Asphalt Oasis

I was out the other day on the municipal campaign trail with my buddy Lindell Smith when we ended up at Mulgrave Park. I thought I knew every basketball court in Halifax but The Councillor knew better.  He wanted to show me a court I’d driven past a million times but never noticed. 

“Damn,” I thought, as I steered my little red truck around a north-end corner and saw it perched above Barrington Street. Hunkered in the shadow of the Irving Shipyards (tell me that any other neighborhood in town would have been saddled with that giant building casting a pall over its windows and playgrounds) was a single, crumbling court surrounded by a fence that has more holes in it than a perforated jersey. 

I weaseled my way into a pick-up game with a handful of kids and, after just three short games, this court had became one of my new, favorite places in Halifax.  Not because of what it is, but because of what it could become.  And because any asphalt oasis where some very fine young ballers come to get their daily dose of round-ball sustenance is very good place.  Maybe it’s the best place.  

The Coach & The Crisis

My lawn — and I use the term loosely — is a disaster.  It is a brutal mix of weeds and dirt, with a sprinkling of grass, that has started to test the limits of my property-owning patience and, frankly, my marital status.  Upon returning from a recent morning walk, my wife begged me to ‘fix it’.  I assured her I would.  But the unspoken truth that hung between us like moss from the branches overhanging our front yard, is that I didn’t know how.

Having failed in the past to properly seed and grow a decent lawn, and knowing that I have two thumbs that are absolutely black when it comes to anything green, I did today what struck me as the wisest thing I could do: I texted Tim.  

Tim is many things: he’s a friend, a university Athletic Director, my son’s basketball coach, and a helluva a cook.  He’s also a man whose front lawn looks like it is part of the Augusta National Golf Club.  Simply stated, the man could grow grass in a Jersey City sandlot.  

I reach Tim as he is finishing a Covid-19 era grocery store run.  I explain my quandary and he walks me through the steps to short-term lawn improvement.  As we are talking he also manages to sneak up on me.  “I’m out front looking at your lawn,” he says through the phone.  Sure enough, I see his truck parked out front and step outside to meet him at the edge of my yard and in comical unison — two men with arms akimbo, nodding seriously — we examine the paltry patches of green that sit like tiny islands amidst the sea of brown that is my front lawn.

Good friends show up.  That is the extent of what I know about meaningful friendships and what defines these relationships.  

But in the COVID-19 period the definitions of all relationships, and indeed he boundaries that we live within, are being redefined on a daily basis.  Often not in good or positive ways.  I was struck hard by the way New York Governor Andrew Cuomo bluntly put it the other day during one of his televised COVID-19 press conferences.  He said that this unprecedented period has brought out the best and the worst in people.  Then, in his gunslinger-of-a-governor style, noted that some people who he thought would rise to the challenges they face have “crumbled” while others, who he did not expect to meet the crisis head-on, let lone thrive during this COVIDian chaos, have done just the opposite: they’ve shown themselves to be superstars.  

As an old basketball chum of mine likes to say, “Give me 20 minutes on a sports court with someone and I will tell you what they are really like.”  In today’s parlance, Cuomo or Dr. Anthony Fauci might say, ‘Give me 20 minutes in a heated political meeting or ER room and I will tell you what a person is really like.’  A lot of pressure produces coal; it can also, over even more time, produce diamonds.  

So what will I be after COVID-19 passes?  What will you be?  And what will your son or daughter or nephew or niece be after all this pandemic pandemonium shakes out and we get back to normal — or whatever passes for our ‘new normal’?   It’s a tough question.  And one worth considering closely, and personally.

My buddy Tim tells me, as he leans into his rake and starts to haul back some of the layers of leaves and weeds from my front yard, that a trip to the grocery store has gone from being a leisurely and somewhat creative outing for him to a near-contact sport with old women hollering at people going the wrong way down aisles and flour-hungry bakers elbowing each other aside for the last 10-pound bag of unbleached white gold. 

These days my wife and I are trying to keep our two boys (Jacob, 16, and Pete, 13) focused on the things that matter.  And we are trying to preserve and promote a sense of warmth in our home that defies the insanity that invariably leaks in through the TV and social media.  This doesn’t mean we are immune to badness; it just means we are trying to make ourselves and our kids better, in small ways, through this bad time.  

We’ve tried to help our boys see the big picture and the small picture, and appreciate the difference.  The importance of giving and getting loaves of fresh bread to those we love but don’t often see these days.  The joy of celebrating their grandfather’s recent and miraculous diagnosis of “cancer in remission” by driving to the apartment building where my Greek in-laws live and holding up signs of “Congratulations!” and “We Love You, Papou!” outside their window.  And the importance of believing that love will triumph over the evil that was recently perpetrated by a gunman who turned Nova Scotia (“Canada’s ocean playground”, as our quaint license plates read) into the site of the largest mass shooting in Canadian history. 

