It's night side with Dany. I'm deel you.
Two hours down, two hours to go to the end of nights side, the beginning of Christmas and Hanukkah. And like I said, there are those of you. You have the radio on in the background and you're assembling some toy for your child or children, and I tip my hat to you. I remember those days. Believe me, I do. Now. When I use the word legend, I know it's meaning and I mean it throughout every letter of the word. This next gentleman is a legend. He has worked in
the sports arena, Good Grief for over five decades. We first saw him at the anchor desk for sports on Channel four back in the seventies, and that's taken him literally around the world. He has been everywhere. He has covered Olympiads, tennis tournaments, yes here in the United States, football games, basketball games, baseball, and hockey. And there is nothing he hasn't achieved, and I do mean achieve in the world of athletics. He I am proud to say, is not only a friend, he is a good friend
of mine. Welcome to the radio, Jimmy Myers, Jimmy, Happy holidays, very.
All of the player Morgan and I also covered Botchyball.
Oh I didn't even say I didn't even say that one. I should have thought of that one.
I'm covered Bosekeyball, Model Jacks, Double Dutch.
Oh my goodness, there you go. The double Dutch, Bess is all. I'm sorry, Okay, I thought of this after we had spoken. Yeah, and I'm not going to dwell on it because we have enough things to do between now and midnight. But this happened in either seventy one or seventy two. The longest game in football history was on Christmas that year between the Dolphins and Kansas City.
And the Kansas City Chiefs.
Yep, yep, tell me about that game.
Oh my gosh. This couple overtimes. But more importantly, they just marched up and down the field. It was one of those games where you felt that whoever had the ball laugh was going to win. But it was a remarkable game.
You know.
It's definitely remarkable game. And this was the beginning of Miami's ascent to that that level where they would be Super Bowl champions for the next couple of years, including the seventeen to zero run that they made the perfect season last one, first one and last one in the history of the league. But that game itself there, let me see, I believe Jan Stenerude was one of the
key players in that game. And wow, I mean he they were just a guy named Potolac ed polacking the running backs off the top of my head is what I could think of. At Polax was doing everything, blocking, throwing, kicking, running. He was key with something. But John stener would have believe while I'm kicking the game time field goal and I think the game winning field goal we were talking about fifty three years ago. So I remember, I was just in the business. I just started at BZ during
that time, believe it or not. In fact, September ninth, nineteen seventy one, so it was after that game i'd started b Z. But yeah, that was the beginning of what's considered one of the great games of all time.
I mean, it was you at home, driving or in your living room or whatever. You're using to hear this show night side. Did you see what I did? Now? Jimmy did not have any concept I was going to bring that up. I brought up something that was fifty three years ago in his mental history yet and still he's rattling off names and circumstances as if it happened last week.
Well, I knew he could do it.
It felt like it as first when you asked me, I said, where are we going with this? Then my brain kicks in that that that autopilot or that that automatic video in my brain starts playing and I limit, I remember, I remember this, I remember this, and I remember this.
Yeah.
Yeah, it was a great game. I mean and at that time, very few people know anything about overtime because remember when in nineteen fifty eight when the Giants and the Baltimore Colts played the first overtime games. That's the game that basically made the NFL to your orderance. And if you don't understand it, please go back, go online, find the video. Johnny United became a household name in that game. Game was played in Giants Stadium and the
United States team down the field. Another no that was Tolly Connolly before Tittle oh okay, and Kyle Wrote and Frank Giffert, those diag were in that game. But more importantly Morgan it was it was the coming out of Johnny United to Raymond Berry. They had a combination that day that Giants just could not stop. So by the time the game was tied and they were going into overtime, Morgan. The players didn't know because they never played an overtime,
they didn't know that there was an overtime rule. They didn't know it was an overtime rule. Wark the referees had to check with the league to do you have an overtime rule? Women?
You know there's the NFL championship game. You know it's on television. You know there are millions of people out there for Watche. We can't end up in a tie.
A tie?
Are you crazy?
No, no, no, calm down, Calm down.
Referees they went over and made a phone call to the league office.
