One pleasure of living in SoCal has been watching the career of Kobe Bryant, who arrived here at age 17. He’s among the elite of the elites, and like them, has intensity and focus few can understand.

This column by T.J. Simers, find Kobe in a reflective, open state of mind.

Kobe’s motor remains revved to the max at age 34. His intensity is plastered across his face while just walking onto the court for pregame introductions.

“That’s my slow walk,” he says. “That’s me getting into my zone. I’m just putting on my Secretariat blinders; it’s race time.”

But he comes across arrogant. Why not show more joy?

“That’s not going to happen,” he says. “I know I drive a very hard bargain. I was reading the Steve Jobs book, which was enjoyable because it made me seem like a Magic Johnson-like character.”

Jobs was at the top of his game as well, but written off as a jerk by some.

“I don’t think I’m a [jerk] except on the court,” he says. “Come down to Newport and then people I know will tell you I’m different off the court.”

Sam Farmer in the LAT has a great profile of Manning and how he’s made it back, with a new team and a new approach.

…”Those reminders are good,” said Manning, 36. “You’re in a new place. Let’s keep working hard. Take it slow.”

The Broncos aren’t taking it slow. They’re rolling with their new quarterback, winners of five in a row with a three-game lead in the AFC West. Manning has the AFC’s most passing touchdowns, 24, best completion rate, 68.5%, and top passer rating, 106.2.

The league’s only four-time most valuable player, who sat out the entire 2011 season recovering from four neck procedures, is on course for MVP No. 5.

“What Peyton is doing, in my brain, is not just remarkable, it’s freaking historical,” Broncos CoachJohn Fox said. “To be where he is, off of what he just went through. Just look at it, his life got turned upside down.

“He’s been in one place for 14 years, and he never imagined he’d be anywhere else. To have a real serious injury, where at one point you weren’t real sure you were ever going to throw again. To be where he is right now? He’s doing it in a completely different part of the country, with a completely different organization. I’m loving it, but I think about it and I’m like, ‘This is kind of bizarre.’”

Manning, standing with a reporter in an otherwise empty corridor outside the locker room at the practice facility, detailed his improbable and sometimes uncertain ascent back to the top of the game, and the help he received from an old friend.

That friend was Duke Coach David Cutcliffe, who was Manning’s offensive coordinator at Tennessee and his younger brother Eli’s head coach at Mississippi. Cutcliffe, who a year earlier had worked with Eli during the lockout, was Peyton’s coach of choice during his arduous comeback.

“Going to a private college, where the gates are locked, there’s no spectators, and you can get concentrated work, that was big for me,” said Peyton, who had made at least four trips to Duke last winter before the media caught wind of it.

Manning lived with the Cutcliffe family during those visits. Just another kid in the stately, lodge-like house, with his own room and a pile of laundry every day.

“He and I both really got to go back in time,” Manning said. “I was a junior in college again. He was my coach. He coached the hell out of me. He yelled at me. “Faster! Faster! Faster!” I can remember that same feeling I had in college. I’d get mad at him.

“We’d go at it. It would be intense. But I’d always caught a ride home to his house that night, had dinner with him, and spent the night at his house. So we couldn’t get too mad at each other.”

Cutcliffe, who speaks in a rich Southern drawl, calls himself a “drills maniac” and says that stems from his childhood in Alabama, when he would throw his way through a pasture by “completing” passes to specific limbs of trees.

He had Manning do all the traditional drills, and some different ones, such as Manning making precise throws while equipment managers hammered away at him with heavy bags.

“We call those distraction drills,” Cutcliffe said. “One of the more critical things for a quarterback to prove to you is that his eyes stay downfield. We’re making him make decisions. We’ll have two targets down there and we’ll immediately try to lean toward one of them and make him make an accurate throw to the other target. At (more…)

UCLA: 38

USC: 28

Well played!

For all the buzz about President Barack Obama’s skills on the basketball court, the NBA’s commissioner, David Stern, thinks the hype is overblown.

What buzz?

“He’s not that good,” Stern, who announced Thursday he is retiring in 2014, said in an interview with Reuters. “He’s a lefty, he goes the same way every time.”

So true.

Stern’s critique, good-natured as it was, wasn’t simply some partisan swipe.

“I’m a loyal Democrat, a passionate Democrat. He’s not as good as he thinks he is.”

