Manute Bol: Most Valuable Helper
June 23, 2010
Sports stars often make headlines with spectacular misconduct, and they don’t use their celebrity enough to make the world a better place. But every now and then, along comes a star as gifted ethically as athletically — and I’m thinking now of one of the greatest basketball players ever.
Certainly not one of the best shooters, for he averaged only 2.6 points a game. But Manute Bol, at more than 7 feet 6 inches tall, was a moral giant who was unsurpassed in leveraging his fame on behalf of the neediest people on earth.
Bol died on Saturday from a noxious mix of ailments, exacerbated by his insistence on working in Sudan to build schools and forestall a new civil war. Bol’s great dream was to build 41 new schools across Sudan (he admired the first President Bush, hence the No. 41).
It’s a lofty dream, particularly because he is no longer around to speak at fund-raisers. It’s almost as inconceivable as the dream he had when he was an African cattle-herder aspiring to play in the N.B.A. — and this too can be a slam-dunk, posthumously, if his fans help out.
If each admirer chipped in the cost of a ticket to just one game, if each of his former teams agreed to match donations, if a few current and former N.B.A. stars agreed to stand in for Bol at fund-raisers, why then schools would sprout all across Sudan.
The first of Bol’s 41 schools is now approaching completion in his childhood village, said Tom Prichard, executive director of Sudan Sunrise, the charity that Bol used to build his schools. Forty to go.
Bol grew up herding cattle. Twice he ran away in hopes of attending school, but he never got much formal education. He moved to the United States and played in the N.B.A. from 1985 to 1995, setting a rookie record for blocking shots. He was a curiosity, the tallest player in the league when he started.
As Bol began playing before large crowds in America, his homeland exploded in violence. Northern Sudan waged a savage war against the South, costing roughly two million lives. American officials and news organizations mostly looked the other way, but Bol worked passionately to ease the suffering.
One summer, Bol button-holed more than 45 members of Congress, trying to get them to pay attention to the slaughter. He donated most of his basketball wealth to help the people of southern Sudan, and he flew into war zones to highlight their suffering. Sudan bombed camps that he visited, perhaps in an effort to assassinate him.
Some 250 people in his extended family were killed in the war, Bol estimated, many of them by Sudanese soldiers from Darfur. Yet when the Sudanese Army turned on Darfur in 2003, he was one of the southern Sudanese who led the way in protesting the slaughter in Darfur.
Bol envisioned co-ed, multifaith schools in which Christians in southern Sudan studied alongside Muslims from northern Sudan. Darfuri Muslims have been helping to build the first school, in Bol’s hometown of Turalei, a two-and-a-half day drive from the nearest paved road.
Robert McFarlane, a former national security adviser to former President Ronald Reagan, traveled late last year with Bol to Turalei and gushes about what a “giant heart of gold” Bol had. Mr. McFarlane told me: “The people of Turalei almost worshiped Manute for his commitment to make schools available for their kids.”
Critics sometimes derided Bol’s kooky publicity stunts, like participating in a celebrity boxing match or putting on ice skates to become the world’s “tallest hockey player.” Bol shrugged off the scorn because he seemed to care less about his dignity than he did about raising money for schools.
Bol made his American home in Olathe, Kan., and a local paper, The Kansas City Star, made a larger point a few weeks before he died:
“Bol symbolizes an unfortunate side of our sports obsession and how we measure the worth of those who play,” The Star noted. “The best athletes get the love, most times regardless of what they do away from sport. Bol, doing the work of a saint, is largely ignored.”
A new civil war may be brewing today in Sudan: The South is expected to secede early next year in accordance with an international treaty, and many fear that the North will unleash war rather than lose oil wells in the South. President Obama and his administration have been weak and ineffective toward Sudan in ways that make another horrific war there more likely. We can only hope that President Obama and his aides will be bolstered by Bol’s gumption and moral compass.
