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Baby shocks and delights crowd by taking magical first steps during WNBA halftime crawl

And the crowd goes wild!

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A baby takes their first steps. A basketball crowd goes wild.

It's a small step for a baby, but a GIANT step for mankind—at least on the Internet. Even though the Minnesota Lynx beat the living heck out of the Vegas Aces, it didn't sully the adorable halftime baby-race show. And now, basketball might never be the same.

From the WNBC Instagram page, they note "some wholesome content for your timeline."

The Las Vegas Aces baby crawl is already adorable enough as it is. But on this particular day, magic struck. What follows is definitely one for the baby's digital scrapbook. As the parents and friends lined up on opposite sides of the court to encourage their racing baby to crawl as fast as they could, one small infant clad in red leggings, a white top, and a pink bow pulled ahead from the jump. The chyron reads, "We immediately had a front runner."

And just like that, this quick lil tot, out of nowhere, just stood up and started walking instead. "But then," the screen reads. "She started taking her first EVER steps." The crowd understandably goes wild. She, perhaps feeling the exciting momentum of her many new fans, picks up the pace and runs right into the arms of the woman waiting for her. In a supportive (and non-competitive) move, the surrounding mothers, sisters, and friends applaud the baby and give the mom all kinds of smiles and love.

The clip then shows the baby's proud dad (clearly an Aces fan) carrying her in one hand, and her giant inflatable trophy in the other. "Talk to me, Dad," we hear. He responds, "She hadn't been walking. She just randomly decided to stand up in the middle of the thing!" He laughs with more pride as the person filming says, "Proud dad moment. Congratulations, champ!"

baby, nba, wnba, eating, kids Cute baby at basketball game. Giphy NBA

The comments are hilarious and joyous. A top commenter suggests that perhaps this is a sign of things to come. "Draft speech...My first steps were on a WNBA court. It was destined!" Another agrees, adding, "The fact that she walked the rest of the way, for her first time, in socks, on a basketball court… yea she a hooper in the making FASHO!!!! I would have been a bawling MESS LOL!!"

Reddit has already exploded. In the subreddit r/NBA, someone jokingly posts, "Baby blatantly cheats by taking her first ever steps to win the Las Vegas Aces baby crawl race."

This is followed by over a thousand comments in 24 hours. One shouts, "REF DO SOMETHING." Others continue with that joke. "This is why I quit baby crawl racing, too many sweats."

This Redditor takes it up a notch, by mock-alerting sports analyst Stephen A. Smith. "Steven A. Smith: Let me tell you something right now! I’m sick and tired of these so-called “experts” in the baby community trying to tell me that these little ones, these adorable, chubby-cheeked miracles, THEY’VE ALREADY BEEN ABLE TO WALK BEFORE WE SEE IT ON CAMERA? I mean, have you lost your mind!?

Listen, this baby is a personal friend of mine! I’ve watched this baby, folks! I’ve seen the struggle, the wobbly knees, the carpet burn, the sheer DETERMINATION! Don’t come in my face, on national television, and try to throw shade on this achievement. When a baby takes its first steps, THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT IT IS! THE. FIRST. STEPS."

baby, baby walking, first steps, trying, kids A baby makes a great attempt at walking. Giphy GIF by TLC

Despite all the funny memes and jokes, many seemed moved by this moment. "I was thinking how so many parents don’t get the chance to actually film the first walk and this being it is pretty momentous. Now imagine being the kid’s younger sibling and having to live up to this lol."

- Baby takes first steps during a basketball halftime show. www.youtube.com, The Today Show

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Shaquille O'Neal quietly paid for a random guy's engagement ring while standing in line

"I'm just trying to make people smile... That's all."

NBA on TNT/Twitter

An unsuspecting guy at a shopping mall Zales got the surprise of his life back in 2021 while trying to pay off part of his engagement ring.

As the young man talked with the clerk at the jewelry store counter about how much he still owed for his ring and when he'd be able to pay it off, an extraordinarily large hand handed the clerk a credit card. Shaquille O'Neal, the 7' 1'' basketball legend known colloquially as "Shaq," overheard their conversation and decided to take care of the bill himself. No big announcement. No fanfare. He just handed over his credit card, shook the stunned customer's hand and patted him on the back, and that was that.

Someone caught the moment on video and shared it, which prompted Shaq's co-hosts on NBA on TNT to ask him about it the next day.

One of the first questions was, "You went to the mall, and went to Zales?!?" Not exactly where one would expect a person with a $400 million net worth to be hanging out on a Monday, but Shaq pointed out that he has a jewelry line at Zales. He went in to get some hoop earrings. Alrighty.

The young man at the checkout counter was so shy, Shaq said, and when he heard him talking about paying for his engagement ring, Shaq asked him how much it was and offered to pay for it.

At first, the guy refused, but Shaq insisted. And apparently, he does these random acts of generosity all the time.

He said he was recently in a furniture store (seriously, do multi-millionaires not shop online?) and saw a mom with an autistic daughter buying furniture. He just took care of their bill, just because.

