RIP CHOCOLATE THUNDER

Legendary dunker, basketball pioneer, and citizen of  Planet Lovetron Darryl Dawkins dies at 58

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Darryl Dawkins was once summoned in the Philadelphia 76ers' locker room to meet a celebrity who wanted to meet the man known for dunking with backboard-breaking force.

The guest was Grammy Award winner Stevie Wonder. The entertainer is blind, yet even he could tell there was something unique about Dawkins' game.

"A guy who never saw me," a beaming Dawkins said in a 2011 interview, "gave me the name 'Chocolate Thunder.'"

The name stuck, and the rim-wrecking, glass-shattering dunks remain unforgettable -- as will the giant of a man who changed the game with them.

Darryl Dawkins' dunks were too powerful to be contained by our rims:

Dawkins said he didn't try to break the first one, but did try the second time. Then we changed our rims to fit him.

Dawkins died Thursday at a hospital in Allentown, Pennsylvania, according to the Lehigh County coroner's office. He was 58, and even though officials said an autopsy would be performed Friday, his family released a statement saying the cause of death was a heart attack.

"Darryl touched the hearts and spirits of so many with his big smile and personality, ferocious dunks, but more than anything, his huge, loving heart," his family said.

Dawkins spent parts of 14 seasons in the NBA with Philadelphia, New Jersey, Utah and Detroit. He averaged 12.0 points and 6.1 rebounds in 726 regular-season games. His 57.2 field goal percentage is seventh best in NBA history.

"The NBA family is heartbroken by the sudden and tragic passing of Darryl Dawkins," NBA commissioner Adam Silver said in a statement. "We will always remember Darryl for his incredible talent, his infectious enthusiasm and his boundless generosity. He played the game with passion, integrity and joy, never forgetting how great an influence he had on his legions of fans, young and old."

Dawkins was selected No. 5 in the 1975 NBA draft by the 76ers. He was the first high school player to be taken in the first round of the draft.
Dawkins was as revered off the court as he was on it. He remained enormously popular after his playing days were done, even during his stint as a member of the Harlem Globetrotters.

He would name his dunks -- the "Look Out Below," the "Yo-Mama" and the "Rim Wrecker" among them -- and often boasted that he hailed from the "Planet Lovetron."

Jim Spanarkel played with Dawkins in Philadelphia during Spanarkel's rookie season in 1979-80. He said Dawkins often entertained reporters postgame.

"If you were a writer, he was a delight because everything that came out of his mouth was shocking or entertaining," Spanarkel said. "Win or lose, every night I could barely get to my locker."
Dawkins' shows of force unquestionably changed the game. The NBA soon went to breakaway rims and mandated that backboards be shatter-resistant.

"One night, first time he broke a backboard, and I remember going back to the locker room because there was a delay," Spanarkel said. "I remember him yelling that he broke a backboard and that he wanted to renegotiate his contract because he could break a backboard.

More tributes poured in quickly from across the league, including from the 76ers.

"Simply put, Darryl Dawkins was beloved -- by his family, friends, former teammates and his fans all over the globe," 76ers CEO Scott O'Neil said. "His endearing charm, infectious smile and unparalleled sense of humor will be sorely missed. 'Chocolate Thunder' will always have a special place in our hearts."
Injuries plagued Dawkins late in his NBA career, and he went overseas for several years to play in the Italian league. He briefly had stints in the Continental Basketball Association and the International Basketball Association. He also coached at times, at both the minor league and junior college levels.

He averaged double digits in nine consecutive NBA seasons, with his best year likely being the 1983-84 campaign for New Jersey. He averaged a career-best 16.8 points per game that season, with only foul trouble -- 386 that season, still a league record -- holding him back.

"Darryl Dawkins is the father of power dunking," Shaquille O'Neal once said. "I'm just one of his sons."

The Associated Press, ESPN's Ohm Youngmisuk and ESPN Stats & Information contributed to this report.

THE NORTHERN LIGHTS     

Last night in Neganuee, photo credit to Word on the Street blog.