Bol will never be able to cut the ribbon at the schools he dreamed of. But we can pick up where he left off. In a world with so much athletic narcissism, let’s celebrate a Most Valuable Humanitarian by building schools through his charity, www.SudanSunrise.org.
US: Slavery in Mauritania Report 2010
Mauritania (Tier 3)
Mauritania is a source and destination country for men, women, and children subjected to trafficking in persons, specifically conditions of forced labor and commercial sexual exploitation. Some women, men, and children from traditional slave castes are subjected to slavery- related practices, rooted in ancestral master-slave relationships, which continue to exist in a limited fashion in both rural and urban settings. These individuals, held for generations by slave-holding families, may be forced to work without pay as cattle herders and household help. Mauritanian and West African boys – referred to as talibe – are recruited to study at Koranic schools, but are sometimes subsequently subjected to forced begging within the country by religious teachers known as marabouts. Girls have been trafficked internally and from neighboring West African countries such as Mali, Senegal, and The Gambia for involuntary domestic servitude. Mauritanian girls have been married off to wealthy men from the Middle East and taken there in some cases for forced prostitution. Mauritanian women are forced into prostitution within the country, as well as in Gulf States.
The Government of Mauritania does not fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking and is not making significant efforts to do so. The government did not show evidence of significant progress in prosecuting and punishing trafficking offenders, protecting trafficking victims, and preventing new incidents of trafficking. Despite its acknowledgment of trafficking as a problem, the government is reluctant to acknowledge that de facto slavery currently exists in Mauritania, and prefers to talk about “the consequences of slavery.” The government has stated it is willing to take action, but does not have the necessary resources to fund needed services, such as shelters for trafficking victims, legal assistance, and training in life-skills and income generating activities. Certain government and civil society leaders have expressed a willingness to work with foreign partners to improve the country’s human rights record; however, in 2009, prosecutions of forced labor or forced prostitution offenses were nonexistent and no government programs were put in place to assist victims of such crimes. Therefore, Mauritania remains on Tier 3.
Recommendations for Mauritania: Take steps to investigate and prosecute trafficking offenses; in partnership with NGOs, where possible, improve the government’s capacity to assess law enforcement efforts against human trafficking; consider measures allowing civil society organizations to file complaints on behalf of slaves; provide slaves with land and other resources to live freely; construct a shelter for human trafficking and slavery victims; and provide support for and access to legal assistance for trafficking victims.
Prosecution
The government did not demonstrate increased overall law enforcement efforts during the reporting period. Mauritanian law prohibits all forms of trafficking through its 2003 Law Against Trafficking in Persons, which prescribes penalties of from five to 10 years’ imprisonment; these penalties are sufficiently stringent and exceed those prescribed for rape. Slavery is prohibited by Law 2007-048, which was enacted in September 2007. This law defines slavery and prescribes a sufficiently stringent penalty of from five to 10 years’ imprisonment. The law’s effectiveness, however, is hampered by its requirement that slaves file a legal complaint before a prosecution can be pursued, as well as its barring of NGOs from filing complaints on behalf of slaves. Many slaves are illiterate and unable to complete the paperwork involved in filing a complaint. According to the Ministry of Justice, there were neither investigations or prosecutions of trafficking offenses nor convictions or sentences of trafficking offenders in 2009. A local human rights organization reported that judges refused to investigate two child slavery cases brought to them during the year, either on slavery or child abuse grounds. The parties reached an informal agreement outside the court, and the children remained with their slave-masters. The government provided no support for programs to assist victims systematically to file complaints on slavery.
