ESPN story on h.s. basketball team

The shot should have counted based on the pictures, from the Spartanburg paper. That said, if losing a state championship is the worst thing to ever happen to you in your life, count yourself lucky.

 

I don't have much problem with not including more from the losing team. In Friday Night Lighs (the book), there's that improbable scene where the three teams have a coin toss to decide who goes to the playoffs. Permian wins it and survives. I think Bissinger has a graf or two on the odd team out, where he writes about what the coach said to the players. But he doesn't dive into their story, or talk about whether that coach was now going to be fired, or talk about the player who was playing for the memory of a deceased father, or talk about a running back who blew his knee out early in the year (hello, Boobie!). There were probably just as many intriguing stories with that team as there were with Permian, and in a book he had unlimited space. But the story was Permian, and that's where the focus remained.

 

I was intrigued by the discussion here, so I just went and watched the story online. Being as jaded and cynical as I am, I expected to find it sappy and overdone, but I didn't. I think it was a compelling story that was fairly simply told, with relatively few bells and whistles. It wasn't like those awful pieces Chris Connelly did with the Make-a-Wish Foundation last summer, where they came up with these contrived situations designed to tug at your heartstrings. In this piece, the emotional punch came from the subjects themselves -- the coach/firefighter saying "tell my wife I love her", or the player saying "please, please, no!" when he thought the hail mary had beaten him, for example. That was real stuff, not the result of some syrupy piano music or photos placed against a darkened background. Very little to criticize here. An award-worthy piece.

As for the final shot, I think they were right not to focus on whether or not it beat the buzzer or on the kid who made it. That might have been an interesting story, but it really wasn't the story they were telling. If this had been HBO Real Sports, for instance, that might have been an aspect of the story that Rinaldi could have talked about afterwards with Bryant Gumbel. But I think it would have diluted the impact if they had included it in the main piece.

 

FWIW, and because there's been discussion about the shot, ...

It beat the buzzer. We've looked at it here about a brazillion times and it beats the buzzer every time.

BUT ...

As best I/we can tell, it shouldn't have mattered. Because there's no way that kid hauled down that rebound, dribbled free and got that shot off in the 1.7 seconds that were left on the clock. They don't show it in the piece, but the clock doesn't start until he's halfway to the spot he shoots from.

 

Joey Crawford strikes again.

 

Link, for those who want to watch it: http://sports.espn.go.com/broadband/video/videopage?&brand=null&videoId=3421852&n8pe6c=2

 

I just watched that, and I am/was crying like a freaking baby.

How any of you could hear him in that building and not lose it is stunning to me.

 

good call, mustard. no way in hell the kid accomplishes that in 1.7.

 

I've heard of legging out a bunt, but this is ridiculous.

 

The rule of thumb is one dribble per second, right? So maybe when the officials huddled, they talked about how many dribbles he took and determined there's no way the shot got off in time. Seems like a legitimate ruling to me.

 

I'm glad that was addressed; that was one of my very first thoughts after watching the piece.

Which was terrific, btw, no matter what channel it was on. (And, by and large, I hate ESPN.)