So today as my youngest son was supposed to be tackling his school-work, I let him join Tim and me in the front yard.  (Tim is his basketball coach and a bit of a hero to my boy).  Pete gladly got down on his hands-and-knees and helped weed the front yard for an hour, quietly enjoying the sun on his cheeks and the earth between his fingers.  Occasionally, we three gardeners exchanged a comment or a funny story, but mostly we just dug in and happily got the job done.  By the time we stood up and stood back, the front yard was starting to look better; not great, but better.  Before I could properly thank Tim, he was back in his truck and headed home to his lovely wife and two great kids.  

I went inside and typed him a text, saying how grateful I was for his help.  But it didn’t seem like quite enough for a man who’d just improved, immeasurably, both my standing with my wife and with my neighbours.  I pulled the bread machine out and loaded in the ingredients for a pizza dough.  

Later, Pete and I will wrap the dough in a nice, clean cloth and jump on our bicycles and ride over to Tim’s house to drop off a small heap of happiness on his porch.  It’s this sort of back-and-forth that has become so important in these strange days; a time when we are all struggling to see what each of us will look like, up close, after having spent so many moments standing — and shopping and gardening — six feet apart. 

-DN

Eli's Dead. Long Live Eli.

Mortality sucks.  There, I said it.  I hope that doesn’t bring the wrath of any god(s) down on me, but it needed to be said — especially in the wake of recent events and news.  First, I went to the bank and the teller (young, dapper, 30 something) informed me gleefully that I really should look into some of the bank’s credit options, then added, “Because when you retire these options just go away”.  Jezzus, I am 52.  A bald 52, I admit, but I’m not looking like a guy who’s moments from retirement.  Am I?  And then there is this university course I am taking in which we recently read The Epic of Gilgamesh and, well, it’s a long story… suffice to say it’s all about immortality and how humans don’t qualify.  

And then there was the news this week that Eli Pasquale has died.  This one hurts.

I didn’t know the great point guard who led UVic teams to five straight national championships and took Canada to one of its all-time great international victories, at the World University Games in 1983, versus a US team that included Charles Barkley, Karl Malone, Johnny Dawkins, Ed Pickney, Kevin Willis.  (It should be noted that in the final of that tournament Eli shut down a Yugoslavian combo guard named Drazen Petrovic to help Canada win gold.  If you aren’t aware of Petrovic’s basketball prowess and how easily he scored, look him up!)  The ‘miracle on the hardwood’ at the University games presaged Eli’s leadership role on not one but two Canadian Olympic teams (at LA, then South Korea).  

A thousand people know Eli’s story better than me, but I do have a small connection worth sharing, I think.  It’s the early 80s and I am seated at the Metro Centre in Halifax alongside my pal Mac.  We’re 15 years old and have found the perfect perch — end of the row, feet dangling over the lip of the Upper Bowl aisle — to watch UVic play in the national tournament.  It’s spell-binding stuff, and no one is more attention-grabbing than the little point guard for the Vikings.  The olive-skinned kid wearing #13 is thoroughly unassuming until he starts running the point and making so much happen with so little space.  It becomes clear why the Vikes will win — and win 4 more championships before Pasquale moves on — and why UVic coach Ken Shields, barely has to do anything to rack up victory after victory, including a .500 record versus NCAA Div 1 teams.  

Mac and I are in awe.  Both of us are nuts for StFX and we make a popcorn pact to attend that school one day and play backcourt positions. But Mac quietly forms another plan; he wants to be the next Eli Pasquale.  Long story short, when the time comes (in 1985) for me to attend university I head for X and make the team as a walk-on with a decent long-range J and little else.  Mac is nowhere to be found, though.  He has entertained offers and varsity jerseys from a number of schools before ultimately heading west to Victoria, B.C. where he tries to take over the role that Eli once dominated.  My pal’s attempt to slip into Eli’s sneakers doesn’t go as planned, but it was a heck of a shot. I still love the balls it took for Mac to try.  

