Tar Heel gets New Yorked
There is an article in the NYT sports section today discussing the poor performance of UNC basketball star Tyler Hansbrough in UNC's loss to Gonzaga in the NIT Season Tip-Off tournament at Madison Square Garden. It's a good article and it gave enough information to pinpoint exactly what happened to the player even if the writer didn't get it. Hansbrough got New Yorked.
The Carolina players went out walking in Times Square. Manhattan is sensory overload. The stimuli to sight, smell, touch, and sound are omnipresent. It takes a toll. In the early 1980's shortly after I moved to Manhattan a friend who lived in a large regional Southern city, who was well traveled and knew New York came to visit me for a long weekend. After heading out from my small apartment for touring in the morning, we returned in the early afternoon and he immediately laid down on the sofa, ran through the remote until he found a Beverly Hillbillies rerun, and went comatose. New York can be overwhelming. Committed Manhattanites leave the city in droves every Friday afternoon to get a recharge from the intensity.
On top of that, I doubt that UNC houses it players at hotels like the Four Seasons, St. Regis, or Mandarin Oriental where the soundproofing insulates you from the cities constant hum or worse. Even normal good hotels are not removed from the street sounds below.
So the simple but correct answer to the heretofore inexplicable performance of the young man from Poplar Bluff, MO who now lives in Chapel Hill, NC is that his energy was sapped by New York. One of Gonzaga's players is quoted as saying that "in the second half he didn't even attack". Hansbrough said that he was not nervous and couldn't explain his "horrible" play. It's a long way from Franklin Street to Broadway.
The Carolina players went out walking in Times Square. Manhattan is sensory overload. The stimuli to sight, smell, touch, and sound are omnipresent. It takes a toll. In the early 1980's shortly after I moved to Manhattan a friend who lived in a large regional Southern city, who was well traveled and knew New York came to visit me for a long weekend. After heading out from my small apartment for touring in the morning, we returned in the early afternoon and he immediately laid down on the sofa, ran through the remote until he found a Beverly Hillbillies rerun, and went comatose. New York can be overwhelming. Committed Manhattanites leave the city in droves every Friday afternoon to get a recharge from the intensity.
On top of that, I doubt that UNC houses it players at hotels like the Four Seasons, St. Regis, or Mandarin Oriental where the soundproofing insulates you from the cities constant hum or worse. Even normal good hotels are not removed from the street sounds below.
So the simple but correct answer to the heretofore inexplicable performance of the young man from Poplar Bluff, MO who now lives in Chapel Hill, NC is that his energy was sapped by New York. One of Gonzaga's players is quoted as saying that "in the second half he didn't even attack". Hansbrough said that he was not nervous and couldn't explain his "horrible" play. It's a long way from Franklin Street to Broadway.
posted by John Borden at 12:23 PM
1 Comments:
My wife says some things never change.
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