ALWAYS BREAKS OUT THE TY ON HOLIDAYS
I was in Boulder, Colorado on Sept. 11, 2001.
What follows below are a few personal accounts from 76ers’ personnel about that day, the 10-year anniversary of which – as we all know – is Sunday. Much of the team’s current coaching staff was beginning its first year with the Washington Wizards. Current general manager Ed Stefanski was working for the New Jersey Nets. Comcast-Spectacor’s Peter Luukko was involved with both the Flyers and the Sixers. It’s not particularly important where I was, except it’s somewhat therapeutic to recall the tiny details of a moment that touched as all.
I was a junior at the University of Colorado. On Monday night, Sept. 10, I stayed up late to watch the season-opening game of Monday Night Football: the New York Giants vs. the Denver Broncos. At first, I thought I’d remember this game because Denver wide receiver Ed McCaffrey (a local favorite in Denver and a former New York Giant!) suffered a broken leg in what was a horrific collision going across the middle. The next morning, we had a 6 a.m. agility workout – that year we had early workouts every day of the week. I had the agility workout followed directly by an individual workout, which I didn’t mind because that meant by 8 a.m. I was done with that day’s workouts. After the first workout, which would be about 7 a.m. mountain time, 9 a.m. eastern, one of my assistant coaches mentioned that a plane had inadvertently crashed into the World Trade Center. We were tying our sneakers and taking some shots before the basketball drills started. A few minutes later – I’m not sure if she was looking at her smart phone, I don’t remember the extent of the technology then – this same coach upgraded the situation in New York.
“OK, it seems like a second plane has now crashed into the towers,” she said.
And I actually do remember this verbatim. Although most of my teammates were from flyover states – Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado – I was particularly interested in what she was telling me because I’d grown up in New York (upstate, yes, but halfway across the country it all just felt like New York to me).
We stared at her, wondering if she’d cancel the workout, wondering if she had more information, wondering what she might say next. She kind of shrugged and said, “Put on your dribble goggles.”
Dribble goggles were these awful contraptions you strapped to your head so you couldn’t look down while you dribbled.
I’ll remember these juxtaposed sentences for the rest of my life: “So it seems like a second plane has now crashed into the towers … Put on your dribble goggles.”
My coaches said thousands of things during my time playing at Colorado, but none are burned into my memory as clearly as those.
I know we all have similar stories about that day. Here are a few, transcribed word for word.
Ed Stefanski (now Sixers’ general manager, then with New Jersey Nets): “I was up in New Jersey with the Nets and of course we were right across the river from the issue in New York. I was with Henry Hines, a former Olympian track star. We brought him in to work with the young guys, running. We were sitting there and we heard that a plane went in. We were very curious because there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. It was a beautiful blue sky. And we said, ‘That’s weird that a plane would go in. Maybe the guy had a heart attack or something like that.’ Then we sat there and watched and saw the next plane and that’s when everything happened. The eerie part was the jets buzzing over our buildings where we were in East Rutherford. And then going home, going down that turnpike, everybody was leaving and seeing the smoke. It was incredible. The big thing for me was coming up in the other days I had to come up to New Jersey. I always knew I was close to the office when I saw the towers. I said, ‘OK, I’m only a few exits away.’ When I didn’t see those towers; that was eerie for me. Everyday in that landscape you saw those towers and then all of a sudden they weren’t there.
Everyone in the country put things in perspective. Obviously you want to win and you’re a competitor, but it put things in perspective. Especially in the New York area, I’m sure in D.C. the same thing. When you’re out on the West Coast you’re not as affected as much. But the people in that tri-state area of New York, it really hit home. And people had loved ones they’d lost.”
Tony DiLeo (now and then, working in Sixers’ front office): “I was driving to work and usually I always have the news and traffic and weather on, but that day I was listening to music. I had basically no idea until I got to work what happened. We had workouts that day. Guys were playing and I was watching the workouts, but really I wasn’t really watching the workouts because I knew what was going on. Kept going into the back room and watching the TV and try to figure out what was going on. The first thing I heard was the reporter said it was air traffic control must have made a mistake and sent a plane in another pattern and hit the building. Obviously that was wrong. It was surreal; it was such a sad time.
