No. 109: MICHAEL JORDAN & WILLIAM BEDFORD / The write-around in Chicago, Part II. When MJ wouldn't talk, who'd have something to say about the emptiness of his stardom? The coach in Hoop Dreams.

Yesterday's dive into my story about Jordan's retirement explained how I wound up talking to Jim Brown. Better than Brown though was a high-school hoops coach to whom I dedicated by Audible project.

Commandoes coach Luther Bedford at Marshall High School in an undated photo

As I laid out in yesterday’s SubStack, I had always wanted to interview Jim Brown, a desire that dated back to the days when I dreamed I one day might type about sports. Never did I imagine that I’d talk to you for a basketball story, but then again, my story about Michael Jordan’s retirement was more a study of stardom and on that count Brown was an authority. Today, though, I’ll focus on another voice in that story, not a star by any means but a coach whose fame lasted 15 minutes, about the length of his screen time in a film classic.

I dedicated How to Succeed in Sportswriting (without Really Trying), my Audible Original, to four people. I had talked to three of them: Harry Cleek, Helen Hart and Luther Bedford. The fourth, the writer Mark Kram, I would have loved to talk to tell him how I wound up in hospital for three weeks after reading his Sports Illustrated story about Lou Nova, a boxer turned yogi, but I…