Fever Dream

The Best…

…Podcast Series I Listened To This Week

UConn’s Dream Season: An Oral History — Produced & hosted by Matthew Edwards

My high school friend and a loyal reader of this newsletter, Jed B., texted me the other day to recommend UConn’s Dream Season: An Oral History, a 15-part podcast series about the 1989-90 University of Connecticut men’s basketball team.

This was the team that captured hearts across the state and truly brought “Huskymania” to a national audience. (I’ve previously written a bit about it.)

Predicted to finish near the bottom of the Big East Conference, the plucky Huskies would improbably win the league title, earn a No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament, notch an iconic miracle victory, and nearly reach the Final Four (damn you, Christian Laettner).

In Connecticut ever since, that year has been known as “The Dream Season.”

UConn’s Dream Season: An Oral History, which was produced, written, and hosted by Matthew Edwards, effectively recreates that season with the help of fresh interviews and archival audio clips. (Among the interview subjects: Bob Heussler, who was in his first season as UConn’s radio play-by-play announcer in 1989-90, and is a reader of this newsletter. That’s his voice on the “iconic miracle victory” clip above.)

The podcast also sets up the Dream Season by delving into the history of the program, which had been a regional power for decades before falling on hard times in the 1980s. But the team’s fortunes began to change with the hiring of Jim Calhoun as head coach in 1986. The rest, as they say, is podcast history.

For me, the series was like catnip. My parents had taken me to my first UConn game at the Hartford Civic Center the previous season, a 1-point thriller of a victory over the University of California in the National Invitational Tournament. So, at age 10, I was primed for the 1989-90 season.

What surprised me about listening to the podcast, though, was how emotional I got any time the story mentioned Nadav Henefeld, a 6-foot-7 forward who appeared on the UConn campus that fall almost literally out of nowhere.

Nadav was a 21-year-old freshman from Israel, having arrived at UConn after serving three years in the Israeli military. He had plenty of offers to play professionally in Europe, and he hadn’t been recruited by any U.S. college programs. But he wanted to experience college basketball in the States. As luck would have it, one day he called UConn and asked to visit. Eligibility complications would arise, but soon enough, Nadav became a member of the Huskies.

Nadav was not like any other freshman. At age 21, his maturity was apparent in his demeanor and performance. He was calm and smart, with an unusual artistry to his game. He could knock down three-pointers. He was a creative passer. But he really separated himself from the others with his defense. He had telepathic instincts, deceptive quickness, and the hands of a pickpocket.

In those days, UConn’s style was defined by its frenetic, full-court pressing defense, and Nadav was often the catalyst for causing turnovers and turning them into transition baskets. (His 138 steals is still an NCAA Division I single-season record for a freshman.)

But I’ve buried the lede for the impact Nadav had on me as a 10-year-old. He was not only this mysterious star on my favorite team, he was also a Jew. A 6-foot-7 Jew! I knew I would never be as tall as him, as handsome as him, as cool as him… but I was Jewish like him. He could have been my uncle or cousin or brother (well, he was way too tall to be a brother). That made him extra special in our house.

I don’t think I realized just how much that meant to me until I found myself tearing up while listening to this podcast.

When it comes to Nadav, that season really did feel like a dream. For as abruptly as he appeared in the fall of 1989, he disappeared just as abruptly the following summer. He left UConn, returned to Israel and embarked on what would become a decorated 12-year career with Maccabi-Tel Aviv, the country’s premier pro team.

But that wasn’t the end of my story with Nadav.

In the summer of 1993, when I was 14, I went to two summer basketball camps. The first was Jim Calhoun’s camp at UConn, where the head coach was absent for the entire week. Where was he? In Israel, recruiting a player who would become the Huskies’ next great Israeli star, Doron Sheffer.

The second was Red Auerbach Basketball Camp, which was held at Brandeis University. Auerbach was a legendary coach and executive with the NBA’s Boston Celtics, and his camp for kids like me ran concurrently with the Celtics’ rookie and free agent camp. This was where aspiring young players got the chance to showcase their skills in the hopes of getting a contract offer from the Celtics.

Among the aspirants was Nadav Henefeld, now 25 years old. Getting to watch him play in a Celtics uniform gave me a thrill. At one point, I somehow conjured the gumption to chase down the team’s head coach, Chris Ford, to ask him what Nadav’s chances were to make the squad.

