Scorecard

Hub-bub over a Handle

As hard as it is to imagine Boston without its Garden, most New Englanders have come to accept the fate of the Old Lady on Causeway Street: that it would be razed following the current hockey and basketball seasons and that a shiny new showplace, the Shawmut Center, would become home to the Bruins and Celtics next fall. But last week Shawmut, the bank that had agreed to pay some $30 million to put its name on the new building, was bought by Fleet Bank. Thus did a proposal for a new name come to light: the Fleet Forum.

That just won't do. For the Bruins and Celtics to play in a building that echoes the name of the shrines of their most bitter rivals, the Montreal Canadiens and the Los Angeles Lakers, respectively, would be every bit as much a sacrilege as Bruin intros in throaty French or a Celtic girls dance team. "Tell them we're all for it," a spokesman for the Great Western Forum told The Boston Globe. "Imitation is the highest form of flattery."

Boston is often criticized for its provincialism and hidebound attitudes, but the Hub deserves an arena with a name reflecting the city's rich athletic tradition. How about the Russell-Orr Center, to honor two of the old Garden's great denizens? Or simply the New Garden? Fleet needn't festoon its name all over the building for New Englanders to give it credit for helping to make the arena possible. In fact, the bank might win greater public acclaim by allowing the two teams' new home to bear a dignified name.

Tangled Webb

Chris Webber, whose clashes with coach Don Nelson of the Golden State Warriors precipitated his own trade on Nov. 17 and Nelson's resignation from the Warriors on Feb. 13, recently appeared on a sports talk show on Detroit's WDFN radio to discuss his donation of $25,000 to Wayne State University. When co-host Michael Stone brought up a Jan. 30 SI story on young prima donnas in the NBA and Webber's inclusion in that piece, the Washington Bullet forward said he had received a letter from SI's Phil Taylor, who wrote the piece, in which Taylor supposedly apologized for having cited Webber in his story. According to Webber, Taylor wrote to him that Webber had been included in the story "basically to sell [magazines]."

In fact, Taylor wrote Webber no letter, much less the apologetic, exculpatory one that Webber described. It appears that last season's NBA Rookie of the Year, besides being talented, headstrong and generous, has a pretty active imagination.

Illegal Hold

If sports are supposed to teach young people how to lose gracefully, the Illinois High School Association (IHSA), which supervises scholastic athletics in that state, ought to learn a few lessons. In early February a coach at a rival school told the IHSA that Mount Carmel High, a parochial school on Chicago's South Side, had participated in five wrestling tournaments this season, one more than IHSA rules permit. The IHSA swiftly banned Mount Carmel from the state team tournament.

But Mount Carmel, which has won three straight state Double A titles, mounted a persuasive defense. The school's coaches pointed out that they had sent no varsity wrestlers, only junior varsity ones, to that fifth tournament, and that they believed jayvee grapplers to be exempt from the four-meet limit described in IHSA bylaw 5.162, which doesn't distinguish between varsity and jayvee events. By contrast, other IHSA bylaws pertaining to the minimum number of events required to qualify for the state tournament specifically mention that those tournaments must be of varsity status. Thus Mount Carmel assumed—reasonably enough—that only varsity events would count toward the maximum.