Tom Talks

Curry's warming up but not shooting yet

Good news, Davidson fans.

The Wildcats stood on the court, and were soon joined by Wisconsin, awaiting basketballs. When the balls arrived, most of the Wildcats shot. But Stephen Curry engaged in a dribbling ritual, from the baseline toward midcourt, and back, straight ahead and then sideways.

As he did, a ball bounced toward him. Curry caught it and began to dribble it. After a few seconds, he tapped it back, without looking, to Will Archambault beneath the hoop.

Things I forgot in Detroit

   It is sunny today in Detroit. But I kind of miss Thursday’s snow.

   I’m a proponent of fresh air, and after spending the day in a car, in a plane and on a covered football field, I needed to breathe. So I walked a couple of blocks to Tom’s Oyster Bar Thursday night.

   Snow makes you feel like a kid. You slip and slide and sashay through the stuff, trying to keep your balance while trying not to laugh. You can’t be pretentious when you walk through snow. You’ll fall.

   I finally attained Tom’s, where I had spent time during the Super Bowl. It’s a neighborhood place, good food and friendly customers, with a television set in the corner turned to the Louisville-Tennessee game.

   Although packed during the Super Bowl., there were only two of us at the bar Wednesday. But as long as Louisville won, I was fine. I thought Tennessee was the most bloated team in the tournament. I’d love to tell you I picked Louisville to beat the Volunteers, but I didn’t. I picked Butler to beat them.

   I made my picks in the Observer the day after the brackets were divulged. Some of you tell me that you used them in your NCAA tournament pools. I think you’re doing all right, but since I didn’t enter any pools, I don’t know.

   I didn’t enter because (A) I believe that gambling is pure evil and (B) I forgot.

   I picked 10 of the Sweet 16 teams correctly, and my Final Four teams are still intact. I picked three of Thursday night’s winners, missing Xavier.

   I’ve spent so much time following basketball the last few weeks that I forgot about  Mitt Romney. The Mitt for President buttons are marked down 75% in the hotel gift shop.

    I also forgot about baseball. I didn’t watch a pitch from the games in Japan. But the Detroit Tigers open at home here Monday at 1:05 p.m. against Kansas City. I’d like to be here for that one.

   Here’s how you know baseball is almost upon us.

   Comerica Park, where the Tigers play, looked especially pretty Thursday. The closer we get to opening day, the prettier a ballpark looks. The snowflakes that fell onto the field were as big as a Boston terrier’s head.

   The other way you know that baseball almost is upon us is Charlotte real estate attorney Jerry Reese files yet another lawsuit to hold up construction of a minor league ballpark downtown.

   Jerry, major league baseball isn’t coming to Charlotte. We can’t support a team. We’d tear it up on weekends with help from Greensboro and Greenville. But how do you think we’d do on a weeknight for a game against Kansas City or Houston?

   You lost, man. Let it go. Single issue people become so consumed with their cause they cease to be interesting. I’ll tell you what. Drop the suits, and I’ll bring you back a MITT FOR PRESIDENT button.

No cheap tickets to be found

When newspapers write about what scalpers are getting for tickets, we usually are way off. We get fooled, perhaps by ticket sellers trying to drive up the price, and embellish the numbers. I suspect it’s like the alleged street value of confiscated drugs.

But what follows is s no embellishment.

Walking to Verizon Center for the Duke-West Virginia and Xavier-Purdue games Saturday afternoon, I saw a lot of people looking for tickets but almost nobody selling.

I found one seller near the media entrance, approached him and asked what he was getting. He thought I was a cop so he walked away. The cheapest ticket I found was $300, which I thought was outrageous.

Then I encountered a dispirited West Virginia fan with his son. They were sitting on a hill, totally sad. The cheapest tickets they found were $100 more. They couldn’t justify paying $800 to watch the game.

