"Obviously, the Euros knew it and the Canadians had no idea what we were singing. It was something about winning and being champions."KRIS DRAPER, on the song the Wings sung in the locker room PITTSBURGH -"Hey," Kris Draper yelled, "is the Cup down there?""Yep," came the answer. "In the middle of the room."Draper, surrounded by his family, put an arm on one of his children."Let's go."
PITTSBURGH - One last bullet came flying at Chris Osgood. It had kill all over it. He stopped it with his glove, pushed it away with his stick, and as the blue light swirled to mark the end of the game, he was flat on the ice. But not for long. The Red Wings were coming home. The Stanley Cup was coming with them. As they say in fairy tales, "All's Well That Ends Red."Well, in Detroit fairy tales.
I am the voice inside your head today, Ben Wallace. Sorry for keeping you up all night. But let's be honest, you weren't getting much sleep, anyhow. It's time for Game 7, the end of this Detroit-Miami series, maybe the end of your season. And waking you up is what this is all about.Ben, it is time for you to be as proud as you should be - and to play that way. It is time for you to stop shaking your head, stop staring off in wounded pride. It is time for you to dish out some of what you've been taking from Shaquille O'Neal.
So he woke up the morning after one of the toughest, longest playoff losses in Red Wings history, and he drove his daughter to school. On the way she said her knees were bruised from the game, because she kept jumping up and down and banging her legs into the seats in front of her. When they reached the high school, "she gave me a kiss," he says, "and she said, Good luck, Dad' "And off she went. And off he went.
MIAMI -- Tayshaun Prince was mopping his face with a small hand towel. He patted his forehead. He wiped around his nose. He looked like a skinny man with a cold, or at least one who couldn't stop sweating. This was in the emptying hallways of American Airlines Arena, a full hour after Game 2 had ended Wednesday night, but Prince still seemed to be wafting in the steam of his opponent, Dwyane Wade.
The reason you want to move the ball around in basketball - what the Pistons desperately wanted to do Thursday - is that most of the time, it ends up in the right hands. Even if it's not the hands you think.Ben Wallace has been chided for his hands in the past - too small, they say, for a guy his size - but his hands were hot for most of Game 2. And we're not just talking blocks and rebounds, his normal specialties.We're talking lay-ups. We're talking finger rolls. We're talking bounce passes.Bounce passes?
MIAMI -- Oh, so that's Dwyane Wade. That's the guy we've been hearing about up north the way we hear about tropical storms or hurricane damage. And just like those things, you really can't appreciate the power until you're in the middle of it.Suffice it to say, the Pistons are now wet. And a few of their windows have been blown out as well.
And after all that, after the crazy second quarter, the crazy third quarter, the emergence of a bench star, the circus shot by Rasheed Wallace for the lead, after all that, here we were again, LeBron James out top, with a decision to make, the game in his hands.And here he came, down the lane.In Game 1 at the Palace, he dished the ball to Donyell Marshall, who missed a three-pointer, and a rainstorm of criticism came down on LeBron's head. Why'd you pass? You're the best in the league - shoot it!
Mitch Albom writes about running an orphanage in impoverished Port-au-Prince, Haiti, his kids, their hardships, laughs and challenges, and the life lessons he’s learned there every day.