Guys were just working out. We had a lot of guys in there playing like we always do: our guys and other guys from other teams and local guys in there playing. They were playing. I’m not sure how much they realized what was going on because they were out there playing. For me, it was just unreal. I was watching our guys play, but really not concentrating on what they were doing. Going back and forth trying to get updates. It really didn’t sink in until afterwards. When you realized what really happened, that’s when it really sank in. I watched constantly because I knew people, not directly, but I knew people in the financial world who had friends who were up there. I was watching throughout the night. I couldn’t believe that something like had happened. And I couldn’t believe how simple of an idea that was. That they could pull that off because it wasn’t really … it was simple. Using planes as bombs and attacking our buildings. It was confusing to me: that we couldn’t stop it and how it happened. It wasn’t some super sophisticated idea. It was an elementary idea.”
Peter Luukko (now and then, with Comcast-Spectacor): “We have a shower at our offices, and I’d been working out. I came out of the shower, walked into my office, and my assistant was watching CNN and said there were reports that a small plane hit the World Trade Center. So we were watching the coverage and as we were watching this, we literally saw the second plane hit right on live TV. I just remember saying that something is really wrong here. This isn’t a coincidence. Then we stopped to think about what else is going on and immediately called our security people to see what kind of information we could get, what we could do with the building. As the day developed and we let people go who wanted to go get their kids, there was that fear of the unknown, like, “What is really going on here? And how is that going to affect everything?” We were very scared.
“Shortly after, a day or two after 9/11, we had an exhibition game against the New York Rangers and we made the decision to stop the game and show President Bush’s address to the nation. We did that – we had basically a sold-out preseason game – and the crowd was chanting, ‘USA,’ which was very moving. The President’s address went on for 45 minutes and it was between the second and third periods of the exhibition game. And we made the decision that the address had gone on so long, and it was so emotional, that we ended the game. We had both teams shake hands. And the crowd went absolutely crazy, clapping. We got national attention for what we had done: stopping the game and airing the President’s address. And never got one complaint that we cut the game short. It was a very rousing, patriotic moment, to literally be watching the President’s address with 19,000 people … that was, in a strange sense, the beginning of our rebuilding and getting moving after the situation. The smart thing wasn’t to cancel games, but to move forward. But from that time on it changed our whole look at security: how we look at bags, the way we look at supplies coming into the building, the way we set up planters around the building so somebody couldn’t drive into the building. Basically everything changed.”
Brian James (now, assistant coach with Sixers, then, assistant coach with Wizards): “We were right in the middle of all of it. I remember, in fact, my first day on the job, it was our first year in Washington with a brand new staff. Doug and I, Johnny Bach, and Patrick Ewing, we all had moved to D.C. that week. I think we moved to D.C. on Sept. 7, so I’d only been in D.C. a few days and gone apartment hunting one day and believe it or not the apartment that I did not take, it came down to the final two, the one I did not take would have been where I could have seen where the third plane went down into the Pentagon. That’s how close we were to everything. But I remember walking in the MCI Center, which is now the Verizon Center, with Doug Collins. We’d already gotten our coffee, we were walking into the arena, and we’re standing at the security desk and the TV is on and they are saying, ‘Look at this.’ To the best of my recollection we are watching live and the first plane had just gone in the building. I think that was about 8:45, I don’t know exactly to the minute, but then we were watching in awe and watched the second plane on ‘The Today Show’ with Katie Couric and Matt Lauer and we watched the second plane go in the building on TV. Our mouths dropped, we were flabbergasted. What happened was, we said the safest place for us to go was to our offices. Which were in the basement of the MCI Center, below ground, that’s where they told us to go. Immediately, Doug said we needed to call our families and let them know we’re OK. My family lived in Michigan at the time. I immediately told my wife to turn on ‘The Today Show.’ We called our families and then reconvened in Doug’s office and we were literally glued to the TV until 10 o’clock and they told us to stay put, our security people, because they knew that there were some other planes that were unaccounted for. Obviously everybody knew that the third plane was rumored to be headed either for the White House or for the Pentagon and we were only six blocks away from the White House. A couple of different times we asked if we should go ahead and start talking basketball. But nobody could. And Doug goes, I do remember Doug saying, ‘I just have this sick feeling in my stomach.’ We couldn’t even mention the word basketball. Now the time frame was that the third plane, about an hour later, goes into the Pentagon. And we know that there’s a fourth plane that had just crashed in Pennsylvania some time. I think it was about 1 or 1:30 they told us to leave the building, to go home if you lived walking distance to the arena. Doug and I, we only lived a couple of blocks because we were in temporary housing until we got an apartment or a house. We went there. For the next month, I have never seen more military people with guns drawn, tanks out then I did at that time in D.C. in my 40 years combined.”