We've got it down, what to do, We've got it written down.
Yeah.
Bert Bell, who is the father of Upton Bell from right, Burt Bell was a commissioner from right. But they had a rule in place, but nobody ever used it once. So consequently something comes up and you say, gee, like the baseball like in baseball, you know what it's about, fourteen thousand rules in baseball, right, it's a rule to coverage just about everything. But something will happen in a baseball game that you've never seen before and you will
never probably see it again. But there's probably a rule for every game. And that's why I probably loved baseball more than any other sport because of the complexity of the game. You know, a dot played on the diamond, round ball, olong back, basically diamond run around a diamond. So but the funny part was going back to that game, no one knew anything. So when they finally figured it out, I said, Okay, we're gonna play overtime. Okay, what does
that mean? Do we play overtime and keep playing till somebody? We played till somebody scores, to which Johnny Uniteds took them, took his team down the field, and I believe I'm sure Alan and Mechi scored the game winning touchdown in overtime when he when he dove across the goal line. He ran across the goal line and just a goot, untouched. But United had gotten them all the way down here. Johnny Uniteds a reject player from the university I think Pittsburgh.
He came out of Pittsburgh, but Johnny United played in Louis Though. Johnny Uniteds led them down the field and became a household name that day, and football became what we know it is today. No, Johnny United, is no such game. Who knows where football would have gone. I'm sure it would have got on, but not like that because the whole nation didn't know Morgan White. No one sitting in front of their televisions knew what.
Was going on.
They said, okay, live, what's this? Its side the old where are we going out? Everybody?
People? People listening, and that the radio.
Morgan trying to imagine people listening on the radio saying, what the hell is going on there the stadium?
But radio MutS to be broken.
I'm not hearing it.
No, no, no, they're calling the.
League office to figure out where do we go here?
To the night side audience, I hope you paid attention to what you just witnessed, and we're going to be doing more of that. Richie and Boston on the phone line to get it to you. We've got another guest, Jimmy is bringing along in about twenty minutes to join us. We've got a lot planned for these next roughly hour and forty four minutes of nightside time and temperature ten sixteen thirty degrees.
Now back to Dan Ray live from the Window World Nightside Studios on WBZ News Radio.
Hi, I am Morgan Morgan White Junior, filling in for Dan. I'll be here tomorrow, Christmas evening, Thursday, Friday, Saturday on my show, and then I'll be here Monday and Tuesday next week. So I've got a lot of time logged in filling in for Dan Ray, who will be on vacation until the first of January. Jimmy Myers is my guest, and Jimmy, let's take a phone call. We got a lot of things planned, so let me get the phones out the way. Richie, welcome your next Happy holidays, Richie.
I'll try one more time, Richie. You're next, Richie in Boston. Welcome. Goodbye Richie. Well he's gone and there's another person next. Excuse me, but I can't. Oh, okay, never mind. So Jimmy, it's you and I again tease what's coming up. In about fifteen to twenty minutes, I.
Will talk to Dennis Wilson, the head basketball coach at Madison Park High School. Dennis is from a very very distinguished family. His brother Harry. His late brother, Harry Wilson, was the man who started Pop Warner Football in Roxbury and built it into what it is throughout Boston today. Harry is a legendary figure, Vietnam veteran, a brilliant, brilliant guy who lost along with his wife a little while back.
