#he went to high school and played in France before the nba

[afreauxheaux]

Why am I just learning that Clint Capela speaks French???

[africanamericanpeople]

29 notable African Americans who helped change the world

From activists to entertainers to record-breaking athletes to a postal worker, 6abc shines a spotlight on the contributions of 29 influential African Americans in Philadelphia and beyond as we celebrate Black History Month.

Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander | Writer | 1898-1989

A native Philadelphian, Alexander was the first black woman to receive a Ph.D. in economics in the United States, the first black woman student to graduate with a law degree from Penn Law School, and the first African-American woman to practice law in Pennsylvania. Alexander's work and views are recorded in speeches kept in the Penn archives. The Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander University of Pennsylvania Partnership School ("Penn Alexander") in West Philly is named after her.

Richard Allen | Minister | 1760-1831

A minister, educator and writer, this Philadelphia native founded the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the first independent black denomination in the United States. He opened the first AME church in Philly in 1794. Born into slavery, he bought his freedom in the 1780s and joined St. George's Church. Because of seating restrictions placed on blacks to be confined to the gallery, he left to form his own church. In 1787 he turned an old blacksmith shop into the first church for blacks in the United States.

Maya Angelou received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from former President Barack Obama in 2010.

Maya Angelou | Poet | 1928-2014

Angelou was an American poet, singer, memoirist, and civil rights activist with a colorful and troubling past highlighted in her most famous autobiography, "I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings". She published seven autobiographies, three books of essays, several books of poetry, and is credited with a list of plays, movies and television shows spanning over 50 years. Her works have been considered a defense and celebration of black culture.

Arthur Ashe | Tennis Player | 1943-1993

Ashe's resume includes three Grand Slam titles and the title of the first black player selected to the United States Davis Cup team and the only black man ever to win the singles title at Wimbledon, the US Open, and the Australian Open. In July 1979, Ashe suffered a heart attack while holding a tennis clinic in New York. His high profile drew attention to his condition, specifically to the hereditary aspect of heart disease. In 1992, Ashe was diagnosed with HIV; he and his doctors believed he contracted the virus from blood transfusions he received during his second heart surgery. After Ashe went public with his illness, he founded the Arthur Ashe Foundation for the Defeat of AIDS, working to raise awareness about the disease and advocated teaching safe sex education. On June 20, 1993, Ashe was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Bill Clinton.

James Baldwin | American novelist | 1924-1987

Baldwin was an American novelist, playwright and activist, most notably known for "Notes of a Native Son", "The Fire Next Time" and "The Devil Find's Work". One of his novels, If Beale Street Could Talk, was adapted into an Academy Award-winning dramatic film in 2018.

"It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have."

U.S. Deputy Marshals escort Ruby Bridges from William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans, La.

Ruby Bridges | Civil Rights Activist | 1954-present

At age 6, Bridges embarked on a historic walk to school as the first African American student to integrate the all-white William Frantz Elementary School in Louisiana. She ate lunch alone and sometimes played with her teacher at recess, but she never missed a day of school that year. In 1999, she established The Ruby Bridges Foundation to promote tolerance and create change through education. In 2000, she was made an honorary deputy marshal in a ceremony in Washington, DC.

Kobe Bryant | NBA star, humanitarian| 1978-2020

Drafted right out of Lower Merion High School at the age of 17, Bryant won five titles as one of the marquee players in the Los Angeles Lakers franchise. He was a member of the gold medal-winning U.S. men's basketball teams at the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games and the 2012 London Olympic Games. In 2015 Bryant wrote the poem "Dear Basketball," which served as the basis for a short film of the same name he narrated. The work won an Academy Award for best animated short film. A vocal advocate for the homeless Bryant and his wife, Vanessa started the Kobe and Vanessa Bryant Family Foundation aimed to reduce the number of homeless in Los Angeles. Bryant, his daughter Gigi, and seven other passengers died in a helicopter crash in late January.

Kobe Bryant inspired a generation of basketball players worldwide with sublime skills and an unquenchable competitive fire.

Octavius V. Catto | Civil Rights Activist | 1839-1871

Known as one of the most influential civil rights' activists in Philadelphia during the 19th century, Catto fought for the abolition of slavery and the implementation of civil rights for all. He was prominent in the actions that successfully desegregated Philadelphia's public trolleys and played a major role in the ratification of the 15th amendment, baring voter discrimination on the basis of race. Catto was only 32 when he was shot and killed outside of his home on South Street in1871, the first Election Day that African Americans were allowed to vote. In 2017, a monument to Catto was unveiled at Philadelphia's City Hall.

Philly unveils first statue dedicated to African-American. Vernon Odom reports during Action News at Noon on September 26, 2017.

Bessie Coleman | Civil Aviator | 1892-1926

Coleman was the first black woman to fly an airplane. When American flying schools denied her entrance due to her race, she taught herself French and moved to France, earning her license from Caudron Brother's School in just seven months. She specialized in stunt flying and performing aerial tricks. Reading stories of World War I pilots sparked her interest in aviation.

Claudette Colvin | Civil Rights Pioneer | 1939-present

Colvin was arrested at the age of 15 for refusing to give up her seat to a white woman, nine months before Rosa Parks' more famous protest. Because of her age, the NAACP chose not to use her case to challenge segregation laws. Despite a number of personal challenges, Colvin became one of the four plaintiffs in the Browder v. Gayle case. The decision in the 1956 case ruled that Montgomery's segregated bus system was unconstitutional.

Medgar Evers | Civil Rights Activist | 1925-1963

Evers was an American civil rights activist in Mississippi, the state's field secretary for the NAACP, and a World War II veteran serving in the United States Army. After graduating from college with a BA in business administration, he worked to overturn segregation at the University of Mississippi after Brown v. Board ruled public school segregation was unconstitutional. Evers was assassinated by a white supremacist in 1963, inspiring numerous civil rights protests which sprouted countless works of art, music and film. Because of his veteran status, he was buried with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery.

Mary Fields | Mail carrier |1832-1914

Known as "Stagecoach Mary", Fields was the first African-American to work for the U.S. postal service. Born a slave, she was freed when slavery was outlawed in 1865. At age 63, Fields was hired as a mail carrier because she was the fastest applicant to hitch a team of six horses. She never missed a day, and her reliability earned her the nickname "Stagecoach". If the snow was too deep for her horses, Fields delivered the mail on snowshoes, carrying the sacks on her shoulders.

Rudolph Fisher | Physician | 1897-1934

Fisher was an African-American physician, radiologist, novelist, short story writer, dramatist, musician, and orator. In addition to publishing scientific articles, he had a love of music. He played piano, wrote musical scores and toured with Paul Robeson, playing jazz. He wrote multiple short stories, two novels and contributed his articles to the NAACP all before his death at the age of 37.

James Forten | Abolitionist |1766-1842

Forten was an African-American abolitionist and wealthy businessman in Philadelphia. Born free in the city, he became a sailmaker after the American Revolutionary War. Following an apprenticeship, he became the foreman and bought the sail loft when his boss retired. Based on equipment he developed, he established a highly profitable business on the busy waterfront of the Delaware River, in what's now Penn's Landing. Having become well established, in his 40s Forten devoted both time and money to working for the national abolition of slavery and gaining civil rights for blacks. By the 1830s, his was one of the most powerful African-American voices in the city.

Robert Guillaume claimed the 1979 Emmy for Best Supporting Actor for his role in "Soap".

Robert Guillaume | Actor | 1927-2017

Robert was raised by his grandmother in the segregated south but moved to New York to escape racial injustice. There, he performed in theatre for 19 years, gaining momentum and a Tony nomination for his portrayal of Nathan Detroit in Guys and Dolls. In 1976, he landed his infamous role as Benson on Soap which won him an Emmy and his spin-off, Benson for which he won another Emmy. He returned to the stage in 1990, playing the role of the Phantom in Phantom of the Opera at the infamous Ahmanson Theatre. He voiced one of Disney's most beloved animated characters, Rafiki, and can still be heard as the narrator for the animated series, Happily Ever After: Fairy Tales For Every Child.

Francis Harper | poet | 1825-1911 (died in Philadelphia)

Born free in Baltimore, Harper was an abolitionist, suffragist, poet, teacher, public speaker, and writer. She helped slaves make their way along the Underground Railroad to Canada. In 1894, she co-founded the National Associated of Colored Women, an organization dedicated to highlighting extraordinary efforts and progress made by black women. She served as vice president.

Langston Hughes was instrumental figure in the Harlem Renaissance and jazz poetry.

Langston Hughes | Poet | 1902-1967

Hughes was an American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist. Born in Missouri, he moved to New York at an early age becoming one of the earliest innovators of a new art form, jazz poetry. In the early 1920's, his first book of poetry was published and he wrote an in-depth weekly column for The Chicago Defender, highlighting the civil rights movement. His ashes are interred beneath a floor medallion in the middle of the foyer in the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem, the entrance to an auditorium named for him.

Zora Neale Hurston | American author | 1891-1960

Hurston became an American author, anthropologist, and filmmaker but as a child she was unable to attend school after her father stopped paying her school fees. In 1917 she opted to attend a public school but had to lie about her age in order to qualify for a free education. She studied hoodoo, the American version of voodoo, and found her way to Hollywood by working as a story consultant. One of her most notable works, Their Eyes Were Watching God was turned into a film in 2005.

Nipsey Hussle | Rapper, entrepreneur | 1985-2019

Born Ermias Joseph Asghedom, Hussle, was an American activist, entrepreneur, and Grammy Award winning rapper. Raised in South Central, he joined gangs to survive before eventually attaining success in the music industry. Hussle focused on "giving solutions and inspiration" to young black men like him, denouncing gun violence through his music, influence and community work, while speaking openly about his experiences with gang culture. Hussle was shot and killed a day before he was to meet with LAPD officials to address gang violence in South Los Angeles.

If you stop and look around near the intersection of Grand and Ellita Avenues, a brightly-colored mural of Grammy-nominated rapper Nipsey Hussle is sure to catch your eye.

Harriet Jacobs | Writer | 1813-1897

Born a slave, her mother died when she was 6. She moved in with her late mother's slave owner who taught her to sew and read. In 1842 she got a chance to escape to Philadelphia, aided by activists of the Philadelphia Vigilance Committee. She took it and worked as a nanny in New York. Her former owners hunted for her until her freedom was finally bought in 1852. She secretly began to write an autobiography which was published in the U.S. in 1860 and England in 1861. She lived the rest of her life as an abolitionist, dedicated to helping escaped slaves and eventually freedmen.

Cecil B. Moore | Lawyer |1915-1979

Moore was a Philadelphia lawyer and civil rights activist who led the fight to and successfully integrate Girard College. He served as a marine in WWII and after his honorary discharge, he moved to Philadelphia to study law at Temple University. He quickly earned a reputation as a no-nonsense lawyer who fought on behalf of his mostly poor, African-American clients concentrated in North Philadelphia. From 1963 to 1967, he served as president of the Philadelphia chapter of the NAACP and served on the Philadelphia City Council. Moore is cited as a pivotal figure in the fields of social justice and race relations. He has an entire neighborhood named after him in the North Philadelphia area.

Bayard Rustin | Civil Rights Activist | 1912-1987 (Born in West Chester, PA)

Bayard Rustin was an American leader in social movements for civil rights, socialism, nonviolence, and gay rights. He was a key adviser to Martin Luther King Jr. in the 1960s and was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2013. Rustin has local ties as he was born in West Chester and attended Cheney University of Pennsylvania, a historically black college. A gay man, he adopted his partner to protect their rights and legacy.

Nina Simone | Musician | 1933-2003

Born Eunice Waymon in Troy North Carolina, Simone was an American singer, songwriter, musician, arranger, and civil rights activist. Her music crossed all genres from classical, jazz, blues and folk to R&B, gospel, and pop. She learned to play the piano as a toddler and played in church where her father was a preacher. She would cross tracks to the white side of town to study classical piano with a German teacher and was later accepted into The Juilliard School. She went on to record more than 40 albums and in 2003 just days before her death, the Curtis Institute awarded her an honorary degree.

Big Mama Thornton | Singer | 1926-1984

Thornton is best known for her gutsy 1952 R&B recording of "Hound Dog," later covered by Elvis Presley, and her original song "Ball and Chain," made famous by Janis Joplin. Affectionately called "Big Mama" for both her size and her powerful voice, she grew up singing in church and eventually caught the ear of an Atlanta music promoter while cleaning and subbing for the regular singer at a saloon. An openly gay woman, she joined the Hot Harlem Revue and danced and sang her way through the southeastern United States. She played at the Cotton Club and the Apollo Theatre and continued performing sporadically into the late 70's.

Sojourner Truth | Abolitionist |1797-1883

Truth was born into slavery but escaped with her infant daughter to freedom in 1826. She then sued and won the return of her 5-year-old son who was illegally sold into slavery. In 1851, Truth began a lecture tour that included a women's rights conference where she delivered her famous "Ain't I a Woman?" speech, challenging prevailing notions of racial and gender inferiority and inequality. She collected thousands of signatures petitioning to provide former slaves with land.

Denmark Vesey | Carpenter | 1767-1822

Vesey was born a slave but won a lottery which allowed him to purchase his freedom. Unable to buy his wife and children their freedom, he became active in the church. In 1816, he became one of the founders of an independent African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church and recruited more 1,800 members to become the second largest "Bethel Circuit" church in the country after Mother Bethel in Philadelphia. In 1822, Vesey was alleged to be the leader of a planned slave revolt. He and five others were rapidly found guilty and executed.

Muddy Waters | Singer | 1913-1983

An American blues singer-songwriter and musician who is often lauded as the "father of modern Chicago blues", Waters grew up on a plantation in Mississippi and by the age of 17 was playing the guitar and the harmonica. In 1941, he moved to Chicago to become a fulltime musician, working in a factory by day and performing at night. In 1958, he toured in England, reviving the interest of Blues and introducing the sound of the electric slide guitar playing there. His performance at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1960 was recorded and released as his first live album, At Newport 1960. In 1972, he won his first Grammy Award for "They Call Me Muddy Waters", and another in 1975 for "The Muddy Waters Woodstock Album".

Phillis Wheatley| Poet |1753-1784

Born in West Africa and sold into slavery, she learned to read and write by the age of 9 and became the first African American woman to publish a book of poetry. In addition to having to prove she had indeed written the poetry, no one in America would publish her work. She was forced to go to England where the pieces were published in London in 1773. Years later, she sent one of her poems to George Washington who requested and received a meeting with her at his headquarters in Cambridge in 1776.

Serena Williams is arguably the greatest women's tennis player of all time, with 73 singles titles and an overall record of 831-142.

Serena Jameka Williams |Tennis Player |1981-present

Williams emerged straight outta the streets of Compton to become the world's No. 1 player. She has won 23 major singles titles, the most by any man or woman in the Open Era. The Women's Tennis Association ranked her world No. 1 in singles on eight separate occasions between 2002 and 2017. She has competed at three Olympics and won four gold medals.

[junker-town]

Why Gonzaga is good enough to be an undefeated national champion

Gonzaga isn’t just playing for a national championship. It’s trying to be one of the best college basketball teams ever.

A reputation is a hard thing to shake, especially when it comes to the imaginary hierarchy of men’s college basketball. A program like Indiana can go nearly two decades without making an Elite Eight appearance but still retain a thin veil of prestige with the national media and rabid local fans. Gonzaga represents the other end of the spectrum. No matter what the Zags accomplish, there will always be skeptics that discount their success because of their tiny conference and lack of triumph before the ‘00s.

There was a time when it was fair to question Gonzaga’s viability against against the elite tier of the sport. Though head coach Mark Few has led the program to the NCAA tournament in 21 straight seasons, the Zags ended seven of eight seasons without advancing past the first weekend of March Madness between 2007-2014. Ever since, Gonzaga has consistently made deep tournament runs as often as any school in America.

The Zags have advanced to at least the Sweet 16 in the last five NCAA tournaments. That includes an appearance in the national championship game in 2017 when they pushed North Carolina to the brink and came out on the wrong end of some spotty officiating. If the Zags don’t look like a blue blood in size and scale, they certainly perform like one in March.

Gonzaga enters this year’s field with a No. 1 seed next to its name for the fourth time in the last eight tournaments. The Zags are the No. 1 overall seed for the first time, but that doesn’t quite incapsulate their true power: with an undefeated record at 26-0, Gonzaga can do more than just win a national championship by running through the bracket. This can also go down as perhaps the greatest college basketball team of the modern era.

No college basketball team has finished a season as undefeated national champions since Indiana in 1976. Even teams with multiple future NBA All-Stars like John Calipari’s 2015 Kentucky squad have come up short. While anything can happen in March in a single-elimination tournament, make no mistake: this Gonzaga team is worthy hyperbole and historical comparison.

