For 73-year-old Bruce Lidell, basketball plays a major role in fighting of a terminal disease
By CHRIS ANDERSON, Herald Tribune, Sarasota, FLA
You couldn’t see it, but there was a small pump inside his pants pocket, and a tube ran underneath his shirt to an opening in his chest.
He shook his defender and caught the pass.
He dribbled out past the 3-point line.
He launched the same running hook shot he’d been using since he saw Bob Cousy as a kid.
This was it.
One shot for the league championship.
One shot for every cancer patient who had given in to a disease he swore would not define him.
The adrenaline flowed through his body. So did the chemotherapy coming from the pump.
This wasn’t Willis Reed playing in the 1970 NBA Finals with a broken leg. This wasn’t Michael Jordan playing in the 1997 Finals with severe flu.
This was something more.
This was a man in his 70s playing in an over-50 basketball league with terminal cancer.
This was man still running the floor without 18 inches of his colon. This was a man who had been given three months to live, six month tops. This was a man who recently shrugged when asked why he played in a game a few years ago attached to a chemo pump.
“Because I’m a gym rat,” he said
The left-handed running hook shot he took that night was good.
His team won the championship.
And on it goes with a gym rat’s battle with cancer.
“He’s everyone’s hero,” said friend John Grady.
Bruce Liddell is a 73 year-old father of 5 who has worked in the cable business for 30 years. Everyone knows him as “Pops.”
He has been living in Sarasota since 1969, and he played in every basketball court in the area over decades of time.
He keeps several basketballs in his trunk along with shoes and a pump, and he’ll often stop when he sees a 3-on-3 half-court game somewhere.
He’ll shoot left-handed hook shots on the other end until someone invites him to join the game.
He has seen his share of oddities over time.
Once a teammate kept getting fouled so he went back to his car and got a handgun and stuck it in his waistband.
“Now foul me again,” the man said.
Lindell did not play basketball on his wedding day and he stopped shooting that day when a skunk sprayed the court. But hs does play when he is sick, and he does play on Christmas.
“To me this is worse than a cocaine addiction,” Lindell said. “When you say people have a cocaine addiction, well I’m the same way with basketball.”
The League he plays with is now called the OMG League. OMG stands for One More Game.
He needs to play League games five times a week, but chemo treatments have cut it to twice, Thursday nights and Saturday mornings.
He has been known to drive three hours from the east coast of Florida, where he is working, just to make it back for league game.
“Ever sit there in anticipation waiting for 7 o’clock to roll around,” he said.
The league he plays in has eight teams. The games are 3-on-3 and half-court. You have to win two of three games. Each is up to 25 and you must win by two.
Lindell has won four 50 and over league championships, and last year he was given a trophy that read “MVP Superstar.”
The OMG League games are played at Faith Presbyterian Church in Sarasota where Grady is pastor, participant and in awe of Lindell off the court as well.
Grady said that Lindell quietly approached him over the holiday and asked if anyone less fortunate needed anything. He was willing to buy toys clothes, and food.
“He’s always cheerful and smiling,” said Chet Komarin, a teammate. “He’s never down. I’ve never seen him shake his head and say, “This is terrible.”
“He’s a walking inspiration,” said Len Schmoyer, who runs the OMG league. “He’s all heart.”
And he always banks the shot off the backboard.
He also shoots long-range with an old-fashion set shot.
“He’s deadly from the baseline corner and the top of the key with 3-pointer,” said Schmoyer. “Before you know it he’s hit four in a row and your team is behind.”
Lindell played High School basketball in Albany, N.Y., but was benched and later kicked off the team.
His coach didn’t want him taking hook-shots.
He has missed only one league game, and that happened when his gall bladder was removed, and he underwent double-hernia surgery
One night in the hospital, he was getting dressed when the nurse walked into his room. “Where are you going, the nurse asked.
“I play basketball at 7,” Lindell said.
“Get back in bed,” the nurse said.
Lindell climbed back into bed.
But no one was surprised when he showed up for an OMG league game the next week.
While he was in the hospital, however, he learned that his cancer had spread to lis liver because his gall bladder was removed.
He was told that he had six months to live.
He’s heard that before.
Already battling prostate cancer, Lindell learned that he had terminal colon cancer in 2004, when he was 68 years old.
He was told in the hospital that he has three months to live - six months tops.
That was five years ago.
“Why I’m alive I don’t know,” he said. “I really don’t know.
Lindell is in impressive physical shape, no doubt from decades of running courts. His calves are thick and his heart and lungs are strong.
So is his mind.
“I’m never going to give in to this.” he said. “Cancer , to me is just another sickness, and there’s medicine to treat it.”
Part of the medicine is basketball.
When he pops the trunk, pulls out a ball and gives it to a kid, that’s medicine.
Same thing when he shoots on Sunday mornings with his twin boys.
“Without basketball I wouldn’t be alive,” he said. I can honestly say that.