It’s sometimes impossible to ignore the symbolism in life.
As one great Oklahoma Sooner prepares to enter into a life in the spotlight of the NBA, another, who stepped away from it some time ago, has left the mortal coil.
After a battle with cancer, Wayman Tisdale died, as you’ve heard by now, Friday morning.
I never got to see Wayman Tisdale play. But he’s one of those college greats who you just know was as good as those who watched him play say he was. Yeah, I’ll take their word for it, but the three All-American nods also lend some credibility. As does his still-standing records at Oklahoma for points and rebounds. For as powerful as Griffin was this season (and last, really), I get the feeling his presence won’t be as strong as the positive one Tisdale’s left in the mid-’80s.
Like Tisdale, I also play music. Like Tisdale did, I love it. To paraphrase the man with one of the best smiles in the history of sports, music was never a fight with him. While he always had a talent for the game of basketball, he sometimes had to work through it. Not with music. He was just drawn to it; it was what he always wanted to do with his life. And that’s what so damn terrific about Tisdale, and why it’s all the more sad he lost his battle with cancer. Tisdale didn’t allow the sport he happened to be pretty damn good at get in the way of what he really wanted to do: funk the hell out of whatever room he was in.
Tisdale was a pretty damn good bass player, and for as worse off the sports world is without him, the music world is even more silent.
