{"id":3928,"date":"2020-12-29T22:00:30","date_gmt":"2020-12-29T22:00:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/?p=3928"},"modified":"2020-12-29T22:00:30","modified_gmt":"2020-12-29T22:00:30","slug":"i-dont-understand-how-gifted-athletes-like-haskins-can-ruin-that-gift-plus-the-great-tom-stith","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/?p=3928","title":{"rendered":"I don’t understand how gifted athletes like Haskins can ruin that gift, plus the great Tom Stith"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

TERRY MOSHER<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

TOP OF THE TOWN \u2013<\/strong> Maybe it\u2019s because I was a very good athlete as a young kid and went nowhere with it that I look at these guys who have more athletic ability than I ever thought of having and either do nothing with it or screw it up and I think what a stupid waste. I know the answer to this. Yet, I am still puzzled and shake my head at it all. I\u2019m thinking now of quarterback Dwayne Haskins. You know that the Washington Football Team released Haskins on Monday, a day after he was benched in the team\u2019s loss to Carolina. His problems have been long-standing, but the latest came after he almost led Washington to a comeback against Seattle. Hours after the game he was photographed at his girlfriends\u2019 birthday party with strippers. Two things come into play here. One, he violated NFL and team COVID-19 protocols and two how dumb do you have to be to be out celebrating two hours after your lose a football game? For me, even if you forget those obvious mistakes, this is a pattern that I have seen far too many times in over 50 years of sports writing. You can chalk it up to whatever you want \u2013 maturity is high on that list \u2013 but I have never learned why guys like Haskins and Johnny Manziel turn a golden goose into tinfoil. They have made it big and, bingo, they might do drugs or alcohol or just plain party too much and that golden goose disappears, flying bye-bye over the horizon. Josh Gordon I explained in a blog the other day. His is an addiction and his golden goose is on the loose, but after nine \u201csecond chances\u201d it\u2019s possible he may make it to 10. I understand addition. It is difficult to break. It can be broken, but it takes a lot of effort and guts and help. But if you are just too immature to grasp how fortunate you are than I can\u2019t help you or respect you. We have millions in this country right now that don\u2019t know how they are going to put food on the table to feed their families \u2013 indeed some of them might not even have a table \u2013 and here is a 23-year-old sitting on a gold mine and he bleeps it away at a strip club in the midst of a pandemic that has cost over 320,000 American lives. Cry me a river, but I don\u2019t feel sorry for Haskins or people like Manziel. If somebody had offered me millions to play football, I would do everything in my power to justify such a sum. But I guess I\u2019m behind the times. You can have your millions and smoke dope and chug another bottle of beer as much as you want. Just don\u2019t do it with cell phone cameras within sight or while thinking of team or teammates. … Is it too early to tag Gonzaga with the NCAA basketball championship? They appear to be unbeatable, a wonder team that defies all imagination. The Zags are currently 8-0 and the top-ranked team in the country, deservedly so. They are scoring on average 94 points a game, beating opponents by an average of 20 points, and have knocked down No. 3 Iowa, No. 5 Kansas, No. 11 West Virginia and No. 15 Virginia, putting 98 points on the defensive-minded Cavaliers. \u00a0They have four guys and nearly a fifth averaging in double figures \u2013 Corey Kispert and Drew Timme are averaging 20.6 points, Jalen Suggs is at 15.6, Joel Avayl is scoring 10.4 and Andrew Nembhard is at 9.4. Kispert is a 6-7 senior from King\u2019s High School in Edmonds, \u00a0Timme is a 6-10 sophomore from Texas, Suggs is a 6-4 super quick freshman from Minnesota, Avayl is a 6-5 redshirt\u00a0 junior from France and Nembhard\u00a0 is a 6-5 junior from Florida. The national media, especially on the East Coast where much of the media power is concentrated, have had a hard time justifying Gonzaga over the years because, well, because they are on the West Coast and from a small private Catholic school in a state so far Northwest some along the Eastern Seaboard think Washington is in Alaska. Slowly the powers that be are waking up to Gonzaga and giving them their due. But one misstep and the Zags will pummel downwards in national polls.\u00a0 That\u2019s alright. I\u2019m used to small Catholic schools getting shunned. I grew up on St. Bonaventure basketball. The Bonnies (they used to be the Brown Indians before\u00a0 political correctness became the thing) had some really good teams in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s (Bob Lanier\u2019s time there)and with Niagara and Canisius form the Little Big Three, a three-way rivalry among Catholic schools that dominates conversation in that neck of the woods. As long as I live, I will always remember Tom Stith, who starred with St. Bonaventure in the early 1960s. Stith was one of the best college players I ever saw. Nobody remembers him, but he was amazing and once scored 69 points against the Cleveland Pipers, a semi-pro team owned by George Steinbrenner. I\u2019m going to close with his story that was written a long time ago, but illustrates the glory years back when I was a kid listening to the St. Bonaventure Brown Indians on my upright Zenith Radio late at night while lying in my bed in New York State.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

