Magic Johnson, former basketball player, may run for mayor of LA in the next election. Remember the good 'ol days when only qualified people ran for office like actors and professional wrestlers.
I had never picked up a basketball before. I went through a grueling audition process. It was almost as if I was learning to walk. It would be like teaching somebody to dance ballet for a role.
I played in Joe Louis in a playoff game. I played there when the roof caved in for half a season. The facility is great for basketball because it goes straight up, so you feel like the fans are on top of you.
The cast gets along pretty well, it's a good work environment. I hang out a lot with Brett Claywell, he plays Tim Smith on the show. We play plenty of basketball.
I've tried to handle winning well, so that maybe we'll win again, but I've also tried to handle failure well. If those serve as good examples for teachers and kids, then I hope that would be a contribution I have made to sport. Not just basketball, but to sport.
That's what I do now: I lead and I teach. If we win basketball games from doing that, then that's great, but I lead and teach. Those are the two things I concentrate on.
As all of us with any involvement in sports knows, no two umpires or no two referees have the same strike zone or call the same kind of a basketball game.
As I've said, basketball has been, I think, a real cooperative venture. There have been a lot of people that have been involved in it: coaches, administrators - not recently - fans and nobody, nobody any more so than students over the years.
If there wasn't any business and it was just strictly basketball, then there would be no issue, it would probably be done by now. But the team has to protect.