And Dennis is his younger brother. Dennis had picked up the mantle to a degree and more or less share that time with Harry, because Dennis was right there when Harry started the Roxbury Raiders they were called, So Dennis was right there with Harry, and they built an organization that wound up sending Massachusetts children to the Pop war and Football super Bowls down in Florida, and nothing like this had ever come to this area. So it was
an incredible, incredible moment for Roxbury. And Dennis has been coaching at Madison Pockets I mentioned for over thirty years. I think it's thirty seven now, and he has you know, there's a floor named after him at the school, which is an honor. They probably could probably even do more, but Dennis. I've known Dennis for wild since he was a very young man, and Dennis, Dennis was part of the show that I did it on another station, six
o'clock in the morning on Saturday. Dennis became the out there reporter and it was well, it was an experience. Dennis would go around the community and I remember, this is a big station and they didn't know anything that much about Roxbury and Dorchester. So Dennis would go around and find stories and we would break them on the air and dieing forever. And then it to Dennis, because Dennis wound up not only going from there, he wound
up starting his own cable television show. There is a movie I'm trying to think of, the movie put out a couple of years ago, a great movie about his high school team. That this movie went national. So Dennis, Dennis Moore has more than fulfilled any qualification, that capability that anyone would want to talk about, because he's a remarkable human being. And again he's still coaching. And I asked him a couple of days ago, when I asked him to come on the show. Dennis, that's a question,
why are you still doing this? He's simple as this, Jimmy, I love to teach, he said, I love these young men, but I love to teach the game. And then it's just sent a lot of young men on in this life to very very successful careers on and off the basketball court. So it'd be somebody that I thought would be very interesting for your show, Morgan, because so many people in Boston know very little about what goes on
in the black community. I am blessed now to be able to write for the Base State Banner newspaper on a week to week basis, and it's online, so if you go to Baystate Banner dot com you can read the columns. But more importantly, the two owners, two new owners.
Noil Miller was he was a longtime owner of the paper, but the two new owners, Ron Mitchell and Andre Stark, they have really stepped in to build a paper on a concept of more than anything, of talking about vote issues, particularly you know, young people in sports in the black community,
and that's what we're trying to do right now. But you know, and I think of all the things that have happened, even the things they had to write about this week, we did the end of the year review, and when I'm thinking about that end of the year review, it's always long. I apologize at the beginning of every every single one of these I know there may be some issues or some people that I may leave out.
I apologize in advance for that, but we only have enough space hit the paper to write the things that we need to write. And we go back and we look at the year, and I was thinking about the people that we lost this year, you know, particularly me, think of our local legends. Louis Tilla. Lose Louis, I mean, he's gone. And I think of somebody Joe Fitzgerald, longtime writer of the Boston Herald and one of the most
wonderful people that I've ever known in my life. I spent a lot of time with Joe over the years, and I miss him every day. And more importantly, you know, I was able to spend some time with him before his children more or less put him in a situation whereas he was more or less put away to a degree for his health reasons or whatever. Very painful situation. But I did attend his funeral out of respect because I knew Joe, his wife and his family. I watched
those kids grow up. But you know, young people make decisions and they feel that they're right, and I felt they were wrong. But it's not my business. It's a family thing. So I ate that one. But more or less I was there to tell Joe as he was being put away. Joe, you were loved and for anybody who ever read his column, you were blessed to read Joe Fitzger because that guy.
A true work.
He knew how to put gosh could He writes right.
Words in the sentence and then the right sentences to follow. Tell you what Richie is called back in. I don't know what happened, but let's get him on before I have to take a news hit. Richie, I hope you're there this time.
Hi, thank you, Merry Christmas, and thanks for taking my call. I'm Richie from Boston, no relation to Richie Powers. And you talked about the greatest games. I was at the triple overtime in seventy six, Game five at the Garden triple overtime. Yeah, that was a great game. And the thing that was interesting was it was and the interesting thing was when Hamblechik had that off balance shot. Celtis
were leading and won the game. They were leaving the court and Richie Powers said, there's two seconds left on the clock and they had to come back out, and some idiot came on the court and it started attacking this pet referee Richie Powers, and a nice guy came out there and try to help him, and it was a very nice guy. Yeah, that's right guy.
Two or three guys grabbed Richie. And it was right after gar heard hit a turnaround jump shot that sent the game into the next overtime. Because Hamil Checker put in my head they thought the game was over. Everybody ran off the court. They came back on and then you know, into between that time they attacked with the Powers, which I you know, I was sitting underneath the basket. I remembered, like it was yesterday. Tell me I just
ran on the floor. I just ran the floor and dove in the middle of the pile, wound up getting my knee blown in more or less swollen badly. I thought I tore toward my knee. But the more the most important thing with Richie Powers is safe. He would later do a talk show with me and we talked about that night. He said, I rolled over and I looked up. It was Jimmy pulling me about the floor. I said, yeah, well, I was dragging my leg at the same time. But great man, great official Hall of
Fame official. But you know, the incidents like that they should not happen, and unfortunately they did. But thank god we were many people were there. The security was quick enough to get there too, to pull those guys off of them.
