The Los Angeles Lakers unveiled a bronze statue of Elgin Baylor at Staples Center before Friday night’s game against the Minnesota Timberwolves. What took them so long? The Staples Center has been in existence since 1999; Baylor has been retired since 1971. Baylor, a Washington, D.C. native, became the sixth Laker to be honored with…
Forty years ago this week, DeMatha’s basketball team made history. By that time, Hall of Fame coach Morgan Wootten had been at the school 20 years and had turned it into the premier high school basketball program in the Washington area, if not the country. But the Stags had never finished a season unbeaten. That…
It was a cold winter morning in December of 1969. Schools were on break, with teachers and coaches like DeMatha’s Morgan Wootten happy for a respite from their responsibilities. This particular morning, Wootten heard a knock on the door of his Hyattsville home. He went to answer it and discovered ninth-grader Adrian Dantley standing on…
It’s rare that someone would prefer winter in Lincoln, Nebraska to winter in Miami.
But it worked out for James Palmer, Jr. Palmer, who played at Henry Wise and St. John’s, is one of the main reasons Nebraska is battling for an NCAA Tournament bid as March approaches.
Was it the greatest single-game performance in the history of D.C. area high school basketball? It just might be. Fifty years ago this week, Harold Fox, a 6-foot-1 guard at Northwestern High School, pumped in 64 points in a wild 103-87 victory over Oxon Hill. Fox, a senior, connected on 29 of 44 shots, pouring…
When you hear the stories about Gary Mays, a multisport star at the long-closed Armstrong High School, it’s easy to dismiss what you’ve heard. There’s couldn’t really have been a one-armed high school basketball player who was also the best catcher in the city. It’s got to be an urban legend. Mays was a legend,…
Fifty years ago this week, Washington’s sports pages were full of stories on the Green Bay Packers’ recent Super Bowl II victory over the Oakland Raiders. In sports news closer to home, local basketball fans were starting to notice a kid named Jim O’Brien, who kept showing up in the Stuart High School boxscores with…
For years, a string of Notre Dame football coaches has tried to duplicate the sustained success of the program’s glory days. Notre Dame’s basketball program, meanwhile, doesn’t have that problem. Mike Brey has seen to that. The Bethesda native and former DeMatha point guard, now in his 18th season as head coach of the…
More than a quarter-century later, with a distinguished professional career behind him and unimaginable riches to his name, Hill is an A-List basketball celebrity by any measure. But his days at South Lakes still represent something special to him. That’s why he came back for the ceremony; that’s also why he hosted a private question-and-answer session with the current varsity players afterward. To the people of Reston and the community at South Lakes, Grant Hill is a hometown hero – in every sense of the word.
Much of the talk after University of Maryland’s 80-65 victory Saturday over New Mexico centered on the Terrapins’ ability to bounce back from a tough loss. “I’m really proud of how my team responded,” Maryland head coach Mark Turgeon said. “It was a short turn around but we came out with a lot of energy.” The victory came less…