Lagos, Nigeria

Say yes

March 30, 2008:

Those were the words running through his head.

Say yes.

Say yes.

Say yes.

‘The Document’

So I’m reading Kyle’s latest and nodding.

... they should be functioning time capsules that help us remember when our memory fails us. They allow future generations piece together the meaning for themselves.

There is a feeling that binds George Mason 2006, Davidson 2008 and Butler 2010 together.

... to sell those ahead of us on the idea that this was a really powerful experience for a lot of people.

And then:

I didn’t really like Michael Kruse’s Taking The Shot: when I first read it, I felt it was too esoteric and short, padded with extraneous material and featuring more footnotes than a David Foster Wallace book. But when I was back home for a few days nursing my broken immune system after Vancouver, I went back and re-read it. I “got it” a little more, and I could better see what the author was attempting. There are stories of the other players, and of fans and students, of free buses to Detroit, about the construction of the team, and the old and wise coach’s philosophy. And there is the feeling, in black and white, when the shot didn’t go down, when Davidson couldn't do what Mason did two years earlier, what Butler has done now. It’s far from perfect, but it’s a blueprint and a way forward.

It’s a very fair point. I actually would add a few more fars: far, far, far from perfect. I would change a lot of things about it, if I could go back and try it again, but I can’t. That’s the way it goes. One night at the Brickhouse, not long after it came out, I told William I thought it was flawed but earnest. Fail with some grace and hope to learn from it for later. This is one reason I’m excited about The Davidson Project. More voices, more accessible, and a much, much wider frame: I think ultimately it will be a better version of what Kyle’s talking about here.

(More) thoughts on the shot taken

Strange in a way to read in the current ESPN The Magazine a redux of the 16.8 seconds about which I wrote 40,000 words. My first thought, when I looked at the double-truck spread, and of course this is silly -- but my first thought was: But that’s OUR moment.

So you’ve got the comments from Kansas assistant Joe Dooley and you’ve got the comments from Stephen, and they’re short and simple and unavoidably revisionist just due to the passage of time if nothing else. And you’ve got the comments from McKillop in the part of the companion story about final possessions, which had additional comments from Stephen, which conspicuously had no comments from Jason. And anyway there are any number of things that could be said about it.

For now, though, I want to key in on just one part. Cue Stephen:

“I got a good ball fake in, and Rush really bit on it. But Jason’s defender [Sherron Collins] got a late break when Jason came back up the sideline, and he ended up in the perfect place at the perfect time to pick me up.”

Here’s what Steve Rodgers said on the resulting thread over on DavidsonCats.com:

The mistake JR made was coming towards the ball (Curry) when it looked like Curry might not get his shot off. It was instincitve, that’s what JR always did to get the ball back and restart the offense. When JR came towards Curry, Curry had pump fake his guy but JR’s man was now close enough to Curry to disrupt Curry’s shot. This left JR open but everyone, including JR would rather have had Curry take the shot.

That’s what I saw.

That’s what he saw because that’s what happened.

From the book:

Jason was in the right corner. He watched Stephen stop going to his left and turn and start heading to his right and toward Thomas' second screen near the top of the key.

Six seconds.

Jason watched Chalmers duck past Thomas and chase Stephen, and he watched Rush get up off the floor and start chasing Stephen, too.

Five seconds.

Jason decided he had to move, because he didn’t want this game to end with him just standing there, and if he stayed in the corner he would be doing nothing. He didn’t want to be watching.

He wanted to help.

You could stop there. Or ...

Jason started running toward Stephen.

Four seconds.

Stephen pump-faked and Rush jumped up and off to the side. Maybe here was a sliver of an opening for a shot. But Jason’s defender was running after Jason and left him now and bolted toward Stephen. He had his arms straight up.

The opening closed.

Do you want to end on help? Or do you want to end on closed? That moment within that moment always has been difficult to parse. I wrote it the way I wrote it because of what I knew and I knew what I knew because of the reporting I’d done. The reader as always can and should think whatever he or she wants to think.

In any event I like what Eddie wrote on the board:

I get the feeling JRich thinks we don’t complain about the missed shot because we're just being nice or something. That’s not true. We don’t complain about the missed shot because there isn’t a soul among us who thinks he is to “blame” for anything. What we remember, as we should, is that he’s a huge reason why we were there ...

