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In my final year at school I was chosen to open the batting for the Transvaal Under-19 side with a big-hearted kid called Craig Norris from a neighbouring school. We had one mid-week warm-up game against a Transvaal Invitation XI at Morningside before flying down to Stellenbosch for the 1982 Nuffield Week, a tournament for South African high schools.I cant remember exactly what we thought but Im sure we assumed that the Invitation XI would be made up of ringers and sundry club unemployables of good standard. Wed negotiate past the fixture with the minimum of fuss and be on that plane down to the Cape in a jiffy.In those days, club cricket in Johannesburg was properly competitive. Several Premier League clubs employed English professionals like Richard Lumb or Ashley Harvey-Walker, sometimes called Ashley Harvey-Wallbanger by the wits of the local scene. Every so often you would encounter a Transvaal player on a soft club weekend, or a Transvaal B player trying to play their way back into form or fitness.Schoolboy cricket was hard-fought but genteel. You played on good wickets in front of gently appreciative fathers and mothers sitting in deck chairs; you wore your blazer to tea, didnt argue with the umpire, and didnt appeal unless you had a good chance of getting it right. Mostly they were heavenly days.As a younger boy, clutching my precious 12th-birthday bat and standing timidly knock-kneed in my recently scrubbed takkies, I remember listening to Lumb and Harvey-Walker in a daze of wonder. If you were lucky enough, your headmaster might select you to attend one of their precious net sessions on Friday afternoons at Balfour Park. I didnt learn many cricket lessons at these sessions, spending the afternoons in a funk of thwarted desire. Lumb, I noticed, was kitted out with St Peter equipment, down to batting mitts that shaped over his hands like boxing gloves. Only boys with rich parents could afford St Peter gear. The rest of us had to be content with sanding the edges out of our Gray-Nicolls bat (sand with the grain, urged my dad), lovingly applying linseed oil in the long months before summer with a lappie (rag) from the kitchen.Sometimes Lumb spoke about Geoff Boycott - or Geoffrey - his Yorkshire opening partner. It was usually in tones of mild derision, but he always managed to find space in his tales for a sort of reluctant admiration. Then he laughed and shook his big head of hair and went back to the far less perplexing business of leading the fielding drills.Harvey-Walker was a different proposition. He was clipped, speaking in a language I identified as English but only partially understood. We must have seemed retarded because we never quite understood what he was saying but didnt have the courage to ask him to repeat himself. Sessions were conducted in a busy miasma of mutual incomprehension as he clucked at us in his Derbyshire accent, and we did the best we could to act on what we thought hed said. Net sessions didnt run particularly smoothly.It was only when Hugh Page came into the schoolboys dressing room as Craig and I were padding up after we lost the toss against the Invitation XI that we began to realise what we were in for. You might want to wear this, Page said to me kindly as he passed me his helmet, an outsized maroon number with a protruding visor that stretched all the way to the Zimbabwe border. I had never worn a helmet before. Mostly we just wore our caps. If you came upon anyone really quick in schoolboy cricket, you reeled in your shot-making and waited for him to blow himself out. This helmet was large and ungainly, with fiddly straps. It was like batting inside a hollowed-out watermelon. Craig, who was better than me and had played more regularly at a higher level - he was playing in the Transvaal Mean Machine side a year or two later - probably took first ball, but before long I was facing Graham Dilley, then opening the bowling for England.Dilley hammered his front foot down like some storybook Gulliver but also had a back-foot drag, so the two sounds arrived fractionally before his deliveries cannoned into the splice of my much-used old County bat. I hopped about the crease like a scalded rabbit, and didnt score anything in front of square for the first hour as I flicked and glided and nudged.Neal Radford opened the bowling with Dilley, and when he realised he couldnt get me to nick off, proceeded to cheerfully bounce me. The forward short leg probably got in on the action but I was too busy trying to survive to listen very carefully. When Dilley and Radford came off, Page replaced them. He was slippery, darting it off the seam, thudding a couple into Craigs midriff and hurting him on the juicy inner part of the thigh. Alvin Kallicharran watched it good-naturedly from the slips. The wickets would come, his indulgent smile seemed to be saying, it was just a matter of time.After a while their pity hardened. Radford bounced us some more. A Warwickshire professional whose name Ive forgotten started to get lippy. We couldnt have been far from a hundred partnership - Alfred 40-odd - when I spooned an inelegant mistimed drive to mid-off. The Warwickshire pro went off, swearing like a sewer.As I walked back to the pavilion, struggling with my helmet, our coach caught my eye. That wasnt so bad, he said breezily, and I could see the relief in his eyes. Cheap Air Max 2019 China .Y. - New Orleans forward Anthony Davis was chosen Friday to replace the injured Kobe Bryant in the NBA All-Star game that will be played in his home city. Nike Air Max 2019 For Sale . 