This week hearing the news that Eli has died at the age of 59 after “a lengthy battle with cancer”, I am saddened.  For Pasquale, obviously, but more for his wife and kids, and sister, mother, and brother & former Vikes teammate Vito.  I am sad for all those teammates who knew the man and loved the player; who credit Pasqaule for making them better and in some cases champions — and in one case, an NBA star who became that league’s MVP.  Twice.  Yep, think about it… who out of Canada’s basketball past played, and even looked like the diminutive, sinewy and sneaky Eli?  You guessed it, Steve Nash.  That Victoria native, who went on to unbelievable heights in the pro game, attributes much of his achievement and a ton of his teenage notion that he could rise to the sporting stratosphere to his old mentor and friend Eli Pasquale.  

I love the way basketball brings us together.  But even more than that I love the way the sport invites and nourishes mentorship.  I read that Pasquale just missed making the NBA after two close calls at training camps featuring, in one case Gerald Henderson and the next John Paxon.  Bad timing?  Damn straight.  But it was a boon for the semi pro fans Eli entertained in South America and Europe, and the kids he coached after a somewhat truncated career.  

Death doesn’t become anyone, and cancer sucks.  (Yeah, now I am surely doomed for my lip.) But some guys and gals leave behind legacies that endure and that narratively carry the rest of us forward in a magical way. They simultaneously make us forget that our playing days are numbered while clearly reminding us that we need to help those coming behind us if we, the established ones, are to achieve anything substantial in this too-short match we call Life.   

- DN

Is Halifax the new Harlem?

I’ve been reading Geoffrey Canada’s books lately.  The lanky, 67-year-old from the Bronx is a hero of mine, and his books — “Fist, Stick, Knife, Gun” and “Reaching Up for Manhood” — are terrific reads for anyone interested in helping young people tap into education-based opportunities and form poverty-fighting plans.  I am not alone.

Canada is a hero to thousands, maybe millions of people, including Barack Obama, Oprah Winfrey, and the many Harlem residents who’ve benefited from his tremendous work over decades with the Rheedlen Centres for Children & Families and the Harlem’s Children’s Zone.  (Google the TED talk “Our Failing Schools” and you’ll see that Canada has reached millions: 2, 162, 978 as of today, in fact.) The HCZ changes lives through a myriad of programs that are staggeringly well-executed.   They also adopt the mantra “failure is not an option”, which Canada says applies more to employees of the HCZ than to those it serves.

Recently, the HCZ, through its “Practitioners Institute” gave me a 1-hour tutorial on the work they do and how they do it. It was a superb 60 minutes of questions and answers and ideas-exchange (thanks Yacine and Janet-Marie!). But here’s the thing: as impressive and successful as the HCZ is, there is no magic.  The conjuring, I believe, happens when good intentions meet with great ideas and get irrevocably wed to a determination to see projects through to the bitter (and often sweet) end. 

Of course, along the way shit happens.  

A few weeks before I got on the line with Yacine and Janet-Marie, a local kid in Halifax was gunned down at 5pm on a Friday afternoon on residential street.  He wasn’t an UP guy, but he was close to many young men who are UP ballers.  In New York, the story was similar: as soon as we started to speak, the HCZ folks told about a young person had been murdered just the day before — “Right outside one of our schools,” Yacine said.  

I’m not saying Halifax is Harlem.  But I am saying that our city has race and poverty and violence issues.  And I’m saying that kids are worth helping… that violence knows no boundaries… and that we must build each and every interaction on a foundation fashioned our of Trust & Respect.  

Whether it’s HCZ or UP, it’s not about charity.  Hell, it’s often not even about ‘helping’ someone.  It’s about being human and showing your humanity.  It’s about giving someone a boost up when they need it, including when they are tired or pissed-off or just scared. 

When the HCZ staff asked about my motivation, I explained it that I started UP as much for myself as others.  I put it this way:  I decided years ago that could not continue life’s climb without reaching back and lending a hand to a few people who may have faltered or maybe just never had ‘decent footing’ to start with. 

Don’t get me wrong, I am no Geoff Canada. And I do want to reach life’s summit and enjoy the view. It’s just that getting to the peak alone isn’t very appealing to me.     

-DN 

The Book of Tom

I wanted to be in touch and say thanks. But with him that’s not so easy. This guy doesn’t own a computer and doesn’t use e-mail. Heck, even calling and leaving a message isn’t a possibility because he doesn’t have a cellphone or use an answering service of any kind. He’s a self-proclaimed “Luddite” and proud of it.

So when I wanted to say ‘thanks’ to basketball’s greatest high school scout, Tom Konchalski, for showing me and my pal PJ through the courts of NYC and NJ again I had to drop him a letter. It was a hand-written card, in fact. And penning it felt great — great to know that I had made more than a cold electronic connection with a man who, in his early seventies now, has spent decades making personal and meaningful connections with high school basketball players of all skill levels. He’s the guy who first spotted Michael (then “Mike”) Jordan. And he’s the kind of guy who, long after he’d helped raise Felipe Lopez’s profile so high that “Spanish Michael Jordan” ended up on the cover of Sports Illustrated (after which he graduated to the NBA), still sends Mrs. Lopez, Felipe’s mom, a birthday card. Every year.

