Scorecard July 28, 1997

Letters from Camp

Summer basketball camp, once a place for kids to learn the drop-step and perfect the crossover dribble, is no longer a predictable parade from one station drill to another. To shed light on the current summer scene, we offer excerpts from letters that could have been sent from various bivouacked young basketballers, based on what actually happened at their camps.

Music appreciation was among the activities at Dennis Scott's 3-D Basketball Camp in Sterling, Va.: "Dennis opened the doors and trunk to his sport-utility vehicle so we could better hear the gangsta rap from the stereo. With curse words sounding in the background, he told us not to ask for his autograph. He talked about his 'rage inside.' Even though the Orlando Magic are paying him $3 million a year, he said he's going to retire if he doesn't get what he thinks he deserves. Then he compared himself to Barney, which is weird, 'cause he didn't look so friendly. Some kids started crying. The guy from the rec department called off the rest of camp and gave our parents their money back."

"Some of us got into a fight," goes a dispatch from a middle-schooler at Wisconsin coach Dick Bennett's camp in Madison. "Some trashed the dorm. And when one guy pointed this pinpoint laser light—you know, the kind used to sight guns—out the window, the cops even showed up! Coach Bennett told muddah and faddah that our behavior was 'unacceptable,' and said he might not ever hold a camp for kids our age again!"

Happily, not all the news from camp is so unsettling. Consider this epistle from the Seton Hall Basketball School in South Orange, N.J., where the Detroit Pistons' Grant Hill made a featured appearance: "Then Grant asked why education is so important. I knew the answer, but Malcolm Davis got his hand up first. 'You need an education to get a good job,' he said. Grant pulled out a $100 bill and gave it to him! Malcolm wanted to call his mom to tell her, but he said he didn't have a quarter."

And this, from a basketball camp in a Tel Aviv suburb: "Kareem didn't come all the way to Israel just to teach us how to shoot a skyhook. He had a meeting with Yisrael Lau, our country's chief rabbi, and seemed right at home. Maybe that's because, even though he's a Muslim, he's also a New York City native. As he put it, 'I've been to too many kosher delis for this place to feel strange.' "

Evander Knows Best
Heavyweight champ Evander Holyfield is scheduled to appear before the House Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Youth and Families this Thursday to discuss the subject of fatherhood. The group couldn't ask for more-expert testimony. Holyfield is the father, by four women, of six children—all of whom he fully supports and spends quality time with—and is expecting another with his wife of nine months, Janice.

Dancing Decimals

John Spano is the 33-year-old, Dallas-based businessman whose $165 million purchase of the New York Islanders was unanimously approved by the NHL's board of governors in February. Even though his financial fitness was vouched for by an established security firm hired by the league, Spano could not come up with a $17 million payment due last month, and on July 10 he voluntarily withdrew as owner of the team. This Friday was the deadline set by NHL commissioner Gary Bettman for former owner John Pickett and Fleet Bank to agree on how Pickett would repay the $80 million Fleet had loaned to Spano, who in turn paid Pickett. If no agreement was reached, Bettman was set to arbitrate the matter.

Until last week the Spano case had a sort of Keystone Akkountants quality: When he owed Pickett a $5 million payment, Spano wired $5,000; when the $17 million came due, he sent $1,700. But on Monday it became clear that Spano's problems extended well beyond misplaced decimal points: Sources close to the case told SI that a federal arrest warrant had been issued for Spano. Another source said that authorities tried to arrest Spano at his Dallas home on charges of mail fraud and bank fraud, but he wasn't there.