Buffalo Celebrity Smackdown

Interesting results and comments from a weekend ‘Buffalo News’ article that attempted to define, classify, and define what celebrity status means in Western New York.


“Star power: What it means to be a WNY celebrity” included an “A” List and “B” List along with list of celebs that have lived in the Buffalo area and famous and pseudo-famous people on to the “Celebs who have passed on” list.

 

After reviewing the multiple lists, I decided that even from my jaded perspective of someone who has not lived in the region for years, that the “Buffalo News” staff missed some obvious WNY celebrities of local and even national significance.

 

I was moved enough to write in (along with many others) omissions to the lists, in fact the accumulated omission list from the reader’s comments section has star power compared to the roster put together by the seemingly young “News” staff. If one is under the ago 40 Tim Horton may be more associated with the doughnut franchise than his Hall of Fame hockey career. Horton made the list, whoch begs the question: Do people know what the people listed actually acomplished?

 

Here are the names the “Buffalo News” missed, compiled into one list. See how many you many you recognized or would have missed:

 

• Jack Kemp: former Bills quarterback. U.S. Congressman, Vice Presidential candidate
• Grover Washington, Jr.: soul-jazz saxiphonist, pioneer of the smooth jazz music genre
• Rick Azar: longtime WKBW sports anchor
• Bob McAdoo: Buffalo Brave, NBA Hall of Fame member, NBA scoring leader and MVP
• Randy Smith: Three sport All-American at Buffalo State, NBA All-Star MVP, still Braves/Clippers franchise leader is every major category
• Foster Brooks: entertainer, actor
• Van Miller: longtime voice of the Bills and Braves, sport anchor WBEN for decades
• Danny Neaverth: morning radio host, public address announcer during glory days of Bills and Braves
• Ed Kilgore: local sports anchor since the early 70’s
• Freddie Smerlas: former Bills great and radio personality
• Sal Maglie: major league all-star pitcher
• Stephanie Miller: sundicated radio talk-show host
• Seth Godin: nationally acclaimed business writer, marketing expert, entrepreneur
• Kim Alexis; super model in the 70’s and 80’s, television host and fitness expert
• William Fichtner: character actor
• Rick Jeanneret: voice of the Buffalo Sabres

Please feel free to add to the list.

 

Remembering Randy

by Tim Wendel

Some players only see the world through a prism of their own statistics and accomplishments. Others have no choice but to be a part of team – to be a spokesman for something larger than themselves.

That’s how it was with Randy Smith, who died unexpectedly last night of a heart attack. He was the spokesman for the old Buffalo Braves. He not only realized that but came to embrace that role.

“Sometimes I felt like I was the last of the Mohicans,” Smith told me during the writing of Buffalo, Home of the Braves.

“But I was the guy who was there pretty much from the beginning to the end. I guess you could say I became the institutional memory of that team.”

Nobody loved the Braves and nobody loved Buffalo more than Smith. After starring as a soccer player at Buffalo State, the basketball Braves drafted him in the seventh round of 1971 draft. After working on his jump shot and then thrilling fans with his two-handed slam dunks in the preseason, he surprisingly made the NBA team.

From there he continued to raise his game until he became an All-Star. Randy came off the bench to score 27 points in the 1978 NBA All-Star Game (the Braves’ last year in Buffalo) and took home the MVP award. He played 12 seasons in the NBA – a record 906 games – and never missed a game.

After his playing days were more, Randy eventually became the executive host at the Mohegan Sun Casino in Uncasville, Conn. Sometimes when I’d call, trying to sort out something for the book, he couldn’t talk right away. “Got some big clients in town,” he’d say. “Try me back.”
But when the high-rollers had gone home, Randy liked nothing more than to talk about the Braves and the old days with Dr. Jack Ramsay, Ernie D. and his good friend Bob McAdoo.

“He was the one who remembered all of our stories,” McAdoo says. “He was the best of the Braves.”

Book Release Set

Note: The book "Buffalo, Home of the Braves" is close to completion. On Saturday, May 30, 2009, a book release celebration will be held in downtown Buffalo.

From 11 AM - 1 PM that day, author Tim Wendel will be available for the signing of purchased copies of the book in the Connunity Room of the New Era Cap Company, located on Delaware Avenue in Buffalo.

Books can be purchased online, prior to the book signing date from SunBear Press.


Cuban's Antics stand in Snyder's Shadow

by Tim Wendel

You can create a Final Four bracket smackdown out of anything these days. With that in mind, I wonder how current Dallas Mavs owner Mark Cuban and former Buffalo Braves owner Paul Snyder would have fared in such a competition.

Game Six of the 1974 playoffs against the Boston Celtics.


