Last week, when we discovered Old Spice’s amazing video game, Dikembe Mutombo’s 4 ½ Weeks to Save the World, and once I was done playing it for 72 hours (catch the damn ballots, you morons!) I slipped into one of my very common NBA nostalgia wormholes. And what started out as a search for Mutombo finger wag GIFs actually turned into me revisiting Manute Bol’s career and subsequent extracurricular activities.

Of course, Bol passed away in 2010 due to kidney failure and a rare skin disease, but his legacy has lived on through the Ring True Foundation, which was Bol’s most important effort in aiding the people of his native Sudan. Unfortunately, as I looked through a number of pictures, videos and articles about Bol’s life, I was disappointed by the overwhelming use of the words “side show” and, even worse, “freak show” to describe the way that some people exploited his height.

What a lot of people either don’t remember – or just choose to ignore – is that Bol traded this perceived nnotion of exploitation to support his foundation. So even when he was “shamefully” boxing William Perry or hanging out with jockeys and riding horses, Bol was doing his part to make the lives of others that much better. After all, the cause may not matter in the long run to a lot of people, but George Clooney thought it was enough to get arrested over, so hopefully Bol has been bragging to St. Peter and the boys about that.

This isn’t news, but I thought it might be fun to remember Manute Bol, not as a sideshow but more of the main event. Big shoes, son of Manute. Seriously, huge shoes.

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One of the first classes that we should teach children in middle school is how to properly use search engines on the Internet. This goes not only for your basics like Google and Bing, but also for social media sites, because holy crap there are some really messed up people on Tumblr. The moral of this random opening is that sometimes searching “Food” will bring you to bisexual cyborgs flinging pudding at naked old people and sometimes it will bring you to someone’s creative artwork. Fortunately, we’re dealing with the latter today.

Falling into our long history of appreciation for zany sports fan art, I recently discovered designer Jesse Hora’s simply-but-aptly-titled “Athlete Objects”, which depicts some of our favorite professional athletes (mostly NBA players) as everyday items that represent their names. Again, even more than I love fan art, I love simple fan art, and with respect to Nancy Grace Monster Jams and the National Foodball League, Hora’s work may be my new favorite.

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If it helps, you’re supposed to read that headline like the cover of a Jack Kirby comic.

Anyway, meet Bol Bol (pictured standing next to his famous father, right) (just kidding). He’s the Godzooky to Manute Bol’s Godzilla, a 13-year old who will one day grow into his terrifying limbs, develop a slingshot three-pointer and dominate the NBA, at least in that one little spot where he can stand without falling down.

Bol Bol is a 6’5 seventh grader who is the son of the late NBA player Manute Bol. Bol strokes threes just like his dad and even showed the ability to put it on the ground and create off the bounce. Bol has a good mid range jumper and has a good understanding of the pick and roll. These highlights are from the 2012 Cross Roads Elite Camp in Indianapolis.

A few observations:

1. That is the most terrifying 7th grader basketball camp ever. One kid looks exactly like Manute Bol, one kid has a full mustache in the seventh grade like he’s a Napoleon Dynamite joke and everyone is 6-foot-5. If I’d gone to that camp when I was 13 it would’ve been like Porky Pig playing against the Monstars.

2. This is living proof that if you procreate with Manute Bol, it doesn’t matter what you look like, that kid’s gonna straight-up look like Manute f**king Bol.

3. I like to think that Manute named his kid “Bol Bol” so that when they were announced together, it’d sound like his name was echoing a la Pride Of The Yankees. “Here’s Manute Bol, Bol Bol.”

4. I wonder if Bol Bol ever got to enjoy any of his dad’s festive cruises?

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I don’t like quoting The National Enquirer as a reputable source, but when a story like this breaks you have to share it with everyone you know — according to the Enquirer, Joe McGinniss’ upcoming book Rogue: Searching for the Real Sarah Palin features claims and confirmation that the former governer and Vice Presidential nominee hooked up with three-time NBA All-Star Glen Rice circa 1987, when he was still in college and she was an Alaskan sports reporter. Glen Rice had sex with Sarah Palin. That is today’s actual sports news.

From the story:

In the book, which will be published on September 20th, McGinniss claims Sarah had a steamy interracial hookup with basketball stud Glen Rice less than a year before she eloped with her husband Todd.

Sarah hooked up with the NBA great, then a 6-foot-8 junior at the University of Michigan when he was playing in a college basketball tournament in Alaska in 1987, the book says. At the time, Sarah, just out of college, was working as a sports reporter for the Anchorage TV station KTUU.

A publishing source told The ENQUIRER that McGinniss claims Sarah had a “fetish” for black men at the time and he quotes a friend as saying Sarah had “hauled (Rice’s) ass down.”

I don’t even know what that means.

I guess the premarital sex is sacred unless you’ve got a chance to hook up with a basketball player. And despite a “fetish for black men at the time” (good job seeing black people as people and not things, Presidential Hopeful), Palin ended up marrying the whitest guy on the planet, and none of her brain damaged kids — and I’m talking about Bristol here, don’t get me wrong — get to paternally claim the stars of NBA Jam. Does Rony Seikaly know about any of this?

In case you’re ready to believe Sarah Palin when she goes on TV later and claims the story is an “out and out fabrication” perpetrated by some portmanteau word combining “media”, “liberal” and “spend-o-crat”, don’t … at least one of the people snuggling in that sleeping bag on a cold, mooseless night in 1980s Alaska is confirming the rumor.

In the book, McGinniss quotes Rice as confirming the one-night stand.

What’s next, are we gonna find out that Manute Bol nailed Michele Bachmann?

[h/t Deadspin]

Former NBA center Manute Bol passed away Saturday from acute kidney failure and the rare skin disease, Stevens-Johnson Syndrome. When I saw the alert come across Google News, I thought, “Please let it be Uwe Boll” but unfortunately it was someone who has actually contributed to society.

The 7’7” Bol was a NBA fixture for 10 seasons, playing for four franchises after being drafted by the Washington Bullets in 1985. Over the years he became known for his sense of humor and charitable work in the Sudan, where he was born to a Dinka tribal chief. His family is currently making arrangements to have his body buried in the village of Turlai, where his father was also buried.

Mostly known for his height – especially after he was paired with 5’3” point guard Muggsy Bogues – Bol finished his career 14th in NBA history in blocked shots, but remains the only player to have more career blocks than points scored. He once tied the NBA record for blocked shots in a half with 11, and blocked eight in one quarter on two occasions. But his legacy will perhaps be defined by his contribution to modern slang, as he is credited with coining the popular apology – “My bad.”

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