If anyone beats the Zags this year, it’s going to count as a major upset. This is how Gonzaga built a historically great college basketball team.

Gonzaga recruits at an elite level now

Few has had success in multiple avenues when he comes to roster construction. For years, Gonzaga was known for its international pipeline to Spokane, bringing over Kelly Olynyk (Canada), Domantas Sabonis (Lithuania), Przemek Karnowski (Poland), Rui Hachimura (Japan), Killian Tillie (France), and French guard Joel Ayay on this year’s team just to name a few. Gonzaga has also found success with transfers, with Nigel Williams-Goss, Brandon Clarke, Jonathan Williams, and Florida transfer Andrew Nembhard on this year’s team serving as the greatest examples.

Gonzaga didn’t need five-star recruits to become a great program. Now that they’re getting them, it’s pushed the Zags over the top.

Zach Collins was Gonzaga’s first McDonald’s All-American and one-and-done as a freshman on the 2017 team that went to the title game. Few leveled up this year by adding Jalen Suggs, a Minnesota native who was the No. 6 overall recruit in his class. From the very first game, it was apparent that Suggs was going to be a top-five NBA draft pick after one year of school. Gonzaga has had a lot of great players over the years, but they’ve never had someone as dynamic as Suggs with the ball in his hands.

Few appears poised to land an even better recruit next year: Suggs’ former high school teammate, 7-footer Chet Holmgren. Holmgren is currently rated as the No. 1 player in his class by ESPN.

Gonzaga is excellent at developing their players over time

The foundation of Gonzaga’s team remains veteran players who have been groomed to fit the system over multiple years. Corey Kispert was ranked as the No. 106 overall recruit the class of 2017. Four years later, Kispert is arguably the most dangerous shooter in the country, maybe the best senior in the sport, and is now projected as a possible NBA lottery pick.

The case can be made that Drew Timme was both an elite recruit and a player who developed well at Gonzaga. A consensus top-50 prospect out of Texas, Timme spent his freshman year backing up Filip Petrusev before emerging as one of the best centers in the country this year as a sophomore. Ayayi’s development into a double-figure scorer as a redshirt junior has also been key, giving the Zags another ball handler who can penetrate, hit an open three, and defend multiple positions at 6’5.

Gonzaga runs a pro-style offense that puts everyone in position to succeed

The Zags don’t just have the most efficient offense in the country — they have the second most efficient offense since KenPom started tracking stats in 2002. The Zags are scoring 126.8 points per 100 possessions, which is more than 2.5 points ahead of the second best offense (Iowa) in America. Gonzaga’s halfcourt offense ranks in the 100th percentile of the country in points per possession, and the transition offense ranks in the 97th percentile.

Few’s offense thrives off spacing and ball movement to open up easy paths to the basket. Suggs, Nembhard, and Ayayi all have dribble-pass-shoot skill sets and often share the floor together. Kispert is an knockdown spot-up threat, and Timme is incredible as a roll man (92 percentile nationally) and on post-ups (98th percentile).

The Zags don’t shoot a ton of threes — only 23.8 percent of their field goal attempts come from beyond the arc, which ranks No. 322 in DI — only because they typically generate wide open looks from two. The Zags’ 64 percent mark on two-pointers is the best in the country.

By the way, Gonzaga is posting the tenth-best defensive efficiency in the country entering the tournament, too.

Gonzaga is battle-tested in the non-conference schedule

The Wes Coast Conference is better than its often given credit for — it was the No. 9 conference out of 32 in DI this season, per KenPom — but Gonzaga is still head-and-shoulders above the rest of the league. If the Zags aren’t challenged much in their conference slate, they’ve made a habit out of scheduling marquee games to open the season.

This year, Gonzaga beat four teams that were ranked in the top-16 of the AP Poll when they faced them. They drubbed Kansas, West Virginia, Iowa, and Virginia through November and December with average margin of victory across was the four games of 12.75 points. Only the Mountaineers came within single-digits. Gonzaga was supposed to be play fellow No. 1 seed Baylor during the non-conference slate too, but the game was canceled due to Covid protocol.

The Zags also beat BYU three times during the regular season, and that’s an impressive accomplishment, as well: the Cougars ended the year No. 24 in the KenPom efficiency rankings and earned a No. 6 seed to March Madness.

Gonzaga checks every box as one of the great college basketball teams we’ve seen in the modern era

The Zags one of the best coaches in the country in Mark Few. They have perhaps the most effective offense of the last two decades paired with a defense that’s performed at a top-10 level this season. They have marquee wins on neutral floors against multiple top-4 seeds in the tournament. They have three All-Americans in the starting lineup, with one player projected as a top-five NBA draft pick and another projected to go in the lottery.

Gonzaga has won every game it has played. The only thing missing is a national championship.

The 2015 Kentucky squad showed us that even historically good teams can come up just short of cutting down the nets. For now, that’s the only thing separating Gonzaga from their place among the best teams we’ve seen do it in recent memory.

[sciencespies]

The 10 Best Wellness Trends Of The 2010’s

https://sciencespies.com/news/the-10-best-wellness-trends-of-the-2010s/

The 10 Best Wellness Trends Of The 2010’s

With the sun having set on the 2010s, what are the top wellness trends to take into the New Year … [+] 2020? (Photo: Getty Images)

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Every chocolate eclair has a golden lining. While the 2010’s have had its share of bogus and bad wellness trends, it’s also had its good ones. On the last day of the past decade, I covered for Forbes the Top 10 worst wellness trends of the twenty-teens. Let’s use the New Year to cover the really good ones. Now without further doggie-doo, here are the Top 10 best:

10. Athleisure, activewear, and eco-friendly apparel

“Athleisure” or “activewear” clothes are more comfortable but also stylish garbs that you can wear during athletic activities as well as others such work, going to school, attending parties, and getting arrested at protests. It’s basically melding sportswear with everyday wear, making it easier to meld physical activity with everything else. Why not? After all, many classic office-wear clothing items make about as much sense as the lyrics of the song Ice, Ice Baby. For example, neckties have little practical purpose, except to dab the tears in your eyes from your dreams being slowly crushed by your boss.

Then there are eco-friendly clothes, those that are less likely to pollute the environment. For example, they may be made out of natural fibers rather than petroleum-based clothing, which can be a source of microplastics, making oceans look like a bedazzler gone overboard, so to speak, as I’ve covered before for Forbes.

More clothing lines emerged that merged athletic activities with other activities. (Photo: Getty … [+] Images)

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9. More flexible work hours and more attention to family leave policies

While I was in medical school, an anesthesiologist once told me, “the best thing about anesthesiology is that you get into work at 6 am and then.” Everything sort of went hazy after he said that, because, to borrow a quote from the movie Jerry McGuire, he definitely didn’t have me at 6 am. Even if he had continued by saying,”they provided gold bars and sushi,” that workday start-time basically ruled out anesthesiology as a career option for me.

Fortunately, the 2010s saw increasing recognition that not everyone operates best at the same hours. On one end of the spectrum are night owls, who prefer later-to-rise-and-later-to-bed hours. At the other end are people whose sole purpose is to make night owls miserable: the early morning people, the larks. Then, there is a whole continuum of people in between. Over the past decade, more and more workplaces began offering more flex hours, allowing employees to better tailor their “on times” to their own personal working styles.

Another trend was paying more attention to having more reasonable family leave policies. Note that the words are “paying more attention to” and not actually changing them. While some organizations have responded by offering longer family leave, not all are allowing mothers and fathers much time with, you know, those living, breathing, peeing, and pooping things that have appeared in their houses and apartments. As John Oliver pointed out in this 2015 episode of Last Week Tonight, the U.S. still lags most of the world (except for perhaps Papa New Guinea) in this area:

8. Doing something about the sitting problem

Is sitting literally the new smoking, as some began claiming that it is? Not exactly, unless you are doing something really weird with your bottom. What this saying is supposed to highlight are the dangers of sitting around too much, which can lead to an increased risk of obesity and other non-communicable diseases (NCDs). The 2010s saw various trends aimed at decreasing your sitting time, such as standing desks, conducting meetings while standing, desk cycles, computer screen reminders to periodically get off of your butt, and the movie “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter” to get you moving more or out of your seat. Not all of these will necessarily sit well with time though. Standing too long has its perils too, such as back and foot issues, and people asking you to stop blocking their view in the movie theater. And if you’ve got a standing desk, you’ve got to be real careful when propping your feet on the desk.

Standing desks became a thing in many workplaces. (Photo: Getty Images)

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7. More plant-based diets

Eating more plants and less meat can be better for not only your health but also the environment. Fruits and vegetables are naturally lower in saturated fat and sodium and can be higher in sodium and many types of nutrients and antioxidants. Plus, meat production can add lots of carbon and other types of pollution to the environment, and it’s not just from cows farting. The past decade did see an increase in plant-awareness and plant-based options. Heck, there is even meat-free haggis now, which is a bit like Game of Thrones without the killing and the sex. Keep in mind, though, plant-based doesn’t automatically mean healthy. Some plant-based dishes can have plenty of bad stuff added such as saturated fat, salt, sugar, and artificial ingredients. Also, if you are vegan, don’t go acting like the Todd Ingram vegan character in the movie Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. Being vegan won’t automatically make you better than others, as this tweet references:

6. Waking up to sleep problems

What you do in bed matters, a lot. No, not that the stuff that takes on average 5.4 minutes to do with a range of 0.55 minutes to 44.1 minutes, based on a study of men in the Netherlands, United Kingdom, Spain, Turkey, and the United States published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine. Instead, I’m referring to what you usually do in bed, which is sleep or, at least try to sleep. Getting less than seven hours of sleep a night is linked to increased risk of obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes, coronary heart disease, stroke, frequent mental distress, and death. And if you are dead, you can’t do that other stuff in bed, at least you really shouldn’t. A study published in the February 19, 2016, issue of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report found that more than a third of Americans regularly fall below this seven hour threshold. While many of these sleep problems have not yet been adequately solved, at least there seems to be more awareness for now.

The increasing use of smartphones and other devices may be affecting sleep. (Photo: Getty Images)

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5. Meditation and mindfulness

And Zen there’s this trend. It isn’t a completely new trend. In fact, various meditation and mindfulness practices have been common for hundreds of years in many parts of Asia. What’s new is these practices are becoming more mainstream in the U.S. For example, my previous article in Forbes covered how the NBA has incorporated such practices into its Rookie Transition Program. Being more in touch with your mind, your feelings, and your environment can’t be a bad thing. Maybe mindfulness can help counteract another trend that’s happening on social media: mindlessness.

Here is a video from the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH) on the origins and traditions of meditation:

4. Personalized health, nutrition, etc.

Surprise, surprise. Everyone is not the same. You all don’t have the same bodies, the same minds, and the same circumstances. You all don’t like to dab. For too many years, too many people, whether its medical researchers, people trying to sell stuff like diets and medications, or people making policies and guidelines, have overlooked the individual and tried to lump people together into gigantic buckets. The 2010s saw increased realization that this just doesn’t work, that you actually have to, gasp, get to know someone before making many judgments and giving advice.

3. Talking more about mental health

If you have a bleeding arm, would you ever try to hide it or fear that someone will say, “ha, ha, that’s the bleeding arm guy, look at how bleeding his arm is.” Similarly, hiding mental health issues for fear of stigma and social and career implications makes little sense. You can’t address an issue if you don’t know about it. The 2010s had a number of athletes, movie and television stars, and other celebrities be more frank about their mental health challenges. For example, in this Today show segment, celebrities Carson Daly, Kristen Bell, Ryan Reynolds, Kevin Love and Michael Phelps discuss their anxiety, depression and other mental health challenges:

2. Efforts to increase sports participation and make it more inclusive.

Physical inactivity has become a major worldwide problem that’s gotten worse in the 2010s. Sport participation, especially among kids, dropped in the 2000s and much of the 2010’s with sports becoming too expensive, too competitive, and too inaccessible to play for many and a range of more sedentary activities like social media and putting Tide Pods in your mouth competing for attention.

But there is hope. The past decade witnessed increasing diversity among professional and other high profile athletes. Events like the 2019 Women’s World Cup provided a greater showcase for women’s sports:

Kosovare Asllani of Sweden (R) battles for the ball with Samantha Mewis of United States (L) during … [+] the 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup France group F match between Sweden and USA at on June 20, 2019 in Le Havre, France. (Photo by Marcio Machado/Getty Images)

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The tail end of Ichiro Suzuki’s major league baseball career, the spectacular beginning of Jeremy Lin’s NBA career, and Chloe Kim’s gold-medal-winning 2018 Winter Olympic debut got more people used to seeing those of Asian descent as top athletes.

Jeremy Lin #17 of the New York Knicks in action against Jason Maxiell #54 of the Detroit Pistons on … [+] March 24, 2012 at Madison Square Garden in New York City. The Knicks defeated the Pistons 101-79. (Photo by Jim McIsaac/Getty Images)

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The 2010s also saw more Black athletes dominate in roles, such as being an NFL quarterback, that not too long ago seemed reserved for White athletes. Moreover, initiatives like Project Play 2020, which I have described previously for Forbes, launched to increase youth participation in sports.

1.Finding ways to decrease sugar and salt consumption.

Oh sugar, who would have thought that drinking sugar water would be a bad thing? In the 2010s, there was finally a whole lot more attention paid to the dangers of adding sugar to everything. This included trying to find ways to curb the consumption of sugary drinks, such as warning labels and soda taxes, and helping people better understand how much sugar is being added to food. One example is when First Lady-at-the-time Michelle Obama worked with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to add a new category to the Nutrition Facts label: “Added Sugars.” The actual implementation of this change has been delayed under President Donald Trump’s administration.

On August 22, 2017, KIND Healthy Snacks dumped over 45,000 pounds of sugar in Times Square to … [+] represent how much added sugar American children consume each day. (Photo by Vanessa Carvalho/Brazil Photo Press/LatinContent via Getty Images)

LatinContent via Getty Images

This list certainly ain’t everything that was good about wellness the 2010s. Also, some wellness trends in the decade were a bit mixed. For example, wearables really became a thing. The good thing about these tech devices is that you can wear them on your body to monitor what you do. The bad thing is that you can wear them on your body to monitor what you do. Questions remain about the usefulness of the information being collected and the impact of others knowing this information.

Alas, 2020 is no longer just name of a television show or a perfect reading on an eye exam. It is now when we are. How many of these best wellness trends will continue and expand? You may want to sleep on it.