"I'm into making people happy," he said. "I didn't mean for that to get out because I don't do it for that...I'm just trying to make people smile, that's all."

Shaq's generosity is well-documented, despite his preference to keep much of it under wraps. In a 2015 interview with Graham Bessinger, he explained how his father's charity—despite their family not having a lot of money—influenced him.

After giving the family's bag of hamburgers to a homeless veteran, his father got into the family car and told him, "If you ever make it big time, make sure you help those in need."

Shaq remembered those words and engages in charity in a range of ways, "because of what a man who made $30,000 a year taught me," he said. "And a woman who was a secretary who probably made $20,000 a year—they taught me that."

His giving comes "from the heart," he said. He's not looking for attention or accolades—he just wants to make people happy.

"I'm doing this because this is what I was taught," he said. "I'm doing it because to walk in there and see a family, put a smile on their face for a day, that's just awesome to me."

Shaq on helping others when no one is lookingwww.youtube.com

"That's my thing. I just want to make you smile," he said.

Shaq once asked a restaurant server how much of a tip she wanted, and when she quipped "$4,000," he gave it to her. When a 12-year-old was paralyzed by a stray bullet in a shooting, Shaq donated a whole house to his family. A fan who saw Shaq in a Best Buy offered condolences to the star for the untimely death of Shaq's friend and former teammate Kobe Bryant, as well as Shaq's sister Ayesha, who had recently passed away from cancer. He was treated to a new laptop—the best one in the store.

Many of us like to daydream about what we'd do if we had more money than we know what to do with. And many of us like to picture ourselves being generous with our wealth, helping out random folks who could use some help.

Charitable giving looks like a lot of different things, from funding organizations to distributing money through a foundation to handing over a bag of burgers to someone who's hungry. It's just delightful to see wealthy people who not only support official charitable organizations with money and time (Shaq serves as a national spokesperson for the Boys & Girls Clubs of America and is a member of the national Board of Directors for Communities in Schools in addition to raising and donating millions of dollars to various causes) but who also just help out random people everywhere they go.

Kudos to Shaq's parents for teaching him so well, and kudos to him for taking their lessons to heart.


This article originally appeared four years ago.

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Half of the head coaches in the NBA are now Black

More great progress in the world of sports.

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Boston Celtics head coach Ime Udoka is one of eight new Black head coaches in the NBA.

It’s been almost 60 years since Bill Russell became the first Black head coach in the NBA. In the years since, there have been 260 regular coaches that have come and gone, and only 1 in 3 have been Black. Most of them haven’t lasted more than three years in their first job—they also haven’t gotten a chance to have another head coaching position. But the times they are a-changin'. Currently, 15 of the 30 head coaches in the NBA are Black. And it’s about time.

Boston’s Ime Udoka, Sacramento’s Mike Brown, Portland’s Chauncey Billups, Dallas’ Jason Kidd, Orlando’s Jamahl Mosley, Washington’s Wes Unseld Jr., New Orleans’ Willie Green and Los Angeles’ Darvin Ham are the eight newest full-time head coaches in the NBA. They join Detroit’s Dwane Casey, Phoenix’s Monty Williams, Cleveland’s J.B. Bickerstaff, Philadelphia’s Doc Rivers, the Los Angeles Clippers’ Tyronn Lue, Houston’s Stephen Silas and Atlanta’s Nate McMillan, who were all head coaches last year.

“It means a lot,” Brown, who will take over as head coach in Sacramento next season after finishing the current season as the assistant coach for Golden State, said.

“When my son, and my oldest son’s about to have his first son, when they turn on the TV and they see people that look like them leading an NBA team on the sidelines, it can be inspiring. For me, carrying the torch and then passing it to the next generation is something that I think about often — not just for my family, but for others out there.”

The last time there were this many Black head coaches in the NBA was the 2012-13 season. There has been no explanation as to why it took almost 10 years to get back to that number, but there are some theories.

“This is not a sports issue,” Nate McMillan, the head coach for the Atlanta Hawks said back in February. “It’s a society issue that the opportunities sometimes certain people, they don’t get the opportunities because of the color of their skin.”

He also gave credit to Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban for making sure the organization has not only a Black head coach (Jason Kidd) but other Black people in the room. Aside from Kidd, there are three prominent Black people in the organization: Cynt Marshall (chief executive officer), Nico Harrison (general manager and president of basketball operations) and Michael Finley (assistant general manager and assistant vice-president of basketball operations). Marshall is the first Black female CEO in the history of the NBA.

“I think that’s just what Mark has done is really open his mind to interviewing people and giving them an opportunity where they have the skills to fit into those positions. They’ve done well and I think that’s great,” said McMillan.

According to the site Statista, 73.2% of the players in the NBA are Black, and that’s not including ones who identify as more than one race because it doesn’t do an interracial breakdown. In a league where almost three-quarters of the players are Black, it only makes sense that the head coaching staff be reflective of what you’re seeing on the court. Not just for optics, but for a general kind of understanding that may not exist otherwise.

