Half Court Shot at Nets Game

Shot from Half Court at a N.J. Nets game vs. Raptors in March of 2000 ... I won a Trip to Rio de Janeiro !! I had been given some free Nets tickets by our auditors. The promo group picked my daughter Megan's seat but she was 7 yrs old at the time, so the contest chance went to me. How is this for kids? - Megan stayed up in her seat and, when I shot the hoop, she had her eyes covered the whole time ! ...she was too nervous for me, and she "couldn't watch" !... afterward, as I ran back up to my seat, all 30 rows up the stairs, all the folks on each side of the aisles were slappin five with me and saying "Alright Bob"... I went to the Men's room about 10 minutes later and every guy in the crowded men's room was doing Hi Fives to me - even while I was standing there, doing my business at the urinal ! Megan reminds me that, as we were leaving the Continental Arena, that night, every so often a person would yell: "hey, there's that Bob Guy" ! hey Bob !!...and more high fives " ... my humble 5 minutes of fame.

Here is one other humorous 'after-fact': Christine Whitman was at the game. She was the Republican governor of NJ at the time, and used to sit prominently in a box at a lot of Nets and Devils game. She went on to be head of the E.P.A. under George Bush for his first 4 years, but 3 months after my Shot went in, my business partner Denis and I went to this big Bush fundraiser [Bush was running in 2000 for 1st time and this was around June] at Monmouth University and Gov. Whitman was at the head table as the main speaker. After dinner, Denis took me up to say Hi to her. After the blank-stare, 'how-dya-do', and not much else from Whitman, I mentioned casually [..."aw shucks"] that I had seen her at a Nets game in March, and it was a game where I shot a Ball in from Half... all of a sudden her eyes light up, and she says: "You're that Bob guy!! ...oh my God, hold on a second".. and she leans down the table at her husband 3 spots down, and yells "Hey, John, this guy here is "Bob", that guy who made that shot from Half we saw !!" and all the mucky mucks starting saying 'Hi' to me now, and shaking my hand. ... so, this was my second 5 seconds of fame, A Forest Gump moment.

Category:

Sports

Tags:

• basketball

[hedleybyrne]

You're right Dave, I could not do that again if I had 50 attempts !! The Governor of New Jersey, Christie Whitman, later congratulated me, and introduced me to her husband !

[hedleybyrne]

-----Original Message-----

From: Richard

Sent: Mon Feb 25 07:03:15 2008

Subject: Re: The basket

That is absolutely awesome...at first I was assuming that someone had overlaid Bob's head on the guy shooting the basket, but then came to the conclusion it was real. My scepticism perhaps related to my memories of Bob's golf swing.

Thought the post basket celebrations were great too.

When did it occur?

[hedleybyrne]

Did you see the reverse rotation on that ball as it swished thru the Basket...awesome !!

- Dr. Julius Irving

[hedleybyrne]

Funny, I was thinking of calling a foot fault too. I guess they didn't notice at the time.

SW

[hedleybyrne]

From: Scott

Awesome! Didn't know if you had it in digital format or not. Woo hoo Bob Burn!

[hedleybyrne]

I make two observations...

1) He was WELL past half court when he released the ball

2) He cut the video off just before the best part! -MDW

[va3dda]

Great shot Bob I would not want to bet that you could do it again