Run to Final Four helps unite city

Memphis rallies around basketball team

In a town commemorating the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. on Friday, basketball and a Memphis team filled with 13 young black men are a cause for celebration.

Blue, Tiger blue, is everywhere.

"We're bringing a lot of people together with us winning ... and getting to the Final Four," senior Joey Dorsey said as his team prepared for its third Final Four appearance.

Memphis is the school where students selected the colors of blue and gray in the early 1900s to show people could come together. And Memphis is also the town where King's death on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel on April 4, 1968, remains a vivid memory and race still a prickly topic.

It's also a town where the biggest national headlines often come from the latest crime.

Until these Tigers, which is why fans around town dressed up in blue Thursday.

To help these young men born in the 1980s understand the importance of this week and this team's accomplishments, coach John Calipari had copies of King's "I Have a Dream" speech for his Tigers to read after practice Wednesday, along with a King biography.

Dorsey didn't need a copy of King's speech. He had to memorize and deliver the speech in 2004 to graduate from Laurinburg Prep as the first member of his family to graduate high school. The meaning of this anniversary and the Tigers' accomplishments have not been lost on him. "A big deal, big deal," Dorsey said.

BAD BACK KEEPS WALTON AWAY: Bill Walton won't be in his usual seat at this weekend's Final Four cheering on his UCLA Bruins.

The former center who starred on John Wooden's national championship teams in the early '70s has been laid up for more than a month because of a pinched nerve in his back and an aching hip.

"His back is all jacked up. He's going through a tough time right now," his son Luke Walton said Thursday. "He can't go into the arenas and sit in those chairs. He definitely can't get on a plane. He said that's the most painful thing. He can barely get into a car right now. But he said he's getting better. Slowly getting better."

SUMMER SCHOOL: The NCAA and coaches are looking into a new, 3 1/2-year program for basketball players that proponents believe would increase graduation rates by allowing players to complete big chunks of coursework during summer school.

NCAA president Myles Brand said the concept is based on the success many players have had starting coursework the summer before they start their freshman years. It would expand the program and place them in summer school after their freshman and sophomore years.