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Nancy Lieberman to play professional basketball again

July 24, 2008 – 4:13 pm
Posted in current events, observations, opinions
Tagged commentary, current events, heroes, sports
Comments (1)

The big sports news story today is that the WNBA’s Detroit Shock professional women’s basketball team signed Nancy Lieberman to a seven-day contract. The news comes after the Shock lost All-Star forward Cheryl Ford to a season-ending knee injury during a bench-clearing brawl at the end of a game against the Los Angeles Sparks. Why is this a major story? Because Nancy Lieberman is a bona fide superstar sports legend.

After a high school career of championships and national honors, she was the youngest basketball player in Olympic history to win a medal when the USA women’s team took the silver in Montreal – when she was just 18 years old.
She led her college team at Old Dominion University to three consecutive major championships: first the WNIT championship, followed the next two years by the AIAW championships – and she personally racked up prestigious national awards and recognitions.
As a pro player, she led her team to the WABA championship, and was also the scoring leader and the league MVP.
She has been inducted into the Nassau County Sports Hall of Fame, the Virginia Sports Hall of Fame, the Basketball Hall of Fame, and the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame.
She was head coach of the WNBA’s Detroit Shock for three years.
She is currently a full-time basketball analyst for ESPN.
She just turned 50 years old.

Yes, this is a bit of a stunt. It raises some interest, grabs some headlines, and deflects attention from the ugly on-court fight and its fallout. But the fact is that the Shock need some good short-term help immediately, with their star out for the season.

I still remember excitedly watching Nancy and Old Dominion in those amazing championship seasons of 1979 and 1980. The team went 72-2 at that time. Few sporting events have been that exciting. There is no overstating OD’s dominance, or the personal dominance by Nancy herself.

If anyone can step back into the big leagues at age 50 and make a positive impact every minute she’s on the floor, it’s Nancy-freakin-Lieberman.

I figure this is my most popular Flickr photograph ever.

There are times when I shoot in a definite “stock photography” style. So I get that this is recognizable as stock. And I released it under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license, so anyone is free to use it so long as they properly attribute the work to me. So I get that people like how easy it is to use this photo in blogs, etc. But I uploaded this photo over two years ago, and yet people are still finding it and using it to this day. I’ve tried to figure out how my photo keeps getting chosen, why it’s so popular, and so on, but I have yet to crack the mystery.

Here’s a list of all the web sites I know of that are using my photo, to date. It’s an average of almost one per month since January 2006. Wild.

http://dailyslackr.blogspot.com/2008/05/two-lifesaving-productivity-tools.html

http://joychaser.com/2008/01/04/how-to-make-an-inspirational-pick-me-up-journal/

http://zenhabits.net/2007/10/6-rules-for-dealing-with-habits-vs-tasks/

http://www.zimmi.cz/clanky/vyhledavac-do-sesitu.php

http://www.greenpandatreehouse.com/2007/12/04/time-money-managment-one-size-does-not-fit-all-in-most-cases/

http://www.greenpandatreehouse.com/2007/11/30/financial-goal-for-2008/

http://www.blatternet.ch/index.php/2007/11/20/uber-das-notieren/

http://cvillain.com/2008/02/28/silence-on-school-awards/

http://www.simplyneecy.com/blog/2008/02/one-of-my-favor.html

http://www.greenpandatreehouse.com/2008/03/07/writing-a-good-job-recommendation/

http://twopenniesearned.blogspot.com/2008/03/how-temping-can-be-rewarding-lifestyle.html