TOM STITH<\/p>\n

By Mike Vaccaro,<\/p>\n

New York Post<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

This was written June14, 2010<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Please do yourself a favor and read my colleague\u00a0Peter Vcsey\u2019s\u00a0wonderful\u00a0tribute\u00a0to\u00a0Tom Stith, one of the best players you probably never heard of, the Knicks\u2019 first-round pick in the 1961 draft, second overall, a man whose brief post-college basketball career could fill a whole chapter of a sports What-If book.<\/p>\n

I went to St. Bonaventure, a place where Stith\u2019s legacy lived on in all its majesty for each of the last 49 years since he helped nudge the Bonnies to the precipice of the big time. St. Bonaventure \u2013 and its hometown, Olean, N.Y. \u2013 remains the kind of small-town harbor for big hopes and bigger dreams. It remembers its heroes forever. And requires that any newbie who shows up and wants to care about its program understand all about what it used to be, as well.<\/p>\n

Most of the locals\u2019 laments center around 1970, when the Bonnies \u2013 led by future Hall of Famer\u00a0Bob Lanier\u00a0\u2013 were a Top Five team and qualified for the Final Four in one of the two years when the rest of college basketball felt it had a shot at a title \u2013 the years between\u00a0Lew Alcindor\u2019s\u00a0reign at UCLA, and\u00a0Bill Walton\u2019s\u00a0arrival. But Lanier blew his knee out in a regional final romp over Villanova, and for 40 years folks in Western New York have wondered what might\u2019ve happened if Lanier had been able to play\u00a0Artis Gilmore\u00a0and Jacksonville in the national semifinals, and then\u00a0Steve Patterson\u00a0in the finals. No one will ever know. Ask someone up there about it sometime; be prepared to stay until closing time.<\/p>\n

Stith, in many ways, provided an even more haunting wonder. Nine years earlier, a team led by Stith,\u00a0Whitey Martin\u00a0and\u00a0Freddie Crawford\u00a0took defending champion Ohio State to the wire of the Holiday Festival at the Old Garden, losing a two-point decision that many old-time Garden patrons still recall fondly. That Bonnies team was flying, riding a 99-game winning streak at home, a civic favorite everywhere in Western New York.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was 10, 11 years old,\u201d Lanier told me once, recalling the many nights he would watch the Bonnies play Canisius or some other featured team at the old Buffalo Memorial Auditorium. \u201cAnd I thought Tom Stith was Superman, only cooler. He was the most magnificent basketball player I\u2019d ever seen.\u201d<\/p>\n

The story from there is even sadder than Lanier\u2019s; at least Lanier had a good decade and change in the NBA, became an All-Star, fulfilled his destiny. Stith and Crawford contracted TB. The 99-game winning streak came crashing down in a heap one night at the Olean Armory against Niagara, with\u00a0Sports Illustrated\u00a0in the house to record what everyone expected would be an easy hundredth. In the NCAA Tournament \u2013 an event the Bonnies had spurned the year before because the team\u2019s African-American players wouldn\u2019t have been allowed to stay with their white teammates \u2013 they lose meekly to a Wake Forest team led by a guard named\u00a0Billy Packer. And soon enough, Stith would have his ruined lungs tended to in a sanitarium.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are tragedies worse than what happened to Tommy I suppose,\u201d\u00a0Eddie Donovan\u00a0told me years ago. Donovan was sitting in his office at St. Bonaventure, back working at his alma mater in a fund-raising role after spending 25 years in the pros, helping build both the \u201970 Knicks and the old Buffalo Braves.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut there is never a time when I think of Tom and I don\u2019t want to cry. I mean it. Every time. Here was a kid who had it all, who was strong and tough and indestructible. Look, it wasn\u2019t as bad as what happened to poor Mo Stokes, who really did lose everything once he got sick. Tom\u2019s had a great life, and I\u2019m grateful for that. But there is tragedy to the fact that people know who\u00a0Elgin Baylor\u00a0is, and they know who\u00a0Connie Hawkins\u00a0is, but hardly anyone knows who Tom was. I thought he\u2019d be a household name. And it wasn\u2019t meant to be. People should remember him.\u201d<\/p>\n

In one corner of Western New York, anyway, they always will. My friend\u00a0Jerry Carr, who was a freshman at St. Bonaventure in that wonderful and ill-fated winter of 1961, said after hearing of Stith\u2019s death yesterday at 71: \u201cIt was magical. I can still see him scoring on that jump shot in the corner. And he was a class act.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Ok, that is it for today.<\/p>\n

Be well pal<\/p>\n

Be careful out there.<\/p>\n

Have a great day.<\/p>\n

You are loved.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TERRY MOSHER   TOP OF THE TOWN \u2013 Maybe it\u2019s because I was a very good athlete as a young…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":3929,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3928","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-column","category-mosher"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3928","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3928"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3928\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3930,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3928\/revisions\/3930"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3929"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3928"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3928"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sportspaper.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3928"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}