Braves fans will recall that heartbreaking game was decided when Jo Jo White sank a pair of free throws after a suspect foul against Buffalo’s Bob McAdoo. To add insult to injury, the clock was allowed to run out. The refs reaction? They headed for the exits. No time to huddle up and get the call right.

But Snyder didn’t stand for such treatment. As McAdoo and Coach Jack Ramsay later told us, the Braves’ owner shouted, “You can’t do this to me,” after being denied entrance to the referees’ dressing room.

Then, for good measure, Snyder pounded on the door a few times with his fists. The chaotic scene still brings a smile to McAdoo’s face.

“I did get a kick out of Paul Snyder pounding on the referees’ door after it was all over,” McAdoo told us. “There he was, still trying to get the call changed. I always loved that.”

Let’s see Mark Cuban top that.

Who do you Root for? Part 2

by Tim Wendel

Kevin Collins, a good friend of Buffalo, Home of the Braves, has come up with an intriguing answer to my question about what current NBA team to root for? Kevin reminds me that in light of the bizarre franchise swap of 1978, “the old Braves are the new Celtics and the old Celtics are the Clippers.”

So does that mean we can revel in winning last year’s title? Probably not. I don’t any parade preparing to head down Main Street. Still, I like the idea of the Braves living on as a championship club. Perhaps that’s what has always bothered me about the Braves’ institutional memory and storied history simply being passed off on the woebegone Clippers.

At their best the Braves had plenty of personality and top-flight talent. Already I can hear the mantra in my head – McAdoo, Ramsay, Ernie D., Randy, etc., etc., etc. As we all know, with a bit of luck and another wide body under the boards (where for art thou, Moses Malone?) the Braves could have been champions in their own right, in their own time.

Old School Weekend Warrior

By Tim Wendel

Autumn means colorful foliage to some, the start of the football season to others. But what I wax nostalgic about during this time of year is what we used to call our “Buffalo Sports Weekends.”

From 1974 to 1978, I was an undergraduate at Syracuse University. The football team was about as good as it is now. In other words, lousy. But that didn’t stop us from religiously cheering on the Orange Saturday afternoons. This was before the Carrier Dome went up, so we hunkered down in Archbold Stadium, which bore a striking resemblance to the old Rockpile.

Several times each fall, we’d go right from the SU game and drive to Buffalo in time to catch the Braves at the Aud. Of course, it was early in a new NBA season and, at least in 1974-75-76, the sky seemed the limit for a squad with Bob McAdoo (pictured above), Randy Smith, Ernie DiGregorio on the floor and Jack Ramsay calling the shots.

I’ll admit that early on the Braves were a way to flesh out Buffalo Sports Weekends. Usually we’d go to the Bills game Sunday afternoon and finish things off with the Sabres, back at the Aud, Sunday nights. Then we’d race back down the Thruway in time for class Monday morning. I didn’t take the best of notes those days, but I was there. I made it to class.

But during those years, the Braves won me over. I loved watching them play and was crestfallen when they left town.

When I tell people about those days, hitting the Braves, Bills and Sabres in 24-plus hours, they think I’m crazy. “How’d you pull that off?” they ask. Indeed, it seems hard to believe now. But sometimes that’s how the best of times roll out. You don’t realize how special things were until decades later.

Most miserble, it's all relative, right?

Forbes Magazine of all publications today announced its list of the "Top Ten Most Miserable Sports Cities". I first heard of the rankings this morning while watching the Mike and Mike Show on ESPN2. I was waiting to see where Buffalo would land, knowing that a maligned reputation based on lost Super Bowls, rust belt economics, and snow would likely garner Buffalo a top position.

Buffalo was third behind Atlanta and Seattle with the rhetorical criteria centering around heartbreak, blown titles, and franchises that left town (i.e the Braves). After a fanfare buildup Mike and Mike's Mike Greenberg went through the rankings and simply stated, "That's not a very good list."

Instead of making apples and oranges comparison between cities and discrediting the sports reporting credentials of Forbes, it may be best to pinpoint why Buffalo and its sports community are an acquired (usually by birth) taste that outsiders don't generally understand. And oh yeah, for the record, the Buffalo Braves left town because of an inept ownership and not because of fan support.

30 days and two days ago the Braves played their last game in Buffalo. The Buffalo News barely took the time to honor the anniversary with a token article that was read like it was written by someone who wasn't even alive on April 8, 1978.

Yesterday Bob McAdoo and Randy Smith did make the final selections in the USA Today "All-time Braves/Clippers Starting Five". McAdoo outdistanced Elton Brand by 20 votes thanks to the last day effort from the Buffalo faithful.