A great player and a wonderful person...

I guess the only thing that really upsets me more than hearing that some middle-aged man has dropped dead in his driveway while shoveling snow is hearing that a middle-aged, former professional basketball player has dropped dead of a heart attack for no apparent reason at all. One of the little fibs I like to tell myself is that I play basketball so that I WON'T drop dead of a heart attack while shoveling snow, so this sort of news sure puts a damper on that kind of wishful thinking big time. It's just not right. Especially when it's somebody like Dennis Johnson, who came into the league when I was still in college and helped lead the Seattle Supersonics (my hometown team) to their one and only NBA Championship.

I know here in Boston DJ is much better remembered for his Championships with the Celtics, his five All-Star appearances, and especially his slashing left-handed lay-up to beat the Pistons in the final seconds of Game 5 of the 1987 Conference Finals, after Larry Bird's amazing steal of the inbounds pass. But I remember a tenacious defender who sat on the bench in High School, and then played Jr College ball before finally attending Pepperdine and then being drafted into the NBA. And although he's now part of that Beantown Pantheon which includes Larry Bird, Kevin McCale, Robert Parish and Danny Ainge, I'll always see him first in a Sonics uniform, alongside Gus Williams and "Downtown" Freddie Brown, Jack Sikma, Lonnie Shelton, Paul Silas and coach Lenny Wilkens -- MVP of that victory against the Bullets, when Washington Coach Dick Motta first coined that now famous phrase "the opera ain't over 'til the Fat Lady sings" after seeing the publicity for Wagner's Ring Series which was also being performed in Seattle at the time. DJ made the Fat Lady squeal with delight. Along with a few hundred thousand die-hard Sonics fans like myself.

Still, it was Larry Bird who said it best. "Dennis was a great player, one of the best teammates I ever had, and a wonderful person." It's hard to say it any clearer than that. We should all do so well by our friends.