Protection
The Government of Mauritania demonstrated minimal efforts to protect victims of human trafficking, including of traditional slavery. In 2009, the government’s National Center for the Protection of Children in Difficulty provided shelter for 270 children, including 60 talibes identified in Nouakchott, the capital. This center returned children to their families or imams, and asked for guarantees that the children would not be sent back to the streets to beg. Government-provided access to legal and medical services was very limited, and the government did not offer shelter or long-term housing benefits to victims aside from the aforementioned center for talibes. The government did not have a referral process in place to transfer victims who were detained, arrested, or placed in protective custody by law enforcement authorities to institutions that provided short- or long-term care. The government’s law enforcement, immigration, and social services personnel did not have a formal system of proactively identifying victims of trafficking among high-risk persons with whom they came in contact. Illegal migrants were detained and placed in the Migrant Detention Center at Nouadhibou until their expulsion from the country, without the government making any effort to identify trafficking victims among them. Women suspected of prostitution were often jailed. The government made no attempts to screen these women for victimization. The government did not encourage victims to assist in the investigation and prosecution of human trafficking cases, and there were no precedents of victims filing civil suits or seeking legal action against trafficking offenders. In slavery cases, civil society representatives claimed that judges attempted to broker informal agreements between the masters and disgruntled slaves. Courts often dropped cases and avoided conducting investigations.
Prevention
The Government of Mauritania made inadequate efforts to raise awareness of trafficking during the last year. In 2009, the government, in conjunction with civil society, conducted a public awareness campaign in local newspapers about the plight of domestic workers, and also about the 2007 anti-slavery law, as part of the government’s Program to Eradicate the Consequences of Slavery. The government did not monitor immigration and emigration patterns for evidence of trafficking. There was no mechanism for coordination and communication between various agencies on trafficking-related matters. In 2009, the government worked in association with an international organization to draft a National Action Plan to Fight Trafficking in Persons, to be released in 2010. The government made no efforts to reduce the demand for forced labor.
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US: Slavery in Sudan Report 2010
SUDAN (Tier 3)
Sudan is a source, transit, and destination country for men, women, and children subjected to trafficking in persons, specifically conditions of forced labor and forced prostitution. Sudanese women and girls, particularly those from rural areas or who are internally displaced, are trafficked into domestic servitude in homes throughout the country; some of these girls are subsequently sexually abused by male occupants or forced to engage in commercial sex acts. Sudanese girls also engage in prostitution within the country, at times with the assistance of third parties, including law enforcement officials. Sudanese women and girls are subjected to involuntary domestic servitude in Middle Eastern countries, such as Bahrain and Qatar, and to forced prostitution in European countries. Sudanese children transit Yemen to Saudi Arabia for use in forced begging. Sudanese gang members reportedly coerce other young Sudanese refugees into prostitution in nightclubs in Egypt. Sudanese children may be exploited in prostitution in Sudanese refugee camps located in eastern Chad.
Sudan is a transit and destination country for Ethiopian and Eritrean women subjected to involuntary domestic servitude in Sudan and Middle Eastern countries, as well as a destination for Ethiopians and Somalis victimized by forced prostitution. Agents recruit young women from Ethiopia’s Oromia region with promises of high-paying employment as domestic workers in Sudan, only to force them into prostitution in brothels in Khartoum or near Sudan’s oil fields and mining camps.
Thousands of Dinka women and children, and a lesser number of children from the Nuba tribe, were abducted and subsequently enslaved by members of the Missiriya and Rizeigat tribes during the concluded north-south civil war. A portion of those enslaved continue to remain with their captors. While there have been no known new abductions of Dinka by members of Baggara tribes in a number of years, inter-tribal abductions continue between African tribes in southern Sudan, especially in Jonglei and Eastern Equatoria States; hundreds of children were abducted in 2009 during cattle raids and conflicts between rival tribes.
A research study published in January 2009 documented that, as part of the Darfur conflict, government-supported militia, like the Janjaweed and the Popular Defense Forces, together with elements of the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF), systematically abducted civilians between 2003 and 2007, mostly from the Fur, Massalit, and Zaghawa ethnic groups, for commercial sexual exploitation and forced labor. Abducted women and girls are subjected to sexual exploitation and forced domestic and agricultural labor, while men and boys are subjected to forced labor in agriculture, herding, portering goods, and involuntary domestic servitude; some of these individuals remained captive at the end of the reporting period. It is unknown whether any such new abductions occurred during 2009.
