So, as I watched the last 90 seconds of Mississippi State’s overtime victory over Ole Miss last Saturday night at Starkville, I got to thinking: What would Dr. James Naismith, the inventor of basketball, think?

I had plenty of time to think. Because of video reviews, timeouts, fouls, free throws and more replay reviews, the last 90 seconds of playing time lasted 17 minutes of real time. The game itself took two hours, 41 minutes. That’s 161 minutes if you are keeping score, which is roughly four times the length of time the ball actually was in play.

I think I know what Naismith would think. I believe he would think: You know, this is not really what I had in mind.

Some historic perspective is necessary here. Dr. Naismith was not yet a doctor when he conjured up the game we call basketball. Later to become a doctor of both divinity and of medicine, Naismith was a recently hired YMCA training school instructor at Springfield (Mass.) College in December of 1891, 134 years and change ago. His boss, Dean Luther Gillick charged Naismith with the task of developing a new indoor sport to fill the void between football and baseball seasons. Seems the Springfield students were terribly bored with gymnastics.

Gillick told Naismith he wanted a sport that required skill and sportsmanship. He wanted a game that provided exercise for the whole body, yet a game played without extreme roughness causing damage to players and equipment. Had they watched the Rebels and Bulldogs last Saturday night, Gllick and Naismith might have covered their eyes. Extreme roughness and physicality ruled the night.

But all in all, Naismith did fairly well. Take last Saturday night, for example: Certainly none of players, nor the more than 9,000 fans at The Hump, were the least bit bored, except for during the numerous replay reviews. 

Given his advanced degree in divinity, Naismith probably would admit he was fortunate in some ways. For instance, after sketching out his idea for the sport, Naismith sent a janitor in search of two 15-inch by 15-inch boxes to hang at either end of the gymnasium. Basketball was almost boxball. Hoops was almost squares. The janitor couldn’t find the appropriate boxes and returned to Naismith carrying two peach baskets. And, yes, the baskets had bottoms. Initially a ladder was needed to retrieve the ball after made baskets.

Naismith’s class had 18 students. So it was the first game of basketball matched nine against nine. Tacking, pushing, holding and tripping were prohibited, but, then, so was dribbling. Clearly, as Bob Cousy, Pete Maravich, Juju Murray and Josh Hubbard have illustrated, the game would evolve. The first game, played with a soccer ball, ended with the score one to nothing. Accuracy has evolved, too.

Naismith’s game quickly grew in popularity, especially In the northeast. Naismith became something of a hero. In fact, some folks suggested the new sport be called Naismith-ball. To his everlasting credit, Naismith flatly rejected the idea.

You, as I, may wonder how some of the terms we use in basketball today came about. For instance, the player who patrols the area closest to the goal is often called the post-man even though there is no mail involved. Sometimes, he plays the low post. Sometimes, he moves farther away from the basketball and plays the high post. Why post? Glad you asked. Back in Naismith’s day, most gyms, including the one in Springfield, had posts in the middle of the courts to hold up the ceilings. The players had to maneuver around the posts. The player who played near the posts closest to the baskets was called the post-man.

Back then, many of the courts were elevated and doubled as stages (think Memorial Coliseum at Vanderbilt). There was an inherent danger of players falling off the stages and breaking legs, arms and noggins. Netting was often put up around the courts to protect the players from such danger, giving the playing floor the visual effect of a cage. And that’s why basketball players are often still referred to a cagers. Now you know.

Women took to the sport from almost the very beginning. The first women’s game was played in 1892 at Northampton, Mass. Men were not allowed to attend because the women played the game in bloomers. Uniforms, too, have evolved.

“Basketball,” Naismith wrote, “is a game to play. You don’t coach it.” Chris Jans and Chris Beard, two guys who make millions, surely would disagree. But maybe Naismith had the right idea. All that coaching – which happens mostly during TV timeouts – is part of what makes the last 90 seconds of a close game last more than 10 times that long.

In his book about basketball, Naismith wrote, “Let us all be able to lose gracefully and to win courteously; to accept criticism as well as praise; and, last of all, to appreciate the attitude of the other fellow at all times.”

Dr. Naismith, we can reasonably surmise, would not have appreciated the numerous refrains of “Go to hell Ole Miss” and “ref, you suck” last Saturday night.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Jan. 24, 1941

Legendary artist Aaron Neville — who NPR once said “sings like an angel who swallowed a wah-wah pedal” — was born in New Orleans. 

With Black, Native American and European roots, he made a career of breaking through barriers and embracing a wide variety of music genres. 

As a child growing up in poverty, he discovered that his voice was special. 

“I would sing my way into movies or basketball games or whatever,” he told New Orleans magazine. “Whoever was on the door, they knew I could sing, so they’d say, ‘All right, Neville, sing me a song, and I’ll let you in.” 

By the mid-1950s, he and his brothers began performing as an R&B group, scoring a local hit with “Mardi Gras Mambo,” but his career came crashing down when he was arrested in 1958 for car theft and spent six months in prison. The time served as a wake-up call. 

“They had eight people in a cell designed to hold four,” he told People magazine. “Rats were running over everything.” 

After prison, he settled down, married his sweetheart and began a solo career. He soon found success with his single, “Over You,” which reached No. 21 on the R&B charts and decided to move to Los Angeles. 

The move, intended to boost his career, devastated his personal life when he became addicted to heroin and spent a year in prison for burglary. 

