Making the Connection from Brownwood to Detroit

As you will find out from subsequent entries I am an avid sports fan and my favorite sport is basketball. When I was first learning how to walk ages ago, I believe I was also learning how to dribble a basketball at the same time. My parents quickly learned of my ingenuity as I could turn any hand held item into a ball of some sort. At the age of seven I witnessed my first NBA Finals series as the Hakeem Olajuwon led Houston Rockets defeated the New York Knicks four games to three in 1994. I remember my first Slam magazine which featured a story about Pearl Jam bassist Jeff Ament playing a pickup game with Dennis Rodman. It also featured an excerpt from the book Fab Five by Mitch Albom, a book that would later become one of my favorites of all-time. As soon as my family had access to the internet in the mid '90s I became a basketball historian reading everthing I possibly could on the sport. I watched games constantly keeping up with players' stats and projecting what the statistical outcome would be. My dad attributes my having a profiency in math to this. You see, being a sports fan does have its academic benefits!

This is a little background, now let's flash forward to today. I am a Detroit Pistons fanatic. How did someone from Brownwood, Texas become such an enormous fan of a team in Detroit, Michigan? I was born in Lake Charles, Louisianna where my dad was the horn teacher at McNeese State University. My dad's time at NcNeese St. coincided with that of college basketball star Joe Dumars. Dumars attented McNeese St. from 1981-1985 and in the summer of 1985 he was selected with the 18th pick of the NBA draft by the Detroit Pistons. There he was part of the "Bad Boys" who won NBA championships in 1989 and '90 and was named MVP of the '89 NBA Finals. Dumars played for the Pistons his entire career and upon his retirement in 1999, he became one of the few players in NBA history to play over 1,000 games with the same team. Dumars then became the President of Basketball Operations for the Pistons and currently still holds that position. Needless to say, one my proudest moments as a Pistons fan was in the summer of 2004 when Detroit won the NBA championship by upsetting the heavily favored Los Angeles Lakers in a David vs. Goliath type battle. This happened in large part because of some major trades orchestrated by Dumars to assemble that championship team. In 2006 Joe Dumars was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame. As I was first getting into basketball in the early '90s Dumars was in the prime of his playing career. When my dad told me about his connection with Dumars I decided I was going to root for the team he was on, the Detroit Pistons, and I have ever since.

There you have it. The circular relationship from Lake Charles to Brownwood to Detroit is now connected to explain my fanaticism for the Detroit Pistons in my own little sports world. If you don't give a flip about sports or basketball it's okay. It is just one of my many interests and I will write about many different subjects as they come to me. Go Pistons!