The Tuesday Newsletter Extravaganza ...
Albeit moved to a Wednesday because yesterday was International Left-Handers Day ... which is a holiday we very much celebrate around here
I know, I know.
This isn't a Tuesday.
That said ...
Pushing this week's Tuesday Newsletter Extravaganza to Wednesday was very intentional. Tuesday was International Left-Handers Day. As previously explained, I felt that our annual All-Lefty Team was way too topical (and meaningful) not to publish first and with its own stretch of clear runway. Putting a new Southpaw Six together every Aug. 13 is that important to me.
Yet this particular August 13th delivered a double dose of personal significance for this southpaw. I know I've mentioned this anniversary in a recent dispatch or two, but Tuesday slammed it home for your reflective (and hopelessly nostalgic) publisher, officially marking 35 years since the date of my first NBA article appearing in a real newspaper.
Aug. 13, 1989: My news story on the then-Yugoslavian army threatening to prevent rookie center Vlade Divac from joining the Lakers ran on the front page of The Orange County Register sports section that Sunday. Thanks to my former Cal State Fullerton classmate Todd Harmonson, now a top-ranking editor at The Register, I have a snippet of the copy retrieved from the paper's internal library system to share ... including the quote I obtained by nervously calling Lakers general manager Jerry West at his home for reaction:
I wrote about this whole experience at length five years ago in The New York Times before Divac's Hall of Fame induction. One more burst of excerpted nostalgia from that piece before we return to the modern day:
The editors on duty, once assured that I was already quite familiar with Divac, duly informed me that it was my job to call Lakers General Manager Jerry West at home for comment.
On a Saturday.
Divac has heard me tell this story before — how terrified I was to ring The Logo as a 20-year-old on a sleepy summer afternoon — but it didn’t stop him from laughing into the phone last week when I reminded him of the details. These are the kinds of experiences you can’t help but relive at times like these, over and over, with Divac and I soon to meet up in Springfield, Mass., to receive the honors of our dreams.
On Thursday night, I will be presented with the Curt Gowdy Media Award by the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, bestowed annually to one print and one electronic journalist who have made a career of covering basketball. On Friday night, Divac will be inducted into the Hall of Fame — 30 years after he arrived in the United States as one of the most important pioneers in European basketball.
Sometimes, friends, it’s an even smaller world than they teach you in school.
(PS — A subscriber complained recently that my writing has gotten too personal … then unsubscribed. At this point, honestly, sharing such stories feels pretty natural on this platform. Hope it lands that way with you!)
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As a reminder: Tuesday editions, on this and every Newsletter Tuesday, go out free to anyone who signs up, just as my Tuesday pieces did in their New York Times incarnation.
Brunson The Blue?
The Knicks' Jalen Brunson was obviously going to be the proverbial First Name on the Team Sheet on Tuesday when I printed a new edition of our annual All-Lefty Team ... this one based on what we saw during the 2023-24 NBA season. Full story here:
The OFFICIAL 2024 All-Lefty Team
August 13th, as you surely know by now, is a holiday circled annually on our calendar.
Yet I never expected Brunson celebrating International Left-Handers Day himself by posting a picture of his new Manchester City shirt as furnished by my lifelong football club.
Quite a picture to snap us (or at least me) out of a post-Olympics hangover:
Numbers Game
🏀 56
It bears repeating: Last season's 56 players who were listed as left-handed and appeared in at least one NBA game established a new single-season league record. The previous high, per Basketball Reference data, was 54 during the 2021-22 season.
🏀 10
The world's average left-handed population is routinely estimated at 10% ... meaning that the NBA's southpaw population was pretty much in line with that last season given that the maximum number of players in the league — if every team is using its three two-way roster spots — is 540.
🏀 11
Interesting list from The Athletic's Law Murray: The Clippers' upcoming move to the Intuit Dome in Inglewood, Calif., next season means that the NBA will be down to 11 teams that share a building with an NHL franchise. Those teams: Celtics, Knicks, 76ers, Raptors, Bulls, Pistons, Wizards, Mavericks, Nuggets, Jazz and Lakers.
🏀 64-4
The United States' 6-0 record in Paris improved its Olympic record to 64-4 since NBA players were allowed to participate in the tournament starting with the 1992 Summer Games in Barcelona.
🏀 145-6
The American men are 145-6 in the Olympics overall.
🏀 35:12
Serbia led the United States for more than 35 minutes in last week's semifinals.
🏀 1,103
Good one from my pal Raymond Ridder of the Warriors: Stephen Curry's four 3-pointers in the final 2:47 of the United States' gold-medal-clinching victory over France was the sort of flurry he has only mustered once in 1,103 combined regular-season and playoff games in the NBA. Curry likewise sank four 3s that late in a Game 3 loss to Cleveland in the 2015 NBA Finals.
🏀 12
Germany had amassed a 12-game winning streak, including last summer's 8-0 mark at the World Cup, before losing to France in the Olympic semifinals. Yet it must be noted that Germany's victory over Serbia in the World Cup final in September 2023 came without Nikola Jokić on the floor.
🏀 2
Only two players on the United States' men's Olympic basketball roster played on last summer's World Cup team: Minnesota's Anthony Edwards and Indiana's Tyrese Haliburton. Edwards has already said that he will not play on the U.S. team at the next World Cup in Qatar in 2027.
🏀 24
Denver's Jamal Murray scored only 24 points for Canada in four games at the Paris Olympics.
🏀 35
Murray scored 35 points in his last game for the Nuggets in May in Game 7 of Denver's second-round exit to Minnesota.
🏀 4
Vincent Collet has coached France at the past four Olympics starting with the 2012 London Games.
🏀 50
The power of Numbers Game? We wrote in this section last Tuesday that Malachi Flynn, just four months removed from uncorking a 50-point game for Detroit, was still unsigned. San Antonio then signed Flynn to a one-year deal on the very next day.
I really ENJOY the personal stuff. That's a big part of why this works for me. You've been around for a while and you've collected all this information, why not share it? I absolutely share the story of Carlisle yelling at me the one and only time I had a credential and went to pregame practice haha!
Not sure what that (ex) subscriber’s problem was - you can always skip stuff that doesn’t interest you. But more to the point, this Substack is a community, and it’s almost as if you are inviting us into your home, so of course you’ll share some personal stories, and we sometimes do as well.