As a passionate conservative, I wholly agree.

Now that we’ve seen what bad officiating looks like, let’s take a moment to appreciate this Adonis in stripes.

Thomas Sowell:

It has long seemed to me that there is far more rationality in sports, and in commentaries on sports, than there is in politics and in commentaries on politics. What has puzzled me is why this is so, when what happens in politics has far more serious effects on people’s lives.

To take one common example, there are many people who believe that if the market fails, the government should step in. But, if Robinson Cano strikes out, does anyone suggest that the Yankees should send in a pinch hitter for him on his next time at bat?

Everyone understands that a pinch hitter can also strike out, and is less likely than Cano to get a hit or a home run. But the very possibility that the government can fail when it steps in to substitute for a failing market seldom occurs to many people. Even among some economists, “market failure” is a magic phrase that implies a need for government intervention.

We could argue about the empirical evidence as to when government pinch-hitting is better or worse. But there is seldom even an argument at all in some quarters, where government intervention follows market failure as the night follows the day.

Milton Friedman once pointed out, “A system established largely to prevent bank panics produced the most severe banking panic in American history.” Many other examples could be cited where government intervention made a bad situation worse.

But most discussions of the role of government never even reach the point of looking for empirical evidence. Today, for example, there is much gnashing of teeth in the media because Democrats and Republicans can’t seem to get together to create a bipartisan plan for government intervention to solve our current economic problems.

Those who cry out that the government should “do something” never even ask for data on what has actually happened when the government did something, compared to what actually happened when the government did nothing. That could be a very enlightening trip through the archives.

Sports statistics are kept in a much more rational way than statistics about political issues. Have you ever seen statistics on what percentage of the home runs over the years have been hit by batters hitting in the .320s versus batters hitting in the .280s or the .340s? Not very likely.

Such statistics would make no sense, because different batters are in these brackets from one year to the next. You wouldn’t be comparing people, you would be comparing abstractions and mistaking those abstractions for people.

But, in politics and in commentaries on political issues, people talk incessantly about how “the top one percent” of income earners are getting more money or how the “bottom 20 percent” are falling behind. Yet the turnover in income brackets over a (more…)

LA Times

Female athletes have won 56% of Team USA’s medals and 66% of its golds, both all-time bests. With women’s participation at a record level, these Olympics are being hailed as a gender-equity milestone.

Two-to-one is equity? Call your math teacher.

There’s a disparity here, and you progressives better get on the case about this disparate impact.

And it’s not just male-female: We must work harder to make sure there are more Hispanic, Asian, white, Pacific Islander and Native Americans in the sprint finals.

Sarcasm aside, congratulations to the women’s track team. Not only did they win big, they seem like a classy group of ladies representing our nation.

…or the DOJ might investigate the Olympics for “disparate impact.”

Jon Entine in the Daily Beast

Led by irrepressible record-breaker Usain Bolt, Jamaican men swept the sprinting events at this year’s Olympics, a huge feat for the tiny Caribbean nation. But it’s no big surprise. For the last several years, West African nations—or nations with West African–descended athletes, like the United Sates, Jamaica, Grenada, and Trinidad and Tobago—have each turned out more elite sprinters than all of white Europe and Asia combined.

Running is the most egalitarian of sports, a natural laboratory. Unlike the props and costumes required for, say, fencing, or the intense coaching demanded of gymnastics, one can just lace up and go for a jog. Ethiopia’s Abebe Bikila proved this quite memorably in the 1960 Rome Olympics, when—shoeless, coachless, and inexperienced—he won the marathon.

Theoretically, then, the medal podium for runners should resemble a rainbow of diversity. But just the opposite has happened: running has become segregated. The trends are eye-opening: Among men, athletes of African ancestry hold every major running record, from the 100m to the marathon. Of the past seven Olympics men’s 100m races, all 56 finalists have been of West African descent. Only two non-African runners, France’s Christophe Lemaire, who is white, and Australia’s Irish-aboriginal Patrick Johnson, crack the top 500 100-meter times. There are no elite sprinters who are Asian—or, intriguingly, East African.

Sports exemplify meritocracy. The NBA is predominantly black, as is the NFL.

Baseball features lots of Hispanics.

Why? Because they are better athletes and sports teams care about winning.