Forcible recruitment of adults and particularly children by virtually all armed groups, including government forces, involved in Sudan’s concluded north-south civil war was previously commonplace; an estimated 10,000 children still associated with various armed militias in southern Sudan await demobilization and reintegration into their communities of origin. Although the high command of the Government of Southern Sudan’s (GOSS) army, the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), committed to preventing recruitment of and releasing all children from its ranks, approximately 1,200 children, both boys and girls, remained with the group in December 2009.
Sudanese children are conscripted, at times through abduction, and exploited by armed groups – including the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), all Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) factions, Janjaweed militia, and Chadian opposition forces – in Sudan’s waning conflict in Darfur. The JEM continued to forcibly recruit children in 2009, as did other rebel and Janjaweed militia, albeit on a lower level than in previous years. Re-recruitment of demobilized child soldiers continues to be a problem in Blue Nile State.
The Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) continues to harbor enslaved Sudanese, Congolese, and Ugandan children in southern Sudan for use as cooks, porters, and combatants; some of these children are also taken back and forth across borders into Central African Republic or the Democratic Republic of the Congo. UN/OCHA reported at least 197 LRA-related new abductions in Western Equatoria and Western Bahr el-Ghazal Provinces between January and November 2009.
The Government of National Unity (GNU) of Sudan does not fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking and is not making significant efforts to do so. While the government took some steps to enact relevant legislation and demobilize child soldiers during the reporting period, combating human trafficking through law enforcement, protection, or prevention measures was not a priority. The GNU did not acknowledge that forced labor or forced prostitution exist within the country. The Sudanese government neither published data regarding its efforts to combat human trafficking during the year nor responded to requests to provide information for this report.
Recommendations for Sudan: Acknowledge the existence of a multi-faceted human trafficking problem; enact a comprehensive legal regime to define and address human trafficking crimes and harmonize various existing legal statutes; increase efforts to investigate suspected human trafficking cases, prosecute trafficking offenses, and convict trafficking offenders; establish an official process for law enforcement officials to identify trafficking victims among vulnerable groups and refer them for assistance; demobilize all remaining child soldiers from the ranks of governmental armed forces, as well as those of aligned militias; launch a public awareness campaign to educate government officials and the general public on the nature and dangers of human trafficking; take steps to identify and provide protective services to all types of trafficking victims found within the country, particularly those exploited in domestic servitude or commercial sexual exploitation; and make a much stronger effort, through a comprehensive policy approach that involves all vested parties, to identify, retrieve, and reintegrate abductees who remain in situations of enslavement.
Prosecution
The government’s anti-trafficking law enforcement efforts were negligible during the reporting period; it did not investigate or prosecute any suspected trafficking cases and had little ability to establish authority or a law enforcement presence in some regions. The Criminal Act of 1991 does not prohibit all forms of trafficking in persons, though its Articles 155, 156, and 163 criminalize operating a place of prostitution, inducing or abducting someone to engage in prostitution (seduction), and forced labor, respectively. Penalties prescribed under these statutes – of up to five years’ imprisonment for brothel keeping and seduction, and one year’s imprisonment or a fine for forced labor – are neither sufficiently stringent nor commensurate with those prescribed for other serious crimes, such as rape. Nevertheless, no trafficker has ever been prosecuted under these articles. In January 2010, the GNU National Assembly enacted the Child Act of 2008. This Act prohibits, but does not prescribe punishments for, forced child labor, child prostitution and sex trafficking, and the recruitment of children under the age of 18 into armed forces or groups; it includes provisions, however, for the rehabilitation and reintegration of children victimized by such crimes. Some states, such as Southern Kordofan, instituted their own Child Act based on the national law. The Sudan Armed Forces Act of 2007 prohibits the act of recruiting children under 18 years of age, as well as abduction and enslavement; the act prescribes penalties of up to five years’ imprisonment for child recruitment and up to 10 years’ imprisonment for enslavement. The Southern Sudan Child Act of 2008 prohibits the recruitment and use of children for military or paramilitary activities and prescribes punishments of up to 10 years’ imprisonment for such crimes. The Southern Sudan Penal Code Act prohibits and prescribes punishments of up to seven years’ imprisonment for unlawful compulsory labor, including abduction or transfer of control over a person for such purposes; the Act also criminalizes the buying or selling of a child for the purpose of prostitution and prescribes a punishment of up to 14 years’ imprisonment. In 2009, the Southern Sudan Ministry of Labor drafted an omnibus Labor Act to further protect against forced and child labor; it was not passed during the most recent legislative session. The government neither documented its anti-trafficking law enforcement efforts, if any, nor provided specialized anti- trafficking training to law enforcement, prosecutorial, and judicial personnel during the year.
