After 3 years at Sheffield what prompted your move to Towers? It was a great opportunity. I found out over the summer who was going to be at Towers this coming season. I felt I’d accomplished a lot at Sheffield over the last three years. I loved being there, a great city and team. |
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Robbie is a great coach. Before I came here I was great friends with John McCord who had played with him, at Chester Robbie had won all kinds of silverware. Now I’m here I’ve found that he is a really coach. |
Who has impressed on the team? Jerry has always been a scorer, one thing I’ve always liked about him is that even when it looks like we ‘re getting down he’s always pushing. Rod as the point guard is the main person, he’s the one getting us the ball, pushing our defence and our offence. |
You spent some time in Israel? I was reluctant to go there at first because of the problems there. But the basketball is just the basketball. You might notice at the mall they checked your bags and your car but otherwise everyone just lives normally, particularly in the north where I was playing. The city was nice, the weather was nice the fans were nice, and I just couldn’t believe it. A lot of players go there and the standard of competition is very hard. In countries where 4 Americans are allowed the standard is very hard. |
You were also a Czech Republic All Star? That was a real experience. We were lucky because we were with a rich team so we had nice apartments, we were treated really well. But all you did was go to practise or play then go home. The only people we knew were other players or some of the fans. When we went out nobody took any notice of us, it must have been from years of being under the Communist regime. It was a tough 5 months and it was so cold, you have no idea just how cold it can be. |
| In my first year of Uni I went to Beijing for a few months. People would come up to you and touch you, they just couldn’t believe how tall we were. They’d be staring at us all the time. At least that was the capital, in some of the places we played you saw the poverty people lived in first hand, their homes and the gyms. I just couldn’t believe it. | Basketball playing brothers: Stephen and Larry Larry played in the NBA for 6 years, 1992-98 than played in Spain and is in Greece now. My other brother Steven is a coach now. I hated basketball but when I got as tall as my brothers I didn’t have any choice really. We’re all different ages so at one point one of us is way better than the others. In the summer we play for fun against each other. |
We were no 1 at Gratz, Rashod Wallace was on our team who now plays for Detroit. We hardly lost any games in the time I was there, one year we were 30 - 0, the next year we lost maybe three or four. Temple was my local college and it was really good, one of the top schools so there was no need for me to go any further than that. Finally after a couple of years my high school coach came and took a job there. He got tired of teaching at high school so he moved on to Temple. I went back there this summer, I got my business degree, went back to school. Once you’ve been at Temple you’re always welcome to go back to practise over the summer. |
Looking forward to UConn? College kids are so energetic, you just don’t want to even think. Right now, there’s no way I’m going out there against those kids because my thigh is really hurting. Robbie says it’s up to you, you know your own body. He and you don’t want to risk ending your career so you tell him before the game that you’re up to it or not. |
On USA All-Time Men's US Olympic Festival Roster? When I was in college there was an Olympic festival and I was chosen to play. There were two teams, one travelling around and the other staying in one place. It was great, all the top college Freshmen in the US were there so we got to play and get to know each other and the coaches. |
I am not used to not winning each year so we
should really be getting something this year!
I do apologise
for stopping you getting silverware last year! We missed a ton of free throws in this game, if we’d scored even a few of them we would have won that game! Guess what we’re going to be practising on Monday! The trouble is teams pull out the stops when they play the Towers, we really are the team to beat but by the end of the year we will have something on that shelf, it’s looking pretty empty right now! |
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Andrea Redman on 20/11/04
