It’s Not His Job, but It’s an Adventure

Until its 128-124 defeat by the Netherlands on Wednesday, the United States men’s wheelchair basketball team in the Paralympic Games was nearly as dominant as the Dream Team that played in last month’s Barcelona Olympics.

The wheelchair basketball games are being played in the same Palau d’Esports arena where the Dream Team won the gold medal, but despite identical uniforms, sellout crowds and hordes of autograph seekers before, during and after each game, this U.S. team insists it’s different.

“We’re not the Dream Team,” U.S. Coach Harry Vines said. “But we are the team that dreams are made of.”

Said high-scoring forward Reggie Colton: “The fans recognize you on the street, and that makes you feel good. It makes you feel equally as important as Michael Jordan or Larry Bird. But when this is over, there aren’t going to be any million-dollar endorsements waiting for me--just my job at the nursing home in Gainesville.”

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Add Paralympics: Hungarian shotputter Denes Nagy became the first Paralympics competitor to fail a drug test and has been barred from the games for using an anabolic steroid. Nagy, silver medal winner in the level-1 blindness category, was expelled from the athletes’ village and sent home.

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Trivia time: Who is the only fighter to hold both a world kick-boxing title and a world boxing championship?

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Wakeup call: Pele once called George Best “the greatest soccer player the world has ever seen.” That was before the controversial Englishman played for the L.A. Aztecs during a tour in the North American Soccer League.

Best sees the World Cup in 1994 as the potential catalyst for soccer in this country.

“Hopefully, the U.S. will put on a good show and wake people up,” Best told Chris Cowles of Soccer America. “Worldwide, people are very skeptical--especially in the U.S. If they don’t put on a good show, it will rub off on people.”

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Add World Cup: It will be a first when matches are played indoors in the Pontiac Silverdome in Pontiac, Michigan. Silverdome officials, however, must replace their artificial turf to meet World Cup requirements that all games be played on “natural grass.”

The Amateur Athletic Foundation reports that it will cost about $1.5 million to install the real grass for a three-week period.

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He’d better be good: Eric Lindros hasn’t played a minute in the NHL yet but already card collectors are paying between $250 and $300 for a pre-NHL card printed two years ago featuring the Philadelphia Flyer teen-ager.

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Trivia answer: Troy Dorsey, the reigning world featherweight kick-boxing champion, held the International Boxing Federation featherweight title briefly in 1991.

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Following up: After Indy car driver Eddie Cheever was quoted in USA Today that trying to win for (car owner) Chip Ganassi was like trying to nail jelly to a post, fellow car owner Carl Hogan presented Ganassi a jar of jelly, saying, “I’ll give you the nail and the hammer later.”

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Quotebook: Willie Mays, paying tribute to baseball’s first black player: “Every time I look at my pocketbook, I see Jackie Robinson.”