Hey, he’s not much worse than the NBC yakkers. One of whom advised us that the volunteers at the opening ceremony weren’t paid a thing.

The men’s final in the high bar was an astonishing display of skill, strength and creativity. Here is the gold medalist, Epke Zonderland from Holland.

You can see a better version at NBC’s channel, here.

This clip lacks the NBC yakkers, a plus in my mind.

For millions of us, seeing Gabby Douglas win the Olympic gold medal for gymnastics was an example of talent, discipline, drive, hard work, grace under pressure and personal sacrifice — lots of sacrifice.

She:

• left the comfort of home at age 14, moving from Virginia to Iowa to train
• spent hours in the gym every day instead of doing the usual teenage things
• endured the physical hardships and strict diets of elite athletes

To me, she earned everything she’s gotten and will get. She owes me and our nation nothing. Watching her was my reward. She already “gave back.”

But there’s a certain loudmouth out there who might disagree. After all:

• some people helped her along the way, including teachers
• there are other talented athletes out there
• there are other hardworking people out there
• she got to practice on roads built by the government and flew on planes made safe by the government

So that loudmouth might think Gabby’s achievement was more of a collective win.

What does Gabby think? “I give all the glory to God. It’s kind of a win-win situation. The glory goes up to Him and the blessings fall down on me.”

Actually, Polanski did. But he’s an admitted pedophile and child rapist, so by the logic used by the NCAA in sanctioning Penn State, he didn’t.

The NCAA, meaning to make an example of Penn State’s corrupt college football program, decided to vacate all of the team’s wins from 1998 -2011.

It makes sense to nullify victories if the team cheats in a way that gives it a competitive advantage, but Jerry Sandusky’s serial child rapes had no bearing on the games played. The student athletes who worked so hard for those victories did nothing wrong.

Mike Tyson was convicted and did time for rape. Does that mean he didn’t win 50 boxing matches? Are confessions heard by pedophile priests null and void?

When something awful happens, certain types lose their heads and make fools of themselves.

Otter, the character in Animal House, cried, “I think that this situation absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody’s part!”

The NCAA twits were the ones to do it.

I have no opinion about the design of the US Olympic uniforms, nor where they were made, but this does jump out:

The Ralph Lauren firm physically produces nothing: It is a design, marketing and licensing operation that hires factories to make its stuff. The company has had the U.S. Olympic team deal since 2008. A men’s team shirt costs $425 and a woman’s skirt $498. The beret that makes the athletes look like recruits for the U.S. Special Forces and a T-shirt each cost $55.

Frank Partnoy in the Financial Times:

…Watch Novak Djokovic. His advantage over the other professionals at Wimbledon won’t be his agility or stamina or even his sense of humour. Instead, as scientists who study superfast athletes have found, the key to Djokovic’s success will be his ability to wait just a few milliseconds longer than his opponents before hitting the ball. That tiny delay is why most players won’t have a chance against him. Djokovic wins because he can procrastinate – at the speed of light.

During superfast reactions, the best-performing experts in sport, and in life, instinctively know when to pause, if only for a split-second. The same is true over longer periods: some of us are better at understanding when to take a few extra seconds to deliver the punchline of a joke, or when we should wait a full hour before making a judgment about another person.

Part of this skill is gut instinct, and part of it is analytical. We get some of it from trial and error or by watching experts, but we also can learn from observing toddlers and even animals. There is both an art and a science to managing delay.

In 2008, when the financial crisis hit, I wanted to get to the heart of why our leading bankers, regulators and others were so short-sighted and wreaked such havoc on our economy: why were their decisions so wrong, their expectations of the future so catastrophically off the mark? I also wanted to figure out, for selfish reasons, whether my own tendency to procrastinate (the only light fixture in my bedroom closet has been broken for five years) was really such a bad thing.

Here is what I learnt from interviewing more than 100 experts in different fields and working through several hundred recent studies and experiments: given the fast pace of modern life, most of us tend to react too quickly. We don’t, or can’t, take enough time to think about the increasingly complex timing challenges we face. Technology surrounds us, speeding us up. We overreact to its crush every day, both at work and at home.

Yet good time managers are comfortable pausing for as long as necessary before they act, even in the face of the most pressing decisions. Some seem to slow down time. For the best decision-makers, as for the best tennis players, time is more flexible than a metronome or atomic clock.