#News

[mitchbeck]

CANTLON'S CORNER: WOLF PACK OFF SEASON - VOLUME 5

BY: Gerry Cantlon, Howlings HARTFORD, CT - There is so much activity going on in Rangers-World that Blueshirts fans have plenty to be excited about. DAVIDSON RETURNS One of the many issues John Davidson (JD) will find on his new big desk as President of the New York Rangers will be what to do with the Hartford Wolf Pack, starting with who their coaches will be. The Rangers relieved Keith McCambridge as Head Coach the day after the regular season ended. They also handed Assistant Coach, Joe Mormina, his release as well. One of the questions that JD will need to answer will be if they continue to give the head coach just one assistant or if they return to the more standard two assistants format. And secondly, do they look from within the organization or go with a hybrid of someone from within and two from outside the organization? JD will also have look at the player personnel side at the upcoming combine in the next weeks and the NHL Draft in Vancouver to restock Hartford with better prospects going forward as part of the Ranger rebuild. The Rangers currently have 19 defensemen in the system. They will need a more manageable number to not only ensure enough depth but also not so many that the prospects don't have enough ice time to develop. Will Kevin Shattenkirk be traded, bought out or buried in Hartford? Where do Ryan Lindgren and Libor Hajak fit on the depth chart which presently has four guys making $4 million plus a year, and Shattenkirk is one of them. The talent evaluation process which has suffered greatly these past five years has to be upgraded on both the pro and amateur sides. The glaring lack of depth up top and in Hartford saw both ends have to stretch themselves and the Maine Mariners, the team's ECHL affiliates yielded only a couple of players who were AHL level players. The Pack needs to get a better set of veterans and then they need to be supported, so they can push the company vision forward, This will help lead the current batch of youngsters, as well as the new draftee crop coming by the end of June when they assemble at Rangers Prospect Camp that will be held at Chelsea Piers in Stamford after the draft. Do they have a Captain or not? The organization has traded the last four captains, leaving them to opt for just having three alternates, or do they seek to sign someone to fill in on that role? Better forwards are needed who aren't afraid of getting in front of the net. Life MUST be made harder on opposing goalies if this the Pack are to return to a high level of competitiveness. STANLEY CUP FINAL The Bruins and St. Louis Blue s finals have plenty of connection to Connecticut. The Bruins have former QU Bobcat Connor Clifton, Jake DeBrusk, the son of ex-Pack and Ranger, Louie DeBrusk, and Noel Acciari from Kent School. Two more players are on the Black Ace squad, Paul Carey (Salisbury Prep) and an ex-Ranger plus ex-Pack, d-man, Steven Kampfer. The Blues have ex-Pack and Ranger in Michael Del Zotto and Alex Pietrangelo is the nephew of former Whaler, Frank Pietrangelo. AHL CALDER CUP PLAYOFFS As expected, the Charlotte Checkers and Toronto Marlies have had a very good series. The Marlies evened the series at two in Game 4 as William Carcone factored in all four goals with a hat trick with the third one being the game in overtime. Then on Friday, ex-Pack goalie Dustin Tokarski turned in a strong performance stopping 40 of 41 shots in a 4-1 win at the Coca Cola Coliseum in Toronto, to get the Checkers to a three to two advantage in the series heading back home to the Bojangles Arena in Charlotte. Tokarski is now undefeated 10-0 with Charlotte since he was loaned by the Wolf Pack back on February 28 and unbeaten (3-0) in the postseason and this was his first start in the series. Tokarski career AHL playoff numbers are 18-7 with a 1.76 GAA, with a .935 save percentage in 25 games and a Calder Cup title with Hamilton and Norfolk. The San Diego Gulls with 12,147 fans on hand at the Pechanga Arena the best crowd so far this playoffs including NBA Hall of Famer San Diego native, Bill Walton dropping the ceremonial first puck. Unfortunately, they went home unhappy as the Chicago Wolves' Daniel Carr, the regular season Les Cunningham MVP trophy winner, scoring the game-winner in double overtime at 6:01 his fourth goal of the postseason. Carr did it again early in the third period scoring 1:27 after San Diego had tied the game at two and it broke the Gulls and the Wolves skated away from the high flying Gulls. Tomas Hyka and Tye McGinn each had a goal and assists plus Zack Whitecloud had two helpers for Chicago. Goalie Max Lagace had some superb defense in front of him for 19 saves and chipped in a goal ! Lagace became the first goalie in AHL history to be credited with or to score a goal in the playoffs. He was the last Wolves player to touch the puck as the Gulls Isac Ludestrom’s pass sailed into an empty net on a delayed penalty. Ex-Pack Adam Cracknell gave San Diego the lead early scoring in the first five minutes of the game and Trevor Murphy had two assists. The first game of the Calder Cup Finals is Saturday night. ECHL KELLY CUP PLAYOFFS In their first year at the Double AA level, the Newfound Growlers have made it to the finals to play the Toledo Walleye. The best of seven series started Saturday in St. John’s at the Mile One Centre with a 4-3 OT win on home ice. The series is a 2-3-2 playing format. Newfoundland features former Quinnipiac University Bobcat goalie in Michael Garteig in 18 playoff games is 13-4-1 and a 2.07 GAA. He stopped 30 shots in Game 1 and saw his shutout string end at 123:28. Toledo has a pair of ex-Pack defenseman in Matt Register in 18 games has four goals and 123 points and Brendan Kotyk in 18 games has one goal and four points third PM total at 32. In addition, Toledo has former Yale Bulldog Ryan Obuchowski who also played all 18 games with a goal and assist. MEMORIAL CUP The championship game on Sunday at 7 pm on the NHL Network will be a replay of the QMJHL President Cup final as the host Halifax Mooseheads take on the red hot Rouyn Noranda Huskies. The Huskies won the QMJHL in Halifax two weeks ago. The Huskies knocked off the Mooseheads Wednesday in dramatic fashion with two late third period tallies, but Mooseheads already had a bye to the final. Then on Friday, the Huskies with again two third period goals sent the OHL Champs Guelph Storm home with a 6-4 win as Felix Bibeau goal and assist paced the balanced Rouyn Noranda offensive attack. WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS Finland needed just one goal to knock off Russia in the semifinals 1-0 in Bratislava, Slovakia. Russia with ex-Pack Artem Anisimov advanced by knocking off the US 4-3 in the quarterfinals. In the other semifinal between the Czech Republic and Canada came out on top decisively 5-1 over the Czech Republic with Mark Stone scoring again and Pierre Luc Dubois son of former Nighthawk Eric was set up by ex-CT Whale Jonathan Marchessault. The Czechs had current Ranger and ex-Pack Filip Chytil, ex-Pack Petr Zamorsky and David Musil, nephew of former Rangers and Whaler Robert (Bobby) Holik. The Championship Final will be played Sunday on the NHL Network at 2pm. Next year’s World Championship in 2020 will be played in Switzerland in Lausanne and Zurich. The following sites have been announced for the next three tournaments; 2021 Riga, Latvia and Minsk, Belarus, 2022 Helsinki and Tampere, Finland before moving on to St. Petersburg, Russia in 2023. PLAYER & COACHING MOVEMENT The Rangers snagged the third Russian they coveted to come over the first was 2018 first round pick Vitali Kravtsov and goalie Igor Shesterkin. The prize they landed left-handed, 6’3, 225-pounder, Yegor Rykov, from HK Sochi (Russia-KHL). Rykov who averaged nearly 20 minutes of time last year and was signed to a two-year two-way ELC deal worth ($925K-NHL/$70K-AHL). He played four years in the KHL in 157 games five goals and 33 points with a plus-19 rating and won a Gargarin Cup with SKA St, Petersburg along with Shesterkin in 2016-17.  He played for the Russian WJC team in 2017 was first among defenseman in assists and second in total points only Thomas Chabot (Ottawa) had more. He was drafted by the Devils in the fifth round (132nd overall) in 2016 Rykov was a first round pick (tenth overall) in the 2014 KHL Draft. The Rangers acquired him from the Devils along with a second-round pick in last year’s draft in the Michal Grabner deal. AHL players moving on to Europe now has seen at least one player from half the league’s team depart next season overseas. The latest to change his address to overseas is Peter Holland, the ex-Pack, who was traded to Rockford, signs with Avtomobilist Yekaterinburg (Russia-KHL). Then Jacob Forsbacka-Karlsson of the Providence Bruins heads back home to Vaxjo (Sweden-SHL). Jake Chelios, the son of former NHL’er, Chris Chelios, leaves Grand Rapids and heads to Kunlun Red Star (China-KHL). Kevin Ekman-Larsson, the younger brother of the Coyotes' Oliver Ekman-Larsson, returns home as well. He leaves Tucson for BIK Karlsroga (Sweden-Allsvenskan) and Max Kammerer leaves Hershey for Dusseldorfer EG (Germany-DEL). Providence goalie, Dan Vladar, of Providence had signed with Lokomotiv Yaroslavl but saw his rights traded to HK Sochi last week. The second Sound Tigers Euro signing in a week also heads to Switzerland as defenseman Yannick Rathgeb, a Swiss native, signs with EHC Biel-Bienne (Switzerland-LNA). That makes for 23 AHL’ers to sign for Europe thus far. Ex-Pack Philip McRae heads from ERC Schwenniger (Germany-DEL) to Orli Znojmo (Czech Republic-CEL). Ex-Bridgeport Sound Tiger, C.J. Stretch, leaves Orli Znojmo for the Vienna Capitals (Austria-EBEL) Evan Richardson, a former UCONN Husky, leaves Manchester (England-EIHL) for HC Briancon (France-FREL) and former Ranger, Craig MacTavish, is the latest to depart from Edmonton. He was the Vice-President of Hockley Operations for the last four years but has now signed to be the head coach of Lokomotiv Yaroslavl (Russia-KHL). Colin Sullivan, who played his high school hockey at Fairfield Prep (CTPUB) and Avon Old Farms (CTPREP), re-signs with HC Chamonix of the Magnus French Elite League team for another season. Andrew Miller, a former Yale Bulldog, departs HC Fribourg-Gotteron (Switzerland-LNA) for Kunlun (China-KHL) where one of his new teammates will be an ex-Sound Tiger, and the son of former New Haven Nighthawk, Dean DeFazio. He is left winger Brandon DeFazio who is coming from Lukko Rauma (Finland-FEL). Ex-Pack Maxim Kondratiev re-signs with Amur Khabarovsk (Russia-KHL). Former Sound Tiger Jake Newton will make a Scandinavian switch leaving JYP Javalyska (Finland-FEL) for the recently promoted IK Oskarshamn (Sweden-SHL). The list of NCAA college players who head to Europe is growing. Alex Riche of Princeton (ECACHL) signs with Kunlun (China-KHL) while Ludvig Hoff of North Dakota (NCHC) forgoes his senior season and signs with Stavanger (Norway-NEL). The French Division-3 team Meudon in the FFFG league snared five Division III players. Of those five, three come from SUNY-Geneseo (SUNYAC). They are Anthony Marra, Arthur Gordon, and Devin McDonald. Then from SUNY-Plattsburgh, which is in the same conference, goes Antoine Fournier-Gosselin and lastly from King’s College (UCHC) Nicolas Palumbo. Tommy Besinger, of Endicott College (UCHC), played a few games with Evansville (SPHL) at the end of the season. He signs with HC Mulhouse (France-FREL) for next season. John Curran of Niagara University (AHA) signs with Coventry (England-EIHL). J.M. Piotrowski, who missed all of last season at Yale University (ECACHL), gets his degree and signs with the Melbourne Ice (Australia-AIHL). There are now 213 college players that have signed North American European deals for next season. Cooper Moore (Cos Cob/Brunswick School) who's more than likely to be an NHL Draftee next month in Vancouver, heads to the Chilliwack Chiefs (BCHL) next year before going to the University of North Dakota (NCHC) in 2020-21.     Read the full article

[blogevangelinelove-blog]

Drogas y similares otras intoxicaciones

The bar has been set high. Smooth skating, puck skills and competitive desire are complemented well by a magnetic personality off the ice. Claimed in a 2014 interview with New Yorker magazine is to be the best of all us lines up at the same position, shoots the same way and sports a similar playing style..

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[footballghana]

FEATURE: 'The man of Marseille' - why late Pape Diouf meant so much to one city

Ever since the tragic death of Pape Diouf due to Covid 19, on 31 March 2020 in Senegal's capital Dakar, a tide of tributes has flooded from all over Africa, France - and especially Marseille. BBC Africa Sport's Victoire Eyoum gives her personal assessment of the life and career of the journalist-turned-agent-turned chairman.

Ask someone who they are, and they would probably answer to you with their profession after they have told you their name.

Ask who loves that person who that person is, and you would get a completely different answer.

Pape Diouf was a journalist who wrote for La Marseillaise; the first African football agent to succeed internationally; and the first African President of a top league European football club, Marseille.

He was also a businessman and politician who was a candidate to become Marseille's mayor.

But those who knew him closely - and even those who did not know him that well - describe him as "a father, a grand-father, a god-father, a brother, an uncle, a legal guardian" as well as "a friend, a model, a mentor, a pioneer, an entrepreneur, and a maverick."

A widely-respected man, he was fiercely intelligent, and to those in his care, a good advisor: humble, wise, competent, experienced. Some saw him as a legend for what he achieved - the pride of Africa.

Some of the tributes have mentioned his love of people. Others described him as an African football lover, or the Man of Marseille (he moved their in his teens).

Abedi Ayew Pele, one of Diouf's many clients as an agent, said "there is no amount of words to describe Pape."

Former Marseille and Cameroon goalkeeper Joseph-Antoine Bell, who was the man who first persuaded Diouf to make the switch from journalist to agent, called Diouf "The One and Only."

The journalist

Born from Senegalese parents on 18 December 1951 in Abéché, Chad, where his father was working for the French military under the colonial system, Papa Mababa Diouf - named after his grandfather - was sent to France aged 18 to follow a military career.

The young man thought he would only be joining a military school for three years before going back to Senegal. But he soon realised his father had actually signed him to join the forces based in Avignon after a stop in Marseille.

He had experienced enough already to know a military life was not for him. So he began to try to find a way to escape his father's design for his life, which is when the love story with Marseille started.

For a few years he went through several odd jobs and casual work.

But one of them, at the Post, led him to an encounter with a freelance journalist at La Marseillaise who would often discuss sports results with him.

Soon, Pape was introduced to the newspaper to start as a freelancer, and he worked there for more than a decade.

As a sport fan, and especially of basketball - his first article - handball and football, it was not long before Diouf became the newspaper's full-time reporter, dedicated to covering Olympique Marseille.

That was how he developed a special relationship with the players, the club fans, and the whole city.

"Pape arrived in Marseille young - he was a youth from the suburban neighbourhoods - and was as fully from Marseille as he was fully African and Senegalese," Bell recalled.

"So here you have this youth from Marseille's suburban neighbourhoods who goes from the young man who followed the club from afar, through being a student who became a journalist covering the daily football team training, and then becomes a close friend of the club's captain.

"So he was very much into the intimate circle of the club, more than any other journalist."

Abedi Ayew Pelé also remembers his first encounter with Diouf.

"In the nineties, when I got to Marseille, Pape was a journalist, writing for one of the biggest newspapers in Marseille. So, he was somebody who was respected across the board. And he was always very close to the Marseille team."

This closeness would later be the key for a new career pathway, as Diouf was convinced by Bell and Basile Boli to become their agent.

The common values Bell had found in Diouf were "first honesty and integrity but also - I wouldn't say the rejection of money, but the refusal of letting himself be influenced by money.

"As we know, many people change because of money. So the fact that he would consider that money had some worth but was not a value itself was something that united us.

"That encouraged me to recommend him to other players, because I knew he would not disappoint them."

The agent

At the end of the 1980s, African players were paid less than their European counterparts - often substantially less.

There were only few agents in France, and the profession had some bad reputation. That's when Pape embraced his new career and founded in 1989 his firm Mondial Promotion.

"At that time, it would have never occurred to anyone to have a black agent, because there were not many agents and no-one would have thought it could happen," Bell recalled.

"So that tells you how much of an achievement it was."

Former Ghanaian defender Anthony Baffoe - also a client - added: "He was a pioneer in terms of player management. I'm talking about real player management, especially coming out of Africa.

"For him, the interest of the players was always on position one, before he might even consider negotiating his own interest."

Word of mouth spread.

Over the years that followed, after Bell and Boli, Diouf's client list read like a who's who of the cream of African and African-origin players: Abedi Ayew Pelé, François Omam-Biyik, Rigobert Song, Marc-Vivien Foé, Marcel Desailly, Titi Camara, Habib Bèye, Frédéric Kanouté, Peguy Luyindula, Didier Drogba, William Gallas, Samir Nasri, Andre and Jordan Ayew.

But he was not exclusively about players from that background - he also took on Robert Pirès, Laurent Blanc and Grégory Coupet, for example.

"He came out to be someone who foresee my career and managed me to success," Abedi Pele said.

"He managed my children, he took them to Marseille at the age of 14… Everybody is saying that I've got wonderful children. They are well respected and disciplined in the society, but it was not me - it was Pape."

Former Guinean Liverpool striker Titi Camara remembered: "The first time I met him I was playing with Saint-Étienne in the early '90s. Pape helped us to understand there is a life after football.

"He advised us to invest our money in order to have revenues after our football careers."

Players are not the only ones to remember the impact Pape Diouf made on them and on that profession.

For agent Bernard Collignon, Diouf was "the one who opened the door to Africans in terms of entrepreneurship. He showed the way", while fellow agent Yves Sawadogo said his own desire to follow that career "came from the respect and esteem I had for this man."

"Still today, I am deeply influenced by the advices I've received from Pape. Pape knew how to read situations and more than anything he had a really deep knowledge of human beings," Sawadogo added.

In 2012, Pape Diouf was invited to the launch of La Nuit du Football Africain, a Pan-African event that rewards African football performances, as well as African initiatives and achievements. The trophy, which rewards strong action with a large-scale impact, will now be renamed the Pape Diouf Award.

The President

After 15 years as an agent, and having twice rebuffed approaches from the club, in 2004 Pape Diouf took a post at Marseille - first as general manager and then a year later becoming president.

"When you are at Olympique Marseille you are at the centre of Marseille - and this was a youth from Marseille's suburban neighbourhoods who had reached the very top in the city," Bell said.

"So it's not a surprise that today the city of Marseille pays him such a tribute. From the suburban neighbourhoods, he became the Man of Marseille. Everybody knew him."

Once in such a high-profile post - Diouf was the first black president of any top division club in elite European football - his aura began to transcend his sport.

Amadou Gallo Fall, vice-president of the NBA and Basketball Africa League president, described him as a "huge source of inspiration."

"To dare to dream, lead and execute big projects on the global stage, using the transformative power of sport to impact positive social change in our Africa, is a testament to his trailblazing efforts," he added.

Diouf himself saw his status as "a painful assessment if you look at the European society and especially the French society that excludes ethnic minorities."

He did not seek to make things about him, no matter what he achieved.

Once coronavirus is over, there will be a commemoration celebrating Diouf life and legacy.

Abedi Pele said it will be an important event for him, and for Marseille.

