As President-elect Barack Obama joked here Tuesday, he may be “putting together the best basketball-playing Cabinet in American history.”
Six-foot-5 Chicago schools superintendent Arne Duncan, nominated as Education secretary, is Obama’s latest addition to a projected Cabinet loaded with hoopsters.
The president-elect could put this lineup on the floor:
• The president-elect himself. The 47-year-old was on the state championship team at Punahou School in Honolulu. Obama’s still a frequent player — it’s a tradition for him to play with friends on Election Day. He sank a three-pointer while visiting U.S. troops in Kuwait this summer.
• Duncan, 44, who has been playing in pickup games with Obama for more than 10 years. The schools chief, Obama said, has a “much better” jump shot than he does. Duncan played at Harvard University and professionally in Australia.
• Retired Marine general James Jones, 64, who is slated to be the president’s national security adviser. He’s 6-foot-4 and played forward at Georgetown University in the early 1960s.
• Susan Rice, 44, who was picked by Obama to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, was a star point guard at the National Cathedral School in Washington.
• Eric Holder, 57, who’s been nominated to be attorney general, played for Stuyvesant High School in New York City.
• Timothy Geithner, 47, who is slated to be Treasury secretary, “hates to miss a pickup basketball game,” according to the Associated Press.
If that team of over-40s needs some youth and help from outside the Cabinet, there’s Dan Pfeiffer, 32, set to be a deputy in the White House communications office. He was a basketball and soccer player at Wilmington (Del.) Friends School in the early 1990s. Pfeiffer is 6-foot-2.
Reggie Love, Obama’s personal aide, is 26 years old, 6-foot-5 and played both basketball and football at Duke University.
Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, 51, Obama’s choice for the Department of Homeland Security, could coach. She has been a frequent “guest coach” for the University of Arizona women’s basketball team. Or there’s Obama’s brother-in-law, Craig Robinson, 46, who coaches the Oregon State University men’s team.
Barack Obama goes up against Tyler Hansbrough on April 29 in Chapel Hill, N.C.
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