And Richie, next hour, Jimmy and I, Richie, hold on, Jimmy and I are going to be talking about poor behavior by fans both during the game and after a game. That'll be in the eleven o'clock hour.
But but Richie, go ahead real quick because the Celtics.
But you were talking overtime football. Wasn't there a game in fifty seven the Colts and the Giants at Yankee Stadium that Yeah, I think.
That's the whole game.
Yeah, that was great, and no I remember that if I'm right. Yeah, it was at fifty eight. That was a great game. And I remember I was always watched that, and you know, I was a Giants fan. But I want to talk Celtics with you. I'm a little concerned about the Celtics. They're my team, and I still remember all those championship games. And I think we once talked about Frank Selvy we missed that shot in sixty two.
But I was a little concerned because I'm a little concerned about the Celtics per singis he seems like he's having trouble on defense and rebounding. And I'm also you know, some of the big guys like Xavier Tillman, he doesn't seem to be playing much. Al Horford is getting older. And also you know, you got big Al and I you know, and then we got Holiday, who's thirty four. Do you think the team might be in trouble as far as ages.
I don't know if trouble is the word, Richie, but they are getting older. That's the point to be made here. And at al a thirty eight. You can't expect Ali be playing four forty minutes a night. You just can't expect that. But if for Zingi's is out, a'l has to play longer minutes, yes, I'm concerned about that. When I was just discussing this with a buddy of mine who was a huge Celtic fan, like you, I was trying to tell him, do you realize how hard it is to repeat in this league?
You know?
I wanted I wanted to talk Yeah, well not only that I wanted to talk about I wanted to talk about the last team, the Golden State with Kevin Durant that won back to back titles. That's seven years ago now, and it's going to be tough for the Celtics to pull this off. One. You got to have health, you gotta have You got to be blessed with good health. And I don't know if for Zinga's legs are strong enough. I've talked about this before. He said, multiple ankle surgery,
has knee problems. He's not going to be able. If he can play fifty five games fairly healthy, you should be happy. That's seventeen he's going to possibly miss. And if he's coming back, trying to come back too fast, going to just put more wear and tear on a surgically repaired tankle.
So, Jimmy, I gotta I gotta stop you there, Richie. You gotta take a break.
We listen, I listen. Thank you very much for taking a call.
You're very welcome.
We'll have lunch sometime and take care. God bless you, and Merry Christmas.
Merry Christmas to you too. Thank you, Richie. We're going to take our break and when we come back, we'll be joined by Dennis Wilson. Time and temperature here on night side ten thirty one thirty degrees.
It's Night Side with Dan Ray on wb Boston's news radio.
I'm Morgan. I'm here until midnight. I'll be here until December thirty first, including December thirty first, But that's too far ahead. Let's talk about tonight. I've got Jimmy Myers here, and through Jimmy, he has brought and a gentleman for over three decades it has dedicated his life to impacting youth through football and how to carry themselves as young men. Mister Dennis Wilson, welcome tonight's side.
Welcome, welcome Apoli to you gentlemen and all your listeners.
Well, thank you, and tell me what it is. Jimmy already told us, but I want to hear from your mouth what it is to do and what drives you to do it.
Well, I think I got a lot of it from my mom. My mom was always wondered was about helping people and caring about people. And I started back when I was eighteen, so four decades that not to date myself, you know, even though I was a spirit of young guy, but just enjoy not teaching and developing and communicating and inspiring young people, trying to make a positive impact in it life and and just trying to do my share.
I've got a silly question because I've seen them both ways. In both ways translate respect. Do your players call you coach Wilson or coach?
They called me coach. I'm old school, so uh it's coach. I'm sure they'd like to call me other things, but they all.
Right now, Jimmy, do you have any questions?
