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All the Way With LBJ

Posted by :James Howden On : April 24, 2006
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Category: All About Sports

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Here’s a big question in the Toy Department, professional basketball division: has LeBron James, 21-year-old hoops wizard and savvy Goliath of the sneaker wars, done enough this year to be named MVP of the National Basketball Association? Or will he, as I suspect, need to pay further dues? (And just by the way, by what club are these “dues” being collected? Presumably, it’s the CREWS – the Chronically Resentful and Envious Writers of Sports.)

I wish I was seeing more LeBron Live than Magazine LeBron and King James the Pitchman. Even a jaded old dunks-are-overrated dude like me can get a buzz from some of his highlight reels, but there are several things about James that excite me a whole lot more. One of the first times I saw him play, he tapped a loose ball toward a teammate and hustled out to fill a lane on the fastbreak. The dunk at the end was sweet, but I was blown away by his hustle and speed; I’ve ever seen a big man so fast. And he fills up scoresheets, not just the points column, not to mention that with a Sports Illustrated cover in 11th grade (and another at 20 musing about him being “The Best of All Time” when he hadn’t even made the playoffs yet), James has every reason to be a flaming idiot.

My impression is that he isn’t. He speaks thoughtfully, doesn’t appear to think he’s bigger than the game, and his teammates seem to enjoy playing with him.  Best of all – at least until he becomes a philanthropist and advocate for the disadvantaged – LeBron James loves to pass. For a young guy with hops and scoring ability, he understands the game at a high level. He’s rare. I loved what he said last week, which went something like this: it’s cool to get that ‘Oooh’, but when you make the great pass, you get two ‘Ooohs’, one for the dime and one for the dunk. Not to mention that, suddenly, the game isn’t all about ME anymore. Imagine: brothers in short pants doing their thing together. Unselfishly!

Things are looking good for the Association when its Most Valuable Player is likely to be either King James or the reigning king of delivery, Steve Nash. And looking at the dominance of the Pistons, it looks like Team Ball and “playing the right way” (ah, but Larry Brown, where are you now?) are getting cooler by the quarter. Nice!!

The Reason for Driveways

Posted by :James Howden On : April 6, 2006
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Category: All About Sports

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Today, in my driveway, an ungainly apparatus appeared. Wheeled out of my neighbours’ garage, where it had lain in secret for several days, our family basketball goal now dominates our front approaches. (There isn’t much competition.) As is well and proper, our car has been banished to the curb. For the first time since I was 17 at Mom and Dad’s, I have a hoop at my house and, thanks to clever cranks and levers, I can still grab the rim. Thanks, Sam!

Samuel Justice – Number Four Son in your program, tied for first in my heart – turned six today, and we’ve honoured it with a home court. We got through three big brothers without one, somehow. Most often, there just wasn’t a driveway where we lived, but the main reason was that I was the local high school coach and community hoops maven. I had keys to the gym. The older guys got all the basketball they wanted; Ben and Dave were done with competition by grade 10, and Will put down his ball after three years on the high school varsity. We’ll see how long Sam keeps at it. I try to care less, and it seems to work.

This week, he’s going to the Olympics. He has a crazy energy and my-way stubbornness that feels athletic: a long way from coachable, but who needs that when he’s six and just wants to play? His travelling, quadruple-dribbling and truly eccentric version of one-on-one is a blast to play because he laughs the whole time. (He madly chuckled, too, throughout the goofy hockey games on our Tiny Perfect Backyard Rink™ last winter.) He’d rather shoot the ball like his buddy from Sunday school than the way silly old Coach Dad suggests, and he’s so proud when he makes that string music. Thank you, Mr. Naismith! Fathers and sons and driveway hook shots have to be the reason your game was invented. (Either that, or to feed Latrell Sprewell’s family.)

Calvin is Six

Posted by :James Howden On : April 6, 2006
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Category: At First Glance

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Happy birthday, Samuel Justice! Six years old. Calvin (and Hobbes) years. Blonde, bright, stubborn, imaginative, likes his stuffed animals, always on the go. Sounds like somebody Bill Watterson used to know. (What is Bill Watterson doing now?)

We are very happy that Sam attends École le Trillium in a special pilot program of our local French public school board. Somehow, enthusiastic parents convinced the CEPEO to institute a program in Steiner-Waldorf education at one of its schools, and we lucked in. (Sam’s proficiency in French, courtesy of a little help from me and lots from caregivers Samira, Anik et Natalie, was the big factor, though.) And Mommy gets weepy nearly every time she’s in this gentle, beautiful, inventive learning place where Madame Claire makes miracles. The latest? A sweet birthday story pour le roi du jour, Samuel, qui a six ans aujourd’hui!

And now there’s a happy birthday adjustable basketball hoop in our little sloping driveway, and a six-year-old boy who is proud and stubborn about his own special way of making that ball go swish…This is why Mr. Naismith invented basketball.

