C.M. Newton and his Alabama team, Larry Costello and his Western Kentucky outfit, and North Carolina and Dean Smith topped the field. I was in pretty good company. The moves flies in the face of efforts by civil rights groups to have the sites changed. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference wanted games moved from Atlanta because the Georgia state flag includes the Confederate battle symbol. All signs point to a potential removal of the flags, which for all intents and purposes, could never happen quickly enough for the aforementioned organizations.
Old wounds are deep, but past legislative attempts to remove flags have failed.
Larry Bird may be gone, but team president Donnie Walsh has worked overtime to keep the studs, if you will, in the fold. He has played more games and scored more points than anyone in franchise history. Reggie Miller's story is quite remarkable, really. Crippled in his early youth as the result of a deformed hip and feet which pointed inward, young Reggie was never given much of a chance to walk without a limp, let alone be among the elite athletes of the world. It became a Forest Gump-type of recovery, and along with his sister Cheryl, a great basketball player in her own right, the two Miller kids dominated the local playground scene in sunny California.