Mark Madsen's Enthusiasm Knows No Bounds

When you have a limited basketball skill-set, you can still carve a niche for yourself by playing with unbridled enthusiasm and energy. Mark Madsen is a poster boy for this method, but apparently it's not something he can just turn on and off like a switch. No, he attacks everything with surprising vigor, even his sightseeing trips in Turkey. From his blog:

The coolest [trip] to me was the Hagia Sophia Mosque. For one thousand years, it was actually the largest Christian Cathedral in the World. Then, it was taken over by the Ottoman Empire (I learned all of this from our guide today!) and converted into a Mosque. Today it is a museum! So it's been a Christian church three times (Replaced once then burned down a second time, finally rebuilt a third time), a mosque, and now it's museum! How cool is that! ... All of the Islamic and Christian influence can be seen in the building! Then we ventured down to a giant underground water tank (Cistern) that was like a mini reservoir to hold water for those many times when Istanbul was attacked and seiged over the centuries. It was awesome!!

I counted: that's seven exclamation points in the span of one paragraph (not to mention the title of his post is "Hello Again!!!!") -- I'm surprised not to see a random :) interjected here and there. (Realize, though, that I poke fun because I care. If I didn't find Madsen interesting enough to subscribe to his blog's RSS feed, I never would have noticed.)

In other news (and I fully admit this is more "newsworthy" and probably should have been the leading point of the post), Madsen describes how Juwan Howard has started to warm up to his younger teammates. Whereas one reporter noted that Howard seemed reluctant to interact with the young cubs at media day, Madsen says Howard is now one of the leaders on the team who talks with everyone "1 through 15" about how they can help the team. Three cheers for team unity!

Previously on FanHouse:
Timberwolves Living Large in Turkey
Juwan Snubs Young Wolves