No, Basically, you know, I've known this man for the majority of his adult life. But uh, you know his brother. He and his brother I had mentioned talked about the Pop Warner program. But then it's also worked with young women too. Then it is that not just young guys. Dennis has done a lot for the use of Boston. I'm talking about teaching him basketball, teaching him other sports
sports other than football. But when I asked him, as I mentioned when I talked to that a couple of days ago, I had mentioned asked him why why does he do it? Because, like you said, I still love to teach. And part of that teaching factor is the communication that you have to have with young people today.
You speak a different language than we spoke when we were growing up, and I think Dennis should address that, as he talked to when you talk about how do he reaches these young people today, because that was one of the things we talked about, Dennis.
Sure, nowadays you're so right, Jimmy. You now have the social media. So all these negative traps and these negative forces just really tearing at these kids. And I feel sorry for them, you know, some of them being raised in dystrunction families without a male role model, you know, to give me that stuff love. There's so many of them need. But you got to all these as I mentioned, social media, tiktoks and you know, the challenges and YouTube and all this. You know it, you know it, she knows.
We back in the day from a sports perspective, we watched a game, a whole game, and really critique the different players and the styles and all the different nuances of the game. Nowadays, they're just looking at clips of highlights of guys dunker and breaking ankles, as they say, you know, and seeing all that craziness. That's just negativity, just dividing our country and just making these young folks just make bad decisions in their lives through that garbage
that they see. So it's just a sad state of affairs. But things, like you said to me have changed drastically. So you just try to just try to have them sort out right from wrong and making positive decisions in life that are going to help you know, them go on the right channels in the right direction and hopefully not you know, fall into those traps as I mentioned earlier, that are out there.
What in newball? What NFL players are the favorites of your kids? They've got posters of this man on the back of their closet door. Who are as best you can guesstimate, who are their favorites?
Well, of course, you know, I'm sure they probably got Lamar Jackson, you know, and yeah, and Patrick Mahomes but they better get him to that boy Jaalen Hunter, Okay, he's amazing.
Daniels and Washington, Yeah, I mean.
Jade and Daniels. I'm sorry, j Daniels, Yeah, he is special. Oh my goodness. So you know you got guys like that, you know, uh, that the local kid that they were that VC favous, they favorus and and uh, but I would say right now, you know kids love that, say Kwon Barckley again, Uh, great exciting runner backs great receivers justin Jefferson, uh, you know, with the electric fying catches. But I would say that the white the quarterbacks, the receivers and the running backs.
Do you think is gonna break Eric Dickerson's record. He's only get two weeks left. You know.
He means the question of go ahead, take down done for you?
Okay, you know, I think he's gonna run the time. Unfortunately, when you have two great players, you know that you're trying to share you know, the ball with and uh and it seems like the big baby Brown he you know, so upset with not getting the ball, and that takes away from sa Quon and so now instead of you post speed and ta Kuan whish you should. I mean he's special. Oh my goodness, you know you and I remember the great Barry and and and sweetness find moves.
But this guy, he is not in their category. Believe he is no Baron Sanders. But I will say he can go into that area because that area is a very very select area, Dennis. Basically basketball. When you talk to your young people today, who the people they look at that I know John Moran is one of them. Please, he really needs a mental adjustment. But besides him, who is just some of the other players they like. I'm hoping Jay Gilders Alexander's one of them.
But well, he now has become one of my favorite players, and I really push got him as far as just silent Assassin Jimmy. You knows, he just kills you in so many ways and just reminds me of one of my former players, Lloyd Industries. You remember Lloyd Automatic Industrious. He just kills you with his jump shot, his moves, selected, you know, his athleticism. Garon Fox is one that they like a great deal. Of course, everybody loves a I A U. Anthony Edwards. Uh, He's he's just you know, uh,
women Yama is taking over. You know that that league by Storm. You know, somebody that tall, that athletic, to be able to do what he does is amazing. So you know, like you said, you you you stare them away from the cud gifted the ability to be doing dumb the dumb things and making some a bad decisions
that he's made. And then you stay on to guys, you know, our guys, you know the Jaden Jason Datums, Jalen Brown's you know, and like I said, Jake Gilders, you know, these guys, they're they're doing the right things that they're involved in the community. They're setting good examples, you know, for for these young guys. It's not easy, man, all that money and all this endorsements. Now you know that, you know, of course, and I and I l and I mean it's it's man, you and I. Jimmy played
at the wrong time. Jim we played at the wrong time.