Yep, that’s the guy I get to hang with for a few days every summer. Not because I’m anyone special. No way. Rather, it’s just because Tom and I met a bunch of years ago and we stay connected. I’m thrilled to say that somewhere along the way the 6’ 6’’ bastion of basketball information who is “Tom” went from being the subject of a story I was writing (see the “Basketball Diary” page) to a friend. We’re not close, but we’re always happy to hear from one another. And because of my annual visits to NYC — where Tom and me and my dear pal PJ roll around a few playgrounds and watch outstanding HS ball — we’ve all bonded. Over ball and meals and long chats (where PJ and Tom do most of the talking and I listen and nod a lot).

Tom Konchalski is unusual for many reasons, his complete aversion to technology being one of those (his daily attendance at church and inability to drive a car are two others). But he’s even more unusual for his sincerity and character and goodness. He has made a lasting impact on the lives of countless basketball players in terms of the schools to which he has pointed the and the good lives toward which he was guided them. He’s done this in word and in deed.

America’s current political leaders could all take a page from the book of kindness and connection as written by Tom. Heck, we all could. Meantime, for the cost of 2 stamps, a little ink, and a few minutes of my time, I happily communicate with this ‘Wizard of Odds’ the sweet, slow fashioned way.

Grassroots Guys Worth Copying

A new team has taken shape. And hopefully it won’t be the only one of its kind.

The “UP All-Stars” is a crew of 15-17 year old guys from around Halifax who’ve come together (thanks to Ms. Christine Buckley) to focus on basketball skill development. The All-Stars also engage in tutoring (Wed. nites from 5pm-7pm at Dixon Ctr.) and community building activities (bagging groceries, painting exterior walls of local establishments to freshen up neighborhoods) and fun cross-training activities (swimming, inline skating, pilates).

Perhaps best off all, this team does not travel and keeps its cost-to-play exceptionally low. Players are paying $50 to practice & scrimmage throughout the spring and early summer. For this investment players get access to a ton of great coaches (Shawn Mantley, Mookie Magloir, Tray Clayton & Malik States!), gyms, jerseys, & tutors.

Other teams sh/could spring up and copy what the UP All-Stars are doing in terms of basketball development, community growth, and personal development. Go for it! Please.

Wise words, Kind words

I am a pretty good writer, but, truth be told, the polish to my words varies in sheen depending on how passionate I am about the subject being tackled.  I think it’s a common issue with all who put pen to paper, finger to keyboard. And yet somehow I am still shocked when I read a beautifully-crafted sentence from someone who speaks the truth powerfully & eloquently.   It rivals the days when I lived in Toronto and watched from my 200-Level seats as Vince Carter lifted off for the Raptors and did something spectacular.

Recently, I came across two recent examples of terrific writing. 

The first was from billionaire investor Warren Buffet, whose Letter to Shareholders, from his base camp in Omaha, is always narrative gold.  (I read Buffett for the same reason I still read Sports Illustrated: it reminds of what greatness looks like to a fan sipping beer in the cheap seats.)

The second bit of passionate prose originated much closer to home.  It came when Kinduct, a local  sports data company, came on board as UP’s first sponsor.   The leader of the Kinduct team, Travis McDonough, wrote something for our joint announcement that stopped me cold.  Frankly, the first few lines were so right-on that I wished I had written them. 

Travis wrote:

“Historically, sport is the ultimate teacher of life skills for children across the world. Recently however sport has become over structured and over engineered. We have stripped out the imagination, the creativity, the freedom for kids just to play...and learn...and have fun. UP Basketball provides an opportunity for children to play the game the way it was meant to be played — without parents, without coaches, without fixed rules and without organized venues…”

He added: “Kinduct is thrilled to support a grassroots organization that focuses in on the pure joy and essence of sport.” 

Travis may be ‘thrilled to support’ this modest little project, but I can assure you that I am even more appreciative of his support — and that of the fabulous players on the Kinduct roster.  Thank you!

Finally, if you don’t know about Kinduct and how they turn raw data on athletes’ performance into refined intelligence, I urge you to check them out.  I won’t spoil your fun by restating my bias, but I will say this: McDonough & Kinduct are to sports data and analytics what MJ & Scotty were to the Bulls — or should I say, what Zion & RJ are to Duke. Either way,  ‘nuff said.