From Haiti To A Double-Double: Samuel Dalembert’s Wednesday

We’ve mentioned before how the disaster in Haiti, Samuel Dalembert’s home country, has affected the NBA forward. His efforts to help continued on Tuesday, when he left the Sixers and flew to Haiti with Project Mediashare to bring medical relief. Dalembert braved the trip to help (there was no guarantee he’d be able to land, or leave once he arrived, not to mention the inherent safety risks), and to check on his immediate family who still live there.

↵His trip was short, though, because he had to get back to Philadelphia for a game Wednesday night. And he just so happened to be on the same (delayed) flight as Matt from The 700 Level, flying coach.

↵↵The flight was incredibly fast, starting its descent and landing well before we’d assumed it would. I doubt it was because I asked the flight attendant to tell the pilot to “hurry it up” so Sammy wouldn’t miss his start (the flight crew seemingly had no idea who this huge guy was). We landed at about 6:25, then sat on the runway for 5-10 minutes that seemed like forever. The boxer whimpered a little, weary from his second plane ride of the day, but the human passengers complained louder. I wondered how the ducking giant in the back of the plane must have felt, especially after our flight had circled right over the sports complex with the Wach in plain view.

↵Once we were all off the plane, Dalembert started to walk briskly. As he passed me, I said “Go get ‘em tonight, Sammy.” He put his hand up, nodded and quietly said “Alright” and took off running down the terminal hall. On the way home, I tuned in to the radio broadcast and heard them announce that Sammy was taking the opening tip. Pretty unbelievable after witnessing just a bit of the travel it took him to get there and play in his 313th straight game, third longest streak in the league according to tonight’s broadcast.

↵↵Yes, not only did Dalembert make it to the game in time to take the opening tip, but then he went ahead and scored 10 points and grabbed 15 rebounds. How he was able perform at that level after the day (and past week) he has had is completely incomprehensible to me. But really, as amazing as his night was, what’s more amazing, of course, is the work he continues do for Haiti.

↵By the way, he could use some help with that, with donations to Unicef.