DeBusschere held Doc scoreless for the entire first half and didn’t give him much in the second half either. Impossible. Never been done. But he did it. He was a bruising power forward who knew all the tricks and did all the little things to make the game work and to help his team win. He set hard picks, he moved without the ball, he could hit shots when his team needed him to, and he rebounded at both ends of the court. DeBusschere was a plow horse by today’s highflying standards, and yet he was a complete ball player and got more game out of what was a pretty unremarkable physical package than players with twice the athleticism.

Reading about DeBusschere’s passing put me into an unexpected introspection. I have been a casual fan of basketball these past years, but there was a time when I was rabid about the game. Indeed, from the time I was about 13 until I was about 40, basketball was one of the things that mattered most to me. I played it, watched it, read about it, and dreamed about it. I hung on the box scores every morning and went into a funk when the playoffs finally ended. I cared deeply what happened with a succession of