Saying Goodbye to Coach Rab

I know I haven't done much 'writing' in quite some time. I don't know why, I've started several times but have either writer's block or a lack of confidence, not sure, but I just haven't been able to do it. Well, the loss of Coach Rab hit me pretty hard this week, and as many times as he wrote for me while I was at Sports Bubbler, what better way to get back on the horse than to write about Coach Rab? Nowhere near as good as Rab's infamous China Diaries, but here it is....

A Goodbye to Coach Rab

I did not have the pleasure of ever meeting Coach Rab. Defintely my loss. Thanks for your memories Jim. Well done!

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Originally Posted by farmerdoc

I did not have the pleasure of ever meeting Coach Rab. Defintely my loss. Thanks for your memories Jim. Well done!

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Yep, well done.

Jim, Beautiful, absolutely beautiful. Well done and welcome back.

Nice job Jim. It would be interesting to find the kid who Rab talked with in Richmond and see what he is doing these days and how Rab affected his life.

It is not macho for guys to express their feelings in today's society, but that was a damn beautiful love letter (and uplifting and inspiring).

Great stuff IWB!

Great article.
Do you (or anyone) have links to his China Diaries? They were hysterical.

Fantastic write-up, Jim. I was waiting until I got home to read it and finally had the chance this morning. Thanks so much for sharing.

Great read, IWB. It's sad how we sometimes don't know what we have in our midst until we no longer have it. I'm sorry for your loss and MU's loss. RIP, Coach Rab.

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Originally Posted by pbiflyer

Great article.
Do you (or anyone) have links to his China Diaries? They were hysterical.

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Yes and no. When the Journal decided to do away with Sports Bubbler (dumb move - 68,000 individual users per month and a million page views a month = no value? Dumb). Anyway, when they blew it up they deleted every story and video that I had published. I knew it was coming and did start moving videos to Youtube but lost the majority of them.

However, Rab sent me every China Diary to be published to my personal e-mail, so I do have them all. Might start putting them out there for people to enjoy as they were awesome.

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Originally Posted by Jim Ganzer, "IWB"

Yes and no. When the Journal decided to do away with Sports Bubbler (dumb move - 68,000 individual users per month and a million page views a month = no value? Dumb). Anyway, when they blew it up they deleted every story and video that I had published. I knew it was coming and did start moving videos to Youtube but lost the majority of them.

However, Rab sent me every China Diary to be published to my personal e-mail, so I do have them all. Might start putting them out there for people to enjoy as they were awesome.

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If there is enough content publish it as an e-book. I bet his family would get a kick out of it and with the game getting more and more international, I bet a lot of us b-ball junkies would consume it.

Speaking of e-books, I just recently signed up for the digital subscription to the Chicago Tribune - an exact digital version of the paper version 7 days a week plus the Sunday paper delivered to your door plus some really good additional content that includes many of their writers' e-books for free. All for $1.00 a week. I am really impressed. The Sun-Times is doing the same thing for $.99/week.

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Originally Posted by Jim Ganzer, "IWB"

Yes and no. When the Journal decided to do away with Sports Bubbler (dumb move - 68,000 individual users per month and a million page views a month = no value? Dumb). Anyway, when they blew it up they deleted every story and video that I had published. I knew it was coming and did start moving videos to Youtube but lost the majority of them.

However, Rab sent me every China Diary to be published to my personal e-mail, so I do have them all. Might start putting them out there for people to enjoy as they were awesome.

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I think we would all enjoy reading them again. He could have had a great career as a writer as well.

I'd love to read those again, IWB. RIP, Coach Rab. He was one of a kind.

Lovely piece, Jim.

Well done Jim. Rab would be proud of you.

Very moving - Jim. You and Rab both have huge hearts.

I have a lot of these saved still. Here's one from his move from China to Japan.

"Where have you gone, China Diaries
A nation turns its lonely eyes to you...Woo, woo, woo...
What's that you say, Mr. Rabadoo
The China Diaries have left and gone away...hey, hey, hey...

