BEIJING — I left the U.S. for this tour to embrace that uncomfortable feeling of being so far away from home. I've been covering Duke basketball for so long, I needed something different.
So why did the Cameron Crazies follow me here?
Not all of them, just the random three or four who attended the U.S. quarterfinal game against Australia at the Beijing Olympic Basketball Gymnasium. At the end of the third quarter, with the U.S. up by a lot, they broke out with the one Crazie cheer that WILL NOT DIE.
It's goes like this: Two-syllable name, two-syllable name, clap, clap, clap clap clap. As in "Car-los Boo-zer, clap, clap, clap clap clap." Why that chant bugs me has nothing to do with Boozer. After hearing so many permutations, turning one syllable names into two and three back into two, over the years, it makes me twitch.
It's like Pavlov's dog. They started chanting. I started twitching.
