SacTownKid
Hall of Famer
Cool article I saw on hoopshype.com from ESPN.
http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/columns/story?columnist=bucher_ric&id=2165241
Up close and personal in Mississippi
By Ric Bucher
ESPN The Magazine
A word of warning: There's nothing in this column about basketball.
Shareef Abdur-Rahim was one of 11 pro basketball players on Operation Rebound.
This is about a handful of people whose names you happen to know because they play in the NBA and WNBA: Allan Houston, Shareef Abdur-Rahim, Samuel Dalembert, Erick Dampier, Clarence Weatherspoon, Maurice Williams, Justin Reed, Al Jefferson, Swin Cash, Tamika Catchings and Cheryl Ford.
It's about the players meeting a support staff in Mississippi last week to be part of a relief effort, Operation Rebound, by the National Basketball Players Association and Feed the Children, Inc.
It's about a convoy of 22 tractor trailers, one large bus and a police escort that navigated its way through the uprooted trees and leveled buildings and scattered debris to hand deliver basic supplies to people just like you and me, who suddenly find themselves with nothing.
It's about the area that took Hurricane Katrina's hardest punch but has been overshadowed by the attention focused on the more famous city to the west, New Orleans, a few miles across the Louisiana border.
It's also about naively signing up for a worthy one-day event, believing I could gather information for the upcoming season while participating in a good deed -- and, instead, getting smacked rudely in the face with the catastrophe's impact, which makes the upcoming season seem rather trivial.
Which means it's also about acknowledging that even though the convoy unloaded everything it had, it brought something back. Something just as basic and valuable as food and water. Something that sometimes appears to be as rare a commodity around the country as a warm bed and a hot shower are in Mississippi right now. Call it whatever you like: compassion, humility or gratitude. Just know that if your tank is low, there's a place where you can get all you want.
* * *
Right before Houston, Cash and the rest of the Operation Rebound contingent stepped off the bus and abruptly gagged on Hurricane Katrina's disease-ridden stench, and peered through a hot afternoon haze at the eerily quiet remnants of Gulfport, Miss., there was an announcement over the PA system.
Bottles of hand sanitizer and disinfectant wipes had been passed around on the bus after the previous stops, but Ground Zero took precautionary measures to a whole new level. Everyone in the group had been directed to an ambulance parked on the side of the road 20 minutes earlier to receive a tetanus shot to protect against airborne illnesses.
"This is way more serious than I thought," said Abdur-Rahim, putting into words what everyone was thinking.
"We didn't want to tell you about the tetanus shot beforehand," said a volunteer. "We were afraid nobody would come."
Even the inoculation, though, didn't have us covered.
"Do not touch anything or bring anything back with you from Mississippi," announced Mike Espy. Espy is a former U.S. Secretary of Agriculture and Mississippi mover and shaker who helped Operation Rebound through all the bureaucracy and red tape. "You might have radioactive problems."
Everyone heard, but, in the end, no one paid heed. How could anyone come to this place and not take something with them?
The group was standing at the heart of what had been the nation's second-largest gambling mecca. Call it Las Vegas East or Atlantic City South. It had beaches and ocean and grand hotels and night clubs. Had. Now all that was left were strands of rebar and the stumps of girders.
The Copa Casino appeared still to be standing but it was no more than a fake building in a movie, a facade with nothing behind it. Tractor trailers were piled like dominoes, blown here from a marina loading dock a mile or so away, and a 35-foot boat rested upside down against a telephone pole. To their right sat the hulk of a casino in the middle of the street, shoved by 170-mile-an-hour winds a half-mile from its moorings.
And this was after two weeks of a concerted cleanup effort. An army officer in camouflage fatigues told Espy, "We've seen progress here. Down in Hancock? Nothing's happened."
The night before, a NBPA official jokingly had noted that Operation Rebound would be a little more intense than the NBA's "Wheel of Fortune" fund-raiser and referenced the Iraq war by calling me "an embedded journalist." It was no joke the next day.
"I've never been in a war zone, but I'd have to guess this is what it's like," said Clarence Weatherspoon, who spent countless weekends here during his days at Southern Miss. He checked his watch. "Four o'clock on a regular day, you couldn't walk across the streets, there'd be so many cars going in and out. Man, this is crazy."