Roger Clemens may have lied in testimony before Congress about steroid use. He was tried for perjury, which ended in a mistrial caused by the prosecution.

Now he’s back for a second trial. For lying to Congress.

Some potential jurors are wondering why.

On opening day at Roger Clemens’ new trial, several prospective jurors openly questioned the value of a congressional hearing in which he is alleged to have lied, which could pose problems for prosecutors trying to convict the famed baseball pitcher of perjury.

No kidding.

And why does Congress get to lie to the American people on things that matter, such as the double counting and financial gimmicks hardwired into ObamaCare?

(For details on that, go here.)

Why does Obama get to lie repeatedly to the American people about his mother not having health insurance?

I lived in Miami for 10 years. One thing I learned: never say anything nice about Fidel Castro, which is understandable and justified.

If you were running for dog catcher, a last minute campaign smear might consist of someone leaking a photo of your cousin having lunch with someone who was rumored to have liked Castro. Seriously. It was comic.

So when I heard that the Florida (Miami) Marlins manager praised the dictator, I knew what was next.

“I love Fidel Castro,” Guillen told Time magazine. After a beat, he went on to explain: “A lot of people have wanted to kill Fidel Castro for the last 60 years, but that [expletive] is still here.”

It’s understandable why a Major League manager would admire the longevity of a figure like Castro, given the rapidity with which teams pull the plug on managers. But expressing love for the Cuban dictator when you’re running a team in South Florida is akin to … well … we’re having a tough time coming up with a local equivalent. It would be like the manager of the Dodgers asserting that organic produce is bad for you, or that hybrid cars are ugly, or that film subsidies are a bad deal for taxpayers. Actually, none of that rises to the same level; to Florida’s Cuban-immigrant community, praising Castro is little different from praising Adolf Hitler — even if you’re only expressing admiration for his survival skills, not his politics.

Guillen has apologized for his comment, “with my heart in my hand and on bended knees.” That didn’t stop the team from suspending him for five games, even as protesters and a county commissioner call for his resignation. This strikes many non-Floridians, including us, as a gross overreaction, maybe even an assault on American values: Why should he be punished for expressing a minority-held political view?

…I can barely stick the landing on my couch.

More video here.

The big game came down to two catches. The first was a drop by Wesley Welker, as reliable a receiver as you’ll find in the NFL.

As Chris Collinsworth said, “He’d make that catch 100 times out of a 100.” To which Al Michaels replied, “That must’ve been the 101st.”

The other catch was the impossible 38-yard reception of Manning to Manningham. Two plays that determined the game.

Afterward, Tom Brady’s wife ripped the Patriot’s receivers, complaining that her husband cannot both throw and catch the ball.

Fair enough, but Brady wasn’t perfect either.

Humans need scapegoats, it seems. There’s even a new book about it.

Truly honorable people—in the wake of some monumental botch—fall on their swords. Most of us, however, would prefer that someone else be chosen to take the hit. In “Scapegoat: A History of Blaming Other People,” British writer Charlie Campbell traces the habit of buck passing back to the Garden of Eden, where Eve, an apparently gullible person with far too much time on her hands, blamed a talking snake for persuading her to pick the forbidden fruit, thus unleashing our continuing pageant of sorrows.

Whatever our other shortcomings, humans have a profound talent for designating fall guys for problems and disasters that we ourselves are responsible for or that we simply do not understand. As Mr. Campbell observes in this brief and entertaining book, there might not always be a cure for what ails humanity, “but there’s always a culprit.”

Freakonomics blog interviews Mark Cuban.

Here’s a taste.

Q. My father immigrated to the U.S. in the 1970s. He came with nothing and has done very well for himself and his family. He feels that America has lost its way, specifically that Americans don’t work as hard as they used to, don’t work as hard as people in emerging countries, and have a belief that they are entitled to things (such as markets that always go up, that the government should take care of them, that they don’t have to plan for retirement). I wholeheartedly disagree with my father. Whose side would you take? -Wes

A. He is right. But so was his father when he told your dad how much harder he worked.  Productivity has increased generation by generation. Things change. Remember, you never live in the world you were born into.