Protection
The GNU made only minimal efforts to protect victims of trafficking during the past year, and these efforts focused primarily on the demobilization of child soldiers. The government did not publicly acknowledge that children are exploited in prostitution or involuntary domestic servitude in Sudan nor did it take steps to identify and provide protective services to such victims. The government did not employ a system for proactively identifying trafficking victims among vulnerable populations or a referral process to transfer victims to organizations providing care. The GNU and the GOSS provided little to no protection for victims of trafficking crimes; Sudan has few victim care facilities readily accessible to trafficking victims and the government did not provide access to legal, medical, or psychological services. Police child and family protection units in Khartoum, Western Darfur, Northern Darfur, Southern Kordofan, Northern Kordofan, and Gedaref States offered legal aid and psychosocial support to some victims of abuse and sexual violence during the year; these units were not fully operational due to lack of staff and equipment, and it is unknown whether they provided services to trafficking victims. In late 2009 and early 2010, however, at least 36 abducted children were identified and freed from their captors following negotiations led by county and state officials in Jonglei State. Local, county, and state officials forged partnerships with the UN Mission in Sudan (UNMIS), UNICEF, and an international NGO to return the children to their home areas and reunite them with their families. The government did not encourage victims’ assistance in the investigation and prosecution of trafficking crimes or provide legal alternatives to the removal of foreign victims to countries where they would face hardship or retribution. During the reporting period, the government punished some trafficking victims for crimes committed as a direct result of being trafficked. Though it pardoned and released more than 100 children associated with the JEM in the previous reporting period, the government sentenced six child soldiers to death in 2009 for participating in JEM’s May 2008 attack on Omdurman.
Since April 2009, the Southern Sudan Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reintegration Commission (SSDDRC), with UNICEF support, identified and registered 134 child soldiers in SPLA barracks in the towns of Torit, Mapel, Wunyik, Duar, Panpandiar, Quffah, and Yafta. In July 2009, the SPLA demobilized five children in Duar, followed by 43 children in Mapel in September. In January 2010, the SPLA 8th Division in Panpandiar released 10 children to the care of UNMIS and UNICEF. In addition, the SPLA reported the demobilization in early 2010 of one child in Nasir, 15 in Panuarang (Upper Nile State), 20 in New Kush, and 15 from the SPLA General Headquarters. None of the 73 children identified in Wunyik were registered or released due to lack of cooperation by the corresponding SPLA division. The SSDDRC, UNICEF, and an international NGO rehabilitated a compound in Malualkon to serve as an interim care center providing accommodation to children demobilized in Mapel and Wunyik. In November 2009, the SPLA signed an action plan committing itself to end the use of child soldiers and ensure their release and reintegration within one year. The plan prescribes punishment for those within the SPLA who recruit or use children, establishes child protection units within its ranks, and removes all children from the SPLA payroll to discourage them from remaining or joining the army. Implementation of the plan is behind schedule, as the SPLA drafted, but has yet to formally approve, the required terms of reference. The SPLA, however, launched a Child Protection Unit, with representatives at division, brigade, battalion, and company level, to oversee implementation of the plan, compliance with child protection standards at major SPLA bases, and removal of children from SPLA payrolls.
