Back at the dawn of time, before the creation of cable TV, when cagers roamed the earth clad in short shorts and kneepads, when keys were narrow and hook shots were common, The Gods of Basketball looked upon the NCAA and were displeased.
“We must do something: Bearcats, Hoosiers, Buckeyes and Tar Heels and the big schools are taking over our great game. We need to do something like we did in Indiana with Hickory, shake em up, give the little guy a chance.”
And so it came to pass that a little tiny school with two security guards, in a town with three traffic lights (that went blinker at nine o’clock) was given the blessing of the Basketball Gods. The Left-Hander appeared and before long the little school no one had ever heard about began to make noise, a lot of noise.
They cracked the Buckeyes, sodomized the Blue Devils, roasted the Gamecocks, condemned the Demon Deacons, humiliated the Cavaliers, cutting a wide swath through the United States. The Tar Heels were afraid to play them. Afraid!
And so after getting within a buzzer beater of making the Final Four, two years in a row, Davidson was a basketball power and the Gods enjoyed the jest. Mayberry ruled, the Powers ran for cover.
But … strange hubris began to take hold at Davidson. The rulers of Davidson began to believe that Davidson as a basketball power was in the natural order of things – it required no special effort, it would always be. So then the Left Hander came to King of Davidson and said: “There is a special player the Wildcats need, his name is Brian Taylor and though his board scores are low the Tigers, the school who we often compare ourselves to, have admitted him. Surely you Highness recognizes our needs and will allow him to be a Cat.”
But after deliberation with his Henchmen, the King said: Our standards are holy and cannot be bent – go forth and find someone else to beat the Tar Heels with.”
And the Gods were angry. Did not this little man understand the gift Davidson had been given? Did the King’s Henchmen not appreciate the attention, the fame, the interest from students all over the country? Why would they spit in the God’s faces?
And so the Gods took the Left Hander away. And when the King was given a second chance when Larry the Traveler became coach, he still did not change. So the Great Larry was taken away as further punishment.
But the Gods relented as they had always liked underdogs and enjoyed the jest so even after these two ungrateful and foolish decisions–they gave the Kingdom of the Cats the twenty-nine year old Terry the Dutchman. And though Terry could not get the Kingdom back to quite its former glory the Cats still sodomized Blue Devils, roasted Gamecocks, humiliated Cavaliers and offered the Tar Heels the chance to play–which they were still afraid to do for fear the Cats would rule all of Carolina.
But the Kingdom was in danger of losing its basketball power and the Dutchman knew it. So he rallied the merchants and Lords of the Kingdom, the Belks and the Littles, and met with King Sam. The Dutchman offered to raise sufficient funds on his own, to keep the Cats as powers. New facilities, more recruiting and travel money, all without asking King Sam for a farthing. King Sam pondered and declared: “If I let the basketball team raise money it will hurt our other fund-raising. I deny your request now make do and begone.”
The God were furious. Three times the King had spat on the gift, three times he had refused to do anything, three times he and his henchman, the accursed Faculty, imagined that the Cats would always be a basketball power.
The skies grew dark, the lightning struck and the earth split. The Dutchman left, recruits quit coming, the end came quick. Disaster begat disaster, by the time the King saw what had happened it was too late to fix. No fund-raising, no recruiting, no one player or coach could save it. The magic was gone, the lightning was out of the bottle and the Gods moved on to other small schools.
And so this is the terrible tale of how the basketball program of a little Kingdom in the middle of nowhere came this close to ruling the basketball world before the Gods destroyed it for the sin of hubris.
Your Loyal Scribe,
Captain America
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