~ Simon and Garfunkel (knock-Off Version)
Miss me?

A funny thing happened on my way way back to China for year three of turtle soup, the meal wheel, NASCAR like taxi rides, the Chinese Basketball Association and some of the world's best basketball officiating...

The plane landed in Japan...

I jumped off and became the new head coach of Link Tochigi Brex of the Japan Basketball Super League. Actually it wasn't that simple, but it was that quick...I was approached in early June by Tochigi and began my tenure in Japan on July 27th. Now if I can work Thailand, Vietnam and Korea into the mix within the next 10 years I can retire a happy and, more than likely, quarantined coach.

I have traded in names of opponents in China, I still can't pronounce, for high end electronic and auto manufacturers like Hitachi, Panasonic, Mitsubishi and Toyota...you'll think of me next time you pop that Lean Cuisine into your Hitachi 760 Microwave Oven..."DING...hey Rab is 3-1 against those guys this year.'

Three years ago I was waking up in Wisconsin...breathig in the fresh, sub zero air...deciding what type of brats to have for breakfast...shoveling my way out of 8 foot snow drifts...

Forrest's mama was right...."life truly is a box of chocolates, you never know what your gonna get...", but if you puncture the back side of those babies with a small fork or your little finger, you can easily find the caramels...just put the others back or bury 'em on the third level...

For the record, (one which I know you could care less about, yet one I keep asking myself "where did it all go wrong?')...the list of coaching stops is now at seven...North Adams, Pullman, Norman, El Paso, Milwaukee, Nanjing and now Utsonumiya, Japan...Coach K eat your heart out...

Asian Basketball rarely makes ESPN, at least not unless a good fight breaks out or Kobe spends the weekend in Beijing. Nope, the last 3 years have been more like lost episodes of "America's Funniest Home Videos", "The Twilight Zone" or "The Andy Griffith Show"...the latter due the fact I had a small forward in China that resembled Barney Fife and a center that was slower that Aunt Bea...

For the better part of the last 3 years I have woke up in cities where I could not understand what 99.9 percent of the people are talking about...that includes one really weird night in Reno, Nevada...

Most days I do more talking with my hands than a United Airlines worker on the tarmac at O'Hare International...


I say "Four Letter Words"...on occasion multiple times...and no one bat's an eye. Sometimes just for kicks I'll go to the grocery store and ask the courteous and polite grocer..."excuse me, where is the f#@*'n <mailto:f#@*'n> milk?"...he just smiles and shakes his head "yes"...can't do that in Peoria, Illinois...


Forgotten how to use a fork...I eat soup with two wooden sticks...I walk the breakfast buffet every morning, lift the lids and peer into a never ending sea of "are you serious?"..."Tony the Tiger" and "Count Chocula" have long since abandoned me...

Stayed in some of the world's finest hotels...I've also bunked in "1 star" joints that would make the FDA, OSHA, TSA, FBI, CIA and the stars of "The World's Dirtiest Jobs" all run for cover. My dad used to say, "when you turn the lights out at night, all hotels are the same."...sadly Dad, that is one piece of logic you missed on.

Taken taxi rides that would scare the racing stripes off of Jeff Gordon...sat in traffic that makes LA's freeways seem like a lonely country road...watched, amazed, as a 70 year old man pedaled down the street with 4 mattresses strapped to his back (his wife in tow with another seven "Hefty" sacks of recyclable plastic containers)...I have seen a family of 5 on a motor scooter and get passed by a family of six...

Learned to work and thrive in tight quarters...25 people on an elevator is an easy day at the office...stayed in hotel rooms that make your walk in closet seem like an 18 room mansion.

Coached former NBA players, college All-Americans, a center that can't dunk, a point guard named Hu (Who), a shooting guard named Moon and a shaggy haired Japanese small forward that is truly the BEST player that nobody knows about...lost games in Beijing, Shanghai and Tokyo...gone "toe to toe" with the Chinese Red Army...practiced in gyms so cold I was waiting for the "Zamboni" to pull out and smooth the ice out on the court...

