LA Clippers should come to Louisville

I was the face of Louisville, as a freshman.

I spent two and a half years in Louisville, and I loved it.

I worked at a Books-a-Million in Louisville for several years.

I have known Kofi for such a long time. We were in developmental together in Louisville.

I was the lead recruiter at Louisville. I think I signed four or five guys before I left.

She was seriously staring. Which was what you did when you got a gander at a man who is hung like a Louisville Slugger.

Democrats in Louisville were led by Courier-Journal editor Henry Watterson and were implacably opposed to blacks voting.

I had been playing for a while, and I asked Louisville Slugger to send me a dozen flame treated bats. But when I got it, I realized they had sent me a box of ashes.

When I started out back in Louisville, there was Harry Collins. He was my first teacher. He saw that I was so obsessed with magic that he taught me the love of magic.

I ran for president of the student council at my high school in Louisville. And ran against a guy who I thought was better known and little bit better student and managed to win.

Everybody always thinks you have to move out of the city and go where the music industry is, but it's possible in Louisville, and it's possible anywhere. You just have to believe.

My aunt played upright bass in the Louisville Orchestra, and I was always really impressed by her musical ability. I found it really fascinating as a kid that one could play music for a living.

I'm probably not supposed to say this, but the truth is, there were so many times when I thought about quitting basketball, even when I was at Louisville. My freshman year, I shot 18 for 72 from three.

One day I'm lugging walls back and forth in Louisville, and the next day I'm at Cannes giving interviews next to Ben Kingsley. I'm nowhere near cynical or jaded enough not to be incredibly thrilled by that.

All the Southerners think we're Yanks, and all the Yanks think we're Southerners, and all the Midwesterners think we're East. Everybody's always wrong about Louisville. That's kind of why I love it so much.

At a tiny station in New Albany, Indiana, which is right across from the river from Louisville, Kentucky, where I grew up. The Louisville stations were loath to hire beginners, so I had to go across the river.

I can't wait to see someone else from Louisville make a hit song 'cos that'd be dope. I can only imagine how J Cole would feel if somebody just came out of Fayetteville and started booming with some crazy records.

I'm from Louisville, Kentucky, and nobody gets out of there. So I'm like, how am I gonna get out of there? Nobody else can. So it took some time. The struggle made me realize I didn't really want to be 'normal' anymore.

I attended the University of Louisville my freshman year, transferred to what was then Western Kentucky State Teachers College for my sophomore and junior years, and then graduated from the University of Louisville in the summer of 1961.

The only thing I do to my bat is put some tape around the handle to build it up a little bit because I broke my finger about six years ago and can't really close it the way I want to. Other than that, the same bat, same Louisville Sluggers.

Whenever you fly into Louisville, you see a sign that says, 'It's Possible Here.' I remember my first time seeing it - I think I was coming home from the studio in L.A. - I was working on my debut album, and I just thought, 'Wow, it is possible here.'

I don't get into these petty things, Kentucky-Louisville. To me, it's nonsense... There will be people at Kentucky that will have a nervous breakdown if they lose to us... They've got to put the fences up on bridges. There will be people consumed by Louisville.

Well, I got pretty good and went on the road with a group. We starved. At that time I didn't realize that you'd work one gig in Kansas City, the next in Florida and the next gig will be in Louisville. You know, a thousand miles a night. That was really rough, man.

When I was in high school, my uncle, who went to the races quite a bit, got me interested. Then when I went to college at Southern Illinois University, just a few hours from Louisville, we used to go to the Kentucky Derby, and I got to see Secretariat and Riva Ridge win.

Only once in a thousand years or so do we get to hear a Mozart or see a Picasso or read a Shakespeare. Ali was one of them, and yet at his heart, he was still a kid from Louisville who ran with the gods and walked with the crippled and smiled at the foolishness of it all.

I've always loved horses. I had one horse when I was in high school, but I had to sell him because we moved to Germany, and it ripped my heart out, so I never wanted to go through that pain again. When we moved to Cincinnati and Louisville, Kentucky, I was able to ride then.

In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers.

I unloaded planes for UPS in Louisville, Kentucky. It only was bad because it was called 'Earn to Learn,' where you pay for your tuition for college, but you have to work graveyard shift - midnight to eight A.M. - and then go to school at nine or 10 A.M. I was a zombie after two semesters.

Louisville, Colorado, which was just voted by CNN and Money magazine as the best place to live, is a veritable Whitopia that is unaffected by the housing crisis and even the severe recession. You look at the best places to live, according to Money's 2009 list, and 9 of the 10 are Whitopias.

I plan to coach at University of Louisville for as long as I can maintain the passion I have for the game of basketball. I don't want to coach anywhere else. I don't believe in anything else as much as I believe in this university and this state. I want to coach as long as they will have me.

I sort of tried to get a basketball scholarship out of high school, but that didn't happen. Then I started working for UPS, and that paid for tuition for school. I moved to a bigger town, Louisville. I did it for a year. I had to work the graveyard shift. And then you get off at eight for classes, so that sucked. Then I dropped out.

I was a very quiet, shy child. I grew up in a small town, Louisville, Kentucky, and there weren't too many Hawaiian-Filipino girls, so I stuck out like a sore thumb. I didn't look like everyone else and didn't feel I belonged... But these things only build character and make you stronger. It taught me to grow into the woman I was to become.

Once the record was mine, I had to use it like a Louisville Slugger. I believed, and still do, that there was a reason why I was chosen to break the record. I feel it's my task to carry on where Jackie Robinson left off, and I only know of one way to go about it. It's the only way I've ever had of dealing with things like fastballs and bigotry -- keep swinging at them.

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