Basketball is traditionally played by tall guys. Breaking into the NBA with a small increase is almost impossible. But there were also exceptions. The shortest player in league history is point guard Tyrone Curtis (Muggsy) Bogs. His height is only 160 centimeters, which did not prevent him from making an impressive career.
Shotgun Shooting
As a child, Bogs had seen enough of the real horrors. One day he was walking to school and saw a group of strangers beating a passerby with a bat for a wallet with a few dollars.Muggsy himself got into trouble more than once because of his surroundings. When he was five years old, he and his friends broke the window of one of the local shops. An angry owner immediately appeared from the door with a shotgun at the ready and fired several times. The weapon was loaded with shot, which grazed the fleeing Bogs. Several particles hit him in the arm and leg. The hospital removed most of the metal pieces, but some of them remained forever in the player's body.
Problems in childhood were added by relationships with the family. Parents were not particularly worried about their sons. The father of the future NBA player was a gangster and made a living by petty theft. When the athlete was only 10, his father was given 20 years in prison for armed robbery. And the player's brother was on hard drugs for a long time.
< Basketball was an escape from the terrible reality. But even there it was not easy. They did not want to play with Bogs because of his small stature. Only his best friend agreed to leave the ball in the ring with him.
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"When I was refused once again, I called a friend. We took empty milk cartons and tied them to different ends of the fence outside the house. We had a makeshift playground, and we were able to play,» Bogs said.
One day the older guys saw Muggsy playing with a friend and decided to give them a chance. Since then, Bogs spent every day on the basketball court with new friends. He learned to use his height to his advantage. The American was very sharp and managed to take the ball away from his opponents. For this, he received the nickname Muggsy — an abbreviated version of the English word mugger, which translates as «thief». already at the school level. In the first season, his club won all the league matches. USA Today named him Team of the Year in the States. But even such results could not impress everyone.
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"Commentators of our matches constantly mocked me. I remember the phrase of one of them: «Why did they give a sports scholarship to a guy who is no taller than my table in the living room?» There were a lot of negatives. All I had to do was answer with my game,” Bogs said. .youtube.com/embed/lOGj8qM6hQ0″ webkitallowfullscreen=»webkitAllowFullScreen» mozallowfullscreen=»mozallowfullscreen» allowfullscreen=»allowFullScreen» frameborder=»0″>
Over time, the point guard's critics had to shut up, because it was pointless to deny his talent. He was selected by the Washington Bullets in the 1987 NBA draft. The most amazing thing is that Bogs was already the world champion in basketball by that time. A year before the draft, he got into the US team straight out of university, winning the world championship with it.
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"It seemed to me that I never grew up at all and was always small. Mom was one and a half meters tall, and my father was 165 centimeters, so I had no chance of growing up to be a huge guy, «the basketball player explained.
Bogs spent only a year in Washington , after which he signed a contract with the Charlotte Hornets, which debuted in the NBA in 1988. It was there that the point guard made an impressive career for himself. He spent nine years at the club and became its real legend.Bogs still holds the club's record for minutes played, assists and steals. And in terms of points scored, he is still the third Hornets player in history. But his most amazing statistic is only a few dozen successful actions. But what! Mugsy has made 39 block shots in the NBA throughout his career. webkitallowfullscreen=»webkitAllowFullScreen» mozallowfullscreen=»mozallowfullscreen» allowfullscreen=»allowFullScreen» frameborder=»0″>
Mugsy was a real big deal in the NBA during those years. This is at least indicated by the fact that he starred in «Space Jam» and often flashed on TV in commercials. True, he asked not to focus on growth.
After the end of his career, he continued to flicker on TV. Bogs has appeared in several cameo roles in movies and TV series. But at one point he decided to return to work in basketball. Muggsy led the Charlotte Sting women's team, but a year later it was disbanded. For several years he worked as a coach at a Christian basketball academy, but then he became an ambassador for his native Hornets. which logically titled «In the land of giants.» There, he expressed his hope that in the future, a player even lower than him will appear in the NBA. Muggsy believes he will go down in league history by his performance, not by his height.