A nice guidos/Manute story, a W and a 50 W prediction

I am still f’n busy, out on a two week business trip, and it will be like that for few more days.

But some facts made me find the time to write this. In order of importance:

1) this F-A-N-T-A-S-T-I-C Manute Bol/guidos story, that follows the video posted below.

So I received this email:

Go Sixers!  It is so awesome to know there are Sixers fans all over the world.  It’s hard enough to find “real” Sixers fans here in Philly.

Just wanted to share a cool guido / Manute Bol story with you real quick…

I must have been about 11 years old.  I had just started playing CYO basketball for a church in my neighborhood.  My coach was a real South Philly Guido for sure (just to give you an idea of how much of a
South Philly Guido he was, he was a bookie and he’d be on his cell phone checking the lines and taking bets on NFL games during our games).

He was particularly proud of myself and a few other players after a big win one game and decided he was gonna take us all to a Sixers game.  We were super pumped!  Since he was a South Philly guido, he “had a connect” at the Spectrum.  He got us snuck in a service entrance and we got some seats up in the nosebleeds and we wanted MANUTE!

All damn game we were chanting “WE WANT MANUTE!  WE WANT MANUTE!”  To no avail…  Jimmy Lynam would not put Manute in the damn game!  WTF?

We were deep in the fourth quarter of a close game when we finally couldn’t take it anymore.  We went all around our section recruiting other fans to join the chant.  “WE WANT MANUTE !  WE WANT MANUTE !”  It
started with us, then our whole section, then the whole upper deck, then…  The entire Spectrum!  “WE WANT MANUTE !  WE WANT MANUTE !  WE WANT MANUTE !”

It got so loud that Jimmy Lynam had to take a time out to put him in the game!  Manute stepped on the court they passed him the ball, he cranked his long arms over his back and threw up one of his signature catapult slingshot 3 pointers and SWISH !!!  The god damn crowd went crazy!

It was just the spark the Sixers needed to take the game away.  After that, the Sixers ran away with the game, never looking back and we won.  That is not only my favorite Manute Bol memory, but one of my favorite sports moments in my life.  Had to share it with you.

Thanks! GO SIXERS!

We have to thank S4G reader Jesse for this, he gave me the permission to post it on this site. 

More.

2) Sixers won their first preseason game, 98-92 vs Boston. Nice. I’m not the kind of fan that gets pumped for a preseason win so I will not comment much on that (also because I didn’t watch the game, LOL).

But anyway some positives have to be underlined: our young studs all looked good, from LW (27 points in 25 min !!) to Thaddeus Young (in the pic), who played a team high 36 min and scored 21, to Marreese Speights, who had some nice flashes; Brand apparently looked rusty but not overall bad; it was a comeback win, which is always sweet and tells something about confidence; it came vs Boston, even sweeter.

3) Yahoo! blog “Ball don’t lie” has a cool, funny article about the Sixers that includes a 50-32 prediction. Too optimistic? I don’t think so. Mine would be pretty close (a deeper analysis will come before the regular season opener). What is important is that there is a general consensus about Sixers being more-than-relevant in the NBA, something that long time, die hard fans like me have been waiting for too much.

More to come on this site soon: a new contributor, new exchange of posts with fine NBA bloggers covering other teams, an interview to the best guido italian NBA journalist about our beloved team.

Just be patient, it will pay off.