Sunday, February 26, 2006

Autistic Basketball Player

Fine. I cried. Happy?

EDIT: By that, I mean, of course, that my eyes watered up a bit. That's all. I have very dry library, and my eyes were already stressed from watching hours of pornography and car-crash footage.

Just don't want you to get the wrong idea.

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

You think it'll take six months? As far as I can tell, Disney has an entire department dedicated solely to producing sports movies "inspired by true events." I'm sure they're purchasing the story even as we type.

Mary said...

Did someone say Disney?

"Disney officials called Jason's parents, Dave and Debbie McElwain, on Thursday afternoon to inquire about the possibility of doing a movie."

Geoff Thorne said...

Damn, that was cool.

But do you think Justin Timberlake is READY for a part like this?

Anonymous said...

I'd seen this - it's pretty awesome . . . what the CNN story doesn't mention is that he was only in the game for four minutes, according to my brother, and in that four minutes he scored 20 points.

wow.

marc bernardin said...

I cried when I first saw it on Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel (and for lots of reasons). But, then again, that friggin' show is like one big Lifetime movie for dudes...

Anonymous said...

That was beautiful.

It couldn't have looked any more like the end of Teen Wolf if you tried.

Anonymous said...

joshua said: "what the CNN story doesn't mention is that he was only in the game for four minutes, according to my brother, and in that four minutes he scored 20 points."

20 points in 4 minutes? Get this kid a Bulls uniform and position on the starting lineup, posthaste.

Great story, great video. Must clean glasses. Computer screen somewhat blurry this a.m.

Rob

Timmy Mac said...

Jesus! I saw this in the gym today. I hope my "sweat! I'm wiping off sweat!" gambit worked.

Anonymous said...

Rogers-

Was this almost as bad as the time you were on the couch watching Veronica Mars with the cat in your lap?

But seriously, this is amazing, I first heard about it on Paul Harvey (of all places) on the radio last week.

Unknown said...

No. No, that was straight up gay. These were MANLY tears.

Anonymous said...

Stunningly, none of the coaches said: "Boy do I feel like an asswad for assuming that just because this guy was autistic, the best position for him was chucking sweaty towels in a bucket at the end of the day."
247 toothpicks: 50 cents
Wopner: 4 p.m.
Look on the faces of the bigoted idiots, who thought you were some sort of subhuman pity case and felt smugly heartwarmed to let a `retard' participate by washing jockstraps, after nailing six three-pointers in a row: Priceless

Kelsey Gower said...

Aren't autistic people supposed to be really good at math? I ask because it seems like after he missed the first shot he was able to make a few calculations to make the next 20 points; Just move your wrist a little to the left, make more of a sweeping motion, and its like a wave, man.

That doesn't make the story any less important, but I'm kind of wondering why coaches haven't gotten more autistic kids to play for them before. Are they just not interested, or are they usually discouraged from playing like this kid?