During the reporting period, the North Sudan DDR Commission (NSDDRC), the Security Arrangement Commission of the Transitional Darfur Regional Authority, and UNICEF supported the first release of children from armed groups who are signatories to the Darfur Peace Agreement. Of the 2,000 children’s names submitted by these groups for formal demobilization in all three states, 177 children were released in July 2009 and reunified with families during ceremonies in the North Darfur towns of Torra, Malha, and Kafod. It is unknown whether children were demobilized from the Sudan Armed Forces or associated militias during the year. In 2009, the NSDDRC and UNICEF signed a memorandum of understanding with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to undertake family tracing activities, and began searching for potential partners to provide reintegration services for these children.
The Committee for the Eradication of Abduction of Women and Children (CEAWC), established in 1999 to facilitate the safe return of abducted and enslaved individuals to their families, was not operational during the reporting period. Its most recent retrieval and transport missions took place in March 2008 with GOSS funding; since that time, neither the GNU nor the GOSS provided CEAWC with funding for the transport and reunification of previously identified abductees with their families. The GNU made no efforts to assist victims of abduction and enslavement in the country during the reporting period.
Prevention
The government made limited efforts during the reporting period aimed at the prevention of trafficking. Neither the GNU nor the GOSS conducted any anti-trafficking information or education campaigns. Senior GOSS leadership reportedly participated in press conferences and seminars to raise awareness of the trafficking problem in southern Sudan. In 2009, the Southern Sudan Human Rights Commissioner requested assistance from the United Nations in developing an anti-trafficking plan. The government did not take any known measures during the reporting period to reduce the demand for forced labor or commercial sex acts. Sudan is not a party to the 2000 UN TIP Protocol.
Manute Bol: Height, and depth
By Bob Ryan, Globe Columnist
June 22, 2010
He didn’t know how to hold a pencil.
This is Manute Bol we’re talking about. He was a Dinka tribesman from southern Sudan who had been brought to America, as if in a hokey movie, to play a strange game in which 10 people in skimpy outfits ran around and bounced a ball, with the object to put the ball through an orange ring. But to play for an American college he needed to be educated in English as a second language, and that was an interesting proposition since in his previous life, one that revolved around cows, there never had been a need to hold a writing implement.
Manute Bol was, without doubt, the most unlikely player in the 64-year history of the National Basketball Association.
There have been other Africans, but none who came from as far away from Western civilization as this sweet, humble, humorous, and, above all, generous man who died Saturday of kidney failure at age 47 in Charlottesville, Va.
“He was the Golden Fleece,’’ says Leigh Montville, his biographer. “He was the Great Unknown, the Great Game Changer, the Great Everything. He was Sidd Finch. But he was real.’’
The story was too improbable to make up. “In 1979 he had never heard of basketball,’’ Montville points out. “Six years later he was in the NBA.’’
All that mattered was that he was 7 feet 7 inches. As basketball people are fond of saying, you can’t teach height.
Montville is the former Globe and Sports Illustrated writer and columnist, as well as the man who authored acclaimed biographies of Ted Williams and Babe Ruth, which might suggest that he only deals in the perceived big stories. But he always has had a fascination with the offbeat, and so he was the perfectly logical person to tackle the subject of Bol, which he did in his wonderful 1993 biography “Manute: The Center of Two Worlds.’’
“Of all the books I’ve done,’’ Montville says, “the one I enjoyed the most was Manute’s. For one thing, it’s the only one that got me to Khartoum.’’
