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Author: David Shama

David Shama is a former sports editor and columnist with local publications. His writing and reporting experiences include covering the Minnesota Vikings, Minnesota Twins, Minnesota Timberwolves and Minnesota Gophers. Shama’s career experiences also include sports marketing. He is the former Marketing Director of the Minnesota North Stars of the NHL. He is also the former Marketing Director of the United States Tennis Association’s Northern Section. A native of Minneapolis, Shama has been part of the community his entire life. He is a graduate of the University of Minnesota where he majored in journalism. He also has a Master’s degree in education from the University of St. Thomas. He was a member of the Governor’s NBA’s Task Force to help create interest in bringing pro basketball to town in the 1980s.

Great Read Makes Vacation Better

Posted on March 1, 2023March 1, 2023 by David Shama

 

There are countless ways to make a February vacation away from the Great North a pleasurable experience. Always on my entertainment list is a superb book.  As of late, I have reveled in a terrific basketball read: Wish it Lasted Forever: Life with the Larry Bird Celtics by Dan Shaughnessy.

Shaughnessy was the Boston Globe beat reporter on those wonderful Celtic teams from 1982-1986.  He didn’t cover Bird’s first NBA title team in 1981, but he was on the scene for the 1984 and 1986 championship seasons.  His book has Minnesota connections and is so compelling I was nostalgic reading it.

I traveled to Boston in the spring of 1986 on behalf of the Gund brothers’ organization that owned the NHL North Stars and operated the Met Center.  I made the trip to meet with Celtic management regarding the team’s participation in a potential exhibition game at Met Center.

The Celtics provided tickets for my wife and me to watch an NBA finals game at legendary Boston Garden.  The Garden, built in the late 1920’s, didn’t have air conditioning and the old building felt like a sauna for the Celtics, Houston Rockets and fans fortunate enough to be in attendance that night.

The Celtics were always alert for gamesmanship that might turn a game or series in their favor. During the 1984 championship series against the hated Lakers, the Celtics were accused of turning the Garden heating system on in the antiquated Los Angeles locker room during a warm spring in Boston.  Part of the lore, too, was the showers ran cold water in the Laker locker room.

In the 1984 series, with the Lakers leading two games to one, former Gopher and Hibbing native Kevin McHale made a play that is talked about to this day.  Bird had challenged his team’s heart and manhood after a Game Three loss and McHale showed he got the message in the next game by aggressively knocking Laker forward Kurt Rambis to the floor.  The Lakers saw the confrontation as a dirty play then and now.

What followed in Game Four was more physical play and contentious jawing including a spat between Bird and the Lakers’ Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.  Along the way, the Lakers lost their cool, with the Celtics winning in overtime.

The Celtics went on to win the championship four games to three.  “You could feel the whole thing turn,” McHale said in Shaughnessy’s book.

McHale was a rookie on the 1981 championship team coached by Bill Fitch.  I met Fitch when he coached the Gophers from 1968 to 1970.  He was often a writer’s dream and a player’s nightmare. With the media, he could be a standup comic but he was beyond hard at times with his players, pushing them to extremes and even embarrassing them.

Fitch, who wisecracked that some days you wish your parents had never met, excelled with the Gophers leading them to consecutive fifth place Big Ten finishes after 10th place finishes the two previous years.  He left Minnesota for the Cleveland Cavaliers, an NBA expansion team.  He likened the assignment of coaching a first-year team to a religious experience, noting that a lot of prayer was involved “but most of the time the answer is no.”

Fitch was a success with the Cavs, coaching them for nine seasons before joining the Celtics for the 1979-80 season. His timing coincided with Bird’s rookie season and the Celtics became a powerhouse with the demanding coach in charge.  But Fitch’s harsh style with players came at a price and by the spring of 1983 he had lost control of the team.  “…Bill had jumped a lot of ass and there was a lot of angry feelings,” McHale said in Shaughnessy’s book.  Fitch moved on to Houston where he coached the Rockets for several seasons including that NBA Finals in 1986.

K.C. Jones coached the 1984 and 1986 champions.  The view from here is he was more of a caretaker than the coach.  Shaughnessy describes how it was a player, not a coach, who made the key strategic move on using defensive stopper Dennis Johnson on Magic Johnson in the 1984 series.  And when games were on the line for the Celtics, it was Bird calling his own play.

The Celtics were a group of high basketball IQ guys.  The brain power reached its zenith with the 1985-1986 team that saw the arrival of Bill Walton. It’s a basketball lover’s dream to go back and watch the artistry of the 1986 Celtics including the cutting, passing and playmaking between Bird and Walton.

This was team basketball at its best.  Players knew their roles and how to execute them. Textbook defensive positioning, rebounding, fast breaking, ball movement, and high percentage shot selection.

The 1986 Celtics had size, skill, experience and work ethic.  All their core players had so many skills including Danny Ange, perhaps the team’s best athlete.  He was a Parade Magazine high school All-American in three sports—basketball, baseball and football.

