by gordie | Aug 17, 2020 | Uncategorized
Long before Matisse Thybulle emerged as the video star of the NBA bubble, it was clear he was ready for his closeup — that the Sixers’ rookie swingman had the look and feel of someone capable of thriving in the spotlight, which is exactly where he now finds...
by gordie | Aug 9, 2020 | Uncategorized
When Donovan McNabb was in his heyday as the Eagles’ quarterback, he often did this thing where he would escape the pocket and find himself on the perimeter, with seemingly acres of open space in front of him. At this point it only sounded like every fan in Lincoln...
by gordie | Aug 4, 2020 | Uncategorized
Rather than closing in on his 51st birthday, Chris Finch is closing out on it. That’s what good defenders do, and that’s what Finch was, in his heyday at Franklin & Marshall. So whether by rote or some other mechanism, he is closing out on this milestone, and...
by gordie | Jul 26, 2020 | Uncategorized
Since 1993 I’ve had the above painting on my wall, one adapted by a local artist named David Kirsch off a black-and-white newspaper photo I shared with him. I love the subject and the symbolism — how it shows Sixers point guard Maurice Cheeks, a guy who...
by gordie | Jul 12, 2020 | Uncategorized
At one point in his itinerant seven-year pro basketball career, Paul Shirley found himself playing with Steve Nash. OK, maybe playing is putting too fine a point on it, because Shirley seldom actually played for the 2004-05 Phoenix Suns. That was, after all, when they...
by gordie | Jun 21, 2020 | Uncategorized
Not sure exactly why, but late Saturday night I decided to look up my dad’s obituary. I’m guessing it was partly because it was Father’s Day Eve, but it was also out of sheer curiosity. I couldn’t remember how long ago he had died nor how old he had been, and had...
by gordie | Jun 17, 2020 | Uncategorized
Major League Baseball’s death knell has been sounding for a while, and now it is louder than ever, as the owners and players resume their familiar dance. In other years these billionaires and millionaires have squabbled over such things as free agent compensation and...
by gordie | Jun 7, 2020 | Uncategorized
George Floyd’s dying words — “I can’t breathe” — have echoed across hundreds of protests, and across time. I can’t breathe — it was the very same thing another African-American man, Eric Garner, had said while being choked out by a police officer six...
by gordie | May 23, 2020 | Uncategorized
Michael Jordan’s actual last dance — the encore following the elegant waltz depicted in the just-completed “Last Dance” documentary — came not with championship glory as a Chicago Bull but with irrelevance as a Washington Wizard. And the final discordant...
by gordie | May 17, 2020 | Uncategorized
The email from Glenda, a deputy editor at Forbes.com, flitted into my inbox at precisely 8:31 a.m. on April 21. That’s right — Glenda the Deputy Editor (as opposed to Glenda the Good Witch, of Wizard of Oz fame) was writing to say we needed to talk over the...
