An interesting story from the World Stage

(interesting to me, at least)

I'm not a sports fanatic but do love when any sport comes down to deciding a final winner. I enjoy watching the finals of most any contest like the Superbowl or Wimbledon or the NBA.  That affection does not apply to Soccer or I'm sorry to say Baseball. The game of baseball relies on too many numbers to be totally enjoyed by a dyslexic.  Just think about it, to even describe a game of baseball requires a degree in mathematics.

i.e.  "Here we are in the bottom of the sixth there are two balls and two strikes one out, two men on base with four hits seven errors and five runs which puts them five games out of third place in the Eastern division."  

Are you kidding me? I can't keep up.  I like timed sports. You play and score as many points as you can before the clock runs out. And the clock runs backwards which totally fits my dyslexic nature. 

So here we are at the NBA finals and my home team takes on its most disliked opponent for the championship, and I am totally involved. But one story has captured my imagination, and no one seems to be talking about it much. It was briefly mentioned at the first game of the Lakers vs Celtics finals, but I never heard anyone else mention it.  To understand the significance you have to know that the Lakers and Celtics rivalry goes back generations.   But the last time they met in a finals was in 2008 when the Celtics won the NBA finals against the top seeded Lakers, on their own home court, Staples Center. It was the first time the Celtics had even been in the finals since 1996. 

The 2010 Celtics team is basically the same group of coaches and players as the 2008 champs so as Yogi Berra said, "It's dejavu all over again."   All this to explain the story that caught my attention. The night of the win at Staples Center in 08, Doc Rivers, the coach of the Celtics, demanded one hundred dollars from every member of the coaching staff and players. He would not tell them what is was for he just made everyone pay.  He took the money and hide it in the visitors locker room at Staples.  He was the only one who knew the hiding place and told everyone, "If you want to get your money back, you have to come back here and get it at another NBA finals game."  Two years later they are back playing the first game of the NBA finals, at Staples Center.  Doc Rivers goes to the hiding place, gets the money and pays everyone back. 

He didn't say how much money it was or where he hid it but did say he was surprised that it was still there after two years, expressing shock that no one found it when they changed a light bulb or fixed something.  He humbly admitted that it was a great hiding place.

This is a great story. An even better story would be if someone *had* found the money as Doc Rivers thought might happen. Would they have turned it in? Cash in hundred dollar bills? The statistics were against the money being found by one of the rich basketball players and more likely to be discovered by a maintenance man earning an hourly wage. I'm thinking, cash stashed in a wall is really up for grabs.  Let's take a vote...(see the polling square, top of the right hand column)

As you were,

Jay