A Quote by Dave East
My father brought a basketball to the hospital when I was born, and he already had it embedded in his head that I would be a ball player.
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I had been a basketball fan growing up, and I felt that if we brought in the proper coach, and we played basketball the old fashioned way - where defense is paramount and offense involved movement off the ball and movement of the ball - we could build a winning team, and Chicago would respond to that.
It is one of my biggest regrets that Niall Quinn was not here during my time... I felt he was an intelligent player. It would have been a good combination with Thierry Henry. What I like with Quinn is if you look at the player who played next to him, he always scored 40 goals because he had a hand for his head and he just put the ball where you were. He was a team player. A top-class player makes other players look good and he had that player.
My son was born during my last semester in college. His due date was Thanksgiving, but he didn't show up until finals week. I brought my books to the hospital and didn't think anything of it. That is what a father is supposed to do.
My father was a sea captain, so was his father, and his father before him, and all my uncles. My mother's people all followed the sea. I suppose that if I had been born a few years earlier, I would have had my own ship.
My father was a basketball player, so I loved basketball because he did. It was a direct transference. But, more than that, basketball, in the United States at least, plays the same function that soccer does everyone else in the world. It's the sport of poverty. It's the sport born of poverty. It's the cheapest sport.
No player in the NBA was born wanting to play basketball. The desire to play ball or to read must be planted. The last 25 years of research show that reading aloud to a child is the oldest, cheapest and must successful method of instilling that desire. Shooting baskets with a child creates a basketball player; reading to a child creates a reader.
My father was stationed at Clark Air Base in the Philippines, which had a hospital where they brought casualties straight from the battlefield. My mother was kind of a sophisticated bohemian, and my father was in the military to make a living.
I was a mediocre basketball player. But I was there, and I could remember the plays. And my basketball coach, after he retired from teaching, would come to my performances all the time. And I was very happy about that, because I was not memorable as a basketball player.
A lot of people just think I'm a big man, but I'm a basketball player. I am able to do everything that a basketball player can do - from playmaking and scoring to just passing the ball and just being a leader and post presence.
I was always making decisions and they were easier decisions because I had control of the game, I had control of the ball. As a coach you sort of put the ball in other player's hands and let them make decisions for you. But I still get a kick out of winning basketball games and that's what I'm in this for.
Jim had melodies as well as words. He didn't know how to play a chord on any instrument, but he had melodies in his head. To remember the lyrics he would think of melodies and then they would stay in his head. He had melodies and lyrics in his head, and he would sing them a cappella, and we would eke out the arrangements.
If I had not played basketball and made the millions of dollars that I had made, I would never have been able to build a hospital in Congo. It started in 1997, and 10 years later I was able to unveil the Biamba Marie Mutombo Hospital, named after my mother, in my hometown outside of Kinshasa. It was such a blessing.
Thinking about the things that happened, I don't know any other ball player would could have done what he (Jackie Robinson) did. To be able to hit with everybody yelling at him. He had to block all that out, block out everything but this ball that is coming in at a hundred miles an hour and he's got a split second to make up his mind if it's in or out or down or coming at his head, a split second to swing. To do what he did has got to be the most tremendous thing I've ever seen in sports.
As you get older, as a father, you hope your kids can make that kind of impression on somebody who will say, 'Hey, here's a guy that you want, a guy of character, got his head tied on right, a good student, a good basketball player,' whatever it is.
Would I have been a great basketball player? No. But I think I would've been a good basketball player, one of those grinders getting eight to 10 rebounds. I would've been like Kobe and been in the gym five to seven hours a day and never missed a 10-foot jump shot. I would've been a great role player for a team.
The pleasure of sport was so often the chance to indulge the cessation of time itself--the pitcher dawdling on the mound, the skier poised at the top of a mountain trail, the basketball player with the rough skin of the ball against his palm preparing for a foul shot, the tennis player at set point over his opponent--all of them savoring a moment before committing themselves to action.
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