As you prepare for tonight's WCC Championship Game (6 pm on ESPN) between Gonzaga and Saint Mary's, take a moment to give a look at this exhaustive oral history of the magical basketball season of 2005-2006, when Spokane's own Adam Morrison and Duke's J.J. Reddick were lighting up scoreboards and — for some weird reason — pissing off a lot of fans.
The NBCSports piece by Rob Dauster is rich in nostalgia as it tells of how the nation became captivated with the battle between Morrison and Reddick for the NCAA scoring title, and maybe even a national title.
I spent some time with Morrison a couple years ago, profiling him as he transitioned from his pro career to a stint as an assistant coach at Gonzaga. We talked about how he dealt with the sudden and immense fame he was inundated with that season. But here's a great quote about that same subject from this piece.
“It got to a point where it was hard for me to go anywhere. It gets to be, ‘I’ve signed three balls for you and now you’re mad I won’t sign the fourth because you want to throw it on eBay?’ As a young kid how do you interact with that situation? Because it’s never presented to you. In any situation in life, nobody gets practice on being a celebrity or whatever you want to call it. It just gets thrown on you. But it was crazy for a while. I couldn’t go anywhere.”
