Sheed and the Truth
My two favorite college players when I was in high school
Were Paul Pierce and Rasheed Wallace.
Kansas was only a few hours from Texas,
so it was natural to see players from the DFW area
end up in Lawrence to hoop. I watched Kansas games
based on that alone.
North Carolina may as well have been Mars.
I could point it out on a map, but I hadn’t even
left the state of Texas before the age of 16.
My only connection to the school
was ESPN, my subscription to Sports Illustrated
and watching them beat the Fab Five in the National title game
When I was in 8th grade.
On weekends, I watched KU play on the CBS games
And during the week I’d tune it to ESPn to catch Rasheed Wallace, Jeff McInnis, Jerry Stackhouse and Dante Calabria get up and down the court against their ACC opponents.
Rasheed stuck out to me because of the birthmark in his scalp (Randy Galloway liked to refer to him as “spothead”) his long limbs and his violent, and high flying dunks.
As a hometown recruit, Paul Pierce was pegged to go to the defending champion UCLA Bruins, but threw everybody a curveball when he announced he would be attending tschool in Lawrence, Kansas.
Neither player made the title game. Both had memorable losses on national television,
but they’d both had plenty of memorable highlights in their college careers.
I was just finishing up high school early into their pro careers
And could not follow much NBA post Michael Jordan (his second retirement)
Struggling through my weedout classes and without cable, but I kept up with the playoffs
Sheed was a prominent player on that talented Trailblazers team that choked away the Western Conference Finals against Shaq and Kobe, and I was titilated to see him lift the trophy in 2004 with the Detroit Pistons against that very same led Lakers squad.
Truth’s moment would come in 2008 after beating the defending Eastern conference champion Detroit Pistons with Kevin Garnett, Ray Allen, a surplus of superstar role players,
And a mediocre head coach who would cost the team another title with his weird substitution patterns in 2010 game 7 Finals.
That team would be one of my favorite NBA teams of all time because Paul Pierce and Rasheed played on that Celtics squad, and it doubly hurt to see them lose to the hated (and stacked) Los Angeles Lakers.
I hope one day that Wallace ends up on a podcast with Paul Pierce and KG. I would love to hear those conversations and be a fly on a wall for that particular season.
Nuclear Polio Vaccination 