"I think people will see all of us there and people will see how Pape is loved all over the world. He crosses and above race, colour, religion, whatever you can name. Pape is respected across board. Pape is a big, a big, big, big personality".

Source: bbc.com

source: https://footballghana.com/

[thisdaynews]

Kim Jong Un’s Undercover Adolescent Years in Switzerland

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/kim-jong-uns-undercover-adolescent-years-in-switzerland/

Kim Jong Un’s Undercover Adolescent Years in Switzerland

João Micaelo, then the 14-year-old son of Portuguese immigrants, clearly remembered the Asian boy in a tracksuit and Nike shoes walking into 6A, a class of 22 students at his small public school in Bern,Switzerland, in 1998. The kids were already seated at their desks when the new boy was brought in and introduced as Pak Un, the son of North Korean diplomats. There was a spare seat next to João, so the new boy, who simply went by the name of Un, sat in it. The 12-year-old had a pudding-bowl haircut and the start of what would one day become a very pronounced double chin.

The pair soon became close, bonding because of their seat placement but also because neither was particularly academic. In sixth grade, classes were split into two streams, and both Un and João were sent to the group of academically weaker students. Un was embarrassed when he was called to answer questions in front of the class—not because he didn’t know the answers necessarily but because he couldn’t express himself. So João helped him with his German homework, while the newcomer helped his new friend with math. João remembers Un as quiet but said that he was very decisive and capable of making his point.

Story Continued Below

It wasn’t until years later that João and his other schoolmates from Bern realized who the new kid was: Kim Jong Un, the future leader of North Korea.

When he was announced as his father’s heir in 2010, some analysts hoped that Kim Jong Un, having spent four years in Switzerland during his formative teenage years, meant that he would be a more open-minded leader of North Korea. That he might embark on reforms that, while not turning his family’s Stalinist state into a liberal democracy, might make it a little less repressive. After all, in many ways,Kim’s time in Switzerland reveals an adolescence and education that was not so different from a typical Western one: There was a love of basketball, a curriculum that required him to learn about Martin Luther King, Jr., and Nelson Mandela and a wardrobe packed with brand-name tracksuits (jeans were still out of the question).

But these formative years, of which this is the most complete account to date, might have had the opposite effect on the future leader. Kim’s years in Switzerland, in which he was enrolled in both a tony private school and a small German-speaking public school, would have taught him that if he were to live in the outside world, he would have been entirely unremarkable. A nobody. Far from convincing him to change his country, these years would have shown him the necessity of perpetuating the system that had turned him and his father and grandfather into deities. The years also reveal some of the same interests and temperamental characteristics that would come to define the man who is the biggest foreign-policy thorn in the United States’ side. For instance, the same Kim Jong Un who had his uncle and half-brother killed was also known as a teenager for lashing out at his classmates when they spoke in German, a language that he had struggled to master himself.

Kim Jong Un was still very much a child when he departed for Bern, the capital of Switzerland, in the summer of 1996 to join his older brother Kim Jong Chol at school. He found himself in a chocolate-box picturesque city that that felt more like a quaint town than an international capital. Bern was famous for its clock tower, known as the Zytglogge, which had led a young patent clerk called Albert Einstein to discover the theory of relativity some 90 years earlier. Einstein, riding home from work on a tram one evening in 1905, solved the mystery of “space-time” that had been bothering him for years.

The August Kim Jong Un arrived in Switzerland, Mission Impossible was on at the movies, and Trainspotting was about to open. Top-of-the-line personal computers used floppy disks and ran on MS-DOS.

The North Korean princeling emerged from his cloistered childhood into this new, open world. It wasn’t his first time abroad—he had traveled to Europe and Japan before—but it was the first time he had lived outside the confines of the North Korean royal court.

He joined his older brother, who had been living in Liebefeld, a decidedly suburban neighborhood on the outskirts of Bern, for two years with their maternal aunt, Ko Yong Suk, her husband, Ri Gang, and their three children. “We lived in a normal home and acted like a normal family. I acted like their mother,” Kim’s aunt told me when I tracked her down in the United States almost 20 years later. “Their friends would come over, and I would make them snacks. It was a very normal childhood with birthday parties and gifts and Swiss kids coming over to play.”

They spoke Korean at home and ate Korean food, and the boys’ friends didn’t know that Imo—as Jong Chol and Jong Un called her—was Korean for “Aunt,” not for “Mom.”

They enjoyed living in Europe and having money. Their family photo albums contain pictures of the future leader of North Korea swimming in the Mediterranean on the French Riviera, dining al fresco in Italy, going to Euro Disney in Paris—it wasn’t Kim Jong Un’s first trip there; his mother had already taken him a few years before—and skiing in the Swiss Alps. They relaxed at a luxury hotel in Interlaken, the swanky resort town outside Bern that is the gateway to the Jungfrau mountains and home to a famous amusement park.

All the members of the Kim family had carefully constructed identities to conceal who they really were. Ri was registered as a driver at the North Korean embassy and went by the name Pak Nam Chol. Pak is one of the most common Korean surnames after Kim. Ko, in keeping with Korean practice whereby women keep their surnames after marriage, had paperwork naming her as Chong Yong Hye.

Kim Jong Chol was officially Pak Chol, and Kim Jong Un was Pak Un. But the aliases were not new. All of them had been accredited to the North Korean mission to the United Nations in Geneva since 1991, and these diplomatic documents would have allowed them to travel freely in Europe.

Under this identity, Kim Jong Un settled in Liebefeld, where the architecture is more ’70s concrete block than Alpine village. It is not dissimilar to the brutalist style of Pyongyang. Behind the main street in an “industrial alley,” as the sign puts it, next door to a large wine trading company that looks like a monastery, is Number 10 Kirchstrasse. This was Kim Jong Un’s home while he was in Switzerland. It’s in a three-story, light-orange sandstone building surrounded by hydrangeas.

The North Korean regime had bought six apartments in the building shortly after their construction in 1989 for a price of 4 million francs—a little over $4 million at the time—for the family and some of the other North Korean dignitaries living in the Swiss capital.

The apartment was more modest than what he was used to back home, with no pictures on the walls, but the teenage Kim Jong Un had gadgets his classmates could only dream of: a mini-disc player, which was the cutting-edge way to store music in the years before iPods; a Sony PlayStation; and lots of movies that hadn’t yet been released in theaters. The few friends who went to his apartment loved watching his action films, especially those featuring Jackie Chan or the latest James Bond.

In Switzerland, Kim Jong Un could live a relatively normal existence. He joined his older brother at the International School of Berne, a private, English-language school attended by the children of diplomats and other expats in the capital. Tuition cost more than $20,000 a year.

No one batted an eyelid when Kim Jong Un, sometimes wearing the school T-shirt, complete with Swiss flag and a bear, the symbol of the capital, was delivered to school in a chauffeur-driven car. Many other diplomats’ kids arrived at school the same way.

The school, whose student population today contains about 40 nationalities, touts itself as being “perfectly situated in a neutral country.” Indeed, Switzerland, famous for its discretion about everything from bank accounts to the schooling of dictators’ children, was the ideal location for the secretive North Koreans.

When the news first emerged that Kim Jong Un would be the successor to Kim Jong Il, many former acquaintances, who had known both brothers under different names and were now unsure which one had been named the successor, reported tidbits of information that were in fact about his brother. Classmates recounted how the North Korean was introverted but was relatively fluent in English, but it turned out they were remembering the wrong North Korean, “Pak Chol” instead of “Pak Un.”

One snippet—a penchant for the action star Jean-Claude van Damme—did, however, appear to apply to the two boys, both of whom apparently loved to watch movies featuring the Belgian action star. In a coincidence that would play out later, van Damme costarred in a Hollywood movie called “Double Team” with a certain basketballer called Dennis Rodman. The film came out in 1997, while Kim Jong Un was in Switzerland.

Kim Jong Un was obsessed with basketball. He had a hoop outside the apartment and would play out there often, sometimes making more noise than the neighbors would have preferred.

Every day at 5:00 p.m., when the school bell rang, Kim Jong Un would head to the basketball courts at his school or at the high school in the nearby city of Lerbermatt, less than a 10-minute walk away. He always wore the same outfit for basketball: an authentic Chicago Bulls top with Michael Jordan’s number—23—and Bulls shorts and his Air Jordan shoes. His ball was also top of the line: a Spalding with the official mark of the NBA.

Kim’s competitive side came out on the basketball court. He could be aggressive and often indulged in trash talk. He was serious on the court, hardly ever laughing or even talking, just focused on the game. When things went badly for him, he would curse or even pound his head against the wall.

From his base in Europe, he was even able to see some of the greats. He had been to Paris to see an NBA exhibition game and had photos of himself standing with Toni Kukoc of the Chicago Bulls and Kobe Bryant of the Los Angeles Lakers.

It was his mother, Ko Yong Hui, who first sparked his interest in the sport. There’s an old tale that Korean mothers, North and South, like to tell their children: if you play basketball, you’ll grow taller.

Kim Jong Un was short as a child, and his father was not a tall man—he was only five foot three, and famously wore platform shoes to try to compensate—so Ko encouraged her son to play basketball in the hope the tale was true. He grew to be five foot seven, so maybe it worked a bit.

She was thrilled to see her son taking to basketball, a sport that she believed would help him clear his mind and loosen his childhood obsession with planes and engines. Instead, Kim Jong Un’s mother and aunt soon saw that basketball had become an addiction too—the boy was sleeping with his basketball in his bed—and one that came at the expense of his studies. His mother would visit Bern regularly to scold her son for playing too much and studying too little.

She arrived on a passport that declared her to be Chong Il Son, assigned to the North Korean mission at the United Nations in Geneva since 1987, but the Swiss knew exactly who she was. After all, she arrived in the country in a Russian-made Ilyushin 62 jet bearing the insignia of Air Koryo, the North Korean state airline. The plane, which bore the tail number P882, was for VIPs only. It even had a full bedroom onboard.

All sorts of bags and merchandise would be loaded on and off the plane, watched carefully by Swiss intelligence. They monitored Ko Yong Hui closely, keeping records of everything from her shopping expeditions on Zurich’s Bahnhofstrasse, one of the world’s most exclusive shopping avenues, to her hospital bills at fancy private clinics on Lake Geneva.

They also knew who her children were. In private conversation, they called Kim Jong Chol “the tall, skinny one” and Kim Jong Un “the short, fat one.” But the new Swiss attorney general, Carla Del Ponte (who would later become chief prosecutor in the international criminal tribunals of Yugoslavia and Rwanda), had forbidden the Swiss authorities to monitor the children. In famously discreet Switzerland, they were allowed to just be children— even if they were the children of one of the world’s most notorious tyrants.

But two years into his stay in Switzerland, Kim Jong Un’s world was turned upside. His mother had been diagnosed with advanced breast cancer and was starting intensive medical treatment in France. Her prognosis wasn’t good.

The illness could also prove terminal for Kim Jong Un’s guardians, his maternal aunt and uncle.Their link to the regime, the relationship that had vaulted them into this privileged position, was becoming weaker by the day.

They decided to abandon their charges and make a dash for freedom.

So after nightfall on Sunday, May 17, Kim Jong Un’s aunt and uncle packed their three children into a taxi and went to the U.S. embassy. Only their oldest, who was then 14, the same age as Kim Jong Un, knew what was going to happen next.

When they arrived at the embassy, they explained that they were North Koreans, that Ko was the leader’s sister-in-law, and that they were seeking asylum in the United States. The U.S. government didn’t know at that stage who Kim Jong Un was, so Ko and Ri didn’t initially mention that part. They were granted asylum in the United States and settled down in Middle America, started a dry-cleaning store like so many other Korean immigrants and watching their children flourish in their new environment.

Kim Jong Un’s mother lived for another six years, dying in a hospital in Paris in 2004.

***

When he returned to Bern after spending the summer of 1998 in North Korea, Kim Jong Un did not go back to the private international school. Instead, he made a new start at the German-speaking public school in his neighborhood, Schule Liebefeld Steinhölzli. That way, he wouldn’t have to explain why his “parents” had changed.

The school was less than 400 yards from the apartment block where the North Koreans lived, a five-minute walk down the concrete staircase, past the supermarket and other shops, and around the traffic circle.

When Kim Jong Un attended the school, a cluster of two- and three-story functionally designed buildings, in the late 1990s, it had only 200 students and nine classes. The education department liked to have many small schools so that no student would have to travel too far each day.

When he first enrolled at the school in Liebefeld, Kim Jong Un started in a “reception” class for children who did not speak German, spending several months learning his lessons in German but at a slower pace with simpler instruction.

To find out more about what the young North Korean learned in school, I took the bus to Köniz one day and visited the municipality office. Marisa Vifian, head of the Köniz education department, pulled out a big white binder containing the school curriculum from the 1990s. There was the usual lineup of classes—German, math, science, health, foreign languages, music, art and sports—as well as units like “The World Around Us,” which taught world religions and cultures.

Once he finished in the preparatory reception class, Kim Jong Un joined the regular sixth-grade class.

While his friend João remembered Kim Jong Un as “ambitious but not aggressive,” according to an unpublished interview with a Swiss journalist, other students remember the new kid being forceful because he had trouble communicating. While lessons were in High German, the more formal variety of the language spoken in official situations in Switzerland, families and friends spoke to each other in Swiss German, former classmates recalled. This is technically a dialect, but to an outsider, it sounds so different that it may as well be Dutch. It was frustrating to Kim Jong Un, who resented his inability to understand. “He kicked us in the shins and even spat at us,” said one former classmate.

In addition to the communication problems, the other students tended to think of Kim Jong Un as a weird outsider, his school friends recall, not least because the North Korean always wore tracksuits, never jeans, the standard uniform of teenagers the world over. In North Korea, jeans are a symbol of the despised capitalists.

One classmate remembered him wearing Adidas tracksuits with three stripes down the side and the newest pair of Nike Air Jordans. The other kids in the school could only dream of having such shoes, said Nikola Kovacevic, another former classmate who often played basketball with Kim after school, estimating a pair cost more than $200 in Switzerland at the time.

A class photo from that time shows the teenagers decked out in an array of 1990s fashion, with chambray shirts and oversized sweatshirts, is assembled under a tree in the schoolyard. Kim Jong Un stands in the center of the back row wearing a tracksuit, gray and black with red piping and big red letters reading “NIKE” down the sleeve. He’s staring unsmiling at the camera.

Another photo taken around this time shows Kim with a smile, wearing a silver necklace over his black T-shirt and looking like a typical teenager. Another reveals some fuzz on his top lip and a smattering of pimples on his cheek.

As he moved into the upper years at school, Kim Jong Un improved his German enough that he was able to get by in class. Even the girl who got kicked and spat at conceded that he “thawed” over time as he became more sociable.

Still, he remained introverted. At a time when teenagers are usually pushing boundaries, Kim Jong Un was no party animal or playboy in training. He didn’t go to school camp, parties, or discos, and he didn’t touch a drop of alcohol.

Kim Jong Un “absolutely avoided contact with girls,” the former classmate said, adding that she never had a substantial conversation with him. “He was a loner and didn’t share anything about his private life.”

His test scores were never great, but Kim Jong Un went on to pass the seventh and eighth grades and was there for a part of the ninth grade at the high school, the Köniz education authorities confirmed.

The education that Kim received in Switzerland presented a very different worldview to the one he experienced in North Korea. Kim Jong Un’s lessons included human rights, women’s rights, and the development of democracy. One unit was even called “Happiness, Suffering, Life and Death.” Students learned about Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela, and Mahatma Gandhi. There was a strong emphasis on cultural diversity; religious, ethnic, and social groups; the rights of human beings; and standing in solidarity with the disadvantaged.

It’s hard to know what Kim Jong Un thought during these lessons. No such rights existed in North Korea. But this may not have been as jarring to Kim as it sounds because he had encountered very few North Koreans and almost none in situations outside of those that were carefully choreographed to show smiling citizens who beamed contentment at him. Kim could have told himself that his people didn’t need all those fine ideals because they were evidently very happy under his father’s leadership.

Anyway, Kim Jong Un didn’t stay at school for much longer.

One day, around Easter 2001, with only a couple of months to go until he completed ninth grade, Kim told Micaelo that his father had ordered him back to North Korea and that he would leave soon. He offered no explanation for his sudden recall.

Kim’s other friends received no such notice. The boy just stopped coming to school one day. Their teachers said they had no idea what happened to him either.

Just like that, Pak Un was gone. His classmates wouldn’t see him again for almost a decade, when he would appear on the balcony of a majestic building in the middle of Pyongyang with his father, having been crowned The Great Successor.

From the book THE GREAT SUCCESSOR by Anna Fifield. Copyright © 2019 by Anna Fifield. Reprinted by permission of PublicAffairs, New York, NY. All rights reserved.

