Detroit Free Press

On the morning of the last day of the best days of his life, Ernie Harwell got up and put a cassette into the small recorder he had plugged in under the sink. "This is Sammy Fain singing," he said. The recorder spit out scratchy sounds of an old man and a piano, a ballad, a pretty melody. We came together young and strongThe summer smiled and touched us with a songfor that one summerthat one sweet summer

The truth is, you don't coach NBA players anymore, you manage them. They are richer than you. More famous than you. More important than you. So they have the power.

Dizzy is dead. He blew notes around the melody. He blew notes around the world. He was blowing them almost up till his death by cancer in a New Jersey hospital last week. And when he died, the music he made with his trumpet was replaced by another sound: applause. First from his friends, then his co- workers, then his country, then the world. It would turn, quickly, into a standing ovation, headlines, TV news stories, old footage, verbal tributes. It was the loudest the world had ever cheered him.All he had to do was die.

BOSTON -- The sneaker sat in the paint, all by itself, as if it had fallen from a shelf. The man who had been wearing it, Isiah Thomas, was on his back now, a few feet away, grabbing the foot with the sock on it, writhing in pain. Even here, 800 miles away, you could hear the groans from Detroit: "Oh, nooo. Now what?"

TAMPA, Fla. -- Normally it takes a few hours before something really idiotic happens at the Super Bowl, but this being a short week and all, it took only five minutes. Here we were Tuesday morning, the sports media, just me and 3,700 of my closest friends, being herded into Tampa Stadium for our opening interviews with the New York Giants. And the first thing I saw when we walked on the field, dancing among the players in a tight black dress, black hat, black fishnet stockings and black leather boots, was "Downtown" Julie Brown from MTV. Doing interviews. Or trying.

Who is that guy? What's keeping him up there, floating toward the -- look there he goes again, up and slam! -- he's gotta be jet-propelled or something. He comes out of nowhere, and then -- wait, there he goes again uuuuuppppp annnnnd slam! Whooee! Those long arms, the grip, the way he sucks the ball in then floats toward the hoop. He just hangs there, waiting, living in the breeze. He looks so natural, so right.