Re: "Manning ritual voltage-motivated"

[gene kirkpatrick <gk_tyler@xxxxxxxxx>]

Mitch Album paid attention in English class.  Cheers, Gene

Tammo29@AOL.com wrote:I'm sure very few of you ever saw Danny Manning at his best, before the three
ACL injuries, the first one coming in the era when they were still considered
career ending injuries.
That's really too bad because he was the most versatile big man of his
generation. He could lead the break or finish it.
He could get the rebound or run the wing ready to accept the outlet pass. He
was as good a passer as he was a scorer. When he was healthy, he was about
as athletic as they come at 6'10".
This could be the swan song for the Pistons tonight.
If so, it will probably be the last time we see Manning in an NBA uniform.
The rumor is new Kansas coach Bill Self is holding open an assistant coaching
position just waiting for the Pistons season to come to an end. -TAM

Manning ritual voltage-motivated

By Mitch Albom, Detroit Free Press

Friday, May 23, 2003

If you look carefully during the Detroit Pistons playoff games, you will
observe a small but remarkable ritual.
B B 
After every buzzer, as the Pistons head back to the floor, reserve Danny
Manning, once the greatest college basketball talent in the nation while at
Kansas
University, taps fists with each man to urge them on.

"It's the only way I feel part of the game," he says. "It's like a little bit
of electricity passes through them to me."

He doesn't miss a man. He'll slide alongside the scorer's table. He'll curl
around one to get to the other. Fist tap. Fist tap. Fist tap. Because he
rarely
plays -- "It's a close as I come," he admits, "to touching the ball."

This is a man who once was the No. 1 pick in the NBA draft. This is a player
they compared to Magic Johnson. This is a man for whom potential was once
unlimited, a college stallion heading for the open grass of professional
stardom.

He turned 37 Saturday. Old age for basketball. He has survived three
career-threatening knee surgeries, the first of which came just a few months
into his
career. He has been on too many teams to count -- five in the last five
seasons alone. And while he still looks like a basketball player, he is in the
waning hours.

Like Superman exposed to kryptonite, his powers have slowly ebbed, from
phenomenal to very good to good to OK to serviceable to marginal to
disposable.

He doesn't need this life. Most players wouldn't want it, sitting on the end
of a bench, rarely getting in the game, acting as cheerleader. But there's
Manning, night after night, knuckling down, then knuckling up.

Langston Hughes once asked in a poem, "What happens to a dream deferred?"
Manning could answer. He has spent as many days rehabbing his NBA dream as he
did
nights when it actually seemed tangible. He never won a title. He was out of
basketball altogether, coaching his kids, before the Pistons signed him a few
months ago.

"I can't say I'm content with my career," Manning says, "but I'm at peace
with it. Everyone wants to play. But you can't sabotage things because of
that.
So I sit, and I look for things. Maybe I can tell the guys, bHey, your man
is
playing off you,' or bHey, here's the foul situation.' "

He smiles. "You can't do too much talking, though, or they get sick of you."

It's true, Manning has been paid well through the years. But you don't put
money in a photo album. What does happen to a dream deferred? How many of us
could even stand to be around it, knowing, for us, it would never come true?

It takes a lot to encourage others to do well. It takes even more when they
are doing it in your place.

"What happens to a dream deferred?" Hughes wrote. "Does it dry up, like a
raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore, and then run?"

The answer, in Manning's case, is neither. It gives you a chance, you give it
what you can, then you curl it in your palm, close the fist and try to pass
it on to someone else.
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