COLLEGE FOOTBALL PREVIEW COVERAGE CONTINUES --

 

 

You should watch North Dakota State vs. Montana, college football's real 2015 opener

By Rodger Sherman  @rodger_sherman on Aug 26, 2015, 12:52p +

        

Tim Heitman-USA TODAY Sports

NDSU is one of the most dominant teams in the history of football. You should see the Bison take on Bob Stitt's wild Grizzlies offense. 

 

College football is back. We have waited long enough. 

 

Your favorite team probably doesn't kick off until September 5 (or if you're lucky, September 3). But your eyes should turn to Missoula, Montana this Saturday, August 29, for the true start of the season. 

 

North Dakota State takes on Montana in the newly annual FCS Kickoff game, showcasing the best college football's second tier has to offer. And this really is the best it has to offer, at least on one side. Montana has a fascinating new coach and hopes of getting back amongst the FCS elite, and North Dakota State is a true dynasty, a four-time championship steamroller that would look at home in the FBS. 

 

We don't get many opportunities to witness the power of a fully operational battle station. Here's why you should watch NDSU try to blow up a planet at 3:30 p.m. ET on ESPN.

1. NDSU might be better than most FBS teams.

There is no greater force than NDSU. In the past two years, we've seen Alabama's title hopes smashed by a field goal return, Urban Meyer eating sad pizza, and FSU's undefeated streak squandered as Jameis Winston lost control of all his limbs. And yet the Bison keep trucking, a herd demolishing all in their path.

 

NMU was a rival of NDSU as recently as 1989. Now they are regularly beating Power Conference teams.

 

Last year's title was the program's fourth straight FCS championship, making the Bison only the second NCAA team ever to win four consecutive football championships at any level. (The other: Division III Augustana in the 1980s.) Since 2011, NDSU is a preposterous 58-3.

 

2014 could have been a down year for the Bison. They lost head coach Craig Bohl, who moved up to take over Wyoming, as well as starting QB Brock Jensen. Instead they went 15-1 -- we'll chalk up the loss to No. 10 Northern Iowa as new head coach Chris Klieman taking it easy on his alma mater -- and new QB Carson Wentz set school records in completions, yards, and total offense. The school took home another national title and Wentz earned tournament MVP honors.

 

It's cute. You're probably thinking it isn't impressive because it came against FCS teams. But every time the Bison play FBS teams, they romp over them too, winning five straight against the big boys. Last year it was an abysmal Iowa State, but the year before they beat a Kansas State squad that went 8-5 and eventually beat Michigan in a bowl game. The Bison have also won against Minnesota, Kansas, Central Michigan, and Ball State. Over the last decade, their record vs. FBS is 8-3, with only one loss by more than three points.

They will play Iowa in 2016. Stop scheduling them. 

 

NDSU would probably finish in the middle of a power conference, and it's doing it with a smaller roster and smaller bankroll than its FBS counterparts. It's downright incredible, and we should all take a moment to salute the Bison.

This future NFL-er had 27 sacks in 1989; but only 1 against us!

 

2. Stitt happens.

Coaching Montana for the first time is Bob Stitt, who takes over the Grizzlies after 15 years in charge of the Colorado School of Mines Orediggers. 

 

If you follow college football closely, there's an okay chance you've heard of Stitt. If you watch FBS teams, you've seen one of his plays being used by a better paid coach. But unless you've attended a Division II game in the Rockies, you probably haven't seen his offense in action.

 

Bill Connelly, who interviewed Stitt for his book Football Study Hall, described him as a college football "Internet Bigfoot." He rose to public awareness in 2012 when Dana Holgorsen credited Stitt for the devastatingly effective fly sweep at West Virginia. 

 

At a school with almost no history of football success, Stitt had 13 winning seasons in 15 years, three conference championships, and incredibly prolific offenses. He capped that with a Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference title last year, earning the gig with Montana this season. 