Then us keep this go to home. Tell me about the upcoming basketball tournament that's so important now that you brought it back to Madison.
Yeah.
Yeah, I'm doing the Madison Baccer Holiday Classic, and I'm bringing up some real talented teams with some talented young men on it. It'll be the twenty seven twenty eight. This is Friday and Saturday. First game at four, a second game at six. So I got fitted local team Latin Academy that gots Jay and this claim that jumps out to gym six six ' four leaper. They're going against Whiston Tech, who Jimmy knocked them out at Latin
Academy last year in the States. So Danny Bunker, great coach Danny Bunker, he asked, could I make that happen. I made it happen. So they're tipping off on Friday four o'clock and then we got a real tough opponent, Mount Pleasant High School, some rough and tough talented kids from province Rhode Island. So Charlie Holiday talented. Charlie you may him back in the day. He's coming up with his rutus that that's gonna be, you know, tough to
handle for our guys. But hey, we're gonna come to play, and then it'll be at the Matter Dome Saturday will be the consolation game at four for the two losers and then the winners championship game at six and a wardsone. How did you get it back, Dennis, after all this time that it was gone. Well, you know, it's something that I had always always thought about. I went to Wister's Christmas Classic last year Christmas tournament and lost in
the championship to Wilster. So I said, hey, rather than travel and in Boston, Jimmy, I mean, we need more things for our community, for our youth and for our city. And you know, we got so much talent here that's not being showcase. And if it is it's out of town, you know, in the suburbs, and I am not gonna knock them, but so we need to have more more events in the city and showcase our talent and bring talent from without and in showcase of talent from with tennant.
Devis. I want to wish you luck in all that you do, because you and I both know it's not what happens on the field. It's not what happens on the court, it's what happens in the minds of your players. And something tells me your strongest job is getting your players to understand that. And I wish you luck.
So true, so true. I just want to say, and I really sincerely mean this. You're talking to a legend yourself, Jimmy Myers.
Who's who's tell the many.
Lives through the radio and as well as now through through paper. He's writing some fabulous articles in the base Dave Banner, and people need to really take the opportunity to to just take advantage of the mind that this man has, the information he has to offer, and the challenge that he possesses. So I mean, I I just want to give him a plug.
When I first introduced him, I used the words legend, which he truly is. Dennis, I want to thank you. I wish you are Merry Christmas for you and your family, and I'll be checking the papers to see how well you did.
Alrighty, thanks so much and have a great Holliday. Take you all right, God blessed in it.
Everybody, and I'm going to go back to taking phone calls. We have a gym from Taunton. It's held for a half hour, so we'll get to you after we take our break a little late, but bear with me. Time and temperature ten forty seven thirty degrees.
Now back to Dan Way live from the window World Life Sight Studios on WBZ News Radio.
I'm going to go right to the phone. This poor gentleman has held for a half hour, so Jim and Taunton I apologize for the length of time he held. Happy Holidays, welcome tonight's side.
Thank you again. I appreciate you taking my call, and you know it's worth the wait. When I get to talk to I believe you call Jimmy Meyers a legend, which I would agree with one thousand percent, so it's well worth the weight. So thank you for that. Merry Christmas.
To you gentlemen. By the way, Morgan, you had mentioned the word legend, and I will tell you that the gentleman that was in your last segment, Dennis Wilson, also has to have that title of legend because he is one of the best coaches we've had in the city of Boston, especially when it comes to dealing with the youth of Boston. So if anybody had that title to put, it would be Dennis Wilson. He's one of the best.
I will how do you know, how do you know of Dennis Wilson.