Hammer and Tongs on the Hardwood

Posted by :James Howden On : January 17, 2006
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Category: All About Sports

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Wow! In one of the best ballgames I’ve seen in a long time — one of the highlights of the Ottawa sports scene (sorry, Senators, and to all the hockey-heads for whom this was not even on jock radar (Jock Radar! Now there’s a good name for an ex-athlete detective)) — the Carleton Ravens followed up their loss last week to Brock with their first home loss after 56 consecutive wins in the Nest. Even more compelling, it was to their hometown rivals, their main competition for Ottawa basketball talent, the U of O Gee Gees. It was a renewal of the Battle of the Daves, Carleton’s Smart (“what rivalry?”) and Ottawa’s DeAveiro (who had not beaten the Ravens in his head coaching career, something like 14 attempts).

It was what we all wish Canadian university sport could more often be. There was a sold-out audience in a quality athletic facility (in Canada, that means 2000 people – compare that with the “quaint and undersized” Cameron Indoor Stadium at Duke, where demand is feverish for the 8000 seats, or North Carolina’s on-campus Dean Dome” and its 21,000 bumholders). There were student fans with energy and imagination, and well-trained and talented athletes playing for their lives. 63-62 was the final count, and neither team ever led by much. It was tense from the opening tip, and the Gee Gees had an answer for everything Carleton had, including holding its star and leader Osvaldo Jeanty in check. Alex McLeod hit big shots for the Gee Gees, but it was an unlikely three from their quick but poor-shooting point, Teti Kabetu, that gave Ottawa a 5-point lead late and sealed the deal.

They call it the Canal War, and if you were too attached to your television and its through-the-motions January Blaw professional sports offerings, you missed something great. I’m only gloating because I was there, and proved to myself, once again, that sports can be a vibrant spectacle even without bright lights and TV timeouts. Especially then. When I was a high school teacher and coach, kids would ask me who my favourite team was. I’d say, “The Blue Devils, of course!” and I didn’t mean Duke. (I like them, too.) These were the McKinnon Park BDs, and try as we might, we had limited success in getting guys to take off their Yankees caps and Raiders jackets and come watch athletes they actually knew.

“Small service is true service,” wrote Mr. Wordsworth, and hometown fans may be the truest of their kind, too. (Hey, get a load of that — I got a poetry reference into the hoop scoop!)

The Streak Continues

Posted by :James Howden On : December 2, 2005
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Category: All About Sports

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And now it’s 85 in a row for the Ravens. Carleton beat the York University Lions tonight, and their ridiculous romp through all comers is approaching the 88 of the immortal UCLA Bruins teams of Bill Walton, Marques Johnson, Greg Lee and The Coach, John Wooden. (The caveat, which Carleton generally remembers to mention, is that they count (only) regular season and post-season games they’ve won on their way to the last three Canadian University titles. St. Francis Xavier got ‘em in a preseason tourney this year, as the University of British Columbia did last year. And they don’t count their swings against American powers, where this year they played and lost fairly respectably at the legendary Pauley Pavilion of those UCLA Bruins. Glad we got that straight.)

I used to coach at summer camps with Carleton’s head man, Dave Smart, before he embarked on his astounding and still fairly young career. It’s as easy to admire and respect the Ravens as it must be difficult to play for such an unrelenting and insistent coach. He is focused, and so are his teams.

Basketball Boy Gets Out With the Ravens

Posted by :James Howden On : November 19, 2005
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Category: All About Sports

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We had shared pizza and ice cream and our favourite examples of good news. It was our Saturday evening antidote to fearful headlines and breathless predictions of imminent disaster, the ones that lead so smoothly, so ridiculously, into pitches for cars and entertainments. And then everybody took off early for a serious dose of music-as-medicine, so I was free to sneak off to a ballgame. Whee! I was a free man in Ottawa / I felt unfettered and alive / There was nobody callin’ me up for favours / And noone’s future to decide. (Apologies to the divine Ms. M.)

Carleton Ravens basketball is a great sports story, grinding toward a fourth straight national championship and building on their crazy run of success. Tonight, against the Waterloo Warriors, their undefeated streak hit EIGHTY-TWO. They’ve lost a couple of early-season exhibitions over the last few years, but in league and playoff matches they haven’t lost in 82 straight contests. They have no dominant post players. (Haven’t had during the whole run.) They are outsized nearly every night, yet they almost never get outrebounded. This year they don’t have a true point guard, and there’s nobody you’d call a scoring machine or a magical passer. And it doesn’t seem to matter a bit. They defend maniacally, they shoot fearlessly, they play together.

And I can get into this stuff, lived it for a long time as a high school coach, but tonight I watched the game as if it was played in an aquarium and I was outside it. I remembered clearly what the fishbowl was like, and what part of it I had once inhabited. I easily recognized all the species swimming inside it, but the experience felt distant. (Or I did.) Hmm. So this is basketball. Right. They take it so seriously. Coach Dave Smart is a drama, all expectation and insistence and disbelief at his players’ failings, even as they dismantle an opponent. The relentless quest for the meaning of performance. It all looks so fun and familiar, but I felt so far away.