 

It's cool to finally see a coach held in high regard finally running his nifty offense on non-grainy TV, but the Grizzlies should be pretty good, too. Montana has more FCS playoff appearances than any other team, and cracked the top 15 of the preseason FCS poll. If Stitt can mold the Grizz as he wants, this should be one of the best in FCS.

3. It's college football.

And we've waited long enough, dammit.

HAPPY NATIONAL DOG DAY 
FROM NMU PACKER WEEKEND!

I LEFT MY HEART . . . . 

How to solve San Francisco's public pooping problem

Brandon M. Mercer

Updated 8:47 am, Wednesday, August 26, 2015

      

                                                                                                                           
•  
• San Francisco is known for its Golden Gate Bridge, world class cuisine, panoply of cultures, striking skyline, frigid fog, and homeless. More specifically, aggressive panhandling and homeless defecating and urinating in public. And sometimes doing even worse things.

With the holiday shopping season coming, and Super Bowl 50 right behind, the city by the bay will be in the national spotlight once again, and so will images like those above.

While Mayor Ed Lee announced this week that "the homeless must leave the street" for Super Bowl 50, it's more what they leave behind on the street that is a concern for the million or so people who have to walk a few blocks or a few miles in the city every day.

"We'll give you an alternative," Lee said when he was asked whether the sidewalk sleepers will have to go before San Francisco plays host to the thousands in town for the Super Bowl in February. "We are always going to be supportive. But you are going to have to leave the street. Not just because it is illegal, but because it is dangerous."

The idea is to house street campers either in the city's new Navigation Center in the Mission District — where people can live while they are routed into housing, rehabilitation, employment and other services — or in an estimated 500 units of supportive housing the mayor hopes to have rehabbed and open by the end of the year.

"Some of them are mentally ill. Some of them have severe drug addiction," Lee said of those sleeping on the street. "They get cleaned up for 24 hours, and then they are back on the environment that caused this in the first place."

Mayoral candidate and comedian Stuart Schuffman aka "Broke Ass Stuart" has a solution to the excretion problem, and it actually makes sense. "Free to pee" signs in business, incentivized by tax breaks. And he's got a few more ideas in the video.
 

OUTTA MY MIND ON MONDAY MOANIN:

Jordy Nelson Injury May Not Ruin Packers’ Season

By VICTOR MATHERAUG. 24, 2015

Inside                                         

 

When N.F.L. fans watch their favorite team play its exhibition games, they seldom care too much about winning and losing. Instead, they hope to see veterans look sharp and rookies look promising. But most of all, they hope the key players come out unscathed.

 

Green Bay Packers fans were horrified by Sunday’s game in Pittsburgh, and it had nothing to do with losing it, 24-19.

 

Early in the first quarter, the Pro Bowl receiver Jordy Nelson injured his left knee, and the prognosis did not seem good. Speculation immediately centered on a torn anterior cruciate ligament, which would knock Nelson out for the season.

 

There was not yet an official announcement of his condition, but the mood among the Packers afterward was somber. “It’s difficult to lose a guy like that in a meaningless game,” quarterback Aaron Rodgers said.

 

Nelson is coming off two straight strong seasons; last year he made the Pro Bowl after racking up 98 catches, 1,519 yards and 13 touchdowns, all team highs.

 

Should Nelson be out for the season, the Packers would still have last year’s second threat, Randall Cobb, whose numbers were close behind Nelson’s. The second-year player Davante Adams and the rookie Ty Montgomery would have to play significantly greater roles.

 

Every team suffers injuries every year. In the same game, the Steelers lost the Pro Bowl center Maurkice Pouncey, who is likely to need surgery on his ankle. Last week, the Carolina Panthers lost their top receiver, Kelvin Benjamin, for the season.

 

The Packers have faced key injuries to skill players before, including Rodgers, who missed half the season in 2013. But while injuries like Nelson’s are a blow, it is not time for Packers fans to give up on the season.

