sutomcat
No recent Cali or Iggy awards; Mr Irrelevant
- Joined
- Aug 15, 2011
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SU News
Late Mother, Family Drive Christmas As He Works Out for Pacers (indystar.com; Randhawa)
Rakeem Christmas didn't come to basketball until he was in the eighth grade. But when he and basketball met, they were a good match.
Now a 6-9, 250-pound power forward/center out of Syracuse, Christmas was one of the six pre-draft workout participants for the Pacers at Bankers Life Fieldhouse on Monday morning.
It's been quite a journey for Christmas to reach this point in his life, with a chance to become a professional basketball player a little over a month from now when the NBA draft takes place at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn.
Christmas was born about 20 miles from there, in Irvington, N.J. At age 2, he moved with his mother to St. Croix in the Virgin Islands. She died three years later of renal failure at age 28. Christmas' grandmother became his legal guardian until he moved back to the U.S. to stay with his aunt in Philadelphia.
That's where he met basketball.
It took a little time, but Christmas became a dominant player, particularly on defense.
"Before it was just strictly about defense; I was the No. 1 shot-blocker back in high school," Christmas said after his workout with the Pacers on Monday. "It was straight defense."
...
Rakeem Christmas's NBA Future May Prove to Be a Mix of Good Timing and Friendly Basketball Gods (PS; Poliquin)
He may be more notorious round here for issues related to his keister than for much of anything else, but Rick Springfield once spoke words that could be stitched onto a throw pillow in Rakeem Christmas' house.
"If the timing's right and the gods are with you," Springfield stated, "something special happens."
We'll soon learn if that equation plays out with Christmas, the not-quite-6-foot-10 center/forward who, after graduating from Syracuse University in just three years, has left our town with degree in hand and is bound, he hopes, for a place in the NBA.
That he'll get his chance to land in that league is less worrisome than how long he might last in it. The streets are, after all, lousy with people who were awarded NBA uniforms, but couldn't keep climbing into them. So we'll see about Rakeem, whose transition from trifling with boys to competing against men will be made more difficult because he's got a bit of fish and a bit of fowl to him … but perhaps not enough of either.
...
Other
In Syracuse, We Will Take the Silver Snowball for Large City Snow; Lowell Just Beats Out the Salt City (PS; Kirst)
Meteorologists often make adjustments in climactic totals, and so it went this year with Kim Buttrick, of the National Weather Service in Boston. Reviewing snowfall data from late March - specifically, from March 22 and March 29 - Buttrick realized Lowell, Mass. should have received, statistically, two more inches of snow.
The result, according to Pat DeCoursey, oracle of the statewide Golden Snowball contest and the guy who chronicles the national snowfall competition:
Lowell is our new national snowfall champion, with 120.6 total inches, edging Syracuse and Worcester, Mass., tied for second at 119.7.
The New England meteorologist didn't realize until this weekend - when she spoke with DeCoursey - that the small adjustment would change the results for what DeCoursey calls the National Snow Globe competition, emblematic of the snowfall champion for American cities with populations of 100,000 or more.
Yet Buttrick had the right philosophy:
"It's not the Super Bowl, it's not 'Deflategate,'" she said. "It's just snow."
Believe it or not, she said, even after a winter in which Boston got buried beneath a record 110.6 inches of snow, New England is running a spring rainfall deficit - and could actually use what Buttrick called "the other four-letter word."
As for Syracuse, we have to settle nationally for what Mark Hare, columnist emeritus at the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle, once described wistfully as "the silver snowball."
...
Late Mother, Family Drive Christmas As He Works Out for Pacers (indystar.com; Randhawa)
Rakeem Christmas didn't come to basketball until he was in the eighth grade. But when he and basketball met, they were a good match.
Now a 6-9, 250-pound power forward/center out of Syracuse, Christmas was one of the six pre-draft workout participants for the Pacers at Bankers Life Fieldhouse on Monday morning.
It's been quite a journey for Christmas to reach this point in his life, with a chance to become a professional basketball player a little over a month from now when the NBA draft takes place at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn.
Christmas was born about 20 miles from there, in Irvington, N.J. At age 2, he moved with his mother to St. Croix in the Virgin Islands. She died three years later of renal failure at age 28. Christmas' grandmother became his legal guardian until he moved back to the U.S. to stay with his aunt in Philadelphia.
That's where he met basketball.
It took a little time, but Christmas became a dominant player, particularly on defense.
"Before it was just strictly about defense; I was the No. 1 shot-blocker back in high school," Christmas said after his workout with the Pacers on Monday. "It was straight defense."
...
Rakeem Christmas's NBA Future May Prove to Be a Mix of Good Timing and Friendly Basketball Gods (PS; Poliquin)
He may be more notorious round here for issues related to his keister than for much of anything else, but Rick Springfield once spoke words that could be stitched onto a throw pillow in Rakeem Christmas' house.
"If the timing's right and the gods are with you," Springfield stated, "something special happens."
We'll soon learn if that equation plays out with Christmas, the not-quite-6-foot-10 center/forward who, after graduating from Syracuse University in just three years, has left our town with degree in hand and is bound, he hopes, for a place in the NBA.
That he'll get his chance to land in that league is less worrisome than how long he might last in it. The streets are, after all, lousy with people who were awarded NBA uniforms, but couldn't keep climbing into them. So we'll see about Rakeem, whose transition from trifling with boys to competing against men will be made more difficult because he's got a bit of fish and a bit of fowl to him … but perhaps not enough of either.
...
Other
In Syracuse, We Will Take the Silver Snowball for Large City Snow; Lowell Just Beats Out the Salt City (PS; Kirst)
Meteorologists often make adjustments in climactic totals, and so it went this year with Kim Buttrick, of the National Weather Service in Boston. Reviewing snowfall data from late March - specifically, from March 22 and March 29 - Buttrick realized Lowell, Mass. should have received, statistically, two more inches of snow.
The result, according to Pat DeCoursey, oracle of the statewide Golden Snowball contest and the guy who chronicles the national snowfall competition:
Lowell is our new national snowfall champion, with 120.6 total inches, edging Syracuse and Worcester, Mass., tied for second at 119.7.
The New England meteorologist didn't realize until this weekend - when she spoke with DeCoursey - that the small adjustment would change the results for what DeCoursey calls the National Snow Globe competition, emblematic of the snowfall champion for American cities with populations of 100,000 or more.
Yet Buttrick had the right philosophy:
"It's not the Super Bowl, it's not 'Deflategate,'" she said. "It's just snow."
Believe it or not, she said, even after a winter in which Boston got buried beneath a record 110.6 inches of snow, New England is running a spring rainfall deficit - and could actually use what Buttrick called "the other four-letter word."
As for Syracuse, we have to settle nationally for what Mark Hare, columnist emeritus at the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle, once described wistfully as "the silver snowball."
...
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