20 February 2010

Pau Gasol is going to finish 2666 before I do

Many of the NBA's 83 foreign-born players say reading was always the main form of entertainment in their home countries. Cleveland's Mr. Ilgauskas says he grew up with no videogames and a TV that had only two channels. Nenad Krstic of the Oklahoma City Thunder says his basketball coaches in Serbia probably gave him as many books to read as his schoolteachers did when he was a child. "People are just brought up with more technology here," says Milwaukee Bucks center Andrew Bogut, who grew up in Australia. (Mr. Bogut says he's such a bookworm he can't bring himself to use a Kindle. "I get more of a thrill out of going through the actual book like you're supposed to," he says.)
It's out of date now but this Wall Street Journal article about NBA players who like to read is pretty neat.

1 comment:

Wade Garrett said...

That's a great article! I had never seen it before.

Adonal Foyle graduated from Colgate and has a deserved reputation as an intellectual. Last off-season, when Malcolm Gladwell saw Foyle in the lobby of a fancy Parisian hotel (I think it was Hotel George V) discussing art with a couple of French guys, he texted ESPN writer Bill Simmons something to the effect of "I just saw a 6'10" NBA player discussing art in a French hotel." Simmons wrote back "Adonal Foyle is in Paris?"

Emeka Okafor graduated from UConn in three years and, after being drafted #1 overall in the NBA draft, went out and bought himself a Toyota Camry. He reads Cormac McCarthy and Junot Diaz. How can you not love a guys like that?

The other big NBA nerd is Grant Hill. I don't know how much of a reader he is, but he graduated from Duke, is an accomplished classical pianist and one of the best-respected collectors of African-American art (he lends his collection out for touring shows and the like). Also, his mother was Hillary Clinton's roommate at Wellesley and his father is one of the most famous athletes ever to go to Yale. Pretty nerdy pedigree all things considered.