 

In 2010, the team lost its No. 1 running back, Ryan Grant, in Week 1. He had run for 1,200-plus yards in each of the previous two seasons. The journeyman Brandon Jackson and the sixth-round draft pick James Starks stepped in.

 

In 1996, the No. 1 receiver Robert Brooks was knocked out for the season in Week 7, the year after he had a 1,400-yard season. The team still had Antonio Freeman and leaned much more on 32-year-old Don Beebe.

 

In both years, the Packers won the Super Bowl.

MONDAY MOANIN:

 

 

Frank Gifford, N.F.L. Player and Broadcaster, Dies at 84

By RICHARD GOLDSTEIN and BRUCE WEBERAUG. 9, 2015

Inside                        

 

 

 

As the play-by-play man of ABC’s “Monday Night Football,” Gifford, with his low-key persona, provided the perfect backdrop to bring his boothmates — the contentious Howard Cosell (who died in 1995) and the country-boy-irreverent Don Meredith (who died in 2010) — into high relief. It was a formula that made the weekly autumn broadcasts must-see programming for much of America.  

 

As a player, Gifford was the personification of the Giants during their glory years in the 1950s and early ’60s, the best-known figure on teams that featured many other stars, including quarterbacks Charlie Conerly and Y. A. Tittle, linebacker Sam Huff, fullback Alex Webster, defensive back Emlen Tunnell, defensive linemen Andy Robustelli and Roosevelt Grier, and his fellow running back and receiver Kyle Rote.

 

Gifford played for the team from 1952 until 1960, when a brutal injury interrupted and nearly finished his career. By then he had made seven consecutive Pro Bowls, been named to the all-N.F.L. first team four times and helped the Giants reach three N.F.L. championship games. They won one of them, 47-7, over the Chicago Bears in 1956, the same year Gifford was named the league’s most valuable player. 

 

It was on Nov. 20, 1960, that Gifford was the recipient of one of football history’s most famous tackles. Playing against the Philadelphia Eagles, he caught a pass over the middle and was running with the ball when he was leveled, hit high and flattened by Chuck Bednarik, the Eagles’ rough linebacker and a future Hall of Famer himself. 

 

Gifford dropped the ball and lay motionless on the turf as Bednarik waved his arms and shook his fists, an image that became one of football’s most memorable photographs. Bednarik later said he did not immediately know that Gifford was hurt, and Gifford himself said he considered the hit perfectly legal and bore Bednarik, who died in March, no resentment.

 

Gifford was carted off the field with a concussion, ending his season, and in February 1961 he announced his retirement.

 

He returned, however, after missing only the 1961 season, and his career had a resilient second act. In three subsequent years, the Giants reached the N.F.L. championship game twice (losing to the Green Bay Packers in 1962 and the Bears in 1963), and Gifford returned to the Pro Bowl in 1963.
 

All told, Gifford ran for 3,609 yards and 34 touchdowns, caught 367 passes for 5,434 yards and 43 touchdowns, and threw 14 touchdown passes on the halfback option.
 

“Frank Gifford was the ultimate Giant,” John Mara, the team’s president, said in a statement on Sunday. “He was the face of our franchise for so many years.”

Francis Newton Gifford was born on Aug. 16, 1930, in Santa Monica, Calif., one of three children of an oil-field worker hard pressed to find a steady job amid the Depression. By the time Gifford was in high school, his father, Weldon, had moved the family 47 times, traveling through California and West Texas. 
 

Gifford became a single-wing tailback at Bakersfield High School in California and then displayed his versatility at the University of Southern California, where he was an all-American, running and passing out of the single wing, playing in the defensive backfield and place-kicking.


Giff at SC

 

While at U.S.C., he developed a persona, however modest, beyond the football field, gaining Hollywood bit parts. In the 1951 Dean Martin-Jerry Lewis football movie “That’s My Boy,” it was Gifford who kicked the winning field goal as the stand-in for Lewis. A handsome campus hero, Gifford made his mark in contemporary literature as well, serving as the glittering object of envy for one of his classmates, Frederick Exley, whose 1968 memoir, “A Fan’s Notes,” is a staple of the genre (although the author freely acknowledged that some of it was fiction).

