About shopping and meeting Larry Bird
I have really been looking forward to writing this week's blog. As a matter of fact, about midway through the third quarter of our Thursday game with Efes, I was so excited about our situation (we were up 13 at home and with a win would move to 4-4) that I was planning to write the blog as soon as I got home. At that point we had held the Efes perimeter players to exactly ZERO points and had made some adjustments to slow Nikola Prkacin's dominating first-half post play. The arena in Gdansk was as loud as I have ever heard it and the enthusiasm carried over onto the court as well as to our bench. But late in the third quarter something changed. I can't explain exactly what it was, but 23 Horace Jenkins' points, two huge Cenk Akyol threes, and about five amazing Marcus Haislip dunks later, all our excitement had vanished into an 81-74 loss. Needless to say, I didn't rush home to blog about the opportunity we let slip away. However, I did find out that somebody reads my blog other than my wife, my mom and Flavio Tranquilo. Efes post player Ermal Kuqo met me at half court, and while exchanging the cheap gifts that nobody ever sees after we hand them to our team managers, explained to me that he also rocks out to the Killers, but questioned my classical music leanings. Actually, his exact words were: "I like the Killers too, but Beethoven before a game? Come on!". I assured him that the classical music never enters the locker room and is merely for long bus rides and post-loss blues. By the way, before I move on, I have to comment on the slighting of Marcus Haislip on the Euroleague Top Ten video highlights. He was on there twice, but should have been on there about five or six times last week. His dunk that came in at number 4 was his third best dunk of that game!!! He was a human highlight reel!!!
Well, my initial excitement for this week's blog was born of our trip to Bologna. At the time, it was a huge test for us to see if we could get back on the road to a Top 16 spot. We came in with a better record than Climamio, but were definitive underdogs in most people's mind. Climamio has not had the season they had hoped for, thus far, but the tradition of Fortitudo alone was enough to make them favorites against their Polish League visitors. I felt that we really showed a lot of character in that road win - definitely our most well-played game of the season. I had already mentioned in my last blog that I was looking forward to the food in Bologna - I freely devoured about 33 slices of prosciutto during our meals - now we had a victory under our belts and the shops of the top designers in Italy in which to spend our bonus money.
I haven't mentioned it in this blog before, but one thing that some of the guys on our team (and I suspect most teams) like to do during free time on road trips is shop. I sometimes get teased by my teammates about my quasi-addiction to shopping. Most of it is done in the airports' duty-free Hugo Boss (my favorite), electronics, or watch shops during our layover between flights. But, when one gets a chance to shop the Italian (and some French) designers that line the streets of Bologna (or Milano last season) then one must take advantage. You see, Sopot, Poland is not exactly a shopper's paradise. So, several of us strolled through Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Armani and other stores in search of the perfect Christmas gift for our wives. However, word got back to the women in Sopot of the shops we were perusing (I think it was via the biggest shopper, or at least biggest spender, on our team - Christian Dalmau) and so they all figured they could guess what we had gotten them. But, as I explained to my wife, they don't know if we emptied our wallets at YSL, D&G or.....H&M. How funny would that be - go to all the best shops in Europe and come home with an H&M bag full of clothes that my wife could buy at any of the four malls within a 10-kilometer radius of our house in Sopot?
As we head into what is essentially a must-win game for both Le Mans and us, I have to mention a milestone which occurred since my last blog. On December 7 the idol of my basketball youth and reason why I wear the number 33 jersey turned 50. Larry Bird, undoubtedly the best forward ever to play the game, was not the reason that I played basketball (my dad was my first influence), but he was the reason that I loved to watch it. I know most European fans were introduced to NBA basketball during the Michael Jordan era of the 1990s and only know of Larry Bird through what they see/saw on ESPN Classic or NBA TV old-school highlights. But I grew up on Dr. J, Magic Johnson and Larry Bird. I was seven years old during Larry Legend's first season with the Celtics - too young to know a whole lot about NBA hoops, but old enough to know that the funny-looking dude in green and white (essentially the first guy my dad told me about) was the best player on the court. During the next 13 years Larry Legend would lead the Celtics to three championships, earn three MVP's and, due to his rivalry with Magic Johnson, transform the NBA. He was unique in his ability to come through in clutch situations and his ability to make his teammates better. These characteristics led me to follow his every on-court move with an emotion that was hard to match. There are far too many highlights from his career to mention, but I will tell the tale of the biggest highlight of my short NBA career (33 games with Milwaukee Bucks in 1997-98), which took place when we played the Larry Bird-coached Indiana Pacers.
Many times in life our heroes fall short of the stature in which they were held by us as kids. At that time in my life (24 years old) I was aware that Larry Legend was no longer the idol of my youth, but rather a man whose basketball exploits I respected. I wanted to shake his hand as a man. The meeting took place on the court before warm-ups:
Jeff Nordgaard: (reaching out to shake hands) Coach Bird, my name is Jeff Nordgaard and I just wanted tell you that I was a big fan of yours as a kid.
Larry Bird: Thanks. I appreciate that. How do you like it here (referring to Milwaukee)?
JN: I like it a lot. The fans treat me pretty well because I am kind of a local kid. I played at UW-Green Bay.
LB: Yeah, I know. I saw you play. You are a good player.
JN: Thanks. Good luck!
LB: You, too.
I run off with the biggest smile on my face. Larry Bird - the guy who made me cry when Rodman blocked his shot in 1987 to "end" the playoff game against Detroit, only to make me scream for joy when he turned around and stole Isiah's inbounds pass and flipped it to DJ for the miraculous win - just told me I was a good player!!! I missed the next 10-12 shots I took in warm-ups, but I was smiling. But that's not even the highlight. In the game, I caught the ball about six meters from the hoop on the baseline right in front of the Pacers' bench. As I went up to shoot it, I heard Coach Bird yell "get out on him....he's a shooter!!!!"
SWISH!!!
POSTED BY
JEFF NORDGAARD - SOPOT, POLAND
DATE:
Monday, December 18, 2006