Tuesday, May 14, 2002

SPORTS GUY WENT DOWN TO GEORGIA: While reading the Bill Simmons account of his trip to Inside The NBA (here's part one and part two) I run across this passage:

Poor Ernie is hemming and hawing. They're referring to a feature about Johnson in Thursday's USA Today, in which writer Jill Lieber wrote flattering prose about Ernie but took some veiled shots at Kenny and Charles, saying they "babble on endlessly" in one section. The feature even carried a sub-headline about Ernie that read, "He is a rare person who can banter with big egos and still keep the show on track." And now Barkley and Kenny have twisted things around at Ernie's expense.

Lost in all the joshing was the story itself, a wonderful account of Ernie and his family. Johnson and his wife had two children of their own, then adopted two more children -- one each from Romania and Paraguay, including an abandoned, handicapped boy who suffers from muscular dystrophy and a number of other medical problems -- one of those stories that you read and feel guilty about your own life, knowing that somebody else has been acting so selflessly.

Here is the article in question.

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