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[junker-town]

The legend of King Handles and The Notic

The rise and fall, and rise again, of one of streetball’s greatest crews

Almost everyone who played a pickup game in Vancouver in the 1990’s tells the same story: Joey Haywood, a 6’1 teenage guard with a slender frame, innocently dribbling around multiple defenders, many of whom are at least a decade older than him. He goes behind his back in a flash, leaving another defender at mid-court in his rearview mirror. “He would just teleport and leave people behind,” says Dean Valdecantos, who used to play in those open runs.

At any pickup game, you are bound to see a streetballer who makes you jump out of your seat. Haywood didn’t just do it sometimes. He did it every time. He conquered every local court and community center run. Soon, people stopped referring to him by his real name. At the age of 16, he simply went by ‘King Handles’.

In Vancouver, that name still sparks memories, not just of his legendary game, but of a streetball movement that grew from something entirely local into a global phenomenon. The Notic was a group of young Canadian ballers who only had basketball in common at first. They met haphazardly through a pair of filmmakers. The name, The Notic, came from Kirk Thomas and Jeremy Schaulin-Rioux, the tape’s producers who took it from a track off the 1996 The Roots album, Illadelph Halflife.

The players were King Handles, David Dazzle, Johnny Blaze, J. Fresh, and Goosebumps, among many others. David and Johnny were brothers who pushed each other on the courts growing up. David was the more unpredictable one. Johnny was known for his signature low dribble (“I’ve never seen anyone dribble as low as him,” Haywood says). J. Fresh and Goosebumps were known for their freestyling moves.

What started as a pet project became a viral sensation with the help of early internet message boards. The Notic were the kind of underground success that you rarely hear about anymore, immensely popular within a tight-knit circle of streetball fans, a if you know, you know situation. Their moves were modeled in NBA Street. They were invited to cameo in movies. In time, The Notic became a massive accidental enterprise, one that threatened to slip out of control.

Before all of that though, The Notic was about a group of teenagers who loved basketball, and the creativity and individuality it encouraged. They weren’t looking for fame, and they didn’t think what they did on playground courts would translate into a financial windfall. The Notic was born out of a simple desire among a group of young men to change the way basketball was viewed and played on their local courts.

“I remember seeing this guy put the ball around somebody’s head, held the ball on his shoulders with his elbows and just made the ball vanish,” says Mohammed Wenn, who was known as Goosebumps. “I did that move in eighth grade and the guy [guarding me] was so lost he didn’t know where to look and everyone just went nuts. I felt that feeling. It was different. From then on, I wanted to feel that feeling again.”

The Notic chased that feeling together, right up to the brink of collapse. Everything happened so quickly, and just as fast, it was gone.

Joey Haywood, AKA ‘King Handles’, defending Johnny Mubanda, AKA ‘Johnny Blaze’

In 1999, a small group of family and friends gathered at the Don Bosco Youth Centre in Surrey, British Columbia, to screen The Notic, a 30-minute streetball mixtape a year in the making. The footage was grainy, but it didn’t stop several people in the crowd from jumping out of their fold-out chairs. For many in the room, it was their first time seeing Haywood and his friends show off their moves.

The Notic was meant to document a moment in time, and nothing more. The year before, Thomas and Schaulin-Rioux had just graduated from high school. After watching a copy of the first AND1 streetball mixtape that Thomas brought home from a trip to France, they decided they wanted to make their own.

A chance meeting with Haywood at the 1998 Hoop-It-Up tournament, a three-on-three streetball tournament featuring Vancouver’s best ballers, changed the direction of the mixtape. Initially, it was an excuse for Thomas and Schaulin-Rioux to make something that they could watch among friends. They brought a video camera to their own pickup games and filmed hours of footage, but no one was particularly good at basketball.

At the Hoop-It-Up tournament, Thomas and Schaulin-Rioux realized they could do so much more.

“We stumbled upon this holy grail of creativity,” Schaulin-Rioux says.

Haywood still remembers the encounter, one that would chart the course of his basketball career for the next two decades. At the time, he thought nothing of it when Thomas and Schaulin-Rioux asked if they could follow him around the city, recording him as he played. “We didn’t know what was going on,” Haywood says. “We were just playing ball. We were all like, ‘Why not? This could be cool.’”

The tape opens with the instrumental version of “Act too (The Love of My Life),” a track from The Roots’ fourth studio album Things Fall Apart, as a montage of The Notic members flashes on screen. It cuts quickly to a highlight reel backed by more hip-hop instrumentals.

The film quality doesn’t come close to the hi-def reality we’re used to. But you can see the appeal, even if you have to look closely to make out The Notic dribbling around their opponents during a night game at the playgrounds, or how the Hoop-It-Up crowd ate up every single one of King Handles’ crossovers and no look passes.

The Notic more resembled a home video for family and friends than something for public consumption. No one thought much about the mixtape after the screening. It was a fun high school project. The VHS tape would probably end up a souvenir in either Thomas’ or Schaulin-Rioux’s future homes.

Then the two filmmakers posted a 30-second trailer of the mixtape to a streetball message board. Every time they refreshed the thread, the page count multiplied. Everyone was asking where they could get a copy.

Joey Haywood

The footage made its way around the world, all across North America and to parts of Europe, the Middle East and Australia. Thomas and Schaulin-Rioux set up a website so they could accept mail orders. Thomas, working at a local video rental chain called Rogers Video at the time, collected empty cassette cases so the two could dub copies of The Notic. In total, around 800 copies were mailed. Thomas and Schaulin-Rioux realized the mixtape was becoming a phenomenon when they went online and saw bootleg copies popping up on eBay.

Suddenly, The Notic was a household name in streetball circles, both on online message boards and in Vancouver. Haywood’s childhood friend Yash Zandiyeh told him that someone had reached out on AOL Instant Messenger in hopes of connecting with King Handles so he could break down some of his dribbling moves. The request came from Estonia. “We were like, ‘where the heck is Estonia,’” Zandiyeh says. “They didn’t teach us that in geography class.”

The Notic became Vancouver celebrities.

“One kid came up to me, asked for my autograph and said, ‘you’re my favorite player in the world,’” Johnny Mubanda, AKA Johnny Blaze, remembers. “I was like, ‘what are you talking about? Michael Jordan is out there.’”

The Notic was suddenly more than just a group of basketball junkies who wanted to see themselves on tape. Fans were tracking their every move. They were beloved simply for living their regular streetball lives.

This was just the beginning.

For the group, and especially Haywood, the success of the mixtape felt like vindication for everything they believed in. They all viewed streetball as a credible way of playing basketball, to the chagrin of some of their high school coaches.

Haywood modeled his game after Rafer Alston, who rose to streetball fame as Skip 2 My Lou and later played in the NBA. But in Vancouver, Haywood’s penchant for turning organized games into his own one-on-one showcases often rubbed coaches and players the wrong way. Many saw him as undisciplined, selfish and a showboat. It didn’t matter if he was clearly the best player on the floor.

“Not a lot of people had that style of play in Vancouver,” Haywood says. “People tend to look at you like you’re playing rap ball or something. They say you’re just a streetball guy. You can’t really play basketball. You don’t really have fundamentals. At the same time, I was still killing top-level players on the court but it still didn’t matter. It was hard for me.”

Mubanda saw the criticism that Haywood faced firsthand. “We got so much hate when we were young,” Mubanda says. “That’s the one thing [Joey] has been fighting against all his life. It was love on the street, but once he brought it into the regular game, people were hating all day.”

Galvanized by critics and the success of the first tape, the group quickly got to work on a second mixtape, The Notic 2. The tape was more structured. The guys studied what worked the first time, and coordinated what moves they wanted to pull off before the cameras got rolling. Everyone had a clear idea what they wanted to showcase. When it was released, the tape sent the group’s fame into the stratosphere.

EA Sports invited The Notic to help create streetball moves that would end up on the video game franchise NBA Street, released in 2001. Today, Schaulin-Rioux still hooks up the Playstation 2 just to bust out some of Haywood’s signature tricks.

“I remember telling the guys, ‘Imagine playing a video and when I press a button I could be doing one of your moves,’” Schaulin-Rioux says. “Four months later, I was sitting with Joey and Mohammed at a motion capture event for NBA Street and we were laughing, like, ‘Wow, this is really happening.’”

The Notic were invited to play streetball tournaments in the United States, and even received boxes of shoes and apparel from AND1 as tokens of appreciation. “Jeremy and I received the package and piled everything in the back of our car and told the whole crew to meet us,” Thomas says. “We opened the trunk of our cars and shoes just fell out. Everyone lost their minds. They were in high school. They couldn’t afford any of it. Now they got to have all of this stuff. It was so cool to see their excitement.”

For a group of high schoolers, this was the apex. By pursuing their collective passion for streetball, The Notic had become stars. They thrived just by being themselves.

“There was never any business plan,” Thomas says. “The only plan we ever had was to film ourselves playing basketball. We loved basketball and we loved making videos.”

Mohammed Wenn, AKA ‘Goosebumps,’ left, and David Mubanda, AKA ‘Dazzle’

By that time, AND1 Basketball had exploded into the mainstream. Streetballers were earning a living and appearing on ESPN. Everyone in The Notic thought the same thing would happen to them.

And while opportunities came, no one in The Notic thought about how well they were parlaying their popularity into financial stability. It was cool enough to be performing streetball moves in front of a green screen for a video game franchise.

In retrospect, everyone agrees they could have been compensated better if the group had just sat down to discuss a long-term plan.

“But when you’re young,” Haywood says, “you don’t expect a whole lot.”

As the group began work on a third mixtape, even showing up to the pickup games to capture footage became a challenge. They didn’t have the time nor resources to support the work that their popularity demanded. Thomas and Schaulin-Rioux were recent university graduates with full-time jobs. Simply picking up a video camera and driving to the park wasn’t as easy as it used to be.

“I couldn’t call into work and say, ‘The weather is nice, there’s a game happening today, I’m not coming in,” Thomas says.

The ballers also started feeling less motivation to show up. Some of them had graduated high school and moved out of Vancouver. Their numbers dwindled. Those who remained in the city had their own education and bills to worry about. Pulling off dazzling dribble moves at the park wasn’t at the top of their priorities anymore.

Slowly, the group dissolved. By the mid-2000s, everyone went their separate ways. The Notic officially broke up.

Haywood wondered where his streetball career would take him next. He continued to hit local courts in Vancouver during the summer when he wasn’t traveling around the world to play in streetball tournaments. In 2008, Haywood went to Kitsilano Beach, one of the more popular beaches in Vancouver, to play pickup. A bit older now, Haywood was still the stand-out player on the court.

Playing against him that day was Howard Kelsey, a member of Team Canada’s Men’s National Basketball Team for 11 years and previously the head recruiter at the University of Victoria. Kelsey considered himself an encyclopedia of Canadian basketball prospects, so he was surprised to find out he had never heard of Haywood.

Mohammed Wenn and David Mubanda on the SkyTrain in Vancouver

What Kelsey did know was his scouting instincts weren’t betraying him. In Haywood, he saw one of the most skilled players he had ever come across locally. “He had guys triple-teaming him and he’s going through their legs and putting it over their heads,” Kelsey says. “I have never seen anybody at any level handle the ball better than him.”

As a streetballer, Haywood had proven himself in every way possible. Defenders feared him. Fans adored him. The Notic cemented his reputation. But now he was an adult who needed to turn his basketball hobby into a living. Among The Notic, Haywood was the only member who had the skills and the drive to pursue a pro career.

But organized basketball never jived with Haywood’s free spirit. After high school, he attended Langara College in British Columbia and played point guard on the men’s basketball team, but lasted just a few months. Haywood and his coach didn’t agree on his playing style. Even when Haywood felt like he was playing well, he still wasn’t getting a lot of run. Taking on a reduced role was too difficult for his ego to swallow.

“I just wasn’t used to sitting on the bench after starting my whole life,” Haywood says. “I felt like I deserved to be a starter and that was my mentality.”

For the next half decade, Haywood traveled the streetball circuit, flying around the world to tournaments, open runs and elimination challenges. Haywood tried out for AND1 and didn’t make it. He competed in a $100,000 tournament and came up short. The high school phenom was now a streetball vagabond in his mid-20s trying to figure out what was next.

Kelsey was matter-of-fact about what Haywood should do: play pro ball, because streetball doesn’t pay the bills.

“You can be All-Rucker Park,” Kelsey told Haywood. “But if you’ve never played college, the legitimacy is just not the same. You have to be legit. You have to be able to make it in college.”

Those words stuck with Haywood. Shortly after their meeting, Haywood played in a streetball tournament in Halifax and caught the attention of the Saint Mary’s University coaching staff. Ross Quackenbush was the school’s men’s basketball head coach, and happened to be friends with Kelsey, who vouched for Haywood when Quackenbush called him for a scouting report. Haywood was offered a scholarship.

“I let the coaches know, ‘Listen I’m for real, I wanted to change my style of play,’” Haywood says. “‘I didn’t want to come in here and do streetball stuff. I wanted to work on my fundamentals.’”

Haywood kept his word and became a household name again, setting Saint Mary’s single-season scoring record. In his senior season, Haywood was the nation’s leading scorer, averaging 28.8 points per game. He was first-team All-Canadian and the Atlantic University Sport Player of the Year.

The Notic crew asleep on a road trip

Mohammed Wenn

But Haywood, then 27, was graduating college at an age much older than everyone else, and didn’t have an NCAA Division I school or any professional basketball experience on his resume. He didn’t attract any interest from the NBA, and was forced to wander in search of courts again, playing for the Aalorg Vikings of the Danish Basket Ligaen, the Grindavik men’s basketball team in Iceland and the Halifax Rainmen of the National Basketball League of Canada.

Approaching his mid-30s, Haywood, who failed to make the Raptors 905 D League team at a tryout in 2016, admits he struggled to accept that NBA teams weren’t interested.

“I’ll watch some highlights, and then I’ll stop and be like, ‘Fuck man, I wish I was there,’” Haywood says. “I can see myself there. Every day I wish I’d get a phone call or email.”

But even in times of frustration, Haywood is grateful a couple of streetball mixtapes allowed him, in a roundabout way, to play basketball for a living. “It was all The Notic,” Haywood says. “None of it would have been possible without it.”

Haywood does wonder if The Notic would have continued if they had put a business plan in place, and whether he could have spent his 20s traveling around the world with the group, earning large paychecks and watching their celebrity grow over time.

“If we were more business-like and had the right manager and agent, we could have done camps, clinics, streetball tours across Canada,” Haywood says. “The Notic fell off because we didn’t know the business side of things. We never really capitalized on it. We did it for the love, which was great, but we had these tapes, and by the time we sat down to think about how we could eat off it, it was too late.”

Members of the group still kept in touch with Haywood and followed his journey. “I love King,” Mubanda says. “He just kept doing it.” The thought of Haywood carrying the legacy of The Notic by himself was hard to digest.

“I felt as though I let him down sometimes,” Mubanda says. “Before, he had a squad. He had all of us. Now, he was out there by himself.”

Although Haywood never made the NBA, and The Notic never reached their full potential, he found contentment within the career he had. Perhaps he never reached the heights of fame and success he imagined for himself once, but he proved he could persevere and thrive in both street and organized ball.

And just when it seemed like Haywood had nothing left to chase, streetball came calling again.

The Notic crew

In 2017, a hoard of basketball fans arrived at a local basketball court in Tokyo to get a glimpse of their favorite streetballer. Almost two decades after the first Notic tape made its way around the world, Haywood was there to put on a show. Later, fans in the audience asked their idol to sign DVD copies of The Notic 2 and pose for photos.

When a friend reached out about opportunities in Asia to re-enter the streetball scene, Haywood did not hesitate at all. After all these years, the passion that fueled him as a 16-year-old kid at the local community centre had returned. “It’s a rebirth,” Haywood says. “I’ve coming back to the roots of where I started.”

Joining him in Tokyo was Mubanda, who now coaches high school basketball in Vancouver. Mubanda was overwhelmed by the turnout in a foreign country. He could finally see The Notic’s legacy. “You might not be LeBron James,” Mubanda told Haywood. “But look at the impact you’ve made.”

Years after The Notic failed to capitalize on their fame, Haywood is doing it for himself. He has built an online presence and runs his own own YouTube channel, where you can still see him competing in streetball tournaments and holding clinics for younger players around the world. The Notic lives on through Haywood, who still goes by King Handles and features the group’s logo prominently at the start of his videos.

Thomas and Schaulin-Rioux have kept in touch with Haywood, and are proud to watch him carry on The Notic.

“Joey is the best flag bearer for The Notic and for streetball,” Schaulin-Rioux says. “When he steps on the basketball court, you can’t look away. When you meet him after the game, he makes you feel like he’s your best friend. He’s brought people together through the love of basketball.”