It’s like William said so beautifully early in the week right after: ... in that moment, we had in our hearts and minds, proleptically I think the theologians would say, the joy of having it go in. Before it was not in, it was as good as in. For that fraction of a second, we had that experience, and it is enough. It is well worth the journey. At least for me it is, and I guess the ultimate point of this too-long post is that I hope it is also worth it for Jason. He took the shot. He gave us that moment. He trusted, and all we can do is be sure our reaction is worthy of that trust.

Super Bowl XLIV

Story in this morning’s paper.

Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

Ellicott City, Md.

Cornell’s Jon Jaques

On The Quad blog: “... a tough Davidson team ...” The Moment on The Quad.

Snow in North Carolina

Pretty place out there

Here in Seattle

‘And so now here’s this part’

Lots of things made March 2008 so special. Lots and lots and lots. So to start a sentence with “What made March 2008 so special ...” is sort of folly upfront. But let me try it anyway.

What made March 2008 so special is that it came at the end of a season-long effort that had started at 4-6 and at the end of a two-decade-long effort that had started at 4-24. Implicit in that story for those who chose to see it as such were lessons involving work, and faith, and humility.

Those 10 days, those three wins, that one loss -- it was all so powerful to see where they were because we knew where they’d been.

The rainy night in Anderson, S.C.? Remember that?

The handouts McKillop gave to Jason Zimmerman back in 1994? Remember that?

The “sometimes you learn lessons from losing” ... ? Remember that?

The “walk humbly with your God” ... ? Remember that?

From pages 47 and 48:

Months later, William Robertson, Davidson Class of 1975 and the chaplain at the state mental hospital in Morganton, North Carolina, would wonder whether people aren’t somehow hard-wired to be attracted to stories that contain moments like this. They tell a truth in the end.

From struggle comes patience. From patience comes experience. From experience comes hope.

And hope?

Hope does not disappoint.

That, he said, is the theology of the cross. It’s Romans 5. ...

This was how he came to see sports. The experience of caring about a team existed to examine how people dealt with disappointment and defeat.

There are of course all sorts of saws that say the same thing. McKillop has plenty of them. “Proud peacock today, feather duster tomorrow ...” Here’s a version for right now for this blog: Sometimes you score 20 points on Thursday and then you can’t hit a thing come Saturday. I’m only 32 years old, so I don’t know much, but I do know that.

It’s all the same big story, round and round, never not, and so now here’s this part. Here’s 2-6. Here’s 18.8 percent shooting in the first half. Here’s having the College of Charleston students mock you in the second by chanting the name of your former teammate, your former roommate, your friend.

Somewhere inside the bad stuff is where the good stuff starts. We know this because we’ve experienced this. Remember?

Bye for now

I love Charleston, it’s one of my absolute favorite cities south of the Mason-Dixon, and for Davidson basketball over the last few years it’s been a good second home of sorts, but at this point I believe it’s about time to go see somewhere else.

At The Citadel

Cape Canaveral

Here for the shuttle landing.

Cocoa Beach

Left from Saturday

Somewhere in Indiana

Early morning in Middle America on the way to see the Wildcats.

Here at Hinkle

On emotional investments

Here’s Kyle over at The Mid-Majority:

When I hung up, I sat alone on the couch with an weird feeling in my gut and chest. I didn’t ride the whole ride, so I didn’t get the full high. I didn’t deserve to celebrate at all.

Makes me think of when I met with Brandon Williams in New York in June of ’08 for the book. He said that during those 10 days in March he kept getting asked: Did you EVER think THIS would happen? Maybe most people thought he’d say, No, never, but his answer, he said, was the opposite: Yes, always.

Brandon, Class of ’96, who came to Davidson via rural Louisiana by way of Phillips Exeter, committed to play for Bob McKillop when Bob McKillop was coming off a 4-24 season. By Brandon’s senior year the team went undefeated in the league. And by March of ’08, by that weekend in Detroit, by the night before the game against Kansas, he went to visit his old coach in his room there at the Dearborn Inn, and he knew what his old coach was feeling, he could see it and he could hear it, because he knew what he was feeling, too. Because he knew where they had been.

Did Brandon EVER think THIS would happen?

Yes, he told people. This was the whole point.

Says Kyle:

If you have a true understanding of loss, you’re better equipped to recognize victory -- whether it comes or not.