Doug Collins (now, head coach of the Sixers, then, head coach of the Wizards): “I’d just accepted the job with the Washington Wizards. It was going to be my first year there in Washington. Kathy and I were actually supposed to close on our home that day. I was sitting in my office and I had ‘The Today Show’ on, and it was almost surreal. Then I was sitting there and they were doing a report and it was the guy who reported from the Pentagon. He was doing a report from the Pentagon and he said, ‘I think the Pentagon has been hit; I think we’ve been hit.’ All of a sudden the sirens starting coming on, the alarms started coming on in our building like get out of there and get home. We got out of there. We found out the Pentagon had been hit by a plane, which was just up the street. It was a very, very surreal time sort of comprehending all that was going on with our country. Especially being in Washington, D.C. and hearing all of the reports: they thought there was a plane heading to crash into the White House. It was really an amazing time just to be there in Washington and living that experience of that time.
“I think about it a lot of different times, but every time I check into an airport, I think about traveling before 9/11. You would arrive at the airport, you would rush in, you would get on your plane, be only about 10 minutes early. If you would travel overseas, you would get there three hours early, go through the security and be like, ‘What a pain in the butt all of this security is.’ Every time I go through an airport today, I think about how lax our security was at that time. I’m going, ‘Oh my goodness, I can’t believe something didn’t happen a long time ago.’
“Also, too, I think I lived through the first act of terrorism ever at a sporting event in Munich. I was in Munich, went to have some breakfast [with a teammate], and we saw the terrorists hanging out of the second floor. With the hostages and the machine guns and the hand grenades. I lived through that act of terrorism in Munich in ’72 and the devastation that went with that, the heartache. But, I think I’m really reminded of [9/11] when I go through an airport. I’ve got two artificial hips and a knee and I go through all of the security and all and I think how things can change so dramatically for a country in terms of security and what we have to do to make sure we’re safe everyday.”
--Kate
In the first half of Saturday night's 1-1 tie against England, U.S. goalie Tim Howard absorbed a collision with England's Emile Heskey. The collision, Howard said afterwards, was "agony." He was down for 3 minutes, but stayed in the match. At halftime, he received a cortisone shot, which allowed him to play (mostly) without pain in the second half. He made a number of crucial saves to preserve the result.
But, today, the question for the U.S. team is what that collision will cost them: Howard is being evaluated today and U.S. coach Bob Bradley told reporters at the team's headquarters that "a decision will be made about whether he needs further tests," on his ribs. Tests such as an MRI or x-ray.
Will he play on Friday against Slovenia?
"At this time I think there's no answer," Bradley said. "But when you see the way Timmy handled himself after the collision last night, you'd certainly expect he'll be on the field again." Howard's fitness is crucial for the U.S.'s success; it was his play on Saturday that earned the U.S. a point it probably shouldn't have snagged. A serious injury to Howard, one that would keep him out of Friday's match, could severely hinder the team's chances of advancing.
The U.S. split up its practice session today, sending the starters to regeneration and the 10 substitutes plus two backup goalies to the field for a training session.
Group C glance:
Slovenia 3 points, USA 1 point, England 1 point, Algeria 0 points.
A few minutes ago, Slovenia defeated Algeria 1-0 to finish the first round of games for Group C. Slovenia/Algeria looked about to end in a tie, but Slovenia scored a late goal (with some help from Algeria's goalie and a late-game send off) to take all 3 points. First reaction to that game's result is that it could work against the U.S.