Determined to make it in music, he returned to New Orleans and recorded with legendary producer Allen Toussaint, scoring a major hit with “Tell It Like It Is” (ranked on Rolling Stone magazine’s “The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time”). The song rose all the way to No. 2 on the charts, selling more than a million copies, but Neville received no royalties — only a flat fee for the recording session. As a result, he had to work as a ditch digger and dockworker to support his family. 

“We were eating mayonnaise sandwiches,” his son, Aaron Jr., told People. “And we didn’t have a refrigerator. We had an ice chest.” 

Neville continued to struggle with his addiction. “The worst time of my life was when I was separated from my wife and thought I would lose her,” he told GQ magazine. “Then I started praying real hard.” 

After his mother died in 1975, he beat back the demons and began playing again with his brothers, becoming a mainstay of the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival. 

In 1989, his career enjoyed a renaissance after duets with Linda Ronstadt, creating the Grammy-winning single and international hit “Don’t Know Much.” The two performed together at the Grammy Awards in what was Ronstadt’s last performance on the show. 

Neville went on to record the successful “Yellow Moon” with the Neville Brothers, and his solo career continued to soar with more hits, “Everybody Plays the Fool” and “Don’t Take Away My Heaven.” 

In the years that followed, he explored other genres, including country, recording a duet with Trisha Yearwood. In 2006, he released a collection of soul classics. Four years later, he recorded a collection of gospel hymns. 

“I do feel God when I’m singing,” he said. “(A social worker in England) told me there was this 6-year-old boy, he was autistic and they couldn’t do anything with him. The only thing that would soothe him was to put headphones on his ears and he would hear my voice. When I heard that, I thought, ‘Well, it must be the God in me touching the God in him.’” 

Shortly after the album’s release, his wife, Joel, died of cancer. A year later, he met the woman who became his second wife, Sarah, during a People magazine shoot, and she inspired him to live on Freville Farm in upstate New York. 

“I don’t have neighbors that close, so I don’t bother nobody if I’m singing loud,” he told Relix. “I can hit whatever notes I want. The only ones that are gonna hear me are the chickens, and they don’t mind.” 

For the first time in his career, he recorded an album in which he wrote most of the songs himself, making “Apache” a reminiscent love letter to the city he grew up in and the people he loves. “I feel,” he told New Orleans magazine, “like I am a miracle.”

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

A bill that aims to increase pharmacy benefit managers’ transparency by requiring them to report data to the agency that oversees pharmacy practice in Mississippi passed in the House of Representatives Thursday. 

But the Board of Pharmacy and some pharmacists say the legislation doesn’t do enough to help pharmacies and patients. 

House Speaker Jason White, who authored the bill, called it “a good first step.” It will give the Board of Pharmacy – and the public – insight into the companies’ business practices to ensure they are compliant with the law, he told Mississippi Today.

The bill, which passed 88-8, does the following:

• Prohibits pharmacy benefit managers from charging insurers more for drugs than pharmacists are paid, a practice that can be used by the companies to inflate their profits. 
• Requires pharmacy benefit managers to submit reports detailing the rebates, or cost savings, they receive from pharmaceutical companies and to disclose their affiliations with pharmacies to the Board of Pharmacy. 
• Requires drug manufacturers and health insurers to submit reports detailing wholesale drug costs and information about drug costs and spending, respectively, to the Board of Pharmacy.
• Tasks the Board of Pharmacy with developing a website summarizing the reports.
• Allows the Board of Pharmacy to issue subpoenas during audits of pharmacy benefit managers and forces the company to pay for the audit if it is found to be noncompliant with state statute. 

It will next go to the Senate for consideration. 

But some advocates say the bill does not do enough to protect independent pharmacists, or retail pharmacies not owned by a publicly traded company or affiliated with a large chain, and the customers they serve. 

Many Mississippi independent pharmacists fear they may be forced to close as a result of low payments from pharmacy benefit managers, which small businesses do not have the leverage to negotiate. 

“Collecting the data is one thing. Doing something with it is another,” said Robert Dozier, the executive director of the Mississippi Independent Pharmacy Association. “When you look at the legislation, it does nothing to help the pharmacists, and it’s not tightening the loopholes that the Board of Pharmacy needs. It’s not going to do a whole lot.” 

In a statement read by Rep. Stacey Hobgood-Wilkes, a Republican from Picayune and chair of the Drug Policy committee, on the House Floor, the Mississippi Board of Pharmacy requested that the legislation be amended to heighten the regulatory enforcement authority it holds over pharmacy benefit managers, though it did not name specific tools that would be helpful.

The Board of Pharmacy did not respond to a request for comment by the time the story published. 

Dozier said he supports a bill brought by Hobgood-Wilkes which institutes a standardized pricing model for prescription drugs based on national average drug costs. 

Several states, including Kentucky, have passed laws that use the pricing model to regulate drug costs. 

But White said the House is not yet ready to approve a specific pricing model, and that he would not vote for Hobgood-Wilkes’ bill if it made it to the House floor.  

In the past, legislation to regulate pharmacy benefit managers in Mississippi has struggled to gain support. A 2023 bill proposed by Hobgood-Wilkes using the same standardized pricing model died in the House Insurance Committee, chaired by Rep. Jerry Turner, R-Baldwyn. 

A 2024 bill that would have increased pricing transparency and prohibited pharmacy benefit managers from retaliating against pharmacies or charging insurance plans or patients more than the amount they paid pharmacies for a prescription died in the House.

White said he would support appropriations for additional staff to allow the Board of Pharmacy to carry out new responsibilities included in the bill. 

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.