Q. Let’s say that all of the NBA owners are called to a conference room for a meeting with David Stern. All of the owners show up. You look around. Who’s the smartest guy in the room? -Hollins

A. Depends on the topic.

Q. The annual increase in the cost of college tuition seems to be much greater than inflation every year. Even during the recent financial crisis, tuitions were generally going up across the board! Seems like this is a problem waiting to happen. Do you think that we’re going to get a point soon where it won’t be a good investment to go to a private university unless you know that you’re going into a lucrative field (finance, computer science, medicine, economics)? Asked another way: my friend is going to a $40k/year private university to study finance. Is this likely to be a bad investment? -Stocker

A. We are already there.  The return on education investment at a school is becoming less about the quality of education and more about the quality of networking available from that university’s alumni base.

If it were up to me, I would look very closely at limiting the size and total amount of student loans that can be federally guaranteed to $5k per year in 2012 dollars.  If we limit the amount of money available in loans to students, we would create several improvements in this country:

1. Universities would become more efficient.  They would have to separate education from all the other things that universities pride themselves on.
2. We would improve the economy and help protect the future of our kids. I think most people who look at these things fail to realize that graduating from college no longer means the entry of a “mature consumer” into the market who will rent an apartment, buy a car, buy clothes for work, etc. Instead, we get indentured servants whose only goal is to try to figure out how to not spend money so they can pay back their student loans!

LA now has two interesting NBA teams.

When I attended the University of Maryland, Penn State’s football team beat us every year. Joe Paterno was coaching Penn State back then, and I’m 62 years old.

That’s quite a career, but it doesn’t excuse his handling of a sexual predator on his coaching staff, who was seen anally raping a 10 year old boy in the team’s locker room shower.

Somehow the enormity of Paterno’s failure to act decisively was lost on some Penn State students.

Happy Valley was in bedlam early today as angry, chanting students ran amok in a bizarre climax to an unforgettable day that ended with the unthinkable: the firing of football legend Joe Paterno.

Chanting “Joe Pa-ter-no!” and “One More Game!” students raced to the stately Old Main administration building to express their anger that the winningest coach in major-college football history was out – fallout from the child-sex scandal involving his former top assistant, Jerry Sandusky.

More than 1,000 students rioted and rallied at Old Main and on frat-house-lined Beaver Avenue. Riot cops, fire trucks and ambulances were on hand after midnight, amid reports that tear gas was being used to disperse the crowd.

Demonstrators overturned a TV news van, toppled street lights, shook stop signs and threw toilet paper. From rooftops and in the streets, they yelled “F— Sandusky!” and “We Want JoePa!”

The campus chaos began shortly after 10 p.m. with the announcement by the board of trustees that Paterno, 84, who had said earlier in the day that he would retire at the end of the season, was instead fired over the phone and denied a chance to end his career on the playing field.

Flynn Files:

“Shut up and sing” applies to conservative entertainers as well as liberals. Hank Williams Jr.’s comparison of the president of the United States with the leader of the Third Reich was way over the top.

In the wake of the furor over the comments about the furor, ESPN removed the “Are You Ready for Some Football?” jingle from its Monday Night Football broadcast. Censorship? I don’t think so. Political correctness? Not even that, either. If George W. Bush were president, my sense (hope?) is that the same rules of civility would apply.

The country music singer’s Monday Night Football ditty has become iconic, so I am sorry to see it go. But when you make off-the-wall remarks about a bumbing, in-over-his-head, misguided president being the equivalent of a mass murderer on an incomprehensible scale, you should expect your employer not to want to associate with you if you enjoy a high-profile gig. Williams should apologize and ESPN should take him back–or at least his song.

If invoking “patriotism” is the last refuge of a scoundrel, shouting “Hitler” is the first impulse of a moron.

The ball crosses the net six times without touching the ground. The match was a rout, but there was excitement nonetheless.

Bill Veeck, the PT Barnum of baseball, sent a 3′7″ batter to the plate.

Gaedel’s baseball legacy has been told and retold. It started in the mind of Bill Veeck; at least Veeck said so. Author James Thurber had published a short story in the Saturday Evening Post in 1941 that told a similar tale. Veeck was a showman always looking for the next bright idea to spark fan interest. In August 1951, as owner of the American League St. Louis Browns, he needed to attract fans for a club that was perennially at the bottom in attendance. He focused on a celebration to honor the 50-year history of the American League, a birthday party of sorts. And for good measure, he decided that his main sponsor, the Falstaff Brewing Co., should be celebrated as well.