They’ve even approached Haywood about making The Notic 3. Thomas and Schaulin-Rioux envision it as one part back-to-basics Notic streetball highlights, another part retrospective of Haywood’s basketball journey over the past two decades. “There’s still a couple of streetball moves I’ve never seen anyone do that’s sitting on some Hi8 tapes at my dad’s house,” Schaulin-Rioux says.

Where Haywood’s basketball journey goes next is hard to say. But he likes the possibilities.

“When you’re a pro, you’re getting paid, but you’re not really marketable,” Haywood says. “I think this route is a lot better for me. I can give back to the guys and shape the way the streetball game is played by the next generation. I can give back now. I have so much more passion giving back to streetball than playing at the pro level.”

Haywood’s story won’t include an NBA appearance, nor will many basketball fans be able to recall his career. But that doesn’t mean he didn’t succeed.

“I’m so proud of him,” Mubanda says. “He just kept going. He kept The Notic alive. He kept us alive. Through him, we’re still living. Forget the fame. Forget whether people know us. What we had together, that was love. It was a moment in time and it was precious, man.”

[hottytoddynews]

As we speed through an always-short February – with March and its Madness dead ahead – this seems a good time for a pop college basketball quiz.

So, who is college basketball’s all-time leading single-season scorer?

That’s easy, you say: Pistol Pete Maravich.

But, no, that’s not right. The Pistol was remarkable but he does not hold that distinction.

Then, Wilt “The Stilt” Chamberlain? Good guess, but wrong. Wilt once scored 100 points in a single NBA game, but he wasn’t the most prolific scorer in a single college season.

And before you go there, it’s not Michael Jordan…or Rick Barry…or Larry Bird…or Oscar Robertson…or Steph Curry, either.

Stumped?

His name was Clarence “Bevo” Francis. He played at Rio Grande College (pronounced Rye-O Grande) in Ohio in the 1952-53 and 1953-54 seasons. He once scored 113 points in a single game.

Bevo, born on his family’s farm in Hammondsville, Ohio, grew to be 6 feet, 9 inches tall. Not only was he tall, but Bevo learned to shoot his shots at the top of his jump. That is, he developed a jump shot, something relatively new in the early ’50s when most basketball players shot a “set shot” from a standing position.

What’s more, Bevo could shoot that jumper moving to left, or to his right, or twisting around in mid-air after facing away from the basket. He used that shot to score 50.1 points a game through a 39-game season in 1952-53.

As a high school basketball star, Bevo Francis was recruited by many colleges, including big ones across the land. The exact number, Frances later said, was 63.

He chose the one right down the road, Rio Grande, because that’s where his high school coach, Newt Oliver, went to coach. Nowadays, we would call it a package deal – and what a deal it was from Rio Grande, a struggling little Baptist school of 97 students.

As a freshman, he led Rio Grande to a 39-0 record, and I know what you are thinking: Surely, this was against inferior competition. Well, some of it was. He scored 116 points in a game against Ashland (Ky.) Junior College. He averaged 50.1 points a game, but the NCAA lowered it to 48.3, taking out the games against two-year schools. The 48.3 per game is still the NCAA record, but you don’t know the half of it.

Coach Oliver was incensed that the NCAA would not recognize the record of 116 points in a game or the 50 points a game. “We’ll show them a schedule next year,” he declared.

And he did. Playing almost all games on the road – for then-huge guarantees – Rio Grande played at Buffalo, at Madison Square Garden against NYU, in Philadelphia against Villanova, at Providence, Miami, Wake Forest, Butler and Creighton.

Bevo scored 64 against Butler, 39 against Villanova, 32 against NYU in the Garden. He helped tiny Rio Grande pull off huge upsets over Providence, Miami, Wake Forest, Butler and Creighton. Bevo averaged an even 48 points a game as a sophomore.

“We challenged all the big schools and some wouldn’t play us because they said they had nothing to gain and everything to lose,” Bevo once told long-time Iowa sports writer Bob Brown. “But some of them took us on.”

Turns out, all those guarantee checks were sent back to struggling Rio Grande College and used to pay the professors. Bevo’s traveling show saved the school is what it did. Today, it’s Rio Grande University and Community College, a combined school of more than 2,000 students.

Rio Grande did play a few home games that Bevo’s sophomore season. One was against Hillsdale College. Bevo scored an NCAA-record 113 points on 38 field goals and 37 of 42 foul shots.

That off-season, Bevo Frances signed with the Boston Whirlwinds, who traveled with the Harlem Globetrotters. He was later drafted by the NBA Philadelphia Warriors, but there was little money in the NBA at the time. Besides, Bevo was homesick. He went home to eastern Ohio, where he became a truck driver, then a steel mill worker, and then a tire factory worker when the steel mill closed. Bevo Francis died of cancer in June, 2015. He was 82.

Rick Cleveland is a Jackson-based syndicated columnist. His email address is rcleveland@mississippitoday.org.

The post Cleveland: How well do you Know your College Basketball Hoops? appeared first on HottyToddy.com.

[flauntpage]

Your Monday Morning Roundup

The Birds flew across the country and took home the win yesterday against the Los Angeles Chargers. It certainly was not the prettiest of wins.

Re-live the nail-biter with Chris’s Game Thread.

As you look at some of that content in the thread and videos online today, you’ll think it was an Eagles home game, but apparently the Chargers have given up on trying to sell seats.

The crowd that did show up, predominantly Eagles fans, loved seeing LeGarette Blount’s career-long 68-yard run that allowed the Eagles to score a much-needed touchdown to aid the winning effort. It was a Herculean effort– hearing Merrill Reese calling it, is just as good as seeing.

Eagles fans came out early and supported the team and Jason Peters stopped by to sign a special autograph:

WATCH: Eagles LT Jason Peters signs wounded Warrior's leg!!

Marine tells @6abc he lost leg in Afghanistan http://pic.twitter.com/OxonU5LQdc

— Jeff Skversky 6abc (@JeffSkversky) October 1, 2017

The amount of Eagles fans in attendance, thousands of miles from Philly, resonated with Malcom Jenkins:

Malcolm Jenkins says in his 9 years in the NFL he really hasnt seen anything quite like #Eagles🦅 fans taking over today http://pic.twitter.com/xawQSJx6L3

— John Clark CSN/NBC (@JClarkCSN) October 2, 2017

The Monday after an Eagles win is always good, but it is even better when the Cowboys and Giants lose. The Redskins play tonight against the lone undefeated team left in the league, the Chiefs. The Eagles winning and rest of the division losing? I LOVE it.

Now, let’s recap what went down on a jam-packed weekend.

But first, a word from our sponsors:

Legal. Check out Krasno, Krasno and Onwudinjo when you need a workers’ compensation or social security attorney.

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The Roundup:

The Phillies wrapped up their season on Sunday, with a lopsided win over the New York Mets at Citizens Bank Park. The team’s performance in the final few weeks, mainly fueled by the talent of the young prospects, kept the Phillies from losing 100 games and also having the worst record in baseball, a title they held for a majority of the 2017 season. That belongs to the Detroit Tigers. The Phillies finished third worst.

Also, Sunday was Freddy Galvis’s 162nd game of the season, making him just the sixth Phillie to play in every game of a season.

Sunday’s season finale was also the final game for manager Pete Mackanin. The team announced on Friday afternoon that he will no longer manage the team, but will stay with the organization. Personally, I am surprised, but regardless there will be a new manager in 2018, so now what? That’s the question BWanksCB posed.

Whoever does manage the Phillies next year will coach the ballclub in the 2018 edition of the Little League Classic.

—

The excitement for the Sixers is starting to build even more after this weekend when the team held its Blue-White scrimmage at The Palestra, which featured Markelle Fultz, Ben Simmons, and Joel Embiid, with the former two actually playing in the contest. You can watch the whole thing here.

Heading into the scrimmage, at the conclusion of training camp, our Kevin Kinkead compiled some copious notes on the team.

Although Embiid did not play, he did dance:

We are live!

| https://t.co/f1zzH4KFmQ http://pic.twitter.com/tLEWOJozL1

— Philadelphia 76ers (@sixers) October 1, 2017

While Joel dabbed, Ben dunked:

.@BenSimmons25 jammin' and the people love it. http://pic.twitter.com/7uXvpP6FQO

— Philadelphia 76ers (@sixers) October 1, 2017

The Sixers open the regular season in 17 days and this video of Brett Brown mic’d up should get you ready:

Coach Brett Brown prepares the @Sixers for the 2017-18 season! #SixersAllAccess http://pic.twitter.com/cyKj6ujILr

— NBA (@NBA) September 29, 2017

While the team preps for the season, its CEO Scott O’Neil appeared on Bloomberg’s Business of Sports podcast.

—

The Flyers battled the New York Islanders on Sunday afternoon in the team’s preseason match-up before opening up the regular season on Wednesday. Now they need to trim the roster before battling the San Jose Sharks in Game 1.

Our Flyers reporter, Anthony SanFilippo, predicted who he thinks is making the roster on the defense side. The team has yet to announce the official, final roster, but did make an announcement about three players. The team tweeted that Oskar Lindblom is heading to the Lehigh Valley Phantoms to start the season and that both Nolan Patrick and Robert Hagg are sticking around as they have made the team going into opening night.

The puck drops at 10:30 p.m. on Wednesday with the Flyers starting the 2017-18 campaign on the west coast.

—

No. 4 Penn State football battled with Indiana on Saturday in Happy Valley early before pulling away with the 45-14 win. The latest AP Top 25 was released, on Sunday, and the Nittany Lions held steady at that fourth position.

Saquon Barkley, who has the be the clear frontrunner for the Heisman this season, was the subject of a great feature about what he did at a high school track meet. I covered that track meet for a local paper and it was a special moment:

Here's a story about @@PennStateFball's Saquon Barkley that you may not know. And it says plenty about the Heisman candidate. http://pic.twitter.com/9DuzvZyK9a

— Penn State On BTN (@PennStateOnBTN) October 1, 2017

The 5-0 PSU squad battles Northwestern on Saturday at noon.

—

Unlike Penn State, Tennessee football is struggling mightily and many are saying that head coach Butch Jones’s days in Rocky Top are numbered. Who will replace him? The odds on favorite is Chip Kelly.

—

LSU’s homecoming was this weekend and they paid Troy $985,000 to come play them in hopes of an easy win to keep up with the festivities of the weekend. The Tigers lost both on the field and on Twitter:

Hey @LSU, thanks for having us down for homecoming! We really enjoyed it!

— Troy University (@TROYUnews) October 1, 2017

—

Back to the professional ranks, the NFL was in London again and the Jay Cutler of old made the trip across the pond:

Jay Cutler didn't move or give a single f*** during this wildcat formation. http://pic.twitter.com/zkOZlCgEvQ

— The Comeback (@thecomeback) October 1, 2017

The Dolphins lost the game.

—

The Ravens lost to the Steelers and were booed throughout the game for their poor play. Its home crowd booed them pre-game as well, for kneeling:

—

On a somewhat related note, FiveThirtyEight broke down the political affiliation of every NFL team’s fanbase. The Eagles fanbase leans heavily democratic, compared to the rest of the league.

—

The MLB playoffs starts Tuesday night. Here is your guide for when the games are and where to watch them:

Postseason start times announced through Saturday, October 7th. #Postseason http://pic.twitter.com/PmIYErqLvl

— MLB Communications (@MLB_PR) October 2, 2017

—

Sunday was CSN Philly’s 20th anniversary:

It's our 20th birthday today, and while our name will change, our mission remains the same.

Thanks to EVERYONE who has made CSN special. http://pic.twitter.com/1dXQskuad3

— CSN Philly (@CSNPhilly) October 2, 2017

It was also the last day of CSN Philly. Today it is now known as NBC Sports Philadelphia:

🤔 http://pic.twitter.com/6oCdpHSu6B

— Kyle Scott (@CrossingBroad) October 1, 2017

—

In non-sports news…

There was a knife attack in France on Sunday that killed two people.

Nokia is bringing back its old classic cell phone…alert your parents!

Horrible events in Las Vegas.

—

Happy Monday, make it a good week!

Your Monday Morning Roundup published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv

[movietvtechgeeks]

Latest story from https://movietvtechgeeks.com/76ers-bet-big-markelle-fultz/

76ers bet big on Markelle Fultz

Markelle Fultz already has his Philly cheesesteak order down, but he was also quick to let the city of Philadelphia know that the 76ers are a playoff team now with his signing. So now the 76ers put The Process in the hands of Washington guard Markelle Fultz. Fultz, the 6-foot-4 guard, was selected No. 1 overall in the NBA draft Thursday night and joined former LSU guard Ben Simmons as consecutive top picks for the Sixers. Widely reviled and also admired, the Sixers' plan to go from worst-to-first by openly stripping the roster bare of talent to lose and gobble draft picks has resulted in Joel Embiid, Simmons and now Fultz. Embiid and Dario Saric will finish in the top three when rookie of the year results get announced on June 26, and Simmons is expected to be ready for next season after recovering from foot surgery. Embiid welcomed Fultz to Philly with a tweet - what else ? - where he proclaimed the new nickname was FEDS: Fultz, Embiid, Dario, Simmons. "He used to tweet and retweet my stuff," Fultz said. "Once he figured out I had a chance to go there, he started showing more love and everything like that." Fultz averaged 23.2 points, 5.7 rebounds and 5.9 assists in 25 games during his lone college season at Washington, excelling on a team that finished 9-22 and lost its final 13 games. Fultz led the Pac-12 in scoring, finished No. 6 among all Division I players, and was the top freshman scorer in the country. "Everyone knows what that level of talent is going to mean to us becoming a more competitive team," team president Bryan Colangelo. "We are a team on the rise in so many different ways. We are an organization on the rise in so many different ways." Could it be that Fultz's arrival means The Process is finished? "We're going to try to make the right decisions to finish this project," Colangelo said. The Sixers kept the project rolling later in the first round, striking a deal with Orlando to acquire the 25th pick, center Anzejs Pasecniks from Latvia. The Sixers gave up conditional future draft picks for Pasecniks, a 7-1 center, who could be stashed overseas and continue to develop before he is brought over. The Sixers made four picks in the second round: UCLA and Australian forward Jonah Bolden; Oklahoma State guard Jawun Evans, SMU guard Sterling Brown and power forward Mathias Lessort out of France. The Sixers roster is about full, and neither of the four second-rounders may play for them next season. But this draft was all about Fultz. Fultz, often compared to Houston's James Harden, missed Washington's final four games, capped by a Pac-12 Tournament loss to Southern California. Over the past 10 seasons, only two other freshmen had a better scoring average in college: Kevin Durant for Texas in 2006-07 and Michael Beasley for Kansas State in 2007-08. Philadelphia had the No. 1 draft spot three previous times, taking Doug Collins in 1973, Allen Iverson in 1996 and Simmons. The Sixers acquired the No. 1 pick in a deal with Boston for the third pick, plus an additional first-rounder in either 2018 or 2019. "We're going to keep driving to get it perfect," Colangelo said. "It's well on its way there." The Sixers went 28-54 this past season, after winning 19, 18 and 10 games in the previous three seasons, starting a rebuilding campaign more commonly known as The Process. Embiid had adopted the nickname as his own and was commonly introduced as "The Process" at home games this season. "This city has to feel fantastic," coach Brett Brown said. The tease of the potential ahead has caused Sixers fans to react with their wallets: the Sixers said Wednesday they have sold a franchise-record 14,000 season ticket packages for next season. The Sixers said they expect to sell out all 41 home games next season and fans can be added to a wait-list program. Consider, four years ago, the Sixers' season-ticket base at this time of the year was at 3,400. They sold a touch under 10,000 last season and have accepted more than 1,000 partial plan deposits just this week. "By adding a player of Markelle's caliber to our promising roster, we believe we're incredibly well positioned for the future," team owner Josh Harris said. "This is a tremendous night for the Sixers and our great fans." https://twitter.com/sixers/status/878045055277301761 Fultz, wearing orange sneakers made of basketballs at the Barclays Center, is a natural talent on the court that moves with fluidity and ease, and his abilities and tendencies have been dissected heavily heading into Thursday's draft. Off the court, he is exceedingly loyal to those that believe in him. "I don't think it's one thing I can't do. I think I do everything at least decent," Fultz said. He is also a fan of posting trick shots to social media. A lover of Chick-fil-A and his own homemade fried rice. His drive and humility comes from once being cut from the varsity of his high school team. "You realize he's got the chip, but he doesn't go out of his way to show it," Colangelo said. "I think there's an inner drive there and it's something that makes him special. He's motivated to prove people wrong but not in a bad way.

Movie TV Tech Geeks News

[junker-town]

How retired NBA players are helping each other survive the coronavirus

Spencer Haywood, Thurl Bailey, Dave Cowens are members of the National Basketball Retired Players Association.

Retired NBA players are more vulnerable to the coronavirus than active ones. Here’s what they’re doing about it.