Because Slovenia picked up all three points, you can expect them to pack it inside on Friday and gladly take a tie. If that's the result, it will leave Slovenia with 4 points, the U.S. with only 2. Just some early-game speculation.
*After Saturday's game, U.S. defender Carlos Bocanegra, surrounded by reporters, was asked about Robert Green's mistake. Bocanegra said he hoped the British press would spare Green. A number of the British press were in the throng and they chuckled and said, "That's not going to happen."
They were right. Here were some of the headlines from England:
News of the World and Sunday Mirror: "Hand of Clod" accompanied by huge pictures of Green and frame-by-frame display of his blunder. News of the World added this line, "Cock-up keeper Green wrecks dream start" and "Stars and tripe." A few more: "Tainted Glove" and "Worst Howler Ever."
--Kate
Is this the game of the decade for the U.S. team? Has there ever been a more anticipated U.S. Soccer match? Impossible to say, really, but Rustenburg is rocking. There's not much around Royal Bafokeng Stadium, which is about two hours outside of Johannesburg, but there's one little place just across the street. You can see it in the attached picture: hundreds of U.S. and English fans waiting until the stadium opens.
I went over for about 30 minutes. The beer is cheap (I'm confused as to how they have enough, they're selling like a dozen a minute), and there's a projection screen showing the Argentina/Nigera match. The English and Americans appear to be co-existing quite nicely. Next to the "pub" part of the establishment is a joint selling raw meat, red meat and chicken. You carry the raw meat and bread out to a giant stone grill and you grill it yourself. Interesting set up, but the line was long to buy raw meat. You can see videos of all this stuff in the video player below on the right. I uploaded three videos of the scene across the street from RBS.
The sun has just set here in South Africa. The gates to the stadium open in about 45 minutes, but everyone I talked to "across the street" said they'd be staying there longer, mostly for the cheap beer (less than $1 a bottle is what someone told me).
As for the game itself, it's been a long time in the making. The stadium holds 38,000 people. One Englishman I spoke with said there may be a few more Americans than English inside the stadium, but the English would be louder. That was certainly the case during the pre-game party.
I follow a few of the players on Twitter. Here's what they were saying today:
Oguchi Onyewu: "Today is the day people ... many years of dedication, that's what it's all about! Hope everyone has freed up their schedule for 2:30 p.m. ET!!"
Maurice Edu: "Game 2nite vs. England! Thanks for all the continued support and well wishes! Keep it coming! See you guys there 2nite!"
Apparently England coach Fabio Capello has told his squad to avoid swearing at the referees tonight, specifically warning Wayne Rooney. England's Steven Gerrard said, “Wayne’s experienced enough now to deal with it… He understands we need him on the pitch and every player has been warned by the manager and coaching staff.”
Also of note, South Africa goalkeeper Itumeleng Khune said that he felt his team's fans weren't loud enough on Friday. That was surprising to read considering the Bafana Bafana fans filled a 89,000-seat stadium and seemed to be blowing vuvuzelas the entire match. Khune said: "There were not enough vuvuzelas. It was more like a Mexico home game ... I'm disappointed that we didn't blow a lot of vuvuzelas, but let's hopes in the next game we blow more."
Since I'm here in South Africa, and since I'm the one attempting to relay what this World Cup is all about, I read this column today by a local newspaper writer. I know there are people who want to talk about the starting lineup and the formation the U.S. might use, but ... well ... That information isn't available until about an hour before game time. So here's this column if you're interested in what the mindset was like in Johannesburg when the country was awarded this World Cup: naysayers.
About two hours from the match ...
--Kate
Here's a video report from Day 1 of the World Cup:
Today is the day: the opening ceremonies and opening match of the 2010 FIFA World Cup. While the U.S. team is already in Rustenburg (two hours north of Johannesburg), where they will train today, the crush is at Soccer City in Johannesburg, where South Africa will play Mexico at 4 p.m. local time, 10 a.m. in Philly. The Opening Ceremonies will precede the game and include approximately 1,500 performers.