The great Celtics of the 1980’s had camaraderie too.  They liked each other and there was constant pranking that went on among teammates.  Example: Shaughnessy writes about key reserve Scott Wedman, who was ahead of his time with dedication to nutrition and massage.  Wedman drank bottled water and McHale reportedly liked to empty the bottles and fill them with tap water.

The 1986 Celtics were not only the best of the franchise’s three 1980’s title clubs. Many NBA historians, including this one, view them as the greatest NBA team of all time.  Hands down, they are the most gifted passing team ever to play the pro game. The ’86 team was 67-15 during the regular season and won the championship series 4-2.  They were 50 and one at home during the season and playoffs.

Anyone who knew the game of professional basketball and watched that team will never forget their season for the ages. In 1986, the Celtics painted a Picasso.

Wish it lasted forever.

Comments Welcome

Maya Moore: Hero On & Off The Court

Posted on February 7, 2023 by David Shama

 

I met Maya Moore during her rookie year of 2011 with the Minnesota Lynx.  Moore’s demeanor impressed me like few other athletes before or since.  She had a warmth, a calm and friendly presence about her, but no one could have predicted that by 2023—now during Black History month—she would be remembered as both a sports and cultural hero for the ages.

Moore was a three-time college player of the year at Connecticut and won two national titles with the Huskies.  Recognized as one of the 25 greatest WNBA players ever, Moore was gifted with many basketball skills including the ability to make teammates better.  She was an indispensable contributor in the playoffs to four WNBA Lynx championships.

Maya Moore

Yes, the basketball resume is awesome but she is also extraordinary because of her high character and the exemplary life she lives as a social justice advocate. Publicly, that commitment first surfaced with the Lynx in 2016 while leading teammates in calls for change.  This was long before other prominent athletes were speaking up.

That willingness to see wrong and speak out about it was followed by her stunning decision to take a sabbatical from basketball after the 2018 season to focus on criminal justice reform.  Before Moore had reached 30 years old, and at the peak of her on-court skills, she began a journey that helped free the wrongly convicted and incarcerated Jonathan Irons.

Irons, like Moore, is a Jefferson City, Missouri native, and along way the two fell in love and are now married. Moore, who hasn’t played a WNBA game since the summer of 2018, officially announced her basketball retirement last month on Martin Luther King Jr. Day as a guest of the Good Morning America program.

Glen Taylor has owned the Lynx since the franchise’s inception in 1999.   He knows that at age 33 Moore could still be leading his team.  Several years ago, before Moore left for her sabbatical, Taylor and Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve had hoped to build the team around the 6-foot, multi-positional superstar. Moore’s departure caught the Lynx, who haven’t won a WNBA title since 2017, off guard.  “Certainly it did impact our ability to compete,” Taylor told Sports Headliners.

Yet Taylor and Reeve understand Moore’s values and decisions.  .”…It’s to be admired that she had the fortitude to take that course of action,” Taylor said.

WNBA players have long been paid minimal salaries as franchises work to develop revenues locally and nationally.  Moore reportedly earned $45,000 in each of her first two pro seasons with the Lynx.  At the time of her sabbatical, Spotrac.com listed her salary at $117,000.

After Moore stepped away from the Lynx, did Taylor and Reeve try to incentivize a return with more money?  “We chose not to do that because we didn’t think money was the issue,” Taylor said.  “When I talked to her, we talked about family, we talked about religion, we talked about many things, but we never talked about money.”

Moore made a big impression on Taylor way back in 2011 when the Lynx players were invited to his home in Mankato.  After enjoying a meal organized by Taylor’s wife Becky, players went downstairs to play billiards and other games.

Not Moore, though.

Glen Taylor

“Here’s Maya standing right next to Becky doing the dishes,” Taylor recalled.  “She didn’t see herself as something special that way. She just saw herself as that was what she would have done in her house.  So therefore, she did it here.”

The Mankato billionaire has owned the NBA Timberwolves for almost 30 years.  He’s known a lot of male and female players who have impressed him but Moore is in a special group.

“I think she was one of my favorites,” Taylor said.  “Not only for basketball skills but just being the person that she was.  The leadership she provided our team, and her own personal goals that she set for herself.  I admired that and therefore (it) probably pushed her toward the top of people that I respect.”

Maybe in the not too distant future Moore will step on to the Target Center Court one more time and have her No. 23 jersey number retired.  “I see that happening,” Taylor said.

Comments Welcome

Coach Ben Johnson’s Job Safe for Now

Posted on February 5, 2023February 5, 2023 by David Shama

 

The Gophers have been playing Big Ten basketball for over 115 years. A last place finish this winter in the Big Ten standings (all but certain) will be the program’s second straight in the basement.

That’s never happened before but the 2023 Gophers are historically bad. They have one conference win after last night’s embarrassing 81-46 loss to Maryland—the largest margin of defeat ever for a Minnesota Big Ten home game.

No Gopher team since World War II has won only one conference game. Minnesota’s record is 7-15 overall, 1-11 in league games and the Gophers are stumbling through a seven game Big Ten losing streak.

