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Basketball Babel

Welcome to Magic’s world. The following compilation provides a graphic and entertaining tour of the mind of some of the sport’s greatest artists – even the famed ‘dream team’. It is a guide or travelogue around the weird ways in which people pursue sporting pleasure. Packed in equal measure with invaluable information are useless trivia and rude comments, containing wry observations about everything and anything.

Prize and Prejudice

The trouble with referees is that they just don’t care which side wins.

Tom Canterbury, NBA player

High Flyer

If I were given a change of life, I’d like to see how it would be to live as a mere six-footer.

Wilt ‘The Stilt’ Chamberlain, Golden State Warriors/LA Lakers

Happy Birthdays

I’m six foot eleven. My birthday covers three days.

Darryl Dawkins, Philadelphia 76ers

Regrets

Sometimes you wake up in the morning and wish your parents had never met.

Bill Fitch, unsuccessful coach, during a losing run

An Honest Crook

I thought I was an honest guy, and just doing what everyone else was doing – bending the rules.

Manny Goldstein, University of New Mexico recruiter

Survival of the Fittest

Quick guys get tired; big guys don’t shrink.

Coach Marv Harshman on recruiting players from college

Family Ties

I didn’t hire Scott as assistant coach because he’s my son. I hired him because I’m married to his mother.

Frank Layden

Keeping Both Options Open

The free throw shot is both easy – and difficult.

Peter Mintoft

Mistaken Identity

I guess I know very little about music. I’ve just discovered Yoko Ono is a singer. I thought it was Japanese for ‘one egg please’.

Anon basketball player

Player Power

We have total discipline in the Lakers’ locker room. It’s ‘yes sir’ and ‘no sir’. ‘Yes sir, Kareem’. ‘No sir, Magic’.

Pat Riley, Lakers’ coach

Equality of the Sexes

Of course there should be women basketball referees. Incompetence should not be confined to one sex.

Bill Russell, sportswriter

Good Company

It’s better to eat caviar with two players than hot dogs with five.

Marcel Souza, sportswriter

Black Magic

He [Magic Johnson] should change his name from Magic to Mystifying.

Mychal Thompson, LA Lakers

Zoo

Basketball, a game which won’t be fit for people until they set the basket umbilicus-high and return the giraffes to the zoo.

Ogden Nash, poet and humourist