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JJ Redick often thinks about a quote from an HBO miniseries on World War II that aired in 2001. "There's a scene in ‘Band of Brothers' where they're in the trenches and one of the soldiers, who's really scared, asks the other guy, 'How are you able to go out and fight? You don't seem scared,'" Redick recalled. "And he says, 'It's because I'm already dead.'"
On some mornings, just as the sun began to warm the Giza Plateau, a teenage Steve Kerr would go climbing. Up a pyramid. Because in his former life, two scores ago, scaling the first of the seven wonders of the ancient world was a rather normal way to start the day. “And there was an old guard in a galabeya,” Kerr recalled, “a probably 60-, 70-year-old man with an old, like, World War II rifle. And the guy would just yell at you. And you just give him a 10-pound note and he’d say, ‘OK,’ and wave you up.’ And you could literally climb to the top of the pyramids and sit on the top. Look at the Nile and the whole city of Cairo.” That former life — the one that saw him as an expat living in Egypt, the one that feeds his reputed depth, the one that underscores his father’s significance — snuck up on Kerr recently in Las Vegas.
Gortat, who is not Jewish, was born and raised in Poland ... a country that experienced the terrors of World War II, Nazi Germany and the horrors of the Holocaust. He told us out in LA this week that he found Kyrie's promotion of the antisemitic film "Hebrew to Negroes: Wake Up Black America!" to be "completely wrong" ... and he then extended the 30-year-old an invite to Poland to help him learn why he feels so strongly about it all.
Surveillance is at the core of China's efforts to control the Uyghur population, a policy the government says is necessary to stop terrorism and maintain stability. ESPN reported in 2020 that American coaches at an NBA training academy in Xinjiang were surveilled and harassed. One coach said he was detained three times, comparing the atmosphere to "World War II Germany." The NBA has since ended the academy program, which included two other locations, after an investigation determined "the centers did not meet our NBA standards," a source familiar with the decision said.
The opening pages of Dan Grunfeld’s “By the Grace of the Game,” are difficult to read. The subtitle “The Holocaust, a Basketball Legacy, and an Unprecedented American Dream” gives some indication of the tragedy and sadness within the pages. A few chapters in, Grunfeld, the son of longtime NBA player and executive Ernie Grunfeld, spells out the atrocities: His paternal grandmother, Livia, who Dan calls Anyu, which translates to mother in her native Hungarian, lost both her parents and three siblings at Auschwitz and another of her sibling’s died in labor camp in Ukraine during World War II.
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A squadron is one name for a group of pelicans. It also alludes to the 99th Pursuit Squadron — the Air Force’s first all-Black flying unit that trained in Tuskegee, Alabama — as well as Birmingham’s production of planes during World War II. “As we began the process of selecting a name for our G League team, it was important to us that its name would be closely tied to the Pelicans brand, while uniting us with the foundation of the Birmingham community," Pelicans president Dennis Lauscha said. "After careful deliberation and input from fans, we knew the name 'Squadron' was the perfect fit."
Three World War II-era ordnances have turned up at a New Jersey home belonging to Memphis Grizzlies forward Kyle Anderson’s dad — who’s not the least bit shocked at the startling discovery. A pair of rusty relics were first unearthed on Sunday or Monday in the backyard of the home on Elmira Street in historic Cape May, as workers were landscaping, the father, also named Kyle Anderson, told The Post on Thursday.
Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., joined "The Story" Thursday to discuss a bombshell ESPN report alleging that Chinese coaches at three NBA training academies in the Asian country physically abused their players and failed to provide them with promised schooling. "It's a very disturbing report," Cotton told host Martha MacCallum. As one of the [NBA] employees said, these were basically sweatshops for young Chinese kids. And the NBA employees saw the worst kinds of child abuse. "They even," Cotton said later, "had one of these camps in northwestern China, where China is running reeducation gulags for a religious minority ... they liken it to Nazi Germany in World War II. I understand the NBA has deep financial ties to China, but you have to ask at some point, what's wrong with the NBA?"
A former league employee compared the atmosphere when he worked in Xinjiang to "World War II Germany." In an interview with ESPN about its findings, NBA deputy commissioner and chief operating officer Mark Tatum, who oversees international operations, said the NBA is "reevaluating" and "considering other opportunities" for the academy program, which operates out of sports facilities run by the Chinese government. Last week, the league acknowledged for the first time it had closed the Xinjiang academy, but, when pressed, Tatum declined to say whether human rights were a factor.
"I think there's no right answer and there's no wrong answer," Redick said of each's player's choice. "I think there's truth in everybody's feeling right now. This is an unprecedented time in our country. This is an unprecedented time for nearly every sports league. I think you have to go back to World War II to find this level of disruption for sports leagues."
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Still, that man, Wataru “Wat” Misaka, has a place in the history books. Misaka was the first person of color to play professional basketball in what would become the NBA — breaking the color barrier the same year Jackie Robinson did in pro baseball. And Misaka did it in the aftermath of World War II, when the attack on Pearl Harbor and war with Japan prompted the U.S. government to imprison more than 100,000 people of Japanese ancestry in internment camps. Now, 72 years later, with the Raptors’ Game 6 win Thursday night, Jeremy Lin has become the first Asian American to win an NBA championship. (Lin only played for a few minutes during Game 3 of the Finals, but he will still get a ring along with the rest of his team.)
During his first trip to Serbia (he went back again this summer), Malone was walking through Kalemegdan, a park built around a historical fort that features some of the city’s very first basketball courts. It’s where some of the country’s top clubs, like Partizan, were founded near the end of World War II. Malone was touring the area with Ognjen Stojakovic, a player development coach for the Nuggets who is from Belgrade. “And all of a sudden this couple comes up to me with their baby and says, ‘Will you take a picture with our baby? We love the Nuggets; we love Nikola; we love you,’ ” Malone recalls. “I’m like, ‘Oh my gosh, this is crazy.’ That happens quite frequently anytime I’m there. That speaks to their love of the game of basketball, but it also speaks to their love of Nikola. They only know me because of Nikola, and I understand that. They don’t recognize me because I’m Pat Riley. They recognize me because I’m Nikola’s coach.”
Spending time in a Tokyo-area internment camp during World War II had a profound impact on Meschery’s life (a topic that will be explored in a few weeks for the third installment). From age 3, some of his earliest memories were the sights, sounds and smells of the war and intense aerial bombardment of Tokyo. Asked how the trauma of war affected his life, Meschery said, “It’s hard to say. I’m pretty sure that one of the results of the camp was a long-abiding sense of insecurity that I’ve always had. “In basketball, it helped me a great deal because I always thought that I was about to lose my job and that every season I had to battle,” added the No. 7 overall pick in the 1961 NBA Draft by the Philadelphia Warriors by phone from his home in Sacramento, California. “And that’s just the way I’ve kind of always lived my life. I was always looking over my shoulder, and I think that must have come from the camp.”
Jeremy Schaap is host and traveled last June to the seacoast village of Liepaja to spend time with Porzingis, his brothers and his parents. Footage was filmed in the house where he grew up (his parents still live there) and the Baltic Sea beach minutes away at which the 7-foot-3 forward spent relaxing times despite military detritus left over from World War II. “He’s the most famous Latvian in the world,’’ Schaap told The Post. “From what I could tell in my few days there, they take a lot of pride in him.”
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