I hear vuvuzelas outside now. People are taking their chances,
--Kate
While most folks in Johannesburg are embracing the energy building for the World Cup, the U.S. team is doing its best to avoid it.
Here's what U.S. forward Clint Dempsey said today: "I think you need to stay away from the energy. So you do feel like you get away from it because you can’t be thinking about it non-stop, you’ll stress yourself out. You need to prepare for it as you go, gradually building until game time. Because I’m someone who doesn't like to think about things too much because it can cause you to stress a little bit."
Dempsey said the team has had two speakers -- a captain from a Black Hawk Down helicopter and Boston Celtics legend Bill Russell -- and has watched some documentaries. The team is also spending its free time playing XBOX 360's FIFA World Cup game, ping pong, and maybe a little bit of chess. Dempsey said he played midfielder Ricardo Clark in chess.
“I had to show him how it was done," Dempsey joked. "But it isn’t something that everybody is playing a lot of chess, mostly guys are playing FIFA Xbox 360 and ping-pong.”
The team, as we've said, is staying at Irene Lodge, which happens to be in the middle of a dairy farm.
"It’s a little bit of different circumstances," said defender Jonathan Bornstein. "You wouldn’t picture your hotel to be in the middle of a dairy farm … but it’s nice to have something different than the usual commercial hotels we get in the U.S."
Before Monday's open session in Pretoria, a few of the guys were playing some basketball (with soccer balls) before warming up for practice. Since I'm still the 76ers beat writer, I had to shoot the video of it. You can check that out below in the video player. They all looked like they had game, especially Robbie Findley who (not coincidentally, I'm sure) is cousins with NBA guards Mike Bibby and Eddie House. There's also a video of the team's bus: Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Victory.
After taking yesterday off from training, today the team practice at Pilditch Stadium in Pretoria. And so the preparation, officially, begins for England. Forward Jozy Altidore, who missed the exhibition match against Australia with a sprained right ankle, returned to practice. Afterwards he Tweeted, "Great day at training. We are focused."
"Bob’s sessions haven’t been anything crazy," said forward Edson Buddle before training, referring to coach Bob Bradley. "This week we’re probably going to touch the ball a lot more and strategize on things he wants to implement in the game."
"We know they were watching our game, we saw Beckham there," said Stuart Holden, talking about the chess match between the U.S. and England. "It’s par for the course now. Everyone has all eyes on each other and we’ve gathered all the information now and we’ll be going through that and scouting through tapes and videos of past games and making sure we can do everything we can to be prepared."
Who will be Bradley's starting 11? That's something that won't be known until an hour before Saturday's match begins. But Dempsey said that Bradley is a straightforward coach (the following quote is Dempsey talking about other managers): "You don’t really know where you stand sometimes and they don’t really talk to you. All you can do is go out there and keep working hard. But it is nice to know where you stand, and to be able to have that type of open dialogue. I think it makes for a better team to have that type of manager."
Here are two interesting items from around Johannesburg today:
1.) Bafana, Bafana (South Africa's nickname for its national team, translation "the boys"): Each player on South Africa will supposedly be paid R3.5-4.0M (approximately $500,000) plus a Mercedes Benz if the team wins the World Cup. No small feat considering South Africa received an automatic bid as the host nation and is ranked #83 in the world. Bafana, Bafana (believe, you hear that everywhere here) have gone unbeaten in their last 12 matches and are talking the smack to opening match opponent, Mexico. You can check out the article about the 500k and benz here: Mercedes Benz.
2.) Apparently the German team was equipped with South African cell phones upon landing in Johannesburg, except the phones don't work between the players. Here's that story: Oops.
More tomorrow ...
--Kate
The U.S. rested today. No practice and no media availability. According to the Tweets I follow from U.S. Soccer, a few guys went golfing, a few relaxed. The team returns to practice on Tuesday. The England match is on Saturday, so tomorrow will begin a standard week of preparation.
As for England, they held their final warm-up match this evening at Moruleng Stadium, which is about 2 hours, 30 minutes north west of Johannesburg, near to Rustenburg, which is where the U.S. vs. England match will be held. Unlike most nations here in South Africa, the English decided against scrimmaging against another nation (like the U.S. did against Australia), choosing instead to play the Platinum Stars FC, a local side that plays in South Africa’s Premier Soccer League. Platinum isn’t even currently in season, with the players being called back from vacation.
