[pryor15]

Some context: Seeing as my father is one of 5 boys who are all over 6 feet tall, my family is naturally a basketball family. My uncle was a Parade 3rd team All-American out of High School (the same year Kareem was player of the year...i've seen the magazine, there's even a picture of my uncle...he also once beat Bill Russell at HORSE) and pretty much everyone played varisty. i know of at least 6 state titles where at least one McNelly was a key starter.

Some of my earliest, fondest memories involve basketball season, how the first NBA Finals I ever watched was the Celtics/Rockets series, which a large portion of the family watched at my grandparent's house, how large portions of my summers as a kid involved pick up games, winning a state title with my father as the coach and my brother as my backcourt partner, and even now one of the hilights of going home is playing pickup games or helping my brother run the practice of our alma mater.

But, when I was a kid, the local CBS affiliate would broadcast all the Boston road games (this was back when Larry Bird was still playing) and I'd get to watch sometimes all the way to halftime before I had to go to bed. Very quickly, I learned that if I laid on the floor of my room and lowered my head slightly over the edge of the stairs, I could still see the game undetected.

I watched a lot of basketball that way, especially during the NCAA tourney.

If I was lucky, Mom, who wasn't big into basketball, would go to bed sometime in the third quarter, and if the game was close down the stretch, Dad would "wake me up" and let me watch the last couple of minutes, provided I didn't tell Mom. The Duke/UNLV game was one such game (I modeled my play after Bobby Hurley, so I was then, and still am, a Duke fan).

It's such a minor thing, but to a kid, the chance to secretly watch the end of a close game when you're supposed to be in bed is beyond cool. Especially for a kid like me who later would tape World Series games and get up 3 hours early to watch them before school, rather than risk having to go to bed before they were over and missing something amazing.