While Steve Kerr is a great example of an white ally who “gets it,” there are certain experiences that he just won’t understand on anything other than a deep level of empathy. But a coach like McMillian or Ime Udoka, head coach of the Boston Celtics, will understand in a different way. When things happen in Black America, a Black coach is going to be able to do more than empathize—they will be able to sit in that space with their players.

“I don’t understand what took so long, to be honest,” Jaylen Brown, guard for the Celtics said in an AP article.

That’s the real question here. Why did it take so long for half of the league’s coaches to be Black? In February 2019, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, Chief People and Inclusion Officer Oris Stuart and President of Social Responsibility and Player Programs Kathy Behrens met with Rick Carlisle, Indiana coach and president of the National Basketball Coaches Association. After that meeting, the NBA Coaches Equality Initiative was created to address the inequity.

“For many years qualified young coaches of color like Ime Udoka, Jamahl Mosley, Willie Green, Wes Unseld Jr., Darvin Ham and Stephen Silas, to name just a few, were not getting consistent opportunities to interview for NBA head coaching positions,” Carlisle said. “The last two years changed everything. The league office has tirelessly made franchises more aware of the qualifications and journeys of these talented young coaches. This increased awareness has led to qualified coaches of all backgrounds having greater opportunity to interview and the numbers speak for themselves.”

Commissioner Silver is aware of the inequity still facing the NBA. Many basketball organizations still don’t have Black people in the front office. Legendary basketball player Michael Jordan is the only Black principal owner of a sport’s franchise, the Charlotte Hornets. The Hornets currently have an open coaching spot, and hopefully it'll go to another Black coach.

For Mike Brown, “the dream” is to get to a point where 50% of head coaches being Black isn’t something worth talking about. If the league keeps up its current hiring practices, maybe it could happen.

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Mark Cuban revealed the Dallas Mavericks haven't played the national anthem this season

Muggs-N-Manor/Twitter

After years of controversy over players kneeling during the national anthem before sporting events, an NBA team has done something unique. They simply stopped playing the anthem altogether.

They didn't make an announcement. No one on the team or in management or ownership mentioned it. The 13 games that the Dallas Mavericks have played at home this preseason and regular season did not start with the national anthem, and pretty much no one even noticed.

Mavericks owner Mark Cuban confirmed today that he had nixed playing the anthem at the American Airlines Center games and had no plans to play it in the future. He told ESPN that he had made the decision after consulting NBA commissioner Adam Silver.

Cuban has expressed support for and solidarity with players who knelt during the anthem to protest racial injustice and police brutality in recent years, after saying in 2017 that he hoped players would stand.

After news broke about Cuban not playing the anthem at games, the NBA issued the following statement:

"With NBA teams now in the process of welcoming fans back into their arenas, all teams will play the national anthem in keeping with longstanding league policy."

Welp, that puts Mark Cuban in a bit of a pickle. Cuban has reportedly said they will abide by the NBA's rule and begin playing the anthem tonight. He also responded issued a statement of his own:

"We respect and have always respected the passion people have for the anthem and our county. But we also loudly hear the voices of those who feel that the anthem does not represent them. We feel that their voices need to be respected and heard, because they have not been.

Going forward, our hope is that people will take the same passion they have for this issue and apply the same amount of energy to listen to those who feel differently from them. Only then can we move forward and have courageous conversations that move this county forward and find what unites us."

So here we are in another debate about the anthem, this time about whether or not teams should be forced to play it if they don't want to. But the question remains: Why do we even play it at sporting events in the first place?

Playing the national anthem makes sense in international competitions because nationality is inherent in the matchup. But when an American team is playing an American team, playing the anthem feels like nationalism for the sake of nationalism. And when people playing those sports share that conditions in the country make them feel like the anthem doesn't fully represent them, forcing a display of patriotism starts to feel gross.

The fact that the Mavericks didn't play the anthem before 13 games and no one cared until it was pointed out is a sign that the controversy isn't really about the anthem at all. People are welcome to sing the national anthem any time they want. What exactly is the point of doing it before every professional sporting event? What do sports have to do with patriotism in the first place?

Some will say the anthem is played to bring people together, to share a sense of national unity. But if that's really what the purpose is, it's obviously not working. Until we make the country what we're supposed to be and what we claim to be—one in which liberty and justice truly exist for all—forcing the anthem at every game feels wrong.

As Shannon Sharpe pointed out, the national anthem is not the law of the land. There's no law that stipulates that the anthem be played at sporting events—it's a choice. And the anthem means different things to different people. "We have to stop with this notion that gestures and symbols are a sign of patriotism," he said. "Actions and deeds make you a patriot...Sporting events will be just fine."

If the anthem means a lot to you, you have every right to sing it whenever and wherever your heart desires. But the idea that playing it ahead of every sporting event is some kind of sacrosanct thing that can't be changed is simply wrong, and denying a team the right to choose for themselves whether or not they play it feels awfully unAmerican.

American freedom means we don't do forced patriotic displays. And the fact that the Mavericks haven't played the anthem for 13 games and the world hasn't come to a crashing halt means that we'd surely survive not playing it before every sporting event. Save the anthem for international competitions when it serves a clearer purpose, and let teams decide for themselves if they want it played on their home turf.

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