Nate Had Great Look at Kareem

Nate Thurmond, inducted this week into the Naismith Hall of Fame, has been called by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar the best defensive center he ever faced.

Revealed Thurmond: “The first time Kareem came to the West Coast, he was playing Wilt down in Los Angeles the night before he was coming to San Francisco.

“I was about 23, 24 years old. I really didn’t need sleep, but I needed an advantage. So I got on PSA and I flew down and I watched that game. I could see, that night, the moves that he tried to do, or did do, against Wilt and what he liked to do best.

“The next night, the first time I played against Kareem, he only got 13 or 14 points. And that one game helped me for the next 10 years.”

Trivia Time: Dale Alexander won the American League batting title in 1932. Harry Walker won the National League title in 1947. What did they have in common? (Answer below.)

Roy Firestone, interviewing Carl Furillo on ESPN’s “Sports Look,” kept developing the theme that Furillo belonged to Brooklyn and really wasn’t at home in Los Angeles, where he was in the twilight of his career.

“I guess nothing could surpass the thrill of the 1955 World Series,” said Firestone to Furillo, referring to Brooklyn’s first victory in the postseason classic.

“Actually,” said Furillo, “I got a bigger thrill from the 1959 World Series. The year before, we had finished next to last. So we had something to prove to the people of Los Angeles. It was a great thrill to beat the Chicago White Sox.”

Take that, Brooklyn.

Said a British tennis official, when somebody complained about the rain: “If God had meant Wimbledon to be played in great weather, he would have put it in Acapulco.”

Boris Becker of West Germany isn’t happy about the war analogies the British press is using in describing his game.

He has been likened to a one-man Panzer division; one of his victories was headlined as a blitzkrieg, and the nickname most often associated with him has been Der Bomber.

Wrote Joe Gergen of Newsday: “In The Times of London Thursday, Rex Bellamy duly noted that scheduled television programming in Becker’s homeland was interrupted in order to carry his quarterfinal victory over Henri Leconte on Centre Court and added, ‘How odd it was that Germany should have such a personal interest in a court on which, in 1940, they dropped a bomb.’

“It’s true, a bomb did land on the roof in October 1940, destroying 1,200 seats. And no German was permitted to enter the tournament for four years after it was resumed in 1946. That represented a concession on the part of officials, who had banned Germans for nine years after World War I.”

From Herb Caen of the San Francisco Chronicle: “Hank Greenwald, the Giants’ sportscaster, celebrating his 50th at Perry’s Sunday night: ‘I don’t mind turning 50. It’s just that at the beginning of this season, I was 43.’ ”

Trivia Answer: They are the only men who won batting titles playing for two different teams in the same season. Alexander (.367) played for Detroit and Boston. Walker (.363) played for St. Louis and Philadelphia.

Quotebook

Darryl Strawberry of the New York Mets, thrown out of the 19-inning game at Atlanta for arguing a third strike with umpire Terry Tata: “He said the strike zone changes at 3 a.m.”