The Real Life Air Up There

Now this is the kind of Tanzanian orphan I think we should be trying to save.




If I could play Jimmy Dolan, I would.




Only God knows what might have happened had this kid from Dar es Salaam been born in Arusha ten years after his real birthday, February 16, 1987. A kid that tall definitely would have been a regular at our court in Soweto, and a kid that tall definitely would have caught my eye.

And UVa would have been making room in admissions for one very tall, very athletic Mbongo baller about seven years down the line.

Hasheem Thabeet -- born in Tanzania as Hashim Thabit Manka, only to change it to the Americanized version soon to be called out by David Stern at the NBA Draft -- would have qualified for our sponsorship program had our NGO existed when he was growing up in Dar es Salaam during the 1990's. The TZ government defines the word yatima, "orphan," as any child who has lost at least one parent. Whether or not this semantical tweak is a marketing ploy (the more "orphans" a country has, the more attention it gets from Western NGO's) or a reflection of cultural differences, I don't care. Hasheem Thabeet, whose dad died during his childhood, would have been the greatest yatima in the history of the ACC.

The man is a giant: 7'3", 265, with a wingspan of 7'5". At the time that the NY Times article Mr. Booth sent me went to press (I had never even heard of Thabeet until then), he had more blocked shots (127) than nine Big East teams. MORE BLOCKED SHOTS THAN NINE BIG EAST TEAMS. And he's using his talents to send UConn into the Tournament ready to make some noise.

Man, could we have used this kid at Soweto. Hunter and I play on a guard-heavy team that knows nothing of rebounding or defense. It's fitting, I guess, that we're called the Kings; circa 2002 Kings, of course.

When I first arrived in TZ back in July, my uncle Kenny emailed me to say that Penders was looking for a big man in the Patandi region to help with the boards, preferably 6'8" or bigger. Jeep made the obvious "The Air Up There" joke when he saw the photo of me with my Maasai admirers at the Bush appearance.




And even I had someone ask this dude how old he was, and whether or not he'd ever played basketball.

(He's 28, and he's never played. Too little, too late.)

But I just didn't realize that I was too late. My real life Air Up There'er had already made his way to Houston, where he played high school ball at Cypress Christian, and then onto Connecticut, where he's following in the footsteps of two other big men from H-Town, Jake Voskuhl and Emeka Okafor.

As if he wasn't cool enough in my eyes -- a future NBA player who speaks fluent Swahili -- Thabeet played high school basketball in Houston. Nimechelewa.