basketball

Chris Knight's avatar

…how many of y’all didn’t have your NCAA Basketball Tournament brackets thoroughly broken after this weekend?

I’m not much up to speed on sports of late. But watching the agony from brackets getting busted in full gory on my Facebook front page has been pure comedy gold!

Even though I don’t have a dog in this hunt (I would have rooted for my alma mater Elon if it had gotten into the Big Dance for the first time) I have to say: from the getgo this has been a weird weird tourney. Probably the most topsy-turvy one in recent memory....

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Chris Knight's avatar

The people who I tend to admire the most are those who stay true to themselves, but also know how to change and grow as they get older. People who don’t let time wear them down but instead become the better for it.

This is one such person…

The Knight Shift says “Happy Birthday” and wishes all the best to Michael Jordan – perhaps the greatest player that the game of basketball has ever known – on the occasion of his fiftieth birthday today!...

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Chris Knight's avatar

It instantly became one of the most classic moments in sports history.

Coach Jim Valvano’s North Carolina State – a scrappy team that had fought tooth and claw in defiance of all the odds – against University of Houston for the 1983 NCAA Basketball Championship. Houston: the team of “Phi Slamma Jamma”. Hakeem Olajuwon and Clyde Drexler. No wonder one sports writer said that “Trees will tap dance, elephants will race in the Indianapolis 500 and Orson Welles will skip dinner” before Jimmy V’s Wolfpack would beat the Cougars.

But we all know what happened. With seconds left in the game and the scored tied at 52, State’s Dereck Whittenburg made a desperate launch of the ball. Lorenzo Charles was right at the basket, caught the ball and dunked it hard!

North Carolina State had done it! And in those wild seconds after the buzzer, Coach Valvano – overwhelmed ...

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Chris Knight's avatar

John Wooden coached UCLA to ten national championships. But since his passing last night he’s being remembered by most as a teacher, a friend, and a gentleman…

Wooden was also quite a wise figure. ESPN has collected many of his quotes, including this one that I found especially noteworthy…

“Talent is God-given. Be humble. Fame is man-given. Be grateful. Conceit is self-given. Be careful.”

John Wooden was just shy of reaching his one hundredth birthday. An amazing long and wonderful life, he had....

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Chris Knight's avatar

As much as I have to be cheering for Duke, I would not mind it at all to see Butler win the whole thing.

Maybe that has a bit to do with the fact that I’m feeling tonight’s game is going to be eerily reminiscent of the 1983 NCAA Championship between “invincible” slam-dunk powerhouse Houston and a scrappy little team from North Carolina State coached by an Italian kid from Queens named Jim Valvano....

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Chris Knight's avatar

The first thing that popped into mind when I read this was, “Is this what it takes to make sure Chapel Hill never again has to play in the NIT?”

(rimshot)

I can tell already that I’m going to get heaps of grief from Chad and Eric about that 😛

The NCAA is now pondering the idea of expanding the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Tournament from 65 teams to a whopping 96 schools going to the annual tournament. Under the proposed plan the National Invitational Tournament would be discontinued, the top 32 teams would receive byes and whole new brackets would be created for the embiggened tournament.

This sounds more like a hella big mess than the big dance, if you ask me. The current system ain’t perfect, but it’s about as nicely balanced as there’s likely to be. Enlarging the field to 96 teams would ...

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Chris Knight's avatar

Dear management and staff of WFMY:

I am a life-long viewer of WFMY. Yours is the station that I have most associated with well-produced television. Growing up our own television was always tuned to one of two channels: the local PBS affiliate for Sesame Street and Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, and Channel 2. Until the time I was 8 years old I didn’t even know that there were other stations that did news, weather and sports. I will always fondly remember Lee Kindard’s hosting of The Good Morning Show, Sandra Hughes is one of the all-time most classiest ladies in the history of anything (Lord willing I will finally get a chance to meet her someday) and whenever the weather has taken a turn for the worst or (even better) threatened snow that would cancel the schools, WFMY was there. I still remember people like Arlo Lassen (whatever happened ...

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