Ah, Khartoum. “I was staying in a Best Western,’’ Montville points out, “which sounds fine. But it was under martial law, and things were locked up by 10:30 at night. There were dirt roads. Someone said it was like Dodge City. And when it got dark, dogs took over the city. And then you had the 16-year-old kids with AK 47s.’’
But for Manute Bol, who had spent his entire life doing what Dinka tribesmen did, his first trip to Khartoum was like going to Vegas.
How he got there, and why, is all detailed in the book. Last time I checked, Amazon was offering eight new copies and 60 used ones (hint, hint). Basketball junkies will not be surprised to learn that a central figure in the story was our old friend, Kevin Mackey, or that his cohort was a Runyonesque figure named Don Feeley, who was Mackey’s Mackey, if you will. The ubiquitous Leo Papile is likewise front and center, which actually makes this a Boston story. I’ll just leave you hanging by saying that it all started with a photograph.
Bol’s American saga included stops at the University of Bridgeport and a summer with the Rhode Island Gulls of the United States Basketball League, said Gulls located in Newport. After two years at Bridgeport he entered the NBA in 1985 as a second-round pick of the Washington Bullets (believe me, I’m condensing), for whom he led the league in blocked shots as a rookie. His offense was laughably rudimentary, but the Bullets were quite willing to live with that.
Early that first season I went to Washington to do a piece on Boston College star Michael Adams. Manute must have blocked 117 shots that day, or something close to it. Afterward, Bullets general manager Bob Ferry said to me, “Manute Bol [bleeps] up a game as much as anyone I’ve ever seen.’’
The game I’ll never forget took place March 26, 1987, when he led the Bullets to victory over the Celtics by blocking 12 shots and grabbing 17 rebounds. In the first quarter he had the quinella, blocking the starting five. I repeat: in the first quarter. Said Washington coach Kevin Loughery, “He has the greatest defensive effect of anybody since Bill Russell. You are often positive he can’t get your shot, but he does, because he doesn’t even have to jump.’’ I know I never saw anyone else ever get Kevin McHale’s turnaround.
His offense remained primitive in part, as Montville explains, because he suffered from a deformity that left his fingers in a curled position. “He was 7-7, but he could not palm a basketball,’’ Montville explains. “He had to dunk with two hands.’’ That he later was turned into something of a 3-point shooter by Don Nelson only adds to the saga.
As endearing a personality as he was, the man was pretty high maintenance, as well as offensively challenged, and the Bullets sent him to Golden State after three years. He led the league in blocked shots for a second time in 1988-89, but the Warriors dealt him to Philadelphia two years later.
“Nobody really ever got the payoff, did they?’’ Montville says. “Mackey never did. He never played for him at Cleveland State. Bruce Webster at Bridgeport was going to schedule up big-time if Manute had stayed for another year, so he didn’t. You can’t say the Bullets or Warriors did.’’
Bol earned a little over $5 million in the NBA, and a great deal of it went back to his people. He spent his entire post-NBA life trying to aid the plight of his countrymen. Then, as now, Sudan was engaged in a brutal civil war. In the end, he was a person of such stature that both sides wished to exploit him.
Some people wonder how he lasted 10 years and 653 games (including postseason) when there wasn’t a whole lot more than 200 pounds stretched onto that 7-7 body, but Montville says Manute offered an explanation: milk.
“He said to me, ‘It’s all in the milk,’ ’’ Montville explains. “ ‘You people drink this two-percent, this pasteurized stuff.’ Then he told me about this summer ritual, the Toc, when you spend the whole summer drinking milk straight from the cow. It’s a contest to see who can fatten up the most. He said the real cow’s milk gives you strong bones, and that’s why he didn’t get hurt despite the fact he was so skinny.’’
Interesting frame of reference, eh? The NBA has never had another like it.
Bob Ryan is a Globe columnist and can be reached at
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http://www.boston.com/sports/basketball/articles/2010/06/22/manute_bol_had_height_of_course_but_even_more_depth/
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