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The momentous Kevin Durant announcement of July 4, 2016, was foreshadowed years earlier, before the Golden State Warriors commanded enough attention for people to notice.Three years ago, Andre Iguodala joined the team that had just eliminated his squad from the playoffs, to considerably less criticism than Durant currently is receiving. Upon arriving in Golden State by way of Denver, Iguodala said this of Steph Curry in his first Oakland news conference on July 11, 2013:Steph and I played together in 2010 in Turkey, and after practice we would come back to the gym at night when we were overseas and just [get] some shots up. I believe it was Kevin Durant [who] was with us, a lot of the time. So it was us three, maybe one or two other guys, but us three were always together. Kinda got a chance to see him work. Knew how in love he was with the game, so we built a pretty good relationship. We had chapels together before every game so we definitely got to know each other.Us three were always together.If the 2013 Warriors were at a then-Lakers level of clout, such a statement would have reverberated across the internet, fueling rumors far and wide. But the 2013 Warriors had nowhere near the cachet they enjoy today. They had done well to even get into the room to make a pitch to Dwight Howard that offseason. Wooing Iguodala was quite the coup for an organization fresh off its second playoff run in 19 years.What a difference three years can make. Thats how quickly this new, dominant Warriors reality emerged from a long-standing reputation as the ignoble underdog. Thats how fast a team goes from being the harmless bastion of comical futility to the leagues existential threat.In 2013, neophyte 6-seed Golden State shocked Denver and put a scare into San Antonio in the playoffs. In that offseason, GM Bob Myers pulled off what he called the hardest thing he has ever done professionally when he moved massive amounts of salary to secure Iguodala. A year later, the Warriors lost in Round 1 to the Clippers and controversially fired Mark Jackson. Then came Steve Kerrs hire, Draymond Greens move into the starting lineup, Currys MVP ascendance, 67 wins and a championship.And all of that was followed by last seasons 73 wins, a painful loss in Game 7 of the NBA Finals after holding a 3-1 series lead and, now, the pretext for a team unlike anything the league has seen.This remarkable three-year sprint to fame and possibly infamy was in some ways set up six years ago by the FIBA World Championship in Turkey that Iguodala referenced upon joining the Warriors. That was Durants tournament (he won MVP), if you recall, a time when he was heralded as a new, wholesome alternative to a LeBron James whod just left Cleveland on national television.In contrast to LeBrons garish Cleveland exit, Durant garnered praise in the summer of 2010 with a tweet announcing his Oklahoma City Thunder extension. Little did people know that the seeds for Durants eventual departure were being sown at that moment in basketball history, as he got to know Team USA teammates Iguodala and Curry. Given the state of the 2010 Warriors, none of the actors involved could have known where this was headed.Flash forward to the Warriors 2016 pitch to Durant. Iguodala reminded KD of those Turkey days and how much fun they all had together. The veteran swingman is sarcastic by nature and extremely cynical. SSome posit that his guard remains up because of his Philly experience, where a rabid local media shredded a young, pass-first wing for being something less than Allen Iverson.dddddddddddd A sincere, emotional Iguodala brought that up too, conveying how money and status cant compare to his current situation.The 2015 Finals MVP also offered a bit of time travel in his pitch to Durant. He explained how, when your career is finished, you want to reminisce with friends like these. He depicted a future where so much of the present NBA entanglements fade away and a career becomes a memory. When that happens, theres meaning in having great memories. When that happens, theres meaning in being able to revisit those memories with great people.As Marc J. Spears reported on The Undefeated, Curry conveyed that he cared more about winning than credit or sneaker sales. Warriors officials relayed that Durant seemed eager to hear that message. Green and Myers both spoke to how cooperation would result in more championships than any other method. The endearingly spacey Klay Thompson noted that he would get open shots with Durant there, before sheepishly getting back on message and acknowledging KD would probably get open shots too. (This caused some laughter in the room.)Golden States pitch had all of these elements, augmented by a Jerry West phone call. Its difficult to determine if any speeches were needed, though. Most of the actors here knew each other. It would be naive to think communication was confined to a room in the Hamptons.This has been a long process, and one the Warriors were confident in for some time. Some within the organization believed Russell Westbrook and Durant had some chemistry issues in Oklahoma City, and in those issues lay an opening. The Warriors could offer glory, brotherhood and an unselfish playing style, not to mention Bay Area business opportunities.Still, there were no guarantees and despite whatever assurances were offered, Warriors officials were nervous until the news broke officially. So much planning could have been dashed in a decision Durant made in an instant. Its staggering to consider all that had to go right.The Warriors were helped by Currys ankle blessing them with the best contract in sports. They were helped by Thompson agreeing to a max-ish contract that wasnt pegged to the rising salary cap. They were helped by Green accepting a below-market deal. They were helped by the players union rejecting cap smoothing, which opened up the space needed to get Durant in 2016. Myers needed to be better than great and just as fortunate.When asked how long planning for Durant took, a Warriors official quipped, About three light-years. Then, a correction: Actually, light-years is a measure of distance, not time.In a short period of time, Golden State leaped forward a great distance, far beyond any reasonable expectation and possibly beyond anything weve ever seen in the sport. This team looks more complementary than the feared 2010 Miami Heat, especially after the cheap acquisition of center Zaza Pachulia. The best-shooting team ever just added Kevin Durant. Its a staggering reality to behold. The power of shared memory just helped launch a basketball team into what feels further than futuristic. ' ' '