For Al Jefferson and Justin Reed, the caravan was an opportunity to help the less fortunate in their home state.
There had been hints of what lay ahead shortly after the bus had left the Horizon hotel in Vicksburg, its $49 rooms and adjoining casino making it the nearest thing to NBA-caliber accommodations in the area. We had met at 7 a.m. in the lobby and were on the road 15 minutes later for a press conference in Jackson in the parking lot of an abandoned Wal-Mart, the trucks parked impressively in a fanned formation behind a podium.
Dampier, Jefferson and Reed, all Mississippi natives, were waiting for us. Both Jefferson and Reed were in the state when the storm hit but went relatively unscathed. A tree fell on Reed's mother's house and Jefferson couldn't get in touch with his family for two days with cell phone towers and power lines knocked out. "It was scary," Jefferson admitted.
Abdur-Rahim stood back and took in the clots of cameras and microphones scattered around the parking lot.
"This is the hype part," he said. "This isn't what it's about."
A local TV reporter provided a harbinger of what was in store.
"Hope you have a strong stomach," he said. "You're going to see some things."
The convoy pulled off of Route 49 and into Hattiesburg 2½ hours later. With every passing mile, the damage evolved from bent trees to snapped trunks to mighty oaks simply yanked up out of the ground, roots and all. Blue tarps were in high demand, based on the number of them tacked to roofs. Hattiesburg, being 60 miles from the coast, didn't sustain water damage, but it was clear why the wind alone might have scared Jefferson.
The temperature was in the low 90s when the bus squeezed past several hundred people into a community-center parking lot. There was already a line snaking around the building. Every face looked up in awe as the bus rumbled past, suggesting this was the first one they'd seen in some time.
After the players disembarked, neither they nor the evacuees quite knew what to do at first. The kids and the Hattiesburg mayor were the first to break the ice, the former by shyly saying hello and asking for autographs, the latter by shaking hands and introducing himself. Several adults sidled up to me, pointed at one player after another, and asked, "Now who is he?"
http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/columns/story?columnist=bucher_ric&id=2165241
Up close and personal in Mississippi
By Ric Bucher
ESPN The Magazine
A word of warning: There's nothing in this column about basketball.
Shareef Abdur-Rahim was one of 11 pro basketball players on Operation Rebound.
This is about a handful of people whose names you happen to know because they play in the NBA and WNBA: Allan Houston, Shareef Abdur-Rahim, Samuel Dalembert, Erick Dampier, Clarence Weatherspoon, Maurice Williams, Justin Reed, Al Jefferson, Swin Cash, Tamika Catchings and Cheryl Ford.
It's about the players meeting a support staff in Mississippi last week to be part of a relief effort, Operation Rebound, by the National Basketball Players Association and Feed the Children, Inc.
It's about a convoy of 22 tractor trailers, one large bus and a police escort that navigated its way through the uprooted trees and leveled buildings and scattered debris to hand deliver basic supplies to people just like you and me, who suddenly find themselves with nothing.
It's about the area that took Hurricane Katrina's hardest punch but has been overshadowed by the attention focused on the more famous city to the west, New Orleans, a few miles across the Louisiana border.
It's also about naively signing up for a worthy one-day event, believing I could gather information for the upcoming season while participating in a good deed -- and, instead, getting smacked rudely in the face with the catastrophe's impact, which makes the upcoming season seem rather trivial.
Which means it's also about acknowledging that even though the convoy unloaded everything it had, it brought something back. Something just as basic and valuable as food and water. Something that sometimes appears to be as rare a commodity around the country as a warm bed and a hot shower are in Mississippi right now. Call it whatever you like: compassion, humility or gratitude. Just know that if your tank is low, there's a place where you can get all you want.
* * *
Right before Houston, Cash and the rest of the Operation Rebound contingent stepped off the bus and abruptly gagged on Hurricane Katrina's disease-ridden stench, and peered through a hot afternoon haze at the eerily quiet remnants of Gulfport, Miss., there was an announcement over the PA system.