The Giants selected Gifford in the first round of the 1952 draft, and in his first two seasons, the team’s longtime coach Steve Owen often played him in the defensive backfield. But Gifford also filled in at halfback for the celebrated Rote, who had injured his knee and was eventually switched to receiver.

Lombardi turned around Paul Hornung's career by making him the All-Purpose "Frank Gifford" of the Packers.

 

Before the 1954 season, the Giants’ fortunes, as well as Gifford’s, began to turn when Owen was fired and replaced by Jim Lee Howell, who hired Vince Lombardi to coach the offense and Tom Landry to oversee the defense. Lombardi gave Gifford the left halfback spot, and he soon thrived on power sweeps, taking handoffs from Conerly and following the pulling guards. Gifford usually ran upfield, but he also proved effective throwing the ball on the option play.
 

He was in his prime when the Giants defeated the Bears to win the 1956 championship. Two years later, in a thrilling championship game often cited for turning the fortunes of the N.F.L. because it was televised nationally, Gifford ran for 60 yards on 12 carries and caught a go-ahead touchdown pass in the fourth quarter, although the Giants lost in overtime, 23-17, to the Baltimore Colts. In 1959, the Colts rubbed salt in the wound, beating the Giants for the championship again.

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By that time, Gifford had become a part of the New York celebrity scene. He appeared in advertisements for Lucky Strike cigarettes and Vitalis hair tonic. He made a guest appearance on the television show “What’s My Line?” and became a regular at Toots Shor’s, a Midtown restaurant and bar that drew high-profile figures from sports and the political world.

Photo

Gifford long remained in the public eye as the husband of Kathie Lee Gifford. He hosted "Today" with her in 2009. Credit Virginia Sherwood/NBC

“All of a sudden, in a city where Mickey Mantle was a god and the memory of Joe DiMaggio even more sacred, there was an awareness of another sport, another player, another team,” Gifford recalled in his memoir, “The Whole Ten Yards,” written with Harry Waters (1994). “I was the player, and the Giants were the team. Heady stuff — and I loved it.”

 

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Gifford’s luster remained undimmed after he retired as a player. He joined “Monday Night Football” in 1971, its second season, and the program — conceived by Roone Arledge, ABC’s director of sports, as a prime-time spectacle — became a TV phenomenon. As the game broadcaster and later as an analyst and briefly as a pregame host, Gifford remained with the show through the 1998 season, an evenhanded presence amid the theatrics provided by Cosell and Meredith and a host of others.

 

“Roone saw it not so much as a football game as an entertainment show,” Gifford said in his memoir. “Howard was the elitist New York know-it-all, the bombastic lawyer Middle America loved to hate. Don was the good ol’ country boy who put Howard in his place. As for me, I was cast as the nice guy, the guy who got the numbers out and the names down and the game played.”

After his concussion led to his first retirement, Gifford broadcast sports on the radio for CBS and became a Giants scout. When he rejoined the Giants, who had reached the league championship game once again in 1961 under Allie Sherman, Sherman played him at flanker.

Gifford started the season on the bench, but in the second game of the season, against Pittsburgh, he caught two big passes, one for a touchdown, from Tittle, a quarterback with whom he had not played before.

 

“All of a sudden, he got me in the huddle,” Gifford recalled about Tittle in a television interview years later. “And he said, ‘Got something, Frank?’ I said, ‘Yeah.’ ” 
 

He added: “We needed a big play, it was third-and-long, and somehow I caught the ball. We get the first down, and I came back, and he said, ‘What else you got?’ I said, ‘A fly — give me a fly.’ Again he looked at me, like, ‘You out of your mind?’
 

“It was the most important catch of my life, I think. And I caught it just by the tip of the ball. And I was back.”

