, the road from Japan to Sweden took weeks. First on a boat then aboard an arduous weeks-long train trip across the steppes of Siberia. By the time Shizo and his teammate arrived in Sweden, they were not only exhausted but also out of training. The only time they could workout was by running around station buildings during brief stops along the way.
When race day arrived in Stockholm on July 14, 1912 it was an unseasonably warm 32°C (89.6°F). Long distance running as a sport had not evolved to where it is today so the preparations were, shall we say, unorthodox. Nike’s famous waffle sole had not yet been invented. Shizo wore Japanese tabi on his feet and the cloth was all that protected him from the gravel path. And because it was thought that perspiration contributed to fatigue, he refused to drink any water while running.
As you can imagine, Shizo passed out from heatstroke and took refuge at a nearby villa to recover. After spending some time recuperating there, he decided to drop out of the race and caught a train back to his hotel and eventually returned back to Japan.
Because he never informed race officials that he dropped out of the race, Olympic officials marked him down as missing.
Meanwhile, back in Japan, Shizo went on to run in the 1920 and 1924 Olympics, established the famous Tokyo-Hakone-Tokyo College Ekiden race and is known as the father of the Japanese marathon.
Fast-forward to 1962 when a Swedish journalist happened upon Shizo and informed a very surprised Swedish National Olympic Committee that the missing marathoner was very much alive. As a marketing promotion, several Swedish businessmen invited Shizo to Sweden in 1967 to finish his marathon at 76 years of age. That’s the photo above.
Upon Swedish Olympic Committee representatives reading out his official finish time to the gathered press- 54 years, 8 months, 6 days, 5 hours, 32 minutes and 20.3 seconds- Kanakuri was asked if he’d like to say a few words about breaking a world record for slowest marathon ever run. Thinking for a moment, the elderly athlete shuffled to the microphone and said,
“It was a long trip. Along the way, I got married, had six children and 10 grandchildren.”
THE CURIOUS CASE OF SHIZO KANAKURI’S 1912 OLYMPIC MARATHON RUN
Hat tip to Tyler Kennedy for the pointer to this wonderful story.
Much has been written about Simone Biles’ decision to withdraw from the team and individual all-round competition at the Tokyo Olympics. Despite the negative coverage accusing her of quitting it is instructive to look at her (and her team’s) responses in the press conference.
When reporters trained their questions on Biles’s emotional state, she spoke just as comfortably, talking about mental health in the same terms as fitness and recovery programs—another variable in the champion’s pursuit. She described the danger of pressing through and competing in her state, saying she didn’t want to “do something silly” and hurt herself. She called Osaka—another sport-defining Black woman—a source of inspiration. “I say put mental health first,” Biles said in response to a query about how she’d advise other athletes in similar circumstances. “Because if you don’t, you’re not going to enjoy your sport and you’re not going to succeed as much as you want to.”
Simone Biles and the New Language of Greatness
“the most irrational and hysterically rude shots you will ever see” – Deadline
Also see: It’s in the Details: Hidden Highlights From Damian Lillard’s Buzzer-Beater
What an amazing game played by UCF against Duke yesterday. I keep coming back to the final basket, those final seconds when everything hung in the balance, how it almost made it in, just a slightly-softer-touch. UCF was so close to upsetting a #1 seeded championship team. It was never supposed to be that close.
“It was up there forever, I felt like, in slow motion,” he said. “Once I saw it go past the midpoint and roll out, there was, at that point, nothing left to do.”
Heartbroken UCF proud it pushed No. 1 Duke during close NCAA Tournament loss
Then today I saw the locker room speech by the UCF coach, Johnny Dawkins, father of the player who just missed that last basket and a former player for Duke, the team that won. You can hear the sniffling in the background and really feel their loss. These boys, some of them seniors, were playing in the last game of their entire basketball career. They are at the peak of their career, if they are not getting picked up by a pro team, this is it.
For me it was an exciting game and an close loss. Exciting for sure but my bracket’s intact, I’m moving on. Just a close call. But to these kids, the loss must have been devastating. So many years invested up to that one final moment.
There is an annual high school baseball tournament in Japan that is very much like the March Madness tournament here in the United States. 4000+ teams across the country play in a national tournament that ends up with less than 20 teams going to a the famous Koshien Stadium in Japan in mid-August. The entire nation turns in during the hot summer evenings to watch their nation’s youth play their hearts out.
March Madness is our Koshien