Best athlete you played with or against

I was at a local YMCA playing some basketball with my friends and then this group of five comes walking in. One of them is Laron Profit.

No one can "D" him up, first of all because we were all white, second of all, he was pretty good, so he scored at least 19 of the 21 points on us in the game. I think we had one or two points and they were coming down the floor with a chance to win the game with a basket.

I was in the paint with my friend and I saw Profit sprinting out of the corner of my eye toward the lane. I moved out of the way, right as he elevated to the rim. He caught an alley-oop right on top of my friend who turned as Profit's "hammer" slapped him in the face.

 

Played Highschool hoops and soccer against Steve Nash

 

No, but it was a close game to 15 until about the half way point when some white guys with sunglasses talked to them. Then they just blew us out.

 

Was it the guy on the right?

 

I remember going to one of those Steeler games as a kid. This was around 1978 or so in the CCBC (Ca Ca Buc A) Dome.

I know Bradshaw, Mean Joe and L.C. played. I'm sure there were some others, but they stuck out. God, what a great time to be a kid in Pennsylvania.

The Steeler barnstorming tours are one of the great traditions in Western PA. When they had the greats playing in them...

Lord did they pack a house.

 

Only the Canuckistanis (or a few very old Atlanta Flames fans) will get this one, but I played in a summer camp in Ontario for a couple of weeks in the mid 1970s against Paul Reinhart, who was a pretty damn good NHL player in his day for mostly Atlanta and Calgary. He went off to play for the Kitchener Rangers that fall before getting drafted in the first round in 1979 by Atlanta. There were a bunch of OHA-bound guys at that camp (including his brother Kevin, who also played for Kitchener and was one of my best buds during camp), probably a bunch of whom also got drafted by the NHL, but none as good as Paul.

 

More like these guys.

 

I fogot I played against Keith Tower in eighth grade.

His tourette's was going a million miles an hour.

 

When I was 12 I went to the Heart of America basketball camp in Salina, Kan. Another kid on my team there and I were both kind of pissed we didn't make the camp all-star team. I felt like I was borderline. This little guy was really scrawny and not that great.

Two years later I went to a different camp, but my brother went to Heart of America so I was at the award ceremony when we went to pick him up. The kid I knew a couple of years earlier was now about a foot taller and the camp MVP. A few years later Dennis Latimore was a high school All-American signed with Arizona.

 

That wouldn't be a certain man crush of yours not named John Cusack, would it?

 

Didn't think I had one, but I guess I can go with Joe Walters, the all-time leading scorer in Maryland lacrosse history. Little fucker, at least at the time in high school, was a freshman when I was a senior. We used to beat the shit out of him in practice. I guess it helped toughen him up.

 

Played with Gordie Lockbaum, former two-way Holy Cross football star and mid 80's Heisman finalist, on an over-30 baseball team. He hadn't played baseball since high school, when he was all-state. In a league that included a number of former minor leaguers and D-1 players, he was instantly THE BEST player, period. He even pulled a Reggie and hit four, legit 380 feet plus home runs on four pitches in a championship double header vs. a former minor league pitcher who was still well over 80 mph. In all the years I've played, I've never heard the ball come off anyone else's bat like his - it hissed when he'd hit it through the box in bp . Gordie had no arm though, which is why he hadn't pursued baseball. Despite his other skills, he had no position, as even second base was a challenge for his arm. But fast? Wow. Once saw him score from first on a wild pickoff throw that went about 50 feet past the first baseman. Real nice guy, too.