“He’s a terrific player,” Ford said to me. “He’s got as good a chance as anyone.”

But with the Celtics unable to offer him a guaranteed spot, Nadav ultimately returned to Tel Aviv. That’s where I caught my last glimpse of him. Well, not of him, exactly, but of his legacy.

In December 2018, I went on a family trip to Israel. We were in Tel Aviv for a couple days, and the visit happened to coincide with a Maccabi home game against Milano of Italy. My now-dearly departed friend and colleague Alex gave me his two courtside season tickets, and I brought my nephew Jacob.

Maccabi has long been a European power, and the many trophies and artifacts from their gilded past are on display in their club room inside Menora Mivtachim Arena. Jacob and I stopped in before the game to take a look. Not having followed European basketball closely over the years, most of the names and accomplishments commemorated in the trophy cases were unfamiliar to us.

But then I looked up towards the ceiling and saw a row of framed Maccabi jerseys celebrating the team’s retired stars. One in particular caught my eye:

A deep feeling of pride rose inside me with the knowledge that Nadav had found so much success in his home country, and that many others got to appreciate the talents we loved so much back in Connecticut, however briefly.

I snapped the above photo and texted it to my brother Jeff, who was a first year law student at UConn during the Dream Season.

“Our guy Nadav!” I wrote.

His one word response summed it up: “Awesome.”

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…Movie I Saw This Week

Killers of the Flower Moon (2023) — Directed by Martin Scorsese
In theaters

Martin Scorsese’s new film, Killers of the Flower Moon, explores the true story of the Osage Native American tribe in 1920s Oklahoma. (The film is based on the book of the same name written by David Grann, which I wrote about in February.)

After being “removed” from Kansas by the U.S. government and given land in Oklahoma that was barely arable, the Osage discovered oil in their territory and quickly became the wealthiest community per capita in the world.

With those riches came consequences. Members of the tribe were systematically terrorized, poisoned, and murdered in a wide-ranging conspiracy meant to move Osage money into white hands.

At the head of the scheme was William King Hale, a local cattle baron and behind-the-scenes political operator. Played in the film by Robert De Niro, Hale is a recognizable Scorsese villain — the all-powerful mafia don who pulls the strings of criminality while also being a respected and generous pillar of the community.

One of his henchmen is his nephew, Ernest Burkhardt (Leonardo DiCaprio), who comes to Oklahoma to work for King Hale after serving in World War I. Ernest drives a cab by day and commits crimes at his uncle’s behest by night. He meets a wealthy, soulful Osage woman named Mollie (Lily Gladstone), and the story unfolds from there.

Though a lawman named Tom White (Jesse Plemons — always a pleasure to see him) sticks his nose into the proceedings about two hours into the movie, the film largely focuses on the triangle between King Hale, Ernest, and Mollie. All three performances are excellent, and the film looks and feels beautiful. Despite its running time of 3 hours and 26 minutes, I never once got sleepy in the theater. (Though I did have to ask the people next to me to stop talking so much.)

Having read the book, what struck me most is how straightforward the film’s narrative is. The book reads like a mystery, concentrating large swaths of the story on how Tom White and his team pieced together the murders, leading to a series of sensational trials.

But for the movie, Scorsese and co-writer Eric Roth cast much of that part of the story aside, which leaves the film surprisingly short on dramatic tension. But I think that was the point. The audience gets to see how mundane and, well, easy it was for King Hale to execute his greedy, racist plan with the full participation of plenty of white folks. (Had Tom White not almost randomly shown up in 1925, the murders would likely have continued without investigations, arrests or prosecutions until every Osage was dead. After all, local law enforcement officials and doctors were in on the plan.)

Scorsese connects what happened in Osage County to the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921 and to widespread approval across the U.S. of the Ku Klux Klan, to say nothing of the local and federal laws of the time that subjugated Native and Black Americans. In other words, the film argues, what happened to the Osage was not an isolated incident. Terror, plunder, and murder: this is the history of the United States.

Early in the film, Ernest is given a book that tells the history of the Osage people. The camera lingers on an illustration with a caption that asks a question of its reader. But really, the question is for us, Scorsese’s audience: “Can you see the wolves in this picture?”

Yes, we can.