{"id":14984,"date":"2016-03-11T18:37:18","date_gmt":"2016-03-11T22:37:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/craigzablo.com\/?p=14984"},"modified":"2016-03-11T18:37:18","modified_gmt":"2016-03-11T22:37:18","slug":"r-i-p-clyde-lovellette","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/?p=14984","title":{"rendered":"R.I.P. &#8211; Clyde Lovellette"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/stallonezone.com\/zone\/2016\/z031116rip_clydelovellette.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"346\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><strong>Clyde Lovellette\u00a0<\/strong>passed away yesterday at the age of 86 from cancer.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">If you&#8217;re a die-hard basketball fan, you probably know that <strong>Hall of Famer<\/strong>, <strong>Clyde Lovellette<\/strong> was\u00a0the<strong> first player<\/strong> to win an <strong>N.C.A.A. championship<\/strong>, <strong>an Olympic gold medal<\/strong> and an <strong>N.B.A. title<\/strong>. \u00a0That puts <strong>Clyde Lovellette<\/strong> in the same stratosphere as <strong>Bill Russell, Magic Johnson<\/strong> and <strong>Michael Jordan<\/strong>&#8230; of course <strong>Mr. Lovellette<\/strong> got there first.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><strong>Clyde Lovellette<\/strong> played <strong>11 seasons<\/strong> in the <strong>NBA<\/strong> and was a player on <strong>three championship teams<\/strong> [one with\u00a0the <strong>Minneapolis Lakers<\/strong> and two with the <strong>Boston Celtics<\/strong>]. \u00a0Of course before he was in the <strong>NBA, Lovellette<\/strong> had a great <strong>college career<\/strong> at <strong>Kansas<\/strong>&#8230; and before that an outstanding <strong>high school career<\/strong> at <strong>Garfield High<\/strong> in <strong>Terre Haute, Indiana<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">And that&#8217;s where my knowledge of <strong>Clyde Lovellette<\/strong> comes into play. \u00a0When I was a kid, <strong>Clyde Lovellette<\/strong> was the <strong>Sheriff of Vigo County<\/strong>. \u00a0<strong>Terre Haute<\/strong> is in <strong>Vigo County<\/strong> and that is where I was born and grew up. \u00a0<strong>Clyde Lovellette<\/strong> lived one block from me.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">We all knew <strong>Clyde Lovellette<\/strong> as <strong>The Sheriff<\/strong>. \u00a0He reminded us of <strong>Matt Dillon<\/strong> and at 6&#8217;9&#8243; he was just an imposing figure. \u00a0I have just a few memories of interacting with <strong>Mr. Lovellette<\/strong>. \u00a0A couple of times hanging out on the front porch of his house talking to neighborhood kids and another time when he came to a <strong>Collett Elementary<\/strong> &#8220;fair.&#8221; \u00a0He had a portable &#8220;jail&#8221; and kids could buy tickets to have other kids put in jail with <strong>Sheriff Lovelette<\/strong> keeping guard.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">We didn&#8217;t know then how famous <strong>Mr. Lovelette<\/strong> was or would become. \u00a0We just knew him as a man who kept us safe and took the time to come to our school to help us raise money.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Our thoughts and prayers go out to <strong>Clyde Lovellette&#8217;s<\/strong> family, friends and fans.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Clyde Lovellette\u00a0passed away yesterday at the age of 86 from cancer. If you&#8217;re a die-hard basketball fan, you probably know<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":912,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14984","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-celebs","category-sports","comments-off"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14984","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/912"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14984"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14984\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14985,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14984\/revisions\/14985"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14984"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14984"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/craigzablo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14984"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}