Zoomer Magazine – September 2019

(^62) – SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2019 everythingzoomer.com
THE “MINORS” HAVE ALWAYS
fascinated me. It’s the equivalent of sports limbo
where very talented athletes but maybe not elite ones dis-
regard the odds and chase a dream. One of my best friends spent
two years in pro tennis in the late ’70s, earning meagre money and finally
crashing mentally after blowing his potential big break, a two-set lead against
Ilie Năstase in the Wimbledon opening rounds.
A long-ago junior hockey player I know, now in his 60s, recalls an invitation to the
Detroit Red Wings camp, which led to an offer to be a backup goalie for the minor-league
Oshkosh Aardvarks. “I decided I didn’t work this hard to be an Aardvark,” he said.
And then there’s 52-year-old Nick Nurse, the rookie coach of the underdog NBA Champion
Toronto Raptors (and consequently, now a god who walks among us, tasked with per-
forming more underdog miracles next season with the loss to free agency of franchise
player Kawhi Leonard). His 30-year career saw him coach 15 basketball teams in
five countries, including the British league where he was first hired on the con-
dition he both play and coach. He would coach five teams in Britain and
one in Belgium in arenas that may have held fewer people than the lo-
cal church. The fact that he won consistently in these places that
were barely noticed in “the bigs” would have hardly regis-
tered without the work he put into each next
step. From accounts, he repeated
his belief that
RAPTURE IN (THE) 6IX
AFTER YEARS IN THE MINORS, TORONTO RAPTORS’ COACH NICK
NURSE PROVED IT’S NEVER TOO LATE TO GET YOUR BIG BREAK
BY JIM SLOTEK
SPORTS