Rudy meets the Rainman!
If any of you have caught SportsCenter, you’ve seen the story of Jason McElwain. He’s the 17-year-old, equipment manager for his high school’s varsity basketball team. He’s also autistic. Up by 20 in their divisional championship game, McElwain’s coach put him in the game. With four minutes to go, he went 6-for-10 from behind the arc and scored an impressive 20 points. Jason was carried off the floor, in a touching moment, by what appeared to be the entire school.Having experienced Tim Welsch’s Maris Laksa experiment, I’ve been exposed to letting an unlikely player shoot an ungodly number of threes. I was struck, however, by the other team’s reaction.
Imagine this, you’re season is about to be over and you’re down by 20. Life isn’t good. The opposing coach is so sure of victory that he puts in his autistic, team manager. Now, his first attempt is an airball, so you probably feel for the kid and only plan on playing half-heated defense. It’d be cool to see the kid score. Next trip down the floor, he sinks one. You have to figure at this point, the Rudy moment is over and the other team is gonna try to slow everything down. Next thing you know, they’re racing down the floor to get the kid another bucket. This keeps going on and, before you can blink, the kid’s laid 20 points on you AND you’re going to be on SportsCenter for the next week.
You already know where I’m going on this one. At what point, does the kid guarding J-Mac start “challenging” him a bit more? I’d be cool with the kid getting a bucket or even hitting double-digits, but I just don’t think that I could let him light me up quite that badly. There has to come a point where you try to make the kid work on defense or put a hand in his face. If I thought that it could be a major, national story, let’s just say that I wouldn’t want to be walking around with the “I can’t believe that this autistic kid just dropped 20 on me and my coach is still making me guard him” Face.
In a related story, Isiah Thomas just offered J-Mac a 6-year, $72 million contract.
posted by Iconoclast @ 10:42 AM
2 comments
2 Comments:
Truthfully after the kid hits his second basket he gets D'd up. I'm in the passing lanes, hand in the face, and dunking on him in the other end. Basketball like all other serious sports is a fair play situation not a fair share one. Meaning everyone on the court is subject to the same rules despite their pre-existing abilities or disabilities. The immortal 23 was greater than anyone else to play the game, but did people stop trying to guard him because of it? Nope and the autistic towel boy gets the same treatment, just because he may not be up to everyone else's speed he doesn't get a pass. I don't care if he rolled himself out there in a home made wheel chair. Now that said, whose to say he wasn't just awesome and no one knew about it?
Fair question on his actual ability. I've watched the footage about 5 times now and I will say that the kid actually has a sweet-looking jumpshot. On the other hand, his defender didn't even try to put his hands up (which he should be commended for).
As for J-Mac's style of play, I think it's fair to compare him Kobe Bryant for his supernatural ability to forget all about his teammates on the offensive end. He truly epitomizes catch-and-shoot.
On the defensive end, you could see his teammates wildly scrambling for rebounds and dishing him the rock as soon as he had any daylight.
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