Former NBA player Manute Bol dies at age 47

[Tay the Cat]

http://blogs.pitch.com/plog/2010/06/...r_has_died.php

Wow... just wow.

[Shawn Hopkins]

Wow, this is just tragic. Especially considering he caught it and failed to get treatment in time because he was trying to improve conditions in his homeland of Sudan. It's sad to see someone taken suddenly by something that seems so senseless.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/loc...-bol-dies.html

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.

[ABrown]

Manute Bol, who became a basketball sensation in the 1980s as a skeletally thin shot-blocking giant

It's understandable that he would have heath problems with how extremely tall and skinny he was. I remember seeing him play against the Bulls back during the 90's when the NBA was still in what many people refer to as the NBA's "glory years."

[Tay the Cat]

It's understandable that he would have heath problems with how extremely tall and skinny he was.

Thing is, he was quite healthy until he went back to Sudan.

[Bones Justice]

Six three-pointers in one half of an NBA game, pretty good for such a tall guy. Plus, he once killed a lion with a spear!