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Award-winning columnist Tom Archdeacon — an old-school storyteller in a brand-new venue — writes about sports, the city, southwest Ohio and anything else that catches his fancy… or yours.Home > Blogs > Through the Arch > Archives > 2008 > December > 03 > Entry
blog: Chris Wright Rubs Off
This is my 20th season covering the Dayton Flyers and about my 50th following them as a kid growing up, a UD student in the late 1960s and early ’70s and then a Florida sportswriter checking out their box scores from afar.
Chris Wright is certainly one of the better players I’ve ever seen wear a Flyers uniform and by the time he’s done at UD, he may well be in the same class as Roosevelt Chapman, Donnie May, Donald Smith, Johnny Davis and Jim Paxson Jr.
Off the court, he already is one of the best guys ever as far as friendliness, engaging conversation and flat-out charisma. And here’s what happens to a team when your star —one of your leaders — is like that.
It rubs off.
And it makes it a lot more difficult for a bad actor, a malcontent to flourish on the team.
I know its still the early stages of the season, but this Flyers bunch appears to have some of the best team chemistry I’ve seen from a UD ball club. The players get along. They feed off each other.
I think some of that has to do with Wright.
Take for instance Tuesday night after the game. I didn’t have long to come up with a story, so I was trying to do something real quick — and a bit off the basketball mark — on Charles Little and his ballet class.
I first talked to Little about it in the hallway outside the Flyers dressing room and the 6-foot-6 senior — another good guy on this team — seemed a bit self conscious about it and didn’t expound a whole lot. But he did say that Wright was taking a tap dancing dancing class, as well.
Inside the dressing room, I headed straight to Wright, who hadn’t had the best of nights. He played just 13 minutes and fouled out with eight points and three rebounds, his lowest game totals of the season.
And yet when I asked him about tap dancing, he didn’t flinch. He got into talking about his class and said when he’s out there tapping away, he thinks of Dancing With the Stars, and famed hoofer Gregory Hines and he says to himself, “If Warren Sapp can dance, I can dance.”
He said on a tap dace scale of 1 top 10 he saw himself as a 6.
Then he told a funny story about getting started in his tap class:
“I remember walking in the tap dancing store and saying, ‘Can I get the biggest tap shoes you got?’
“They said, ‘You got to be kidding.’ They didn’t know I was a taking tap. I told ‘em, ‘I’m not joking.’ And a little girl who was there — she was six — she asked her momma, ‘Is he a tap dancer, Mommy?’
“Her mom said, ‘Yeah, he’s a tap dancer.’
“I had to tell her, ‘No no, I actually play for the University of Dayton basketball team. I’m just doing this for my class and I really enjoy it — I think it helps me to be in a different environment, a different setting — but, truthfully, I’m more of a basketball player.’”
Little sits maybe 20 feet away from Wright in the Flyers dressing room and he watched from afar as the tapper expounded on his dance class.
“What’d he say?” Little asked as I walked past.
“Man, his quotes stuffed yours, ” I teased.
That’s when Little pirouetted away from self consciousness and soared in his own right. Explaining why he didn’t take tap, as well, he smiled:
“Chris wears a size 14 shoe, but I wear a 17. They don’t make tap dancing shoes in my size.”
For my purposes, Little really scored — he gave me the walk-off line for my column in today’s paper — but I think Wright deserves the assist on it.
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By rob murray
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Great piece on Little and Wright. I agree with your view on the team this year too. That is what will carry them through the tough games and on into an NCAA bid. That chemistry and toughness was always lacking under Purnell and even though he had some good teams they could never get through the tough games or play well on the road.