RIP Manute Bol

[jefferson_dem]

Manute Bol dies at 47

Manute Bol, who became a basketball sensation in the 1980s as a skeletally thin shot-blocking giant with the Washington Bullets and other professional teams, and who devoted his post-basketball life to improving the lot of his fellow natives of Sudan, died June 19 at the University of Virginia Medical Center in Charlottesville. He was 47.

His cousin George Bol said Mr. Bol had internal bleeding and other complications from Stevens-Johnson Syndrome, a rare skin disease that he contracted from a medication he received in Africa.

Mr. Bol, one of the two tallest players in NBA history, was also one of its most exotic and endearing — and surely the only one to have killed a lion with a spear. His unusual journey to basketball stardom began in southern Sudan, where he was a cattle-herding member of the Dinka tribe and never touched a basketball until his late teens. After catching the eye of an American coach working in Sudan, Mr. Bol made his way to the United States without knowing a word of English.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/local-breaking-news/former-bullet-manute-bol-dies.html

[Dr Morbius]

1. Wow. Damn.

Younger than me. Fine defensive center, too thin to really be successful in the NBA, but a shot-blocking monster. A class act, by all accounts; RIP.

[Blue_Tires]

2. r.i.p.

[Auggie]

3. Bol played for the Golden State Warriors

Sorry to hear of his passing

[Tobin S.]

4. Aw, man.

He was a good basketball player and an All-Star person. I heard that he spent most of the money he earned in the NBA making life better for those back home.

[Mojambo]

5. Really good man. Sorry to see him go. n/t

[bigwillq]

6. RIP

:(

[KamaAina]

7. The only guy to put the University of Bridgeport on the map

until the Rev. Sun Myung Moon took it over a few years after Bol left. Seriesly.

Another Bol factoid: He once attempted to play hockey for a day for a minor league team in Indianapolis, but ended up being scratched.

[KG]

8. he played with the 5-3 Muggsy Bogues w/ the Bullets in 87-88

[applegrove]

9. So young.

[Starbucks Anarchist]

10. And he gave most of his earnings to relief efforts in Sudan.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/06/19/SPBH1E213R.DTL

RIP.

[redwitch]

11. My husband had a brief encounter with Stevens Johnson syndrome.

The winter of '08. He has these awful flare ups of headache, stabbing pains that come on suddenly, I forget the name of the condition but the pain makes him flinch. Doc prescribed a medication to deal with it when the headaches start. When the redness started on his face we thought it was because he got wind burned while out shoveling snow. But it got worse and worse and suddenly he had blisters all over his face and in his mouth. He looked up the meds on line and read the possible side effects and learned that Stevens-Johnson syndrome was one of them. He had only taken 2 of the pills, stopped immediately. It took a couple of weeks for all the rash and blistering to go away, if he had continued he could have died. We now always read the info on any new drug we are prescribed.

This can't have been an
easy way to die.


RIP Mr. Bol.

[Swede]

12. RIP Mr. Bol.

47 is way too young to die.