Received technical fouls on 3 continents...said things to referees that would make my very own mother disown me...OK, not disown, but certainly get me "grounded" for a month...

Worked in gymnasiums and arenas so smoky that you would have thought a basketball game broke out in the middle of the world's largest poker game...

Walked on "The Great Wall', been to the top of the "Tokyo Tower", strolled "The Forbidden City" and had coffee at Starbucks in Hiroshima...the attendant snickering as she poured my 700 Yen Venti Americano...

All this and all I have to show for it are some great knock off watches (some still working), a coaching record no one really cares about, learn how to say "where is the bathroom?" in two languages, been to Western Union so many times I could open my own franchise and mastered the ability to eat peas with chopsticks...

What kind of legacy is that to leave behind?

Sure there's the millions in inheritance money I'll leave behind from when I hit that "POWER BALL" ticket in '92 and didn't tell anyone about it. But money can't by a legacy or memories...it can only buy the things we REALLY care and measure ourselves buy like nice cars, a riding lawnmower, a new set of PING's, power tools, above ground swimming pools and the ability to drop 500.00 dollars each and every time we step foot inside of COSTCO or Sam's Club...nothing says you have arrived like a 4 gallon jar of relish and 9 different kinds of mustard in your refrigerator...and yet when the game is on the line you still go to the French's Yellow...

It's the words people...not DVD's, DVR's or 8 track tapes...all those things will be obsolete by 2020, I know, I couldn't get any good 8 tracks during my last year in China...

It's The Diaries...or in this case the "China Diaries"...tales of the most bizarre, head spinning, "what the hell just happened" basketball experiences any man, woman or child could ever hope to encounter...this is what people can ridicule me about when my time on this earth has passed. Who cares that we dropped a 17 point 2nd half lead to New Mexico State at home during m first year at UTEP?

People want to hear about the McDonald's /Karaoke Bar you and the team had pre-game meal at during the road trip to Beijing.

Those are the stories that leave some serious skid marks...and tears in your eyes...well, tears in my eyes anyway...

The China Diaries" are back...but there is one minor problem.

Now that we are HQ'd in Japan is it really fair to call them the "China Diaries"...here are some other possibilities:

1. "Asian Adventures" - too much like a movie on SpectraVision.
2. "Asian Tales" - nope, see above.
3. "My Center Can't Dunk"
4. "All The Tea in China Can't Buy These Referees"

Naw, let's just stay with the "China Diaries"...why change an average thing...

Until next time...

Sayonara..."

That is just awesome. Thanks for posting Trey and welcome to the board!

trey, thanks so much for sharing. those were absolutely great. I hope you are doing well sir.

Thanks guys. I'd be fine if I could just get home from Denver. I had to miss Rab's memorial service because I was out here for the Donate Life America meeting and all of the flights are still messed up due to that problem in Chicago with the air traffic center.

Hey Trey, I still have my donation logo. Actually printed on the license in Illinois, so I believe it will just continue to get printed whenever I renew it and am up to 120 pints. For the rest of you, according to the web page I just looked at, 37% of the adult population is eligible to donate blood, and about 5% do. Not for everybody, for a bunch of reasons, but if you are part of that 37%, consider dropping in some time. Lots of locations in the Milwaukee area. The people are nice, and they give you cookies.

Glad to hear that - thanks for registering as a donor and for donating blood regularly. I've certainly used quite a bit of A+ along the way over the past 10 years. I would donate blood if I could - but I can't due to the medications that I'm on now for the rest of my life.

BloodCenter of Wisconsin for those of you in Milwaukee and surrounding areas - you can schedule an appointment to donate blood online here: https://web.bcw.edu/bcw/landing.php

Thanks for the reminder, UJ. We moved at the beginning of the year and I haven't donated since. Maybe the wife and I can get in this next week.