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Gradey Dick is back home from Canada this week, fresh off his rookie NBA campaign. The former Wichita Collegiate Spartan, Sunrise Christian Academy Buffalo and Kansas Jayhawk is taking time to hang out with young fans in Wichita at his first basketball camp.
Josh Lewenberg: Gradey Dick, who grew up in Wichita, said he's watched a lot of Fred VanVleet over the years. He's close with FVV's college teammate Ron Baker, so he's met Fred a few times, even went to some of his camps as a kid. He said his dad has a VanVleet poster hanging in their house.
Wichita children are soon to be the beneficiaries of the generosity of Shaquille O’Neal. In his appearance at Koch Arena on Saturday night for a Wichita charity basketball game, the NBA legend and Hall of Famer promised to buy 1,000 laptops and 1,000 pairs of his new “Shaq Attaq” Reebok shoes for Storytime Village, a Wichita-based children’s literacy nonprofit organization, to distribute.
VanVleet’s charity activities in Rockford include annual turkey giveaways for Thanksgiving and handing out back-to-school supplies. He also has give-backs in Wichita, where he starred in college, and his NBA home of Toronto. He passed out more than 1,000 backpacks to underprivileged kids in Toronto last year ago. He also started the Fred VanVleet Scholarship Fund to provide full academic scholarships to Black or indigenous students who pursue a college degree in Canada.
Tyler Eldridge: Little tidbit from last week: Former Shocker Zach Brown (@Zacharygb2) wasn’t able to get to Wichita until the day of Friday’s game because he had an NBA workout for the Houston Rockets in his hometown. The 25-year-old wing averaged 17.4 ppg in Hungary’s top-tier league in 2021.
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Faulkner had just finished a relaxing fathers-son weekend in his hometown of Wichita, Kan. He boarded a flight to Dallas on the morning of Jan. 26 to attend the Sports Academy’s facility in nearby Frisco, Texas. He received a call about the tragedy, and he had little flexibility with changing his itinerary. After arriving at his hotel, Faulkner cried in his pitch-black room for about 10 minutes. After crying for most of the day, he flew to Los Angeles so he could visit the two facilities he and Bryant oversaw in Thousand Oaks and Redondo Beach.
“I’ve said this before to a couple of my close friends: I don’t see it as a race thing,” said Griffin, who was raised in Wichita, Kansas. “It’s a humanity thing, in my opinion. It has nothing to do with white or black to me. It had to do with a person who was pleading for his life. As a society, we can’t just stand by idly and let something like that happen. I would be just as furious if it was one of my white brothers, Asian, whoever else. That can’t happen, especially when it relates to law enforcement that we trust to protect us.”
Preseason scheduling has changed. Teams used to play around eight games. Now, they’re limited to five or six. That’s led to fewer unique environment exhibitions. The Thunder no longer go to Wichita. The Warriors are having a tougher time fitting in a San Jose game. Proximity has also gained increased importance. Coaching staffs, particularly ones with more organizational sway, will nudge the preseason schedule makers to keep them as close to home as long as possible. And they’ll listen. Because it’s the franchises who put together the preseason schedule, not the league. “Teams have gotten smarter,” Kerr said. “We used to go all over the place for years. … We don’t want to travel. We have plenty of travel ahead.”
Nets Daily: Landry Shamet, a 6'5" combo guard out of Wichita, is latest draft prospect to work out for the Nets, according to the Wichita Eagle reporter @tayloreldridge. Shamet projected late first/early second.
Current Wichita State head coach Gregg Marshall spoke about Stallworth on Thursday. “We’ll be playing this tournament with a heavy heart, because he was a true gentleman and a wonderful representative of Wichita and Wichita State University,” Marshall said.
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Darnell Mayberry: Russell Westbrook will not play tonight at New Orleans. Just getting the night off. He'll play Friday against Toronto in Wichita.
On another trip, Gates and Nurse left Oklahoma with the team at 4 a.m. and drove to Wichita, Kan., for a flight to Newark, N.J. They won a game that night and allowed themselves a brief moment of celebration before heading back on the road. "What a day," Nurse said. "We woke up and the sun was rising over the great plains of Kansas. We won a basketball game and watched the sun set over the Statue of Liberty." They're all connected by the memories and the journeys -- and by the career paths of fugitives. Joerger was Ticknor's assistant with the Dakota Wizards in Bismarck, N.D., of the D-League. (That team has since relocated to Santa Cruz, Calif.) Joerger replaced Ticknor as the head coach in Bismarck; Ticknor later replaced Joerger in the same job. Gates was Ticknor's assistant with the Rapid City Thrillers of the IBA (which later merged with the CBA). Ticknor now works for Joerger in Memphis. And so on. "I was married in the morning and coached a game that night in Sioux City, Iowa," Ticknor said. "Actually, I remember we lost that game, and so does my wife. She always says that's all I remember about the honeymoon."
The Oklahoma City Thunder will return to Wichita, Kan. and Tulsa, Okla. during the 2014 preseason, the team announced today. The Thunder will host the Toronto Raptors at the INTRUST Bank Arena in Wichita on Friday, Oct. 17 at 7:00 pm followed by a contest versus the Minnesota Timberwolves at the BOK Center in Tulsa on Sunday, Oct. 19 at 6:00 pm.
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