Mike Siroky on Basketball
By Mike Siroky
Commentary
We are blessed in this state to have basketball.
Even as the state high school football championships were playing across town in an indoor arena on carpet, the big show Saturday in Indianapolis was hoops in one of the greatest venues in America� Conseco Fieldhouse
The sold out crowd, more than 18,000, had to go home happy.
The Wooden Tradition is a yearlong series of events which benefit Special Olympics. Wooden was there, looking very frail and using a walker, but there nonetheless, an instant link to the past of Hoosier Hysteria with a presence in the present at 92 years old.
The jewel of this crown is the doubleheader college basketball presentation. This year, it was Duke vs. UCLA and Purdue vs. Louisville. Next year�s field includes Louisville, Indiana, Iowa and a team to be named. Safest bet is Indiana vs. Louisville for one of the games .
I thought about basketball and Indiana as I drove from the wind-swept north to the simply cool middle part of our state Saturday morning.
Basketball fans here get it all; rambunctious high school seasons, wonderful college teams, an interesting professional team and, as if we needed more, special imports like Duke and UCLA for a taste of the coast-to-coast game
I enjoyed watching the coaches most of all. Players, after awhile, become replaceable parts. Duke has a fine leader this season in Chris Duhon. But the star was freshman J.J. Redick and the players talked about this after the game.
"Early on (in practice) Chris needed to learn what we wanted him to do before he could lead," Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski said. "But in the last three weeks, he's really been good. He's always been good. But now he knows what we want."
"I want to be the main focus of our team,� Duhon said. � I want to be there for the guys in tough situations. I want them to look in my face and see confidence."
The defense was locked in, waiting for the offense to catch up. The No. 4 team beat the No. 14 team, even if standings are as solid as the snow skittering outside the arena at this point.
The kid feels no pressure because the veteran is there to lead. In a few years, he�ll be talking about another phenom and he�ll be the veteran. Watching this team, you get the feeling the Final Four is a mere formality. But there are a lot of games between then and now.
Krzyzewski is truly a Special K, a leader of these young men. You can tell the players and he truly like the shared experience of each other.
There is no distance between them, no separation of coach and players, just one big huddle of a team.
Coach K gives quick, apt answers to even the most benign sports writer questions .
For instance, when asked if he was more upset at the slow start of his team (down 12-2) or that UCLA was able to score so well on his defense, he answered he was most upset at watching the score multiply against his team.
At this point in the season, even a loss means little. The over-pomaded UCLA coach said he was most grateful that his two seven-foot freshmen got in a big game and seemed unaffected by the pomp and circumstance of a national TV game against a Top 5 team.
Purdue�s Gene Keady brought the scowl from the bus and Rick Pitino has perfected the Al McGuire choir boy-been-done-wrong appeal to the referees.
I like to watch the other sports writers at work. Some folks came in from the Left Coast and some from North Carolina just for this. One of the LA writers, in his dispatch later posted on the big paper's website, had Redick's name spelled wrong. So much for instant fame.
One churlish national sportswriter put aside his air of exasperation long enough to ask decent questions for a magazine story deadline still weeks away.
I have been watching him work for more than 20 years and he always seems oh-so-superior and bored. You'd think he realize how lucky he is and drop the 'Tude.
Another guy is just as enamored with the craft of what we do as I am. I first worked with him when he was in Philadelphia and paid some punk college kids 20 bucks a week to pipeline information on Indiana University's undefeated season
He spelled Redick�s name correctly, as expected. All these years later and he's in Chicago, still writing about hoops but still just having as much fun as ever.
And so am I.
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