Greatest Woman in Basketball
Nancy Elizabeth Lieberman (b. 1958) was born in Brooklyn, New York. She was passionate about sports from a very young age, and by the time she was in high school, was recognized as one of the best female basketball players in the country. At 17, she was selected for the US National Team, and helped it win the gold medal at the Pan American Games, its first since 1963. The following year, she won silver with the team at the 1976 Montreal Olympics, the youngest basketball player in Olympics history. Lieberman then led her college team to two championships, and was the first player to twice win the Wade Trophy (for women’s basketball player of the year). To this day, she holds a number of unbeaten records. After college, Lieberman was drafted first overall by the Dallas Diamonds of the Women’s Pro Basketball League (WBL). She soon became known as “Lady Magic”, the female counterpart to “Magic” Johnson. In 1997, the WNBA was formed and Lieberman played for the Phoenix Mercury, being its oldest player at 39. She then coached and managed the Detroit Shock for three years, before moving on to ESPN to be a basketball analyst. She came back to the Shock in 2008, at the age of 50, to play on a one-week contract, setting a record as the oldest professional basketball player ever. The following year, she became the coach of the Texas Legends (the farm team of the Dallas Mavericks), making her the first female to coach a men’s pro basketball team. In 2015, she became an assistant coach with the Sacramento Kings, only the second female coach of an NBA team in history. Her most recent achievement was coaching the Power team of the BIG3 league to the 2018 championship. She has also been a contestant on American Gladiators. Her son plays for Hapoel Holon in the Israeli basketball league. Lieberman was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 1996, and into the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame in 1999.
Words of the Week
The case against science is straightforward: much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue. Afflicted by studies with small sample sizes, tiny effects, invalid exploratory analyses, and flagrant conflicts of interest, together with an obsession for pursuing fashionable trends of dubious importance, science has taken a turn towards darkness.
– Dr. Richard Horton, editor-in-chief of The Lancet
Irene Sue Kerchek (1924-2020) was born in St. Louis, Missouri. She met her future husband Abraham “Abe” Pollin (1923-2009) when she was just 17. The couple married and settled in Washington, D.C. Abe worked for his father’s construction company before he and Irene started their own business in 1957. Together, they built a prosperous real estate empire, raising up both affordable and subsidized housing projects as well as luxury properties. The Pollins went on to found and own the NBA’s Washington Wizards team, the NHL’s Washington Capitals, and the WNBA’s Washington Mystics, working hard to bring those three clubs to the city. They also built the Capital Center and what is now Capital One Arena (formerly the Verizon Center), and were credited with reviving Washington’s downtown core. In 1963, the Pollins lost their teenage daughter to heart disease, and Irene lost both of her parents to heart disease that same year. She fell into deep depression and, when nothing seemed to help her, decided to go study psychology and social work herself. She went back to university and earned two degrees. Pollin opened two pioneering therapy clinics, and wrote two acclaimed books on mental illness and counseling. Her greatest mission in life, however, was to combat heart disease. In 2008, she donated $12 million to Brigham and Women’s Hospital (of Harvard) to establish a heart wellness program. In 2012, she donated $10 million to Hadassah Medical Center in Israel to create a heart health institute, and another $10 million to do the same at Johns Hopkins University. The following year, she gave another $10 million to establish one more heart health centre in Los Angeles. After discovering that more women died from heart disease than from breast cancer, Pollin started a number of organizations to increase awareness of female heart disease and to get more women screened on time. The most famous of these organizations is Sister to Sister: The Women’s Heart Health Foundation. Through their efforts, and the screening clinics they set up across America, the lives of countless women have been saved. The Pollins were generous philanthropists and gave millions more to many other causes, including Washington’s Sixth & I Historic Synagogue, the National Symphony, and research into brain disease, which ultimately took the life of Abe Pollin. The Pollins had a summer house in Rehovot, Israel, and were close friends of