A Game of C-A-T (Or Is It K-A-T)
If we want to insult someone’s intelligence, we might suggest they couldn’t spell “cat” if we spotted them the “c” and the “a.” The put-down works because “cat” is a short, simple, common word. But as I made a video for a friend yesterday, and the word made an appearance, I thought to myself that its path to inclusion in the video was actually somewhat involved.
So the video is not much, really. You just see three people shooting a basketball on an outdoor court. It’s not the whole game, just a few slices I happened to get because I wandered by with a camera. Another lady rebounds for them sometimes.
Those shooting include a Newport News police officer, Basketball Hall of Famer Nancy Lieberman, and ESPN SportsCenter anchor Jay Harris. The rebounder is DeLisha Milton-Jones, the current Old Dominion women’s basketball coach who collected more than 2500 rebounds in her WNBA career.
If you were stuck inside during the early days of the pandemic last year (and who wasn’t?), you might have watched the H-O-R-S-E competition Harris’s network managed to televise. A player takes a shot, and if it goes in, the first opponent who fails to duplicate it gets a letter. Once you accumulated enough letters to spell “horse,” you’re out. Some members of the party last week had a dinner engagement, so they had decided to play an abbreviated version of the game. The most common variant is “P-I-G,” but they played “C-A-T.” Or maybe they should have spelled it “K-A-T” – therein lies the backstory.
In a typical year, Harris hosts Lieberman’s annual charity gala every February. The pandemic affected live events, too, so earlier this year, we did a virtual version (there will be a live version in September – buy your table at NancyLiebermanCharities.org). 2021 marks the event’s tenth anniversary, and so we celebrated a number of the great moments from Dream Balls past. Top-flight celebrities from the worlds of sports and entertainment annually grace the stage, so we had a lot of excellent material from which to choose.
We pre-shot a few of the segments with Nancy and Jay reminiscing about the likes of Toby Keith, Billy Crystal, Diana Nyad, Cynt Marshall, Julius Erving, and Tony Romo. One of Nancy Lieberman’s favorite stories involves Ice Cube calling her “his spirit animal” during his speech. She and Jay riffed on it, and Jay posed the question about what kind of animal she would be. He suggested she might be a meerkat. And that was funny, so it has now become a thing. If you ever steal Jay’s phone and are looking at his text messages from Nancy, you’ll probably see meerkat photos they’ve sent back and forth.
Here’s the thing – that part got cut in the editing of the show (which was my fault – just couldn’t quite fit it in). So the only way you’d know about it is by reading this blog post or by hearing Nancy or Jay reference this inside joke.
But to bring it full circle, that virtual event also included a unique auction item – a chance to play H-O-R-S-E against Nancy. We had Nancy’s son TJ offering tips to bidders about how to beat his mom and had a lot of fun with it. So that resulted in another bit wherein Jay talked a bit of smack to Nancy, threatening to bid on the item and hand her another letter – an “L.” So when they found themselves on the same court, well, competition ensued.
Yesterday was Nancy’s birthday, so I sent her the video of her victory (yes, the Hall of Famer won – no shame there, Jay, but expect some trash talk coming your way). But there’s a bigger picture here. The whole reason any of this happened was because both Jay and Nancy wanted to help people. It’s the reason she recruited Ice Cube to her fundraiser in the first place, the reason Jay donates his time every year, the reason they were hosting the virtual show, and the reason they were in Newport News last week. If you ever stop by that Boys & Girls Club, you’ll notice both their names on the court they donated. You’ll also notice the Newport News PD insignia there, which is why it was appropriate that the officer got to play with them (he had some game, too, even in full uniform). They hope to use the courts to bring kids and cops together in an atmosphere of mutual respect.
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So that’s the story of the game of C-A-T on the Dream Court. At its essence, it’s really one of mutual respect and generosity – it’s as simple as that.
Rush Olson has spent more than two decades directing creative efforts for sports teams and broadcasters. He currently creates ad campaigns, television programs, and related creative projects for sports entities through Rush Olson Creative & Sports, Mint Farm Films, and FourNine Productions.