SI.com: Alexander Wolff
SI.com is the league leader in original in-depth coverage of professional, local, college and international sports. And we're updated continuously, delivering the level of rich in-depth coverage Sports Illustrated fans demand, at the speed of CNN.
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Alex Wolff: Boy wonder coach Josh Pastner will keep Memphis winning
He was a creature of the '90s, college basketball's own sitcom character, a cross between Doogie Howser and Alex Keaton. To Josh Pastner, being an end-of-the-bench walk-on for Lute Olson at Arizona had little to do with late-game playing time, and everything to do with learning at the knee of a Hall …
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Alexander Wolff: Three pioneers deserve to be in Pro Football Hall of Fame
I've just come up from a months-long burrowing through the tunnels and warrens of pro football history. The result can be found in this week's SI: a piece that explores how the NFL, which was integrated upon its founding, came to bar black players in the '30s and only reluctantly reintegrated after …
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Alexander Wolff: NBA meets Euro threat head on, and embraces it
NBA Commissioner David Stern ought to be tucking into a celebratory bowl of borscht right now at the Russian Tea Room, which is a few blocks from the NBA's offices in Manhattan's Olympic Tower.
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Alex Wolff: Myles Brand leaves a legacy of integrity, focus on academics in sports
Learning of the death today of NCAA president Myles Brand, from pancreatic cancer at age of 67, it's hard not to think back to the events that first thrust him into the college sports fan's consciousness in 2000.
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Alexander Wolff: Alabama-Auburn showdown tops Bucket List
1. Alabama-Auburn In the magazine I've described Duke and North Carolina in basketball as "the one rivalry all other rivalries secretly wish to be." But I don't stand by that comment quite as stoutly as I would if I'd seen the Tigers play the Tide, a feud I've been curious about ever since spott …
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Alex Wolff: College basketball Thrill List
These lists are not mere compilations of all-time bests in their respective sports but all-time bests at quickening the pulse and evoking a visceral response from those fortunate enough to have witnessed their artistry.
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A long history of awkward Tour de France encounters: U.S. vs. Europe
Since the first American cyclist made his way to the European pro circuit in the mid-'70s, enough gaffes, misunderstandings and flashpoints have taken place to keep a U.N. peacekeeping force busy -- from Greg LeMond's spending the Tour de France rest day playing golf, to the conversion of La Taverne …
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Alexander Wolff: Hoops Hall of fame class leaves us wanting more
That's quite the class the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame announced earlier today. Takes you back to the Nineties: Michael Jordan and a handful of others -- David Robinson, John Stockton and coaches Jerry Sloan and C. Vivian Stringer.
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Alex Wolff: Pitt, Villanova stage NCAA classic
BOSTON -- John Adams sees more than a few games as the NCAA's national coordinator of officiating. He permits his eyes to wander from the zebras to the spectacle, and Saturday at the TD Banknorth Garden -- midway through the second half of the 80th game he has witnessed this season that ended with V …
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Alex Wolff: Ugliest team out there? A winning Pitt team doesn't care
BOSTON -- An old acquaintance greeted Pittsburgh athletic director Steve Pederson in the bowels of the Garden moments after his school's escape of Xavier here last night, a 60-55 victory that put the Panthers in tomorrow's East Regional final against Villanova.
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Alexander Wolff: Big East living up to hype -- and then some
It's one thing to bag three of an NCAA tournament's top four seeds. But in that alone there's no proof, only promise. And the Big East, touted as the college game's preeminent league since November, is keeping its promises. And then some.
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Alexander Wolff: Pressure Points
If ever a college basketball coach set himself up for a reckoning, John Calipari did one year ago this month. With his Memphis team in the midst of winning a single-season NCAA record of 38 games, the world chose to pick at the scab on an otherwise flawless complexion: the Tigers' inability to make …
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Alexander Wolff: How basketball helped shape Barack Obama
The path is a familiar one: Ancestry in Kansas; influences from Africa; a kind of apotheosis in Michael Jordan's Chicago; eventual acclamation by the world. And while, no, basketball itself won't be sworn in next Tuesday as the 44th president of the U.S., the game has played an outsized role in form …
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Alexander Wolff: Obama's style on the court reflects his persona
While working on the piece for this week's SI about how basketball made Barack Obama who he is, I made sure to ask people I spoke with -- from Obama's high school coach back in Hawaii; to brother-in-law and Oregon State coach Craig Robinson; to pickup buddies in Chicago; to Baller-in-Chief.com webma …
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Alexander Wolff: For Newell, engagement with the game was its own reward
Upon hearing the news of Pete Newell's death today at 93, I flashed back to a morning in 2002. Checking out of a hotel in Denver, I blinked at a phone charge on the invoice. I was working on a piece about the decline of fundamental basketball and came to Denver to catch a practice at Division II pow …
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Alexander Wolff: Game always came first to Haskins
Upon learning of the death tonight of longtime UTEP coach Don (The Bear) Haskins, these thoughts made their way through my head, in roughly this order:
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Alexander Wolff: Wade tops my Beijing All-USA 5
With 17 days' worth of basketball in the books, it's time to take stock of the Olympic tournament beyond the headline story of these Games: the emphatic reassertion of U.S. men's basketball supremacy. Before we do, a quick word on the prospects of the continuation of that supremacy.
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Alexander Wolff: Seeing what the Games meant to China
We asked the Sports Illustrated writers who covered the Beijing Olympics to leave us with their indelible memory of the Games.
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Q&A: Aftermath of Team USA's win
Senior writer Alex Wolff was at the Olympic Basketball Gymnasium in Beijing for the U.S. men's basketball team's 118-107 victory over Spain in the gold medal game. SI.com caught up with Wolff shortly after the final buzzer.
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Alexander Wolff: Redeem Team looks to answer injustice of '72 Games
BEIJING -- It was just one moment in the parade of moments that comprise the protocol before any Olympic basketball game -- the exchange of gifts, the hand clasps, the butt-pats dealt out to opponents, teammates, even referees. But in the context of the U.S. men's pursuit of a redemptive gold medal, …
SI.com: Alexander Wolff
