Stupid web pages surfacing old news. I even checked the date but somehow missed the year. Weird. Of course I have been in a Dayquil/Nyquil stupor since Wednesday as well
Legendary NBA 6th man John "Hot Rod" Williams, 53. ******** cancer. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/12/s...e-nba-player-known-as-hot-rod-dies-at-53.html John Williams, a versatile sixth man for the Cleveland Cavalierswho briefly earned more than Michael Jordan after renegotiating a contract during the summer of 1990, helping to establish the modern era of free agency and huge salaries, died on Friday in Baton Rouge, La. He was 53.... Williams, better known by the nickname Hot Rod, was a solid shooter and a dogged defender during his 13 seasons in the N.B.A. Listed at 6 feet 11 inches, he played power forward and center with Cleveland. Lenny Wilkens, the Cavaliers’ coach, used Williams as a reliable substitute, and Williams did not mind the arrangement. “All that means is that they have a player on the bench that they can count on,” he told The Columbus Dispatch in 1992. “I know that I could probably start for a lot of teams, including this team, but Coach likes for me to come off the bench, and that’s fine with me.” Although not a Hall of Famer, Williams had a respectable career. He averaged 11 points, 6.8 rebounds, 1.8 assists and 1.6 blocks per game, and his percentages were impressive: a .480 career field-goal average and a .726 free-throw average. “Hot Rod was one of those freak-of-nature guys who was 6-10, who could shoot the basketball, could put the basketball down on the floor, a very good defensive guy,” Ron Harper, a Cavaliers teammate, told ESPN. Williams made it to the N.B.A. playoffs nine times but never won the title, in part because of the dominance of Jordan’s Chicago Bulls. But in the summer of 1990, Williams outdid the rest of the league in compensation. His pursuit of a big payday began when, as a restricted free agent, he rejected Cleveland’s offer of a five-year, $11.8 million deal. The Miami Heat soon offered him a seven-year, $26.5 million contract (more than $48 million in 2015 dollars). Cleveland agreed to match it. In the 1990-91 season, Williams made $5 million with Cleveland, reportedly more than Jordan, Larry Bird of the Celtics and Patrick Ewing of the Knicks.... There's also a bit about his role in a point-shaving-for-coke-and-cash scandal at Tulane, and his post NBA career running a construction business...
While on the subject of basketball players, we need to post about about a true great who passed this week... Dolph Schayes, 12-time NBA All-Star, Dies At 87 - ESPN SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- Hall of Famer Dolph Schayes, a 12-time All-Star who refined the big man's role in the infancy of the National Basketball Association, has died. He was 87. Dolph Schayes was the franchise player for the Syracuse Nationals from 1948-1963 and was voted one of the 50 greatest players in NBA history. He revolutionized the post position, always in perpetual motion instead of just planting himself in the paint. The 6-foot-8 Schayes was a seminal figure in the game. With a deadly two-handed, high-arcing set shot that he stubbornly used well into the era of the jump shot, he helped redefine the big man in the NBA. He played his entire 16-season career with the Syracuse franchise, scoring 18,438 points and snaring 11,256 rebounds from 1949-64. The New York Knicks chose Schayes fourth in the 1948 Basketball Association of America draft and the Tri-Cities Blackhawks picked him first in the National Basketball League draft before trading his rights to Syracuse. After winning NBA rookie of the year honors in 1949, Schayes led the Nationals in scoring for 12 straight seasons and helped lead the team to its lone NBA title in 1955, becoming the first player in NBA history to score 15,000 points. When the Nationals moved to Philadelphia in 1963, Schayes was named player-coach of the 76ers. He retired as a player after the season, but stayed on as coach for three more seasons and was named NBA coach of the year in 1966 with Wilt Chamberlain, Hal Greer and Billy Cunningham.
He was my first favorite ball player, and no, I'm not old enough to have seen him play, but my grandfather, who played professional football, played him once in a football and basketball 1 v 1 pickup match.
Here is an article to go with Meadowlark's image above. Meadowlark Lemon dies at 83 I always enjoyed watching the Globetrotters play, for all their on court antics they all were very good players in their own right. RIP Mr. Lemon.
The NYT obit says he claimed to have played 16000 games, or 300/year for 53 years. Ill bet he is the player to have the most career games on the winning team.
Lemmy gone after cancer diagnosis. Wow. http://www.theguardian.com/music/20...motorhead-dies-at-70-after-battle-with-cancer
I just saw this on the AMG website and came here to post it. Any afterlife we might hope exists just got a lot noisier.
With his lifestyle it is astonishing he made it this long. Motorhead shows were always a good time! RIP Lemmy.
Lemmy and Cliff Burton are the greatest hard rock bassists, and if the Hall of Fame had any sense to them Motorhead would have been inducted a long time ago. RIP
How hard does the rock have to be for the musician to be considered? RIP, Lemmy, but these two are notable because their bands made it big, nothing more. There's nothing outstanding about either of them as players. There's not much notable about any hard rock bassist (or guitarist- they're not doing anything special themselves), but IMO, Trujillo and Newsted both are better than Burton. You have to hear them playing when they're not playing Metallica stuff to know that, tho. I don't think anybody really cares about the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Maybe the Stones do- they're certainly shallow enough to care. They tried a few years ago to engage Pink Floyd in a war of words about who had the biggest attendance over the course of a tour, like that means anything (McDonald's has sold seven trillion burgers. Do you ever jones for a Big Mac? Ever?) IIRC, Floyd didn't bite.
Various definitions, to me hard rock is rock music with a dominant presence of distortion and a loud, big sound. Burton dominated Metallica to the extent that Hetfield, Ulrich and Mustaine, and look at that cast of personalities, moved from LA to San Francisco so that he would play with them. They knew he had that missing ingredient to make the band something special. I haven't heard Trujillo or Newsted outside of Metallica, I really can't make a comparison but it's a bold claim that either one is a better bassist than Burton. "Master of Puppets" is without a doubt Metallica's greatest album and arguably the best heavy metal album of all time. As for nothing notable about any hard rock guitarist, not sure who you consider as a hard rock guitarist but usually Eddie Van Halen, Randy Rhoads, Ritchie Blackmore, Michael Schenker, Joe Satriani, Steve Morse, Nuno Bettencourt and Jimmy Page are considered hard rock. If anything, I would say hard rock dominates for the most outstanding guitar players within rock music. Yeah, agree about the Hall of Fame, it's a corporate enterprise for Rolling Stone magazine. Still, it would have been nice that a pioneer like Lemmy be inducted a while back.