Oct
16
The Legend of Manute Bol
The young boy sat on the park bench as his grandfather fed pieces of bread to the squirrels and pigeons. The boy’s attention was stolen when the large greyhound, white with a brown spot, made its way toward him. Excited at the sight of the animal, the young boy turned to his grandfather.
“Look it’s an elephant,” the rambunctious yet clearly confused boy said as the towering creature got closer. “Oh, wait. It’s a giraffe Grandpa.”
The young boy’s naiveté made the owner of the orphaned race dog laugh as she passed by.
“A giraffe?” the middle-aged woman asked. “It’s a dog.”
“Oh, it’s a dog,” the young boy blurted out. “I thought it was a giraffe.”
Manute Bol, who turns 47 years old today, made people look twice during his surreal NBA career. At 7’6’’, Bol was one of the tallest players in NBA history. His amazing length was made even more bizarre by his weight. Bol only weighed 200 pounds soaking wet and just seemed so out of place on the court.
Bol was basically a sideshow as a player, more apt to firing up shots from beyond the arc than going down low to bang with the trees, even though he was a Sequoia without the girth. Bol could obviously block shots but was more of a punch line and comic relief on Philadelphia 76ers teams featuring Charles Barkley.
In 10 seasons with the Bullets, Golden State Warriors, 76ers and Miami Heat, Bol averaged only 2.6 points and 4.2 rebounds per game. He only averaged 18.6 minutes per game during his career. And yet Bol was able to parlay his status as a fan favorite to second stints with the Bullets, 76ers and Warriors.
Bol’s career would end during the 1994-1995 season and nearly ten years later, he would make an embarrassing appearance on Fox’s Celebrity Boxing. Bol would fight former Chicago Bear, William “the Refrigerator” Perry, in a joke of a match in which both “fighters” labored.
Beyond the game of basketball and his celebrity appearance, Bol has always done a lot of charitable work in his native Sudan. In fact, he aided in the introduction and development of the game to Chicago Bulls star Luol Deng.
While Bol was nothing much as an NBA player, he is one of the most memorable and charitable figures to ever play the game. In simple terms, Manute Bol represents all that was good and fun with the NBA of the late eighties and early nineties.
by Chris Maynard, chris@hoops4thesoul.com
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Hey Chris,
I love your blog site and just wanted to also share our new blog, which will have info you may want to use. For example, yesterday we did a post called “Bob Douglas, Caribbean Immigrant, Launches Black Pro Basketball Empire With An Idea, On This Date in 1923.”
We’ll probably end up listing you on our blogroll, although we would love it if you went back in time even further!
Sincerely,
Claude Johnson
President
Black Fives, Inc.
www.blackfivesblog.com