“I won the city scoring championship as a senior.”

I grew up in the heart of the Depression.

Cooper was my road roommate, and also happened to be the first African American player drafted by a National Basketball Association team.

We had a strong relationship with Walter Brown, and felt that he was the best owner in the league.

I had endured six years of frustration so I think winning it all meant more to me than most of the others on the team.

There were riots in just about every game we played with Syracuse.

These days I smile benignly at the fights that I see in NBA games. There aren’t any broken noses or black eyes, which happened quite often when I played.

French was my first language.

We lived in Yorkville, which is located on the East End of Manhattan. It’s further east than Hell’s Kitchen, and back then it was the kind of place where the roaches and cockroaches were big enough to carry away small children.

I once heard that Paul Seymour said as much as winning an NBA Championship, he’d like to see the Celtics lose a game after Auerbach brought out the cigar so he could go up to Arnold and stuff the cigar in his face.

The NBA wasn’t a big deal at that time, so it wasn’t really in my career plans.

Bob Brannum was my body guard on the court. He was 6′-6 and built like a bulldog.

It also didn’t take me long to decide that Tri-Cities wasn’t for me, and that I wasn’t going to go there to play basketball.

Do your best when no one is looking.

Every jock gets up and tells the world how lucky he is. But I feel that I may be the luckiest one of all in terms of timing and being at the right place at the right moment-even though, for the last 30 years, I was told I was born 20 years too soon, for obvious reasons.

Some Pakistanis fought for the Taliban. Pakistani extremist groups provided infrastructural support to Al Qaeda. There was a coming and going of Al Qaeda militants and leaders between Afghanistan and Pakistan for several years.

No rural community, no suburban community, can ever possess the distinctive qualities that city dwellers have for centuries given to the world.

Lovers of the town have been content, for the most part, to say they loved it. They do not brag about its uplifting qualities. They have none of the infernal smugness which makes the lover of the country insupportable.

What would it mean to live in a city whose people were changing each other’s despair into hope?– You yourself must change it.

When I get back into the city, it doesn’t matter where you plop me down, I have my friends around me and I feel so blessed.

I love lawyers and bankers, they are my family, but I don’t want to live with them. It doesn’t make a city.

I wasn’t born with a silver spoon in my mouth.

The Potemkin city of which I wish to speak here is none other than our dear Vienna herself.