{"id":28945,"date":"2018-03-30T00:46:39","date_gmt":"2018-03-30T00:46:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=28945"},"modified":"2018-03-30T02:31:37","modified_gmt":"2018-03-30T02:31:37","slug":"you-go-mo-into-the-hall-of-fame","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=28945","title":{"rendered":"You go, Mo, into the Hall of Fame"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p>West Texas State University alumnus Maurice Cheeks is headed to the Naismith Pro Basketball Hall of Fame, along with some other great former pro basketball players.<\/p>\n<p>I am so happy to see this development, as I have been a fan of Mo Cheeks for a long time. I watched him play ball for years as a member of the Philadelphia 76ers. He also coached my hometown NBA Portland Trail Blazers.<\/p>\n<p>I know that Cheeks has a lot of fans here in the Texas Panhandle, where he lit &#8217;em up while playing college ball for the WT Buffaloes. He went through a serious culture shock, coming here from Chicago and learning about life in the Texas Panhandle.<\/p>\n<p>Cheeks will join Jason Kidd, Steve Nash, Grant Hill and WNBA legend Tina Thompson in the Hall of Fame.<\/p>\n<p>But &#8230; there&#8217;s another reason Mo Cheeks has earned many Americans&#8217; undying love and respect. It occurred during the opening ceremony of an NBA game in Portland, where he was coaching the Blazers. A teenager was selected to sing the National Anthem to open the game. Natalie Gilbert did her best &#8230; then something happened.<\/p>\n<p>She froze. Natalie forgot the words. Hey, it happens.<\/p>\n<p>Up stepped Coach Cheeks in an astounding display of presence of mind. He did the following, as shown on the video attached here.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Maurice Cheeks helps Natalie Gilbert sing the National Anthem at Trail Blazers game\" width=\"474\" height=\"267\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/2dSzjIKtVcA?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Right there is my all time favorite Maurice Cheeks moment. It might be my favorite <em>NBA moment<\/em> &#8230; of all time!<\/p>\n<p>Congratulations, Maurice Cheeks.<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>West Texas State University alumnus Maurice Cheeks is headed to the Naismith Pro Basketball Hall of Fame, along with some other great former pro basketball players. I am so happy to see this development, as I have been a fan of Mo Cheeks for a long time. I watched him play ball for years as &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=28945\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">You go, Mo, into the Hall of Fame<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,17],"tags":[3190,3232,5752,7677,5312],"class_list":["post-28945","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","category-sports-news","tag-national-anthem","tag-nba","tag-portland-trail-blazers","tag-west-texas-state","tag-wtamu"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28945","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28945"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28945\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28953,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28945\/revisions\/28953"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}