Bottles of hand sanitizer and disinfectant wipes had been passed around on the bus after the previous stops, but Ground Zero took precautionary measures to a whole new level. Everyone in the group had been directed to an ambulance parked on the side of the road 20 minutes earlier to receive a tetanus shot to protect against airborne illnesses.
"This is way more serious than I thought," said Abdur-Rahim, putting into words what everyone was thinking.
"We didn't want to tell you about the tetanus shot beforehand," said a volunteer. "We were afraid nobody would come."
Even the inoculation, though, didn't have us covered.
"Do not touch anything or bring anything back with you from Mississippi," announced Mike Espy. Espy is a former U.S. Secretary of Agriculture and Mississippi mover and shaker who helped Operation Rebound through all the bureaucracy and red tape. "You might have radioactive problems."
Everyone heard, but, in the end, no one paid heed. How could anyone come to this place and not take something with them?
The group was standing at the heart of what had been the nation's second-largest gambling mecca. Call it Las Vegas East or Atlantic City South. It had beaches and ocean and grand hotels and night clubs. Had. Now all that was left were strands of rebar and the stumps of girders.
The Copa Casino appeared still to be standing but it was no more than a fake building in a movie, a facade with nothing behind it. Tractor trailers were piled like dominoes, blown here from a marina loading dock a mile or so away, and a 35-foot boat rested upside down against a telephone pole. To their right sat the hulk of a casino in the middle of the street, shoved by 170-mile-an-hour winds a half-mile from its moorings.
And this was after two weeks of a concerted cleanup effort. An army officer in camouflage fatigues told Espy, "We've seen progress here. Down in Hancock? Nothing's happened."
The night before, a NBPA official jokingly had noted that Operation Rebound would be a little more intense than the NBA's "Wheel of Fortune" fund-raiser and referenced the Iraq war by calling me "an embedded journalist." It was no joke the next day.
"I've never been in a war zone, but I'd have to guess this is what it's like," said Clarence Weatherspoon, who spent countless weekends here during his days at Southern Miss. He checked his watch. "Four o'clock on a regular day, you couldn't walk across the streets, there'd be so many cars going in and out. Man, this is crazy."
For Al Jefferson and Justin Reed, the caravan was an opportunity to help the less fortunate in their home state.
There had been hints of what lay ahead shortly after the bus had left the Horizon hotel in Vicksburg, its $49 rooms and adjoining casino making it the nearest thing to NBA-caliber accommodations in the area. We had met at 7 a.m. in the lobby and were on the road 15 minutes later for a press conference in Jackson in the parking lot of an abandoned Wal-Mart, the trucks parked impressively in a fanned formation behind a podium.
Dampier, Jefferson and Reed, all Mississippi natives, were waiting for us. Both Jefferson and Reed were in the state when the storm hit but went relatively unscathed. A tree fell on Reed's mother's house and Jefferson couldn't get in touch with his family for two days with cell phone towers and power lines knocked out. "It was scary," Jefferson admitted.
Abdur-Rahim stood back and took in the clots of cameras and microphones scattered around the parking lot.
"This is the hype part," he said. "This isn't what it's about."
A local TV reporter provided a harbinger of what was in store.
"Hope you have a strong stomach," he said. "You're going to see some things."
The convoy pulled off of Route 49 and into Hattiesburg 2½ hours later. With every passing mile, the damage evolved from bent trees to snapped trunks to mighty oaks simply yanked up out of the ground, roots and all. Blue tarps were in high demand, based on the number of them tacked to roofs. Hattiesburg, being 60 miles from the coast, didn't sustain water damage, but it was clear why the wind alone might have scared Jefferson.
The temperature was in the low 90s when the bus squeezed past several hundred people into a community-center parking lot. There was already a line snaking around the building. Every face looked up in awe as the bus rumbled past, suggesting this was the first one they'd seen in some time.
After the players disembarked, neither they nor the evacuees quite knew what to do at first. The kids and the Hattiesburg mayor were the first to break the ice, the former by shyly saying hello and asking for autographs, the latter by shaking hands and introducing himself. Several adults sidled up to me, pointed at one player after another, and asked, "Now who is he?"
