I’m not much of a professional basketball fan anymore. But I remain a solid Mickey Herskowitz fan, the longtime sportswriter for the Houston Chronicle and author. Mickey writes today about the Houston Rockets, a rather boring and generally underachieving NBA team, and observes about the frustrations that the coach must feel:

A great basketball coach once said that to appear successful, one who chose the profession needed an image shaped by two conditions: white hair for the look of distinction and hemorrhoids for the look of distress.

Heavyweight Champ Lennox Lewis announced his retirement over the weekend. Lewis’ legacy will be similar to that of former champ Larry Holmes–that is, a very good but underappreciated champion.
Part of Lewis’ problem is that he is not American (Lewis is a Jamaican raised in Canada), so the U.S. boxing community never really embraced him as champ. Part of Lewis’ problem is that he never really had a defining fight against a well-regarded opponent. The other part of Lewis’ problem is his two losses–one was to the unheralded Oliver McCall and the other was to Hasim Rahman on a fourth-round knockout. That loss may actually be the fight that Lewis will be best known for. Lewis spent the final two weeks in training before that fight “acting” during the filming of the movie, Ocean’s 11.

This Lubbock Avalanche Journal article updates the current saga of Texas Tech basketball coach Bobby Knight. The chancellor has written a memo to the file about his recent run-in with Coach Knight at a salad bar. This incident was addressed in a prior post.