Hosive

a mentor teased me that when i moved to the dc area that i would no longer be a knicks fan…that i was now a bullets fan! i shivered and recoiled at that. especially since i had loved the lovable, winning but never able to win knicks of the early 90’s. i didn’t know any people who liked the bullets. that mentor was more of a prophet than i would know or admit. until today.

i bought tickets to the bullets to take my kids in the youth group to nba games. who wants to be a minister who offered kids a chance to sit in an office at the church to shoot the breeze? i didn’t. i wanted to ask kids…hey, want to see jordan, shaq, kobe, jason kidd, iverson, etc play??? those years i owned tickets were terrible….that is the team was terrible. most nights, they barely gave an effort. i almost fell asleep at some of those games. and one time, one of the kids actually did!

but i was also genuinely thrilled when they made the playoffs with webber, howard and strickland! it was a joyous affair. because i had gone down some long dark days with a team involuntarily….when there was light, i was taken for a ride…one that is usually reserved for diehards.

then more dark days for the team. then the jordan era in dc. then some more dark days. it was more dark than light. and i joined the masses in mocking their elderly owner, abe pollin. one radio personality constantly compared him to mr. burns on the simpsons. i delighted in those analogies. perhaps after giving him so much of my money…..i rejected his old school style of running a club. his seemingly bumbling ways. or was it just tough luck ways?

then i kept hearing quiet stories about him. his loyalty. his family first attitude. his heart for people over even winning. he made some moves that backfired but his motivations were pure(mostly). even in the midst of personal tragedy, he kept wanting to help transform his city. he built affordable housing. i think he paid for his own arena whereas other owners hold communities hostage…..see seattle/oklahoma. and it turned out that mj was an @$$#0!e….see hall of fame speech…so he was right to jettison that disease out of town. in short, he was a lovable loser type…a charley brown….good heart, right motives but never getting his moment in the sun…..which isn’t true! he did win a championship in the 70’s and was a multi-millionaire so you can’t feel that bad for him.

but he will likely be appreciated more in death than in life.

after michael jordan, he brought in eddie jordan along with ernie grunfeld, gilbert arenas, jamison and a few others. their initial rise was so important to the city and i think i’ve cheered for them and cared for this group of players as heartily as i did for ewing, oakley and starks. maybe it was after i started to appreciate mr. polin more.

here are some excerpts from his obituary:
He arrived in Washington more than 75 years ago, the gangly son of a Russian metal worker named Morris Pollinovsky who came to America a poor man speaking no English. Through decades of hard work and a seemingly unstoppable will, Abe Pollin rose to the top of the worlds of business, philanthropy and professional sports. In the process, he transformed his adopted home town by bringing professional basketball and hockey franchises here and spending $220 million to build a massive sports and entertainment arena that has dramatically changed the face of downtown Washington.

Mr. Pollin, through his indomitable drive and fierce devotion to his adopted home town, left his imprint on the city as no other sports owner or businessman has done. In addition to building thousands of units of housing for a range of incomes, he was the pillar of countless charitable and civic efforts, culminating in his building MCI Center (now Verizon Center) in 1997 and triggering a stunning renaissance of Gallery Place and surrounding neighborhoods.

Strong-willed and sometimes cantankerous, Mr. Pollin adamantly refused to compromise his principles in the sports world, even if it meant losing. He got rid of all-star basketball players such as Chris Webber and Rasheed Wallace because he did not like their erratic lifestyles and work habits, and he suffered through a public relations nightmare in 2003 when he summarily fired Michael Jordan, then the most famous athlete on the planet. Jordan, who made a highly publicized comeback for the Wizards as a basketball executive and then as a player, had brought national attention and increased revenue to a mediocre franchise. But Mr. Pollin saw Jordan as a selfish and disruptive influence.

Mr. Pollin was well known for his philanthropy, which touched global efforts such as UNICEF, while never forgetting local causes such as the I Have a Dream Foundation. He championed improving the lives of children, considering it an obligation of those who could afford to do so, and his contributions over the years were believed to be in the multiple millions.

In December 1984, Mr. Pollin read an op-ed column in The Post about 40,000 children dying daily from malnutrition in Africa. He called the writer, inquiring whether the number was a misprint. Mr. Pollin was assured it was accurate and was given a phone number for UNICEF’s top U.S. official. Mr. Pollin organized a trip to northeastern Uganda to observe the pestilence first-hand and later spearheaded UNICEF relief drives for Africans, and then for Kurds in Northern Iraq, and for women and children to survive winter in Afghanistan.

“I don’t know of others who have the global perspective he has,” said Charles “Chip” Lyons, then president of UNICEF USA. “He’s as much hard-charging for children in Uganda and Afghanistan as he is for kids in the District. He just gets that in a way that most people don’t.”

and my favorite………

In a story he told The Post in 1991, Mr. Pollin was sitting by himself in a Washington restaurant. A man came up to him, tapped him on the shoulder and said, “Are you Abe Pollin?”

Mr. Pollin looked up, anticipating a complaint about one of his teams. “Yes, I am,” he replied.

“You don’t know me, but you changed my life,” the man said, “You built that Linda Pollin project, and I moved in there, and that’s the first decent place we ever had to live. That changed my life.”

the whole article can be read here.