subject: Plenty of NBA ties to be found at NCAA Tournament time [print this page] Plenty of NBA ties to be found at NCAA Tournament time
It has been hard for Lionel Hollins to watch University of Minnesota basketball this season. First of all, his job doesn't afford him a lot of down time. He travels a lot and he's got practices and shootarounds and games, and he's worrying about when Rudy Gay's shoulder will heal, and he's in the middle of a playoff race that means a lot to his employers, the Memphis Grizzlies. And then he looks at his son, Austin, a freshman point guard for the Golden Gophers, and he's got a totally different game from the old man. where to buy cheap NBA Jerseys?ujersy is a good choice.
"For me, the hardest part is, he's not me," Lionel Hollins said by telephone Sunday afternoon. "And he doesn't play like me. I know what I was playing like in those situations, and what I was doing. In high school. From the time I started playing basketball, I was an attack, offensive player. He's not that way. He's looking for the open man, looking to pass. But he's been around me coaching, and he's picked that up. He's learning the coaching side of me versus the playing side of me, which is good. But he doesn't know me as a player."
It's an age-old problem for the NBA father -- who starred at Arizona State and then played at the highest level of basketball. Watching a son play the game that both love so much. But we're at the time of year where similar angst-ridden scenes will play out in arenas all over the country.
The NCAA Tournament is here, and with it comes more than a dozen young players who have some family connection to an NBA player or coach. This doesn't count kids like Austin Hollins or his teammate Ralph Sampson, III, a junior center for the Gophers and son of four-time NBA All-Star Ralph Sampson; Minnesota didn't make the NCAA field. Neither did Jeremiah Rivers, the Indiana University guard and son of Doc Rivers, or Jeff and Marcus Jordan, Michael's sons, who play at Central Florida -- though UCF will be playing in the College Basketball Invitational postseason tournament. recommend directory: Westbrook #0 Oklahoma Thunder NBA Jersey.
Sunday brought signficant angst for several NBA relations at Michigan, where the Wolverines had to sweat it out before finding out they'd been awarded an at-large bid as the eighth seed in the West Region. Michigan's roster features three players whose fathers were in the NBA: guard Tim Hardaway, Jr., the son, of course, of Warriors and Heat guard Tim Hardaway; Jon Horford, a freshman forward whose father, Tito, played in the 1990s and whose brother, Al, is the All-Star center for the Hawks; and Jordan Dumars, a sophomore redshirt forward whose father is the Hall of Fame Pistons guard and current Pistons president Joe Dumars.
Despite the knee injury that has kept his son on the sidelines this season, "It's been fun," Joe Dumars e-mailed Saturday. "He really enjoys playing for coach (John) Beilein and he really likes his teammates."
The Wolverines also feature guard Josh Bartelstein, whose father, Mark, is one of the NBA and NFL's busiest and most successful agents. (In 2012, Michigan will add Glenn Robinson III, the son of former Bucks and Sixers star Glenn Robinson, who was college basketball's national player of the year in 1994 and led the Boilermakers to the Elite Eight that season.)
"It's very exciting for them," Mark Bartelstein said Sunday night. "There wasn't a whole lot of hope at the start of the season."
Josh Bartelstein has had to come back from a concussion that kept him out a few weeks toward the end of the regular season and led to migraine headaches and dizziness, his father said. It was doubly troubling because Josh Bartelstein had worked his way into Michigan's rotation after arriving on campus last year as a walk-on. But he was cleared to play before the start of this weekend's Big Ten tournament.
"Growing up, he was always a really good player, from the fourth or fifth grade on," Mark Bartelstein said. "But people would say, 'Your son is going to play in college,' and you always sort of dismissed it. Being in the business, I knew how hard it was to play in college at a major level. I'm watching all these guys play. I know how hard it is and how good you have to be, how tough it is to play at that level. When the opportunity came up to play at Michigan, he was unbelievbly excited. It's a huge thrill. We went to the Final Four in New Orleans one year. For him to be playing in the tournament is a great thrill." recommend directory: Kevin Durant #35 Oklahoma Thunder NBA Jersey.
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