Moments before the NBA suspended its season, Thurl Bailey was at Chesapeake Energy Arena preparing to call a game between the Utah Jazz and Oklahoma City Thunder that would never happen. It was a night like any other, until it wasn’t.

After Jazz all-star Rudy Gobert tested positive for coronavirus and the 18,000-plus person crowd was calmly instructed to exit the building, Bailey, who played in Utah for 10 seasons, was whisked off the court behind Jazz players and broadcast colleagues.

The 58-year-old recalls being led with about seven others into a lounge near the visitor’s locker room. There they sat, eyes glued to a television that was reporting their own surreal experience in real time. Jazz head coach Quin Snyder settled some of Bailey’s nerves when he walked in the room to brief everyone on the situation, as serious as it was. Eventually Bailey was led from that room to another, where medical professionals in protective gear, gloves, and facemasks collected his personal information so he could be tested for Covid-19.

A doctor braced him for the process by letting him know what to expect and how uncomfortable it might be, before a cotton swab was inserted into his nose and mouth. According to Bailey, it was painless and simple. Waiting for results was anything but. After they quarantined at the arena for over four hours, the Jazz spent the night in an Oklahoma City hotel. Bailey sat in his room, concern mounting as he thought about his wife and children.

“What if my test is positive?” he remembers. “Was I next to Rudy? How long was I next to him? Can you receive it if you’re on the same plane as people? All those things you start replaying in your mind.”

In the morning a Jazz employee called Bailey with good news: his results were negative. Soon after, the team flew back to Salt Lake City where they met with Angela Dunn, a state epidemiologist at Utah’s Department of Health. She went over different risk factors, explained the meaning of asymptomatic, and made strong suggestions on how they (and everyone around them) should act through the life-changing days and weeks and months that loomed ahead.

Before the season was suspended, Bailey���s daily responsibilities were not limited to his job as a broadcast analyst for the Jazz. Earlier this month, he was elected as a board of director for the National Basketball Retired Players Association (NBRPA), a 1,000-plus member organization that includes some of the sport’s most integral historic figures — former players from the NBA, WNBA, ABA, and Harlem Globetrotters.

“No one’s immune to [Covid-19], but it is a greater concern for our demographics, if you will,” Bailey says. “A lot of our players are the older generation,” Bailey said.

Right now, in the face of a crippling global pandemic, its members also represent an increasingly vulnerable and shaken segment of society that needs all the security, support, and accurate information they can find. The average member is 55 years old and over 200 of them are at least 70. All are impacted by the coronavirus, stressed over their own future, from a physical, emotional, and financial perspective.

In addition to Bailey — who previously served before he was termed out of the role due to appointment related rules — other recently elected directors include Shawn Marion, Sheryl Swoopes, and Dave Cowens. (Cowens helped found the association in 1992 with Oscar Robertson, Dave Bing, Archie Clark, and Dave DeBusschere.) Johnny Davis was named chairman of the board after spending 34 seasons as an NBA player and coach, while Jerome Williams and Grant Hill were elevated into different roles on the executive committee.

Normally, the association serves multiple functions. It’s a helping hand to members in search of new professional and/or educational opportunities. It reminds them of their own value as walking brand names, and encourages them to engage with the public in different ways. But unfortunately, our current timeline is anything but normal. The NBRPA has always expressed solicitude for its own, but right now its first, second, and third priority is to ensure the health and wellness of every member who feels susceptible.

“No one’s immune to [Covid-19], but it is a greater concern for our demographics, if you will,” Bailey says. “A lot of our players are the older generation.”

The NBRPA has been in front of the issue as best it can. All former players with at least three years service have healthcare coverage, while counseling services, scholarships, grants, and a rainy day fund for any members who are struggling to cope are in place. General awareness of these resources has been spread via email and phone calls, but this pandemic’s unpredictable scale will test mechanisms that have never been burdened by a threat this widespread and relentless.

Many members work part time and are unsure of how they’ll pay their next bill or make future house payments. Dozens have contacted the organization for assistance, which tells NBRPA President and CEO Scott Rochelle that many more may want to. “There’s probably another hundred who need to reach out or haven’t reached out but need the information,” he tells me. “So that’s guiding our efforts to date.”

Spencer Haywood, who just termed out after two straight three-year stints as the NBRPA’s chairman of the board, can’t stop thinking about his fellow members, former teammates, and friends who were suffering even before the globe was blanketed by coronavirus.

“I love them,” Haywood says. “Everybody just calls, ‘Hey can you help me with $300. I need $400, $500. I need this to make my rent. I need this to get food ... We don’t have a revenue stream. All of our guys have to work. They’re doing basketball camps. They’re traveling. They do groups. That’s how they make money ... We’re at the very beginning [of this pandemic], so I know our family, the NBA retired family, we’re gonna have some drama. I’m hoping that it’s not me. But who knows?”

Now 70 and living in Las Vegas, Haywood has done his best to stay as safe as he possibly can, stopping just short of hoarding Purell and essential groceries several weeks ago when his brother, who lives in France, first told him how deadly the virus can be. His four daughters teased him about being overly cautious, but now admit he was right to be so proactive.

Aside from his inability to resist two concerts at the House of Blues, put on by Arrested Development and Leslie Odom Jr. before everything shut down — “I couldn’t help myself!” Haywood laughs. “I went out against orders” — he’s replaced daily trips to the gym with morning yoga and five-mile walks at a nearby park.

While shuttered at home last Saturday afternoon, Haywood — a four-time NBA All-Star and ABA MVP as a 20-year-old rookie — let a few hours pass in front of ESPN’s panoramic Basketball: A Love Story documentary series, which featured his own 1971 Supreme Court case brought against the NBA that essentially allowed amateurs to bypass college and enter the NBA Draft straight out of high school. “I’m sitting there watching,” he laughs. “And I’m like ‘Damn. Pretty nice. I did some deep shit.”

As it rolled across his television, Hayward says a few friends who were also cooped up watching the same thing decided to call him: “They were like, ‘Man, I didn’t know you went through that kind of hell’. And I said ‘You were in the league!’ Man, oh man.”

But the pandemic has also emphasized a few general frustrations Haywood wants to air: “We wasted so much time in fake news and fake this, like shit, dude, if you didn’t want to be president, why did you run?”

He praises the donations made by current players to arena employees who, without NBA games, no longer have a job to do, and appreciates the players union’s unanimous vote that gave healthcare coverage to retired players back in 2016 “[NBPA President] Chris Paul has been a champion,” Haywood says. “I mean truly life saving.”

But in the midst of a broad crisis that will be felt by more former players than are currently under the NBRPA’s umbrella, Haywood also believes today’s stars should make additional contributions. “It’s a survival thing.” he says. “Think about the ones who built it for you. Who built this big conglomerate for you. I think they just don’t know. They never think about us.”

“The thing that bothers me so bad is they don’t know when it’s gonna end,” Cowens says, “Or is it?”

For the NBRPA, spring is typically a busy time of year, with college conference tournaments, the NCAA tournament, the McDonald’s All-American game, and Full Court Press, a nationwide youth clinic launched through the Jr. NBA. In the coming months, members lined up to earn between $250-500k in appearances alone. Instead, thanks to a wave of cancellations, revenue is at zero. There are still engagement opportunities being explored through NBA2K, Twitch, and social media, but the ramifications are undeniable.

Speaking appearances are another source of income for those who can leverage their name and life experience to travel across the country and meet with different people. That includes Haywood’s successor, Davis, the NBRPA’s newly elected chairman. The 64-year-old lives in Asheville, North Carolina, and normally spends his time giving talks at different colleges and universities in the area. He also sits on the foundation board at UNC-Asheville, where he’s heavily involved.

But with those opportunities no longer an option for the foreseeable future, Davis is instead staying put at his home up in the Blue Ridge mountains with his wife and son, where they’ve lived since 2009. “The warning bell has been sounded,” he tells me. “You can see the presence of what this virus has done. You can see it here in terms of how people are moving in their day to day lives. It’s different. It feels different.”

Davis is also spending some time acclimating to his new role with the NBRPA, going through the bylaws with Cowens, who lives in Maine for most of the year but has been down in Ft. Lauderdale since Jan. 10. Despite not having a full-time job, Cowens tries to keep himself busy. Last week he signed and mailed 800 basketball cards for Panini, the memorabilia company, that compensated him for the service. “It’s not a lot, but it’s enough to pay a few bills,” he says.

The Hall of Famer currently lives two blocks from the beach in a 19-story building, with 12 units on each floor. He’s neighborly, but most of the residents are on the older side, and over the past couple weeks everybody has kept to themselves.

Nights are spent out on his balcony, drinking an occasional glass of wine. When asked about the NBA deciding to suspend its season, Cowens says he would’ve liked to see at least one game played without any fans in the stands. The sound of squeaking shoes, shouting coaches, grunting players, and a natural silence that would otherwise be filled by the Jumbotron reminds him of old exhibition games that his Celtics used to play against the Knicks in upstate New York. Only 1,500 people were in the stands.

But there are more pressing matters on his mind. Now 71, Cowens is troubled by everything we don’t know about the coronavirus, how there’s no vaccine or direct word from the inflicted about how it made them actually feel. He worries about his wife. He checks up on old college buddies from Florida State, and recently phoned former Celtics teammate Don Chaney, who’s dealing with a heart condition and is likely at a higher risk than most.

“There’s so much uncertainty. If you’re feeling fine, but all of a sudden you start feeling sick, you then say ‘Am I gonna die from this?’ And so you don’t know. Young people don’t care because they’re already immune to everything in the world anyway. They’re gonna live forever. But they’re young, that’s how they think, and for the most part they’re in pretty good shape for dealing with this,” Cowens starts to chuckle. “So I don’t hang out at the clubs anymore. That’s not part of the schedule.”

No one interviewed for this story can compare such active worldwide disruption to anything they’ve witnessed or experienced firsthand. None can think of anything that comes close. It’s an unknown anxiety, like walking a plank while blindfolded from an unknown height. The future grows more murky by the day. “The thing that bothers me so bad is they don’t know when it’s gonna end,” Cowens says, “Or is it?”

He reminisces about his childhood in Newport, Kentucky. Cowens’ grandparents and aunt lived upstairs, in the same house as his parents and brother. His aunt would entertain with stories about getting to see Jim Thorpe (the only sports hero Cowens ever had) race with her own two eyes.

Cowens thinks about that time; how his grandfather lived to see his 60s despite serving in World War I and then enduring the Spanish Flu, which killed as many as 50 million people across the world. “People are going to survive,” Cowens says. That’s true. But the coronavirus will still crash into so many different lives, and so far the mortality rate for those it infects is substantially higher in seniors with underlying health issues.

Preparing for a disease that will infect and bankrupt thousands of people everyday was never in the NBRPA‘s sight line, and, frankly, it’d be a little silly if it was. Very few organizations in this country, if any, were prepared. But that hasn’t stopped them from doing whatever they can to steady the emotional wave so many are flailing through.

Right now, the organization’s primary motivation is to keep a bad situation from getting worse, and so far most retired players are doing whatever they can to limit the damage. Social distancing and self-quarantining are two examples of individual responsibility each person must take seriously. Most retired players are. The NBRPA can’t help those who won’t help themselves, but they can spread facts and manageable tactics that will save lives. The minefield of misinformation can in many ways be as dangerous as an errant cough.

Towards the end of his career, Bailey spent four seasons playing overseas. Three of them were in Italy, where he formed lifelong friendships. For the last five summers, he’s gone back to put on a basketball camp. Over the past couple weeks, Bailey has been texting with those who know firsthand what the coronavirus is capable of. They beg him to take it seriously. Given his position with the NBRPA, those around him are fortunate that he is.

“Our organization is staying on top of our members and their families to make sure they’re getting through it,” Bailey says. “It’s something that will always be etched in history. I was there. I was there the day the dominoes started to fall in Oklahoma City. In the sports world, anyway.”

[junker-town]

NBA mock draft: LaMelo Ball to the Warriors in our latest projection

The race for the No. 1 pick in the 2020 NBA remains wide open.

Who’s No. 1 in the 2020 NBA Draft?

The race for the No. 1 pick in the 2020 NBA Draft remains wide open we head into the new year. Each of the projected top prospects have failed to separate themselves from their peers in what’s shaping up to be one of the weakest classes in years. While there aren’t a lot of safe bets projected to go in the top-10, the draft is still full of intriguing young players who could turn into franchise cornerstones with the right development.

The last draft that felt this weak at the top was 2013, when Anthony Bennett went No. 1 overall to the Cleveland Cavaliers. While that draft class was full of disappointments, it did feature the best prospect of the decade at No. 15 overall in Giannis Antetokounmpo. After a slow start to his career, Victor Oladipo looks like a worthy pick at No. 2 overall now.

Every draft is full of contributors, even ones that look underwhelming on the outside. This is our projection of the 2020 NBA Draft class at the moment, with less emphasis on team fit and more importance on sorting by the best players available.

1. Atlanta Hawks - Anthony Edwards, SG, Georgia

Edwards’ first 13 games with Georgia have been peppered with fleeting moments of greatness along with maddening bouts of inconsistency. Never was this more apparent than at the Maui Invitational, when Edwards put up a clunker in the opener against Dayton (six points on 2-of-10 shooting) and struggled in the first half the following day against Michigan State, before a second-half explosion that put his star potential on full display. As Edwards finished with 34 second-half points against the Spartans, he showcased his improvements as an outside shooter (7-of-16 from three) and his playmaking defensive ability.

Such pronounced peaks and valleys shouldn’t be particularly surprising for one of the youngest and most talented players in this draft class. Edwards — who doesn’t turn 19 until Aug. 5 — has put up solid, but unspectacular, numbers thus far, with 18.8 points per game, 41.4/31.9/74.6 shooting splits, and encouraging steal (2.8) and block (1.5) rates. His tendency to settle for his jumper and a lack of focus on defense are major issues worth monitoring. That he’s become the top prospect in this class says more about lack of No. 1 overall contenders than it says about his season with the Bulldogs.

2. Golden State Warriors - LaMelo Ball, G, Illawarra Hawks

Ball doubled-down on the strengths and weaknesses in his scouting report during 13 games in the Australian league before his season was interrupted by a foot injury. He remains a brilliant passer off either hand, able to see the floor and read the opposing defense with the vision of a 10-year veteran, not an 18-year-old. He remains a major work in progress as a scorer. His paltry 47.9 true shooting percentage is a byproduct of his struggles finishing at the rim, inconsistency getting to the foul line, and Steph Curry-like shot selection without Steph Curry-like shot-making on deep three pointers. His defense can be an eyesore, with the occasional successful gamble not making up for all the ball watching and blow-bys.

Ultimately, Ball is a flawed but very good prospect because of his youth, his size (6’6, at least), and his elite skill as a facilitator. Rajon Rondo has been mentioned as a possible comparison, but Ball will draw more respect as a shooter. If he can make incremental improvements to his weaknesses along the way, he will end up as a high-impact guard.

3. New York Knicks - Killian Hayes, G, Ratiopharm Ulm

Hayes has been a long-time staple on France’s successful youth teams before moving to play in the top German league this season at 18 years old. The 6’5 guard is a big ball handler with tough shot-making ability, impressive passing craft on the move, and the size to play either backcourt spot. What he lacks in high-end athleticism and burst towards the rim he’s able to make up for with rare touch on floaters in the paint and the threat of his pull-up shooting. Through his first 25 games with Ratiopharm Ulm, he has 59 percent true shooting, a 41 percent assist rate, and a nearly three percent steal rate.

Hayes’ athletic shortcomings will come under the microscope in pre-draft workouts, but during a year when many of the top prospects are failing to produce at above-average efficiency, the young French guard is doing it. Factor in his size and his youth, and there’s a lot to like about his projection to the NBA.

4. Cleveland Cavaliers - Isaac Okoro, F, Auburn

To have Okoro as a top-10 pick is to believe he can be a special perimeter defender while his offense continues to develop. Auburn coach Bruce Pearl called Okoro the best defender he’s ever coached before he played his first game. That talent has been on display throughout the start to his college career even if it isn’t showing up yet in his steal rate. A long and strong 6’6 wing, Okoro can defend both on- and off-the-ball because of his impressive reaction time, ability to hold his own in the paint, and versatility to switch onto any position.

Isaac Okoro's defensive awareness (and overall ability) is damn good for any year player, let alone a freshman pic.twitter.com/EPgGD596hV

— Spencer (@SKPearlman) December 31, 2019

Okoro has not yet proven himself to be a dependable scorer, though he has a solid foundation of skills to build on. He’s a smart and willing passer who rarely takes a bad shot. He’s hit 66 percent of his two-point field goals so far. Teams will worry about his low free throw and three-point percentages, but those skills can be learned. His defensive toughness and versatility can’t be. There’s also this: Okoro literally did not lose a basketball game in 2019.