Giff interviews Lombardi and Rozelle after SB II

 

When Gifford retired after the 1964 season, he returned to CBS as a TV sports broadcaster, and he remained with the network until joining ABC. In addition to “Monday Night Football,” he appeared on ABC’s “Wide World of Sports” and as part of its Olympic coverage. 

 

Gifford was also in the public eye long after his playing days as the husband of Kathie Lee Gifford, a longtime co-host, with Regis Philbin, of the morning program “Live With Regis & Kathie Lee.” Frank Gifford occasionally filled in as a host.

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In the late 1990s, Gifford’s image was tainted when his affair with an airline stewardess (who later posed for Playboy) became tabloid fodder. And in 2013, a book about Johnny Carson by his lawyer, Henry Bushkin, claimed that in 1970, when Gifford was married to his second wife, Astrid Lindley, Gifford had an affair with Carson’s wife.
 

Gifford’s marriage to Lindley ended in divorce, as had his marriage to his first wife, the former Maxine Ewart. He married Kathie Lee Epstein in 1986. In addition to her, his survivors include their son, Cody, and their daughter, Cassidy, as well as two sons, Jeff and Kyle, and a daughter, Victoria, from his first marriage.

 

None of the tumult in Gifford’s personal life dulled his light in the eyes of longtime Giants fans, or longtime Giants.
 

When he was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, Gifford was presented by Wellington Mara, the Giants’ owner at the time, whose roots with the franchise extended to its founding in the 1920s.

In 1997, when Mara (who died in 2005) was inducted into the Hall, he selected Gifford as his presenter.
 

Three years after that, Mara surprised Gifford at a dinner honoring him for his nearly half-century association with the N.F.L. Mara held aloft a white Giants jersey with Gifford’s No. 16 and announced its retirement. 
 

As Mara put it, “he’s an all-time all-timer with us.”

MONDAY MOANIN:   

 

Few words needed for powerful moment between Mick Tingelhoff, Fran Tarkenton

 

Mick Tingelhoff, right, poses with his bust along with presenter Fran Tarkenton. Joe Robbins/Getty Images

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  Ben Goessling, ESPN Staff Writer

Roommates for 12 seasons and teammates on three of the Minnesota Vikings' four Super Bowl teams, Mick Tingelhoff and Fran Tarkenton had a bond that ran far deeper than words. 


The quarterback and center were inseparable on the practice field. They spent years of their life together at training camp and on the road. \

When Tarkenton's father, Dallas, died after the Vikings' infamous "Hail Mary" loss to the Dallas Cowboys in the 1975 playoffs, Tingelhoff was with Tarkenton in a rented Winnebago outside Met Stadium, watching the Oakland Raiders-Cincinnati Bengals game as Jack Buck broke the news.

"We had no secrets from each other," Tarkenton said in February. "We wouldn't call it love, but it was love."

It wasn't hard to see brotherly love on display while watching Tarkenton present his "best friend" Tingelhoff for enshrinement in the Pro Football Hall of Fame on Saturday night. 

Tingelhoff, who started 240 consecutive games and never missed a practice in 17 seasons with the Vikings, has paid the price for his service to the team. He was one of hundreds of former players to sign onto the concussion lawsuit against the NFL. He struggles with memory loss now (NOTE: he has dementia) and had initially planned to make a short speech. 

Instead, on Saturday night, Tingelhoff directed Tarkenton to speak for him. And the quarterback, who'd said Tingelhoff had his back all those years, was there for Tingelhoff in Canton.
"Mick's a man of few words, but he's a man of action," Tarkenton said, his voice breaking as he added, "He waited 37 years to get to the Hall of Fame."

The speech lasted just 74 seconds -- or two for every year of Tingelhoff's wait -- but it drew a raucous ovation and a jubilant reaction from Tingelhoff's wife, Phyllis.

Few words were necessary to convey what Tarkenton and Tingelhoff mean to each other, or what the honor meant to the Vikings' center. On Saturday, a quarterback known for his verbosity, speaking for a center known for his concision, delivered one of the most powerful moments of the evening in Canton.