March Madness to a basketball aficionado is pulsating and enrapturing – it satiates the hunger for intense competition like mana from heaven. Perhaps its appeal is so widespread because it encompasses so many hopefuls across the land.
Who would ever have heard of Gonzaga if it hadn’t been for March Madness? You would have thought that the crusty old baseball commissioner, Kennesaw Mountain Landis, had risen from the dead the way Kennesaw State reacted to getting a bid to the Big Dance in the last fortnight.
In the NCAA tournament, David often slays Goliath. An ant is always moving the rubber tree plant. Farleigh Dickinson taking down No. 1 Purdue in the first round of this year’s tournament brought ecstasy to all basketball “Mudvilles.”
Worldwide today, basketball is probably second only to soccer as the most universally appreciated of sports. There exists a passion for basketball at all four corners of the earth. From Jerry West’s stomping grounds in Cabin Creek, West Virginia, to the streets and playgrounds of New York City to the rims tacked on the sides of barns in Kentucky and Indiana.
Take a kid like J. J. Frazier who grew up in Glennville, Ga., lithe and lean with a three-point arc as pretty as they come. At 5-10, 155, he could not find a home in the NBA, but he’s flourished over the past five years in Europe and Asia, a story that warms the heart.
There are countless such stories across the sports landscape. Some athletes who are not as gifted as others find their way to large success as teachers and coaches.
I thought about this recently when the Georgia Sports Hall of Fame, inducted its latest class which included Jackie Bradford, a basketball icon in this state.
Bradford learned the game primarily at Pine Grove High School, near Valdosta, where he once led the state in scoring with an average of 32.6 points per game. Then he took his game to the next level, signing a scholarship letter with David Lipscomb College in Nashville, Tenn. With multi-talents, it came as no surprise to his alma mater when he set the school scoring and rebounding records in one game – 37 points and 28 rebounds.
Bradford stayed around to earn a master’s degree and began teaching and coaching at David Lipscomb High School before settling down at Greater Atlanta Christian School in Norcross. No coach, no teacher, was ever more at home than Bradford was at GAC.
While a successful coach, there was more in Bradford’s motivational wheelhouse than just wins and championships, though there were plenty of both in his two-plus decades at GAC, with 253 victories and three state championships versus only 82 losses. His teams made the state tournament every year but three.
All the while, Bradford was strategically ingrained into the teaching and administrative processes at GAC. He loved the basketball court, but he also loved the classroom. When he was athletic director and coach at one point, he was also the principal.
He made his community better by being an innovative leader and by giving himself to his school and his teams. That, however, was not enough. A Rotarian, volunteer for the American Cancer Society and the United Negro College Fund and a member of the Atlanta Olympic Committee, Bradford also was a charter member of the Atlanta Sports Council. If that wasn’t enough, he sold real estate on the side, an astute businessman.
He spoke at basketball clinics across the country, and under Bradford’s leadership, the Atlanta Tipoff Club expanded its Naismith Awards to cover all outstanding college basketball players in the nation – including women. Nobody has promoted the game of basketball more diligently and successfully than this enterprising man. If an award were ever given to the Georgia individual who loves basketball the most, it would have to be fixed if Bradford didn’t win it.
So, who is the beneficiary of all this effort? It’s all the boys and girls who matriculated at Greater Atlanta Christian, and indirectly, all basketball players, coaches, and advocates in our state.
When a coach gives of himself to his kids, his constituency, and his community as Jackie Bradford has, there really are no losers.