Davidson is America's team

The Grand Slam is a Washington restaurant and bar at the Grand Hyatt hotel with many television sets and big screens, each of them greedily watched early Friday afternoon. The local team, American, was playing Tennessee on several of the screens. That also was the game I got on my hotel TV.

It was not the game I wanted. I wanted Davidson and Gonzaga. I needed Davidson-Gonzaga. So I hit the Grand Slam and was thrilled to see the game on the featured screen.

The place was packed with fans in town for the West Regional, groups of Georgetown fans and guys in suits skipping work and drinking imported draft beer.

But whoever they were, they cheered for the Wildcats. And the more Stephen Curry scored, the more the fans latched onto Davidson. Every three he hit attracted at least three new fans. As the game wound down, fans were screaming for Davidson.

I heard only one woman cheer for Gonzaga and she might have done it to irritate the guy she was with. The guy wore North Carolina Tar Heels gear and loudly yelled after every Davidson free-throw, basket, near basket, steal, rebound and timeout.

Late in the game, with the Wildcats up by one, the proprietor, in an act of madness, switched the featured screen to American-Tennessee. You should have heard the response. Fans booed, yelled, "Come on!" and generated such an angry ruckus that within 10 seconds Stephen and the fellows returned to the big screen.

In the NCAA men’s basketball tournament, America’s underdog is America’s team. Although Davidson was favored Friday, the Wildcats are America’s team.

Just another day in our nation's capital

   I only missed one game Thursday in my NCAA brackets. But early round losses hurt only if you have your team advancing deep into the tournament. Wisconsin scared me; the Badgers were up two at the half and I have them going to the Final Four. I’ll never pick a Final Four without at least one underdog. Justice ultimately prevailed and my newly beloved Badgers pulled away.

   Fans in Washington talked about the Duke game into the night. At the Green Turtle, a sports bar that adjoins Verizon Center, patrons were united in their praise for Belmont, the team the Blue Devils had beaten by a point an hour earlier.

   Upsets unite. Adults with little in common come together when the team that is not supposed to win beats the favorite. In the Green Turtle they come together loudly. As loud as they were, I almost didn’t find the place. A guy who grew up in Washington told me about it and all I could remember was the color.

   I asked a security guard where the Green Parrott was and he said he had never heard of it. I know it has Green in it, I said. And it’s an animal.

   “Green Turtle!” a woman said.

   “Thanks,” I said.

   I heard her say to the guard, “Green animal?” She was making fun of me. She was entitled.

   About those favorites:  The reason they are favored is because they win. I thought Duke was uncharacteristically sloppy against Belmont, but Duke did enough to advance to Saturday’s game against West Virginia.

   Meanwhile back in the hotel gym a TV reporter from Waco, Tex., was practicing yoga. He was wearing a Bluetooth headset was engaging in a cell phone conversation. The conversation filled the gym.

   “My thighs are burning,” he said into the phone. Later he invoked beef broccoli and took the person on the other end of the phone, if the person exists, through his workout.

   It was like listening to a golfer.

   It was like OUR TOP STORY on Saturday Night Live or Radio Free Europe. The rest of us looked at each other, partly amused and mostly offended. Now, I understand that cell phones occasionally have to be used in the gym. The phones are what connect us to our employers, among others.

   So do what my buddy Mike does. Find a quiet place to talk. Go to the hallway or go outside or, this case, go to Waco.

   As the conversation stretched into the 15 minute mark, we took turns staring at him and, when he hung up, he apologized to the guy next to him, saying he had not talked to the woman on the other end of the phone for two weeks.

   “But how can you practice yoga when you’re on a cell phone?” I asked.

   He apologized, said he turned off the phone and he wouldn’t do it again.

   It’s cool when people that don’t get it suddenly get it.

   It’s also rare.   

Muggsy must make all-time Hornets team

   USA Today runs a feature in which it picks the top five players for a particular NBA franchise. Today the newspaper picked the top five Charlotte Hornets of all time. Chris Paul, the great point guard for the New Orleans Hornets, also chose his top five, as did readers.