When, why and how Veeck got the idea of putting a midget on the field is open for conjecture; surely any story he ever told about it was full of embellishments. He started by asking a booking agent to find the right individual. This wasn’t as easy at it seemed, as Veeck was continually dissatisfied with the men presented to him. He was adamant about hiring a “midget” not a “dwarf,” because he wanted a man who would look somewhat athletic in a baseball uniform. Veeck dispatched his publicity man, Bob Fishel, to find the right candidate. Finally they settled on Gaedel. Veeck sent his traveling secretary, Bill Durney, to Chicago to pick up Gaedel. As they neared the Chase Hotel in St. Louis, Durney had Gaedel hide under blankets to protect the project’s secrecy.

Gaedel was smuggled up to the hotel room wrapped in blankets. He was outfitted in a uniform belonging to Bill DeWitt Jr., the nine-year-old son of the club’s vice president. The jersey had number 6 on the back, but Veeck had it changed to 1/8. Scorecards and other pre-game literature listed the new player as #18, so no one gave it a second thought.

In a pre-game strategy session Veeck ordered Gaedel to squat low at the plate without swinging so he could draw a walk. Gaedel crouched, wielding a toy bat and displaying a strike zone described as 1.5 inches in height. By game time Gaedel, a showman himself, was revved up for the performance. He was swinging the bat and getting into his role. Veeck and crew became worried that the unlikely ballplayer would set aside the plans and try to hit. In the famous picture of his at-bat Gaedel actually stands somewhat erect, expanding his strike zone. This probably concerned Veeck and the others involved, who may have feared for his safety.

Phillip Gourevitch has a great article in the current New Yorker about the formation of Rwanda’s national cycling team.

This one is worth printing out and reading in full.

…Gasore isn’t sure exactly when he was born, so he doesn’t know if he was nine or ten in 1997, when his father died. His mother had died when he was an infant, and his father had remarried and had more children. Sometimes his father came home, and sometimes he brought food, but not most of the time. He was a hard drinker, who got so far gone that he couldn’t afford the next drink—and Gasore said that the thirst, plus tuberculosis, did him in. But Gasore didn’t sound sure about that, either. He kept qualifying his account of his father’s death with the words “I think.” The way he told his story, there was only one thing certain about his childhood. “I had to fend for myself, or else die,” he said.

In northwest Rwanda, in the wet, chilly foothills of the Virunga volcanoes, the soil is black from lava, and ideal for growing potatoes. As a small child, armed with a sack, Gasore began making the rounds of village trading centers to scavenge fallen bits of potato. On good days, he might find a banana or an onion, too. When he was orphaned, he became a maibobo, a street kid—one of hundreds of thousands of children in Rwanda without adults to shelter them. Amid the country’s general poverty and hardship, theirs was a particularly mean existence, but for Gasore it was not such a big change. As he grew, the potato dealers put him to work, filling the hundred-kilo sacks that they trucked out to the rest of Rwanda. He was paid a coin here, a coin there, and, because he knew how to live without money, whenever he saved five hundred francs (nearly a dollar) he hid it away. (more…)

Aren’t Canadians known for their good manners?

And don’t they know you riot when your team wins?

The Miami Heat lost to Dallas last night, as Dirk Nowitski brought his talents to South Beach and showed the impertinent Heat what it takes to be a champion, not just strut like one.

Miami’s orgy of self-congratulation last summer (see below) earned the Heat the enmity of NBA fans world wide. Congrats and thanks to the Dallas Mavericks.

They have a ferocious will to win plus discipline.

Kobe Bryant had a rare bad game as the Lakers lost to the Miami Heat. Neither team played well, but the Heat played better.

So how did Kobe — currently #6 on the NBA’s all-time scoring leader list — react to his bad play?

The game ended at 9:51 p.m. local time, and after doing a round of interviews, Kobe Bryant headed back onto the court to shoot baskets. The arena was empty except for a few TV reporters getting ready to do their live shots plus a couple of Lakers beat reporters. Even the party people in the arena club were long gone.

Bryant shot 3-pointers and free throws mostly for well over an hour, finally finishing a little after midnight. His T-shirt and sweat pants were soaked with sweat. The two ball boys were exhausted from rebounding and passing him the ball. A third came to join them.