I've had the pleasure of actually seeing him coach, even though I went to a different high school. I actually went to some of the games when my high school was playing his high school, and I actually got a chance to see him coach, and he is one of the best. I got to tell you. I was very impressed by the way he carried himself and how he dealt with his players, and it's it's really a credit to the coaches that we have in the Boston school system. So I was fortunate to get to see that gentleman
do what he's what he's best at. I will tell you he's one of the greatest I've ever seen.
And Jimmy, you don't have to go any further than there, because Dennis has done this for a long long time. Whatever detractors he may have, because they'll say, you know, he's boisterous, and please Dennis, you don't survive thirty seven years at doing something without knowing what you're doing. And the most important thing is I always tell those same
people look at the success. I mean, I don't think anybody agonizes more over losing a ballplayer or a student or someone that didn't fulfill what they were supposed to fulfill. The Dennis Dennis hurts when one of his charges young men or women don't do what they're supposed to do. That's what you carry with you as a coach. And most people, you know, you look at the great coaches,
and there's so many of them. They agonize over the ones they lost, the ones that go on and do great, Yeah, good, wonderful. They're supposed to do that because that's what we train them to do. And you never see Dennis jumping out there to say, well, you know, we did this. He will always say they did this, and that's you know, that's the testament to the.
Guy right and Jimmy, I don't know. I should have asked him while I had him. Has he been fortunate to have any of his players He's done this for over thirty years go on to the pros.
Well, you know, said a couple of guys play poll ball overseas. I think Greg Simpson is one of his greatest players, went on to play at Northeastern and did have did have a run in some NBA camps and so forth. That Dennis goes a lot of guys. I mean, I'm sure that some of the names that if we want to start to roll them off while we could be sitting here for half the night. But no, he's he's done that job. He's got them there. But I don't look at I don't look at coaching that way
because very few people. I always tell people one in twelve million people have a chance to play in the NBA. Those are very large numbers, Morgan, and those numbers get greater every day, particularly when you consider all the people that are playing ball in this country, basketball, football, baseball, whatever, hockey. Your chance is like one in twelve Minutellion. And I always give this test when I go to just speak at high schools and places of that nature, even colleges.
I'll say, does anyone in this audience know how long it would take you to count from one to one million? I didn't say twelve million, one to one million, thirty three hours. That's around the world record, that's over day. That's a day in nine hours to count from one to one million, and pray to God you don't lose your place, and so you'd have to have somebody there recording. Okay, you lost your place at at one hundred and thirty
seven thousand, two hundred and forty one. We got to go back to that and start about thirty three hours. So I'm saying twelve times that you're talking about you're talking about chances that are minuscule at best. The few people that do make it, the four hundred plus players I think four seventy five or something like that. Because the league is getting ready to expand again, they'll have
two more teams, so maybe five hundred players. That's five hundred players out of a country of two hundred and no three hundred million people, and that's those numbers are just astronomical. So as I've coached over the years, and I know Dennis has done the same thing. Because we've had these conversations. I always try to tell people listen. So I try to tell young players, listen, if you wind up getting a college education out of this experience,
something your parents don't have to pay for. You won the game. They're paying you to go to college to play basketball. That's a job, that's being a professional. You're getting paid for your services. Now you get to go on further to play overseas or playing the NBA.
God bless you.
And remember we've had, we have had, we have had ball players from this town. One of my just wrote about in the base the banner a couple of weeks ago. It is your bass Napier who went from Boston to Connecticut and he won two national Champsmpionships, not one. As a freshman, he played with Kimba Walker on the Connecticut team that won the national title. Then as a senior he played with the guy I believe Ryan Boat Oak Knight or whatever his name is, a nothing little guard.
But these two were the principal players when Connecticut went to the final four, and he was almost outstanding player of the final forty year they won his senior year Lebron James endorsed him to be drafted by the Miami Heat. They drafted him at twenty four, and then Lebron left and went back to Cleveland, so more or less left in there. But Chabaz survived for eight years in the NBA. He Choku about eight years of experience in the NBA.
Just came back from Italy, winning two national titles there.
Jimmy got to stop you there, jim and tauntin thank you for your call, but i gotta say goodbye to you. I've got news and I'm late for it. So let me quickly just say time and temperature ten fifty eight and twenty seven greese