5. Washington Wizards - Nico Mannion, PG, Arizona

Mannion ended his high school career with a stellar performance at the Nike Hoop Summit and has continued his positive draft momentum during a productive freshman season at Arizona. A 6’3 point guard, Mannion is the best passer in the class behind LaMelo Ball, showing the ability to throw soft lobs to big men for alley-oops, zip passes to the corner for threes, and use the threat of his scoring to set up teammates for easy baskets. While his three-point shooting (35 percent on 63 attempts) has been good but not great, this is a prospect with fantastic touch from all over the court. He’s currently making 84 percent of his free throws and grades out in the 68th percentile in floaters, per Synergy Sports. On the season, he’s at 55 percent true shooting with a 35.4 percent assist rate.

Nico Mannion with constant motion to create space and then knocks down the pull-up 3. This dude is so good. pic.twitter.com/hvG9e1PUas

— Jackson Frank (@jackfrank_jjf) December 31, 2019

Mannion will likely struggle to finish at the rim against NBA length and doesn’t have the elite explosiveness teams ideally want out of a lead guard. While it may hold him back for competing for the No. 1 pick, he’s simply too good of a passer and shooter to fall out of the top-10.

6. Chicago Bulls - Tyrese Maxey, G, Kentucky

Maxey has often found himself in an awkward spot within John Calipari’s lineups featuring three point guards at Kentucky. Playing alongside Ashton Hagans and Immanuel Quickley has pushed Maxey to an off-ball role, where he’s been used to dart around screens and attack closeouts. While it might not be his ideal role in the pros, Maxey has performed well on the biggest stages, hanging 26 points against Michigan State (on 7-of-12 shooting) and 27 points against Louisville (on 9-of-12 shooting). He has shown a consistent ability to get to the free-throw line and projects as a better shooter than his current three-point percentage (27.6 percent) suggests.

Tyrese Maxey is a stud. Freezes Hammonds in semi-transition with the hesitation, finishes the circus reverse pic.twitter.com/KsUdNHMVsK

— Max Carlin (@maxacarlin) January 8, 2020

Maxey excels going to the rim on offense and gets after it defensively. He doesn’t have great size (expected to measure between 6’2 and 6’3) and isn’t the flashiest pick, but he’s the rare lottery prospect in this draft without large, apparent holes in his skill set. If Kentucky is going to develop into a national title contender as the season goes on, it’s up to Maxey to take charge and become the team’s best player.

7. New Orleans Pelicans - Deni Avdija, F, Maccabi FOX Tel Aviv

Avdija is a 6’9 forward who put himself on NBA radars with a track record of strong play for Maccabi FOX Tel Aviv and for Israel at the U20 European Championships. Playing in Euroleague this season, Avdija — who just turned 19 years old — is having an inconsistent campaign with some intriguing flashes of what he could one day become. Passing and ball handling are Avdija’s best skills. He loves handling the ball and making plays in the open court, which helped him average 5.3 assists per game during his MVP run at the U20 Championships.

deni avdija's combo of size, handle, paint touch, and solid burst+application of strength as a scorer feel like they've gone kind of underrated in this class. breaks down yves pons and finishes with a floater: pic.twitter.com/j5EHubZyvJ

— ricky (@scricca1) January 5, 2020

Shooting is Avdija’s swing skill after making only 28.6 percent of his threes and 60 percent of his free throws in the U20 Championships. Teams will hope his shot comes along and he can develop into a dribble/pass/shoot forward with great size who can fit into any lineup.

8. Detroit Pistons - Cole Anthony, PG, North Carolina

Anthony was supposed to be college basketball’s most impactful and productive freshman, but his first nine games at North Carolina were full of inconsistency before undergoing knee surgery for a torn meniscus. At his best, Anthony is a dynamic pull-up shooter and gifted lead ball handler in the pick-and-roll. This was on display vs. Notre Dame in the season opener when he exploded for 36 points. Scouts had concerns about his scoring efficiency and his tendency to look for his own offense instead of getting his teammates involved coming into college, and both bubbled to the surface with the Tar Heels. He was shooting only 36.8 percent from the field at the time of his injury, struggling to score in transition and finishing with more turnovers (34) than assists (32).

The athleticism Anthony showed in dunk contests didn’t always translate functionally and his shooting ability at the high school level didn’t consistently follow him to college. Some of that is variance, but it’s also worrisome for a player who is a full year older than most freshmen (and older than both Zion Williamson and R.J. Barrett, who were freshmen last year). Anthony’s game still feels suited for the NBA, but his relative struggles at North Carolina mean he isn’t the slam dunk pick he once looked like.

9. Charlotte Hornets - Onyeka Okongwu, C, USC

Okongwu has been the most productive freshman in the country. At 6’9, 245 pounds, the USC center has been a monster finisher (80 percent shooting at the rim), impressive shot blocker (10.7 percent block rate), and capable offensive rebounder. He’s No. 5 in the country in PER and No. 7 in box score plus-minus. Long, strong, and blessed with great body control, Okongwu feels like a sure thing to be a contributor in the pros in a draft without many safe bets.

10. Phoenix Suns - Tyrese Haliburton, PG, Iowa State

Haliburton went from under-the-radar recruit to an advanced stats wunderkind as a freshman at Iowa State in a relatively limited role. He’s continuing his evolution by turning into a bonafide lottery pick as a sophomore. Even as his usage rate has tripled, Haliburton remains one of the country’s most efficient players, posting 64 percent true shooting, a nearly 40 percent assist rate, and a four percent steal rate.

He had a triple double but the most impressive thing from Hali's game against TCU was this play where he just did a press by himself, got a steal, then hit a three pic.twitter.com/9yYs5bP1EO

— TS% Eliot (@Cosmis) January 6, 2020

At 6’5, Haliburton has great instincts as a passer and defensive playmaker. He’s a tremendous spot-up shooter as well, hitting 42.5 percent of his threes. At the same time, Haliburton isn’t the most fluid athlete or powerful finisher, and struggles to shoot off the dribble. He’s one of the most unique NBA prospects to hit college basketball over the last few seasons, but in a down year for talent, his defined strengths are worth taking a chance on.

11. Minnesota Timberwolves - RJ Hampton, G, New Zealand Breakers

Hampton was a top American prospect out of Texas who spurned the heavyweights in college basketball to turn pro in Australia. While he’s battled a hip injury recently, he’s mostly acquitted himself well in 15 games in the NBL. An athletic 6’5 guard, Hampton has a well-rounded skill set without a signature niche. He’s shown an ability to attack the rim off the dribble and generate power going to the hoop on offense, and has done a good job of getting into passing lanes and applying ball pressure on defense. His shooting and offensive feel remain question marks.

rj hampton - super low shin angle, + acceleration and stride length, covers ground fast when he gets an edge leading to this strong wraparound pass. i like this kid but definitely can't do the chair challenge pic.twitter.com/zXGFwoUmi4

— ricky (@scricca1) December 16, 2019

12. Sacramento Kings - James Wiseman, C, Memphis

Wiseman was considered the No. 1 player in his recruiting class as a 7’1, 240-pound center with a 7’6 wingspan, wide shoulders, and cut frame. While he certainly looks like everything the NBA would want in a big man, Wiseman’s numbers have always been a bit underwhelming. He didn’t even make one of three All-EYBL teams as a rising senior on the Nike grassroots circuit. His play in three games at Memphis didn’t provide enough answers before he left the program to prepare for the draft amid an NCAA suspension. Wiseman may go much higher than this based on his pedigree, but there are reasons to be skeptical of his stock as a pro prospect, namely: his underwhelming ability to quickly get off the ground, his unpolished defensive traits, and his lack of overall offensive skill.

13. Portland Trail Blazers - Obi Toppin, F, Dayton

Toppin has been the biggest revelation of this college basketball season. An explosive 6’9 forward who dunks everything, Toppin has been a great finisher (68 percent true shooting), dependable rebounder, and has shown satisfactory defensive instincts. He’s also made big strides as an outside shooter, hitting 36 percent of his first 39 attempts from three-point range. A redshirt sophomore, Toppin will be one of the oldest players drafted in the lottery as someone who turns 22 in March.

14. Boston Celtics - Jahmi’us Ramsey, G, Texas Tech

Ramsey has missed time this season with a hamstring injury, but the Texas Tech freshman has been a walking bucket when he’s taken the court. Ramsey, an athletic 6’4 shooting guard, is averaging 17.7 points per game on 61 percent true shooting thanks to a smooth jumper and deep range. Ramsey already looks natural flowing into his pull-ups, which has helped him hit better than 48 percent of his threes on 5.3 attempts per game. He could be a draft riser as the season continues.

15. Atlanta Hawks - Jaden McDaniels, F, Washington

Think of McDaniels as Brandon Ingram-lite. A skinny 6’9 forward, McDaniels was a late bloomer who rose up his high school class rankings because of his length and shot-making potential. He has looked great when his jumper is falling at Washington, but his off nights have also exposed the holes in his game. McDaniels consistently gets knocked off his spots because of a lack of strength, and still struggles to think the game on both ends of the floor. He’s worth a gamble if he can rapidly improve on shooting ability that has run hot-and-cold (36 percent from three, 72 percent on foul shots) so far.

16. San Antonio Spurs - Theo Maledon, G, ASVEL Lyon-Villeurbanne

Maledon has become a part-time starter in Euroleague at 18 years old as a 6’4 point guard who lacks elite quickness but brings spot-up shooting, an impressive feel for the game, and the length to provide ball pressure defensively. Maledon has struggled to score efficiency throughout his season with ASVEL Lyon-Villeurbanne (49 percent true shooting) and has had turnover issues, but he’s already comfortable running a pick-and-roll and has been a positive contributor at a young age in one of the better leagues in the world. He and Hayes thrived together in FIBA youth play for France before getting their professional careers.

Quick Theo Maledon video: - flashed some off ball defense (and on ball) - change of pace in PnR (though this is not new with him) - movement shooting(!), even though it was a bank shot from 3 - smart playmaking pic.twitter.com/BWXGRKyXRm

— Spencer (@SKPearlman) December 24, 2019

17. Orlando Magic - Aleksej Pokusevski, C/F, Olympiacos

Pokusevski is a 7’, 200-pound center playing in the Greek second division and showcasing one of the most intriguing skill sets in this class. He has a rare ability to flow into pull-up jumpers for his size and age, and has shown shooting potential on both threes and free throws throughout his career. He’s also shown an ability to rack up blocks and steals on defense even if he badly needs to add strength. For more on Pokusevski, read Ignacio Rissotto.

Aleksej Pokusevski is acting as an occasional initiator for Serbia in this game while also doing things like these. It's rare for a 17 year old 7-footer to have this type of touch off the dribble. pic.twitter.com/bLRKj45yWT

— Ignacio Rissotto (@eyreball) July 28, 2019

18. Oklahoma City Thunder - Josh Green, wing, Arizona

The freshman forward from Australia has been an impressive on-ball defender and capable attacker off straight line drives at Arizona. While his scoring efficiency (53.8 percent true shooting) and three-point stroke (31.7 percent) need work, he has a big 3.1 percent steal rate and has made 79 percent of his free throws. A team will hope he can develop into legitimate 3-and-D wing down the line.

19. Milwaukee Bucks - Paul Reed, C, DePaul

Reed is one of the best developmental stories in college basketball, using his three seasons at DePaul to go from a three-star recruit way off NBA radars to a legitimate first-round pick. At 6’9, 220 pound, Reed has been one of the most productive big men in America, averaging 16.1 points per game while posting gigantic block (11 percent) and steal (3.3 percent) rates defensively. Reed has the quickness to be a switchable defender and also has some shooting potential, hitting 84.6 percent of his free throws and 8-of-30 three-pointers this season despite an odd release. Teams will want to see him add strength and prove his active rebounding and defense can hold up against bigger professionals.

20. Dallas Mavericks - Aaron Nesmith, wing, Vanderbilt

Nesmith has had a breakout sophomore season at Vanderbilt as a 6’6 wing who can fill it up from deep. Arguably the best perimeter shooter in the class, Nesmith has hit 52.2 percent of his threes this season and 82.5 percent of his free throws. Teams will wonder if he can hold up defensively, but his block and steal rates indicate he does add some value on that end.

21. Brooklyn Nets - Devon Dotson, G, Kansas

Dotson has been one of the best players in college basketball this season as a sophomore at Kansas. A strong and speedy 6’2 point guard, Dotson has a well-rounded skill set and gets after it defensively. While his three-point percentage (30.2 percent) is lower than scouts would like, he’s an 80 percent free throw shooter and has shown improved ability to facilitate this year. He’s also one of the nation’s leaders in steal rate at 4.1 percent.

22. Toronto Raptors - Amar Sylla, C, Oostende

A 6’9 forward with measurements similar to Pascal Siakam, Sylla is intriguing for his rare agility and defensive upside. While he remains a major work in progress on the offensive end, there aren’t many 18-year-olds with this type of size who can switch screens and rotate as effortlessly as he can.

Amar Sylla navigating screens to creatively rotate and time this block perfectly pic.twitter.com/ka2GRzWnpA

— rol (@roIandius) June 29, 2019

23. Utah Jazz - Tre Jones, PG, Duke

Jones is a bulldog defensive point guard who made the surprising decision to return for his sophomore year at Duke. After being the fourth or fifth option on Duke’s Zion Williamson-led superteam last year, Jones has morphed into the Blue Devils’ best option on the perimeter this season, averaging 14.2 points and 7.2 assists per game while also posting an impressive 3.4 steal rate. His jump shot — up to 31.8 percent from three-point range on just under four attempts per game — is his biggest question mark.

24. Los Angeles Clippers - Isaiah Stewart, C, Washington

Stewart has been a monster inside scorer and rebounder from day one at Washington, just as he was promised to be as a top-five overall recruit out of high school. Through his first 15 games, Stewart is averaging 19.5 points and 9.1 rebounds while shooting 59.7 percent from the floor. Stewart has long arms and impossible strength for a 19-year-old, but scouts will worry about his lack of polished offensive skill as a shooter and passer, and his struggles to defend in space.

25. Houston Rockets - Zeke Nnaji, C, Arizona

Nnaji is the third Arizona freshman on this list. A 6’11, 240-pound big man, Nnaji is one of the most efficient scorers in the country with 72.9 percent true shooting on the season. He does almost all of his damage around the rim, usually off feeds from Mannion. While Nnaji is an 80 percent free-throw shooter, he’s still uncomfortable stretching the floor from three-point range, as he’s only 1-for-7 on the season from deep. Nnaji also has issues defending in space.

26. Oklahoma City Thunder - Devin Vassell, wing, Florida State

Vassell is developing into a certified 3-and-D prospect during his second season at Florida State. The 6’6 sophomore wing is a 39.8 percent three-point shooter and has posted impressive block (5.6 percent) and steal (3.5 percent) rates this season. Vassell also rarely turns the ball over and has been excellent in limited opportunities running the pick-and-roll as a ball handler (94th percentile) this season. Teams will want to see him do more off the dribble and improve as a finisher and passer.

27. Boston Celtics - Jeremiah Robinson-Earl, F, Villanova

How does Robinson-Earl fit into the NBA? A 6’9, 230-pound forward, the Villanova freshman lacks the explosive leaping ability, length, and rim protection mastery to play the five and doesn’t have ideal three-point shooting (28 percent from three) to play the modern power forward. Regardless, JRE is a good bet to find a way to carve out a career because he’s simply always found a way to be productive. A good rebounder with a well-rounded skill set across the board, Robinson-Earl’s 84.2 percent mark from the free-throw line hints that he may have more shooting potential than he’s shown thus far.

28. Miami Heat - Patrick Williams, wing, Florida State

Williams is coming off the bench as a freshman for the Seminoles, but has impressed when he’s had the opportunity as a big wing who scores efficiently in the half court and has potential as a shooter. At 6’8, 225 pounds with a 6’11 wingspan, Williams has been an 86 percent foul shooter despite only making 31 percent of his threes. His block and steal rates are impressive on defense, and he’s scoring in the 81st percentile in the half court so far.

29. Los Angeles Lakers - Scottie Lewis, wing, Florida

Florida’s freshman wing is an elite athlete in every sense. Blessed with incredible speed and rare leaping ability, Lewis has shown his playmaking defensive potential all year with a 5.9 block rate and three percent steal rate. He remains a huge work in progress on the offensive end, struggling to make decisions with the ball and score efficiently (51.1 percent true shooting) in the half court.

30. Boston Celtics - Jordan Nwora, F, Louisville

Nwora has become one of the very best players in college basketball as a junior at Louisville. A 6’7, 225-pound wing, Nwora has hit 43.7 percent of his first 87 attempts from deep. Teams will wonder if he can hold up on the defensive end, but his combination of size, shooting ability, and productivity at the college level should make him a first-rounder.