   None of them got it right, although Paul at least had the insight to include Muggsy Bogues. The newspaper did not. Glen Rice made the newspaper’s team, as did Jamal Mashburn.

    Rice and Mashburn passed through. You have to pick the players that stayed and made a difference. You can not pick an all-time Hornets team without including Bogues and Dell Curry. Ask anybody who was there.

   It’s not simply about big names. It’s about heart and soul and who gave shape to an expansion team that Charlotte embraced like no other professional franchise, not even the Carolina Panthers. Those of us who wrote about the team were, for the most part, covering our first professional team and had no idea how special the Hornets were. The Hornets didn’t, either.

   My team is Bogues and Curry, Larry Johnson, Alonzo Mourning and Baron Davis. And if I could find a way to put Kenny Gattison on it, I would. I’m still trying.

NBA interest has faded

   Speaking of the NBA, I’m a longtime fan. But I admit my interest in the league has faded. I knew that for sure when I was talking not long ago to a friend who also is an NBA fan. He loves the Boston Celtics and I love the Phoenix Suns and they had played a late game the night before.

   I wanted to rip him about Boston’s embarrassing performance and he wanted to rip me about Phoenix’s pitiful work. The problem was, neither of us stayed up to watch and neither of us cared enough to check the score that morning. We still ripped each other on principle but we lacked facts.

    And then came last night. I want to a Washington D.C. sports bar to try to catch the Charlotte-Nebraska NIT game. I don’t know where fans of the 49ers in the D.C. area gather to watch NIT games, but it wasn’t this place.

   The Washington Wizards-Orlando Magic game was on, however, and it was compelling. Watching Antawn Jamison, the former Providence high and North Carolina star who is one of my favorite players, was mesmerizing. He would swoop to the hoop, dive to the floor, jump, run and hustle, and those odd Washington uniforms that make the players look like members of a dance troop detracted not at all.

   Back and forth the teams went, the game coming down to the final shot and the Wizards, improbably, winning at the end and on the road.

   It reminded me why I fell in love with professional basketball.

   There is hope.

I'm now an Amtrak fan

BALTIMORE – The man steps out of the last car of the Amtrak train at the BWI Airport station.

"No loud talking, no cell phones and no fun on my train!" he yells.

I love trains.

Duke is playing in the regional in Washington D.C. Short notice airfare from Charlotte to Washington National was exorbitant for a direct flight, no matter who you rode with, and the one-stops left at 6 a.m. or went to Orlando and rarely got to town in time.

But flying to Baltimore was less than half of a Washington ticket. And there were bonuses.

As I waited for the train I thought that Earl Monroe, the former Baltimore Bullet and my favorite basketball player of all time, might have stood in the same spot.

And I got to ride the rails.

If you grew up in the Northeast, you are familiar with Amtrak. But if you grew up in the Midwest, which I did, and have spent almost half your life in the South, which I have, you might not have a lot of Amtrak experience.

I found a seat next to a window and didn’t speak loudly or talk on my cell phone. But I did have fun. I avoided the often horrendous beltway traffic, got a look at towns I knew little about and, when I wasn’t looking out the window, read the newspaper. The train took me within a mile of my hotel. In light of the difference between the Washington and Baltimore airfare, it was a steal for $17.

In retrospect, I would have taken the train all the way from Charlotte.

If Duke wins, it will play next in Phoenix. I’m the sure the train goes there. If I leave now…

Yes, basketball also matters at Virginia Tech

Most of the ACC fans I know wish the conference could be like it was in the old days, when everybody played everybody twice during the basketball season and there was one division and not two and gas prices were about a tenth of what they are now.

I don’t. If the conference had not expanded it would not have Virginia Tech.

The school offers the ACC more than the coveted Greater Roanoke Market (GRM). It’s a great place to watch a football game, up there with Clemson and Florida State. It’s a beautiful campus, a cool little town and a place where football matters. You feel it in Blacksburg the night before the game.

