Wayman: All-American, all-world
The news of Wayman Tisdale’s death Friday morning hit like a sucker punch to the gut.
We’d heard rumors that he was battling cancer again, that the monster was back, that the treatments had started again despite the former basketball legend’s best efforts to fend them off. And when Tisdale appeared at a Thunder game last month, he didn’t look so good. He was thin. He was drawn. He might’ve needed to lose a little weight before, but he had lost it so fast that he looked unhealthy.
Something wasn’t right.
We found out just how bad things were Friday morning.
So, how can you celebrate the life of a man who reached the pinnacle in two entirely different professions — basketball and jazz — and who was a much better person than he was a player or a musician? That phrase is thrown around a lot in sports, but in Wayman’s case, it really was true.
My buddies Berry Tramel and John Rohde captured that as best they could in their columns today, while I wrote about how Wayman inspired people during these past couple years. There were powerful words and sentiments contained in those columns, and yet words just didn’t seem like enough.
Even as Berry and I sat down with sports editor Mike Sherman yesterday afternoon to talk about Tisdale for our weekly Press Row video, it was hard to wrap your head around this larger-than-life figure.
A quick clarification, too, from that video. During it, I said that Tisdale three first-team All-American honors would likely never be matched. A reader pointed out that recently graduated North Carolina star Tyler Hansbrough had been at least a three-time All-American, and that’s true.
The difference is that Wayman was a first-team Associated Press All-American. Hansbrough didn’t make the AP first team until his junior year, and that AP team is viewed by most folks as the granddaddy of basketball All-American teams.
Hope that serves as a little clarity.
Goodness knows, it feels like we need some. This tragic news has heads swimming and hearts heavy.
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