There are eight games remaining on the regular season schedule and the Gophers are expected to lose them all.  They might not but Minnesota faces an ambitious challenge trying to match last season’s dismal 4-16 conference record.

The results of head coach Ben Johnson’s first two seasons leading the program are painful and they substantiate concerns of critics about his hire as a former college assistant with no experience leading a program. But let’s be clear: he is going to be the Gopher head coach for the foreseeable future.

How long? If Johnson directs the program into a competitive position where the Gophers are contending annually for upper-level positioning in the standings, he will be a hero and working in Dinkytown indefinitely.  But if the program can’t come out of the abyss by next winter, then athletic director Mark Coyle could be thinking one additional trial year for the 42-year-old Minneapolis native.

It’s delusional to think Johnson will be terminated after this season.  The cost to buyout his contract after two years is almost $8 million.  The buyout amount (calculated on remaining years of his $1,950,000 annual salary) is reduced by 25 percent, 50 precent and 75 percent after years three, four and five respectively.

Also, Coyle doesn’t do knee-jerk reactions with coaches he hires.  Patience with men’s basketball will be the mantra for a while. This comes in an environment where interest in the program has reached apathy status and program revenues are light years from their potential in an athletic department that counts on basketball to be a cash cow to help the budgets of other sports.

Ben Johnson

Johnson’s supporters argue he has a difficult task with a program rebuild.  Previous coach Richard Pitino was fired after the 2020-2021 season, with his last team producing a 6-14 Big Ten record. Only once in eight seasons did Pitino win more than half of his conference games.

Johnson didn’t want to or couldn’t retain key leftover personnel in center Liam Robbins, and guards Marcus Carr and Gabe Kalscheur. Collectively, their talent surpasses any Johnson and staff have brought to town so far.

In the college sports transfer portal era, there is more potential than ever to successfully remake a roster in a hurry.  Johnson scored with transfers Jamison Battle and Payton Willis in 2021, and with Dawson Garcia last offseason, but overall has come up short in filling needs.

So far players coming in from high school haven’t been difference makers.  The present freshmen class is the first one Johnson and his assistants had a head start in recruiting.  The first-year group is an athletic bunch but on the court they lack cohesiveness, judgment and scoring skills.

Forward-center Pharrel Payne is 6-foot-9, the other three freshmen are 6-4 to 6-7 and are also similar in offensive abilities as shown so far.  Braeden Carrington, Jaden Henley and Joshua Ola-Joseph look athletic driving to the basket but don’t convert consistently and show minimal outside shooting accuracy.

The roster not only lacks talent and experience, but the pieces don’t complement one another. The Gophers don’t excel at any aspect of play.  Offense, defense, rebounding and playmaking are all subpar. Even the free throw shooting is atrocious, with Minnesota making 60.9 percent of attempts and ranking No. 352 in the nation.

It’s dicey to question the effort of players but it’s easier to comment on focus and mental lapses.  In last night’s debacle the Gophers made one of their 16 turnovers when they errored (against no pressure) inbounding the basketball after a made Maryland basket.  In another game, a Gopher player was backdoored three times for scores in less than 10 minutes of playing time.

As limited as the personnel is, the Gophers should be playing better than a team that has consecutive losses twice by 35 points and once by 20.  Questions can be asked about the impact of the coaching regarding ball movement, cuts to the basket, creating open shots, second chance points, offensive and defensive rebounding, minimizing turnovers, forcing turnovers, covering open spaces in the zone defense, defensive switches, lack of defensive intensity and team confidence.

Injuries have sidelined two Gophers, forwards Isaiah Ihnen and Parker Fox, for two consecutive seasons. Difficult to know what difference their presence would have made. Ihnen has averaged 3.1 points in two previous seasons.  Fox has yet to play Division I basketball after a high scoring Division II career.

As of late both Carrington and Dawson haven’t played because of injuries.  Dawson’s absence, as the team’s leading scorer and rebounder, is significant but he could play as soon as Tuesday night at Illinois. With Dawson in the lineup the Gophers defeated Ohio State and had three league losses by a combined nine points.

Evans with Gopher fan Arnie Tietz.

For the more optimistic Gophers fans, it’s wait for next year mode. That’s when hyped center Dennis Evans and shooting guard Cameron Christie arrive. Evans, perhaps the best prep center in the country, will help the interior defense a lot and Christie, a prep sharpshooter, is a welcome addition to a team that can’t shoot straight (41.4 percent on field goals, ranking No. 315 nationally).

But like they say on Wall Street, there are no guarantees for the future.  In addition to Evans and Christie, the Gophers need to add more potentially effective players.  They also need to retain the ones they have, including Battle, Garcia and the current freshmen.

It’s been suggested the Gophers can’t win for awhile because the program is too low.  But it only takes a couple of the right players and the right coaching to throw the switch, though. Quick turnarounds happen every year in college basketball.

With Gophers fans wondering if this is the historically worst of Gopher basketball, positive changes can’t come soon enough.

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