The basketball also matters, as North Carolina discovered Saturday. A young team that was shaky early coalesced under Seth Greenberg, an excellent and emotional coach. It was hard not to watch the game, which was rough and thrilling and ended with a two-point Tar Heel victory.

It was also was tough not to watch Greenberg, who would get so angry after some calls that he’d stomp to the end of the bench and past it, almost reluctantly returning, as if he could watch the game no more.

Are the Hokies an NCAA tournament team? He thinks so, of course. And they might be. But everybody thinks their conference is the conference that is entitled to one more entrant, that entrant usually being the team they favor.

Two of the Hokies starters are freshmen, one a sophomore and only one a senior. So they ought to be competitive next season. Their football team ought to be pretty good, too.

N.C. State's travails, revisited

   An N.C. State fan was in the gym Friday morning.

   I respect the guy too much to walk up and say, “Hey, did you see the game Thursday?”

   But I don’t respect him so much that I don’t walk up and say, “I won’t even ask you about the game Thursday.”

   By doing it my way, I am courteous and respectful and, well, professional. Yet I still attain my objective, which is to make him feel bad about the travails of his beloved Wolfpack. And it has nothing to do with the Wolfpack. It’s the principle. I deal in principle except when it’s inconvenient.

   Thursday’s first session, Wake Forest-Florida State and N.C. State-Miami, might have been the worst opening session, and the worst back-to-back games, in ACC men’s basketball tournament history. You can say that bad basketball is inevitable because of all the bottom-feeding teams that populate the first round.

   But last season in the opening round Florida State beat Clemson 67-66 and Miami beat Maryland 67-62. In the evening session N.C. State beat Duke 85-80 and in double overtime Wake Forest beat Georgia Tech 114-112.

   Last season, the Wolfpack was the story of the tournament. After the Duke victory, N.C. State beat Virginia and Virginia Tech to make the final. Where N.C. State coach Sidney Lowe went wrong this season was benching one of last season’s stars, junior Ben McCauley, in this season’s opener. He did this to accommodate freshman J.J. Hickson. McCauley would play only 14 minutes to Hickson’s 30.

   You don’t treat upperclassmen that way. It was their team. They were the ones that made it special. To push a veteran to the bench in the very first game, especially one as unselfish and as fundamentally sound as McCauley, was a mistake from which N.C. State never recovered.

Duke vs. North Carolina: As always, it's an amazing experience

One debate that never ends is rivalries. Specifically, what’s the best rivalry in sports?

Since I’m in Cameron Indoor Stadium I’m a little biased. I pulled in a few minutes after 5 p.m., which is almost four hours before tip-off. I took what the freeway gave me, and it was in a giving mood.

Durham is freezing. Yet Duke students already had surrounded the gym when I arrived, running and yelling and thrilled to have a chance to be part of the (in alphabetical order) Duke-North Carolina game.

If you ask a Boston fan about the best rivalry in sports, he’s going to tell you Boston-New York or Red Sox-Yankees.

If you ask a New York fan, she’s probably going to say, New York against the world, unless she’s talking about the Knicks, in which case it’s player against player, player against coach and coach against owner and coach against everybody else.

Ohio State-Michigan is an amazing rivalry, as is Appalachian State-Michigan. Texas-Oklahoma is incredible. I’m talking football, obviously.

Minnesota-Wisconsin is huge if you spent several years at Minnesota.

The best rivalry is yours, the one that most moves you.

But some rivalries move everybody.

Duke-North Carolina is one of them. This is by far the best rivalry in college basketball. Proximity and sustained excellence make it so.

The best rivalry I’ve ever witnessed, however, is Alabama-Auburn football. As soon as you hit the state line fans are asking you to take sides. And they expect you to guess right. It’s an amazing experience.

Tonight will be, too.