From what I’ve gathered, the English’s selection of a final tune-up (as well as their selected home base in Rustenburg), is about keeping everything as tight as possible. Playing a local side – instead of another nation – keeps the information just a little bit tighter.
I went anyway. The drive was on back roads, winding, through some interesting areas, and the stadium was plopped down in the middle of it all. Brand-new stadium that can seat 20,000 people. There weren’t that many there, perhaps about 7,000, although difficult to tell; almost all of the fans were South Africans.
If you’re looking for scouting material on England, you won’t find it. Fabio Capello seemed to start a competitive 11, but kept Wayne Rooney on the bench until the start of the second half. England didn’t look great, they looked kind of sluggish, not really that precise, and wasted about a dozen chances. The game was 1-0 at halftime and Platinum had missed a penalty kick.
England won, 3-0, and Rooney scored a goal in the second half. Although the U.S. is no closer to decoding who exactly the English will line up, I did manage to take some videos. Three videos, actually. One is of English defender John Terry, talking after the game. One is of the last few minutes of the game, with Rooney handling the ball. And the third is of Rooney signing autographs after the match.
Back tomorrow with more from U.S. camp ...
--Kate
Today was an interesting day. I awoke this morning and looked at all the options: Argentina closed practice session? Nope. France training session in Cape Town? That’s a plane ride away. Portugal arriving at Johannesburg airport at 8 a.m.? That would be fun – Cristiano Ronaldo – but they’d already landed and were likely at the hotel already. Brazil press conference with Lucio and Luisao? Only 25 minutes away at Brazil’s complex in Randburg?
"It is not a competitive game, but our enthusiasm and will should be the same as in the World Cup. Injuries can happen any time, but we have to be careful and pay attention in training to avoid risky plays. When you are on the field to train or playing with fear of getting injured, it finally happens. I beg God to bless and protect us."
I took a video of Lucio and Luisao walking onto the podium. Not sure if the videos are making it into the video player, but I promise I’m uploading them.
After the adventure in Randburg – which was fun in its own way – I drove north to Pretoria where the U.S. was holding an open practice at Pilditch Stadium in Pretoria. The U.S. has been practicing there everyday and is scheduled to play one World Cup match in Pretoria. Don’t get too excited about the idea of an “open practice.” U.S. coach Bob Bradley had his guys run, do some stretching, do a couple of drills, and then called it a day.
They weren’t out there longer than an hour. U.S. forward Jozy Altidore, who has been out with a sprained ankle, took part in the hour-long session and then did at least a dozen 60-yard sprints afterwards. Since trainers were timing him and looking on, it appeared to be a sort of fitness test. Altidore’s ankle seemed fine. I took a video of it. You can check out that video as well (I think you can at least): It’s uploaded.
The U.S. distributed about 1,500 tickets to the open practice and welcomed 350 children from local organizations supported or facilitated by the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR).
If you haven’t heard them yet, the noisemakers at this World Cup will be the vuvuzelas: a South African blowing horn. Origin of the vuvuzela is disputed, but here’s this fun bit of trivia from Wiki: “Vuvuzelas have been said to be rooted in African history, but this is disputed.People would blow on a kudu horn to call villagers to a meeting.Adding to the appeal is South African folklore that ‘A baboon is killed by a lot of noise.’ During the last quarter of a match, supporters blow vuvuzelas frantically in an attempt to ‘kill off’ their opponents.”
And, in conclusion, here’s my favorite quote from today. Today was interesting because it feels just a little bit too early to be full-blast about England, and too late to discuss anything else. So today was a little bit in between. But in the mixed-zone after practice (that roped off area where players are obligated to come speak with the media) a few folks from England asked U.S. goalie Tim Howard about containing the English attack, an attack including striker Wayne Rooney.
Tim’s response: “We’re going to have to defend like bandits, it’s all hands on deck.”
That’s fun. And it wasn’t in Portuguese.
--Kate
 | Follow on Twitter |
