Magic hopes to turn it into a pay phone
For sale: One fake phone booth, used only once. Price: Make an offer. Current owner: Very motivated seller.
Yes, the phone booth prop that Dwight Howard used during the NBA’s All-Star dunk contest is up for sale. And Howard’s team, the up-to-the-rim-in-debt Orlando Magic, could use the money.
Howard used the booth to don a Superman cape, to be used, in a losing effort, against Nate “Krypto-Nate” Robinson. And now, that booth has to be moved.
Asks David Arnott of Sporting News.com: “What I want to know, though, is a detailed explanation of who owns the phone booth. Who made it? Did Howard make it in his garage, Hugh Jackman style? Or did the NBA and the Magic plan this all along? Did some league executive sign off on the Phone Booth leading in to Krypto-Nate?”
Trivia time
Which team originally drafted Robinson?
Soundtrack for airballs
Basketball and pop music are forever intertwined, so it shouldn’t be surprising to learn that Spalding has developed an iHoop basketball standard, complete with a fully integrated 2.1 stereo sound system that is water resistant.
The Spalding website touts iHoop as “the ultimate fusion of basketball and music,” adding that it “looks as good as it sounds. . . . Your driveway never looked so good.”
The music selections, of course, are up to the user, who will probably best avoid the Commodores’ “Brick House” and Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall.”
Not bad for a rookie
Add the name Unni Haskell to the list of hole-in-one tales that make long-searching golfers gnash their teeth.
Haskell, 62, fresh off eight half-hour lessons, teed up her very first shot on a course, any course, and aced the 100-yard first hole at Cypress Links, a par-three course in St. Petersburg, Fla.
Her tee shot traveled 75 yards, bounced onto the green and rolled in.
“I didn’t know it was that big of a deal,” Haskell told the St. Petersburg Times. “I thought all golfers do this.”
Her teaching pro, Rick Sopka, was quick to remind her.
“Unni, here’s the problem: There’s nowhere to go from here but down,” Sopka said.
Trivia answer
The Phoenix Suns selected Robinson in the first round of the 2005 NBA draft, then traded him to the New York Knicks along with Quentin Richardson for Kurt Thomas and the draft rights to Dijon Thompson.
And finally
From Richard Oliver of the San Antonio Express-News, on this year’s Final Four site:
“Everyone wants to go to Detroit? Gads, it really is March madness.”
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