Dave’s dozen can dream again
High in the rafters of Madison Square Garden back in January, the extraordinary athleticism of the Knicks and the Spurs was almost lost in “the show”. Cheerleaders, acrobats, singers and hotdogs fought for billing with giants like Tim Duncan and Amar’e Stoudemire. Magicians like Tony Parker and Raymond Felton cast as chorus line to the main event; the razzmatazz.
In contrast, stripped to its bare bones by ad breaks on ESPN last Sunday night, the NBA came alive. Enormous, powerful men performing ballerina pirouettes to gain inches of leeway. Three-pointers from downtown make you gasp even harder when you can see close-up 18 stone of muscle plant a giant hand in the shooter’s face.
Unless you’re courtside with Jay-Z, perhaps big-game basketball is, like snooker, best consumed on TV. Unlike Gaelic Games or soccer, there’s little the cameras miss off the ball. The big picture is perfectly framed.
And of course the Americans never fail to deliver a movie narrative even the uncommitted can sink their teeth into. Miami Heat were the big-time punks trying to buy a title by assembling the unholy trinity of Dwyane Wade, LeBron James and Chris Bosh on 14 million bucks a year each and egos to match. Dallas Mavericks the plucky journeymen with a lanky, soft German who blew his only other chance of glory.
At three in the morning, who checks that the Mavs’ payroll is 25mil more than the Heat’s and big Dirk Nowitzki takes home $17m? And the picture panned out as you’d expect. The bad guys started brightly before James imploded and Wade’s frustration spilled over at the officials. Dirk couldn’t hit a hula-hoop early doors before he “got it done” in crunch time. ESPN’s man tidied up the narrative. “Struggling all night but great players are like death and taxes; sooner or later, they gonna git ya.”
It was gripping stuff and as the credits rolled, you wondered if there was some Irish kid watching somewhere — probably doing Peter Shilton-style stretches off the top banister to buy an inch or two — who could write his own script that would lead here one day.
Then you remember we no longer have a men’s basketball team. Or a women’s basketball team. Or an U20 basketball team. Or an U18 basketball team.
In a country with 300,000 players, decades of progress have been scrubbed because nobody has money any more.
Basketball Ireland has spent a year climbing out of the abyss, restructuring finances and management.
In March, former FAI chief executive Bernard O’Byrne came on board as secretary general. The brief involves aligning the hen’s teeth left in the Irish sponsorship market into serviceable dentures. As he took office he described the game as “the sleeping giant in Irish sport”.
The good news; we have decided to give the U16 European Championships a shot — boys and girls.
Dave Baker is head coach of the boys’ team who will travel to Macedonia next month in a hurried new beginning for Irish basketball.
Dave wouldn’t agree basketball is a TV sport. A full-time coach, every weekend he watches game after game from U10s to seniors.
He has had three months to put together a team. And a programme. “The Germans”, he says, “go into a school of excellence for a year before the Euros.”
More than 170 kids over two weeks tried out from everywhere in the country. It has been cut to 15 and Dave has weeks to get them competitive. Then break three hearts to pick 12. And here’s the rub, every last kid in Dave’s dozen will have to find two grand if he wants to represent his country next month. Lebron just earned it blinking. “You have to think we’re missing out on good kids,” Baker admits.
Not that he isn’t proud and protective of this bunch of hopefuls.
“We’re going away as a small country, pretty much at the bottom end of the food chain in European basketball. But some of these guys will come home with a voice saying, ‘I want to go again, I want more of this’.”
Then they’ll have to find a college, probably in the States, and the dream edges the tiniest bit closer. But at least somebody is dreaming again.
WHEN a journalist from another paper wrote an article this week decrying the personal abuse dished out to young GAA players on Internet message boards, some of those dismissing the topic treated her to a fair amount of personal abuse on Internet message boards. The irony seemed to be lost. But more and more GAA people are arriving at the conclusion Down secretary Sean Óg McAteer drew a couple of years ago, when he accused message boards of serving “the malcontents who wish only to snipe at people but never step up to the mark and accept any level of responsibility themselves.”
But aren’t we shooting the medium rather than the messengers?
Isn’t the ignoble practice of abusing our own ingrained in the culture of our games? Youngsters won’t read anything online they didn’t hear from the stands.
A while back Ollie Canning attributed the disappearance of one heralded Galway prospect to the up-close gripes of the mob.
“He had a couple of bad games early in his county career. He missed a few scoreable chances and lost a few tussles he could maybe have won. One day he was taken off and some of the stuff from the crowd was nasty enough. Of course that player was affected by it. And of course he didn’t go on to fulfil his potential at county level. Is it any wonder?”
We don’t have to log off to cop on.
IS Manchester United’s present really secure enough for them to mortgage it on the future? With Alex Ferguson seemingly intent on burning more than €70 million on potential over the coming days, could he be mistakenly taking the short term for granted? Sure David de Gea looks a special, if inexperienced, talent. And to all intents and purposes, Phil Jones looks to be that rarest of beasts, a big lummox who can glide — Arsenal look set to make do with just a lummox in Chris Samba.
But there were already signs during England’s U21 stalemate with the Ukraine that Jones is capable of switching off at critical moments.
And then there’s Ashley Young, who, at 26 shortly, needs something to click pretty soon if he isn’t to become, as John Giles said of Glenn Hoddle, the kind of player still regarded as promising after 50 caps. Will United have the money left to add readymade improvement to a creaking midfield?
THE ACCUSED: The Sunday Game football panellists.
THE RAP: Disrespecting Donegal.
PROSECUTION: Donegal manager Jim McGuinness: “Two years ago they were giving out we hadn’t the stomach for it, that we hadn’t the fight for it. Now they are giving out they are trying too hard, that we have too many men behind the ball. I think Donegal, with the media, is someone you can poke fun at. We deserve a bit more respect. Analysis can be clinical and critical but it is when it becomes disrespectful there is a line to be drawn.”
FOR THE DEFENCE: Is that a siege mentality we see you building, Jim?
EXPERT WITNESS: It’s a long-established tradition in Irish punditry, through Dunphy, Hook, Brolly, Spillane et al, that you play the man and not the ball.
VERDICT: Guilty. The sneering line there was no man of the match in the Donegal-Antrim game was demeaning to the winner. Lighten up, lads.
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