A basketball fan’s perspective

Monday, Wednesday, Friday & Sunday

What about the Spurs

They have The Alien, Victor Wembanyama case closed. That was meant to be a joke, although Wemby stands 7-foot 5 (or 7 maybe) and is tremendously talented more is required over just having him on the roster. The Spurs will look a bit different this upcoming season, during the free agent period they managed to sign Tobias Harris who played for the Pistons last season. Harris is not going to wow anyone but he is a heady veteran able to slide between the 4 and 5, it’s not determined if he starts or not. The draft saw the Spurs secure two legitimate Big Men, one who might miss the season and the other possibly squeezing Kornet for minutes.

Pick number 20 became Jayden Quaintance a 6-foot 10 255 pound forward from Kentucky who could slide over to center in a pinch. Quaintance underwent a surgery procedure so there is a question if he plays in 2026-27 but wait there’s more. Pick 26 is Tarris Reed Jr. also a wide body at 6-foot 11 and 265 pounds, he played at UConn. In the second round the Spurs chose guard Ja’Kobi Gillispie and forward Maliq Brown. Did I tell you Wemby didn’t did not sign for the max, his move will allow the Spurs to extend Stephon Castle and Dylan Harper at the time their rookie extensions end. There is no method to determine how the season turns out for the Spurs however prior to the start most sites rate them at the top in Power Rankings. Even more interesting because the Spurs lost the 2026 NBA championship to the Knicks. If I’m buying stock I’d say the Spurs are a good purchase right now.

Located in the metro

The news on Wednesday contained a story regarding the Chiefs planned stadium in Kansas City Kansas. I realize this is a basketball blog and the Chiefs are an NFL team, bear with me a couple more minutes and I will explain the basketball connection. The $3 billion domed football stadium will be built about 10-15 miles straight line miles from Arrowhead, of course this is a move from Kansas City MO to Kansas City KS. I realize some might not realize there are two cities one located in Kansas and the other in Missouri with the same name. How this came about is a story for another time and place. In any event Mancia Architects were chosen by the Chiefs to design their new stadium.

As for Mancia they are no strangers to projects of this type however what about the basketball connection you ask. Well the NBA Thunder’s new arena Continental Coliseum which is replacing Paycom is a Mancia project, as for other examples we could cite three NBA arenas. The Toyota Center in Houston, Chase Center in San Francisco is another. In China there are two basketball arenas, the Guangzhou Arena located in Guangzhou, China and Wukesong Arena in Beijing, China. Mancia has also designed Allegiant Stadium home of the NFL Las Vegas Raiders and other projects omitted due to space. This portion you might find even more interesting, the firm was started in 2007 by David Mancia. Mancia previously worked at HOK which is also a sports architect firm and is located in the Kansas City metro.

Did you hear this story

I haven’t shopped at a thrift store in two or three years, but this story might send me rushing back to thrift store shopping again. A 19-year-old Portland Oregon shopper paid $3.07 for a basketball warmup jacket that made him a wealthy young man. It belonged to Wilt Chamberlain and, as it turned out, was the jacket he wore during the 1972 NBA Finals. Once authenticated, it sold at auction for $90,000—a remarkable return on a $3 purchase, plus whatever it cost him to travel to that thrift store.

I’m certainly interested in sports memorabilia, but I had no idea some of it might end up in thrift shops. Beginning this weekend, I have a plan: visit the three nearby thrift stores, then three more the following week, and keep going until I uncover my great fortune. Is this a pipe dream on my part, probably but can you blame me? I’ve often wondered about sports memorabilia, it’s become a multi-million dollar business although my guess 99% of sales are nowhere close to what this teen shopper received. On the other hand maybe there is a piece out there somewhere close or perhaps exceeding the dollars this teen received.

The Silver medal

What if I told you a team never bothered to seek their Olympic Silver medals? Well this occurred in the 1972 Olympics held in Munich Germany, for the first time in basketball Team USA faced a formidable foe. The game was a nailbiter down to its controversial ending, the team representing the former Soviet Union “lost” the game, then they won it! There is YouTube video of the last few seconds of the game, check it out and see what you think, below is the AI overview of the game’s end.

“The Soviet Union defeated the Americans 51-50 in a highly controversial gold-medal game, ending the USA’s undefeated 63-game Olympic winning streak. The dramatic and disputed finish involved the final three seconds being replayed twice due to scoring table errors and timeouts. On the final attempt, Soviet player Aleksandr Belov caught a length-of-the-court pass and scored a layup, securing the win. The U.S. team, entirely composed of college players at the time, was so outraged by the officiating that the players voted unanimously to refuse their silver medals, which remained locked in IOC vault.”

Reports indicate that several team members included provisions in their wills instructing their families not to petition the IOC for the silver medals after their deaths. And so ends the story of the Olympic medals never presented to members of the 1972 U.S. team. Never presented because team members believe they were bilked out of Gold Medals at least twice during one of the most bizarre endings witnessed by all at the time.

AI overview