A joyous 15-minute Zoom call shows why talented Illinois can win it all
For the whole time they entertained a batch of reporters in little squares on the screens, Giorgi Bezhanishvili had his arm around Kofi Cockburn until it seemed the blood must have drained from the vessels. As the great global bridge of sport has struck again, a 7-foot, 285-pound Hercules from Jamaica (Cockburn) has wound up cohabitating in the American Midwest with a 6-9, 245-pound force (Bezhanishvili) who spent his first 14 years in Georgia (the European-Asian country with the extraordinary food) before the family relocated to Vienna (the one in Austria).
They’re a two-man, near-14-foot, 530-pound emblem of the energy of basketball’s internationalism, and they really got going when Bezhanishvili fielded a question about the second half of the Big Ten final Sunday, about how he replaced a foul-troubled Cockburn, gushed points and wreaked little booms from the scattered Illinois crowd, all while Cockburn cheered free of envy.
“It was amazing,” Bezhanishvili said. “It was amazing. A-maaaa-zing. It was so great. I can’t explain it, it was so great. It was amazing, man. It was a-maaaa-zing. It was amazing. Amazing. I mean, it was so amazing that it was amazing-amazing.”
Cockburn: “Amazing.”
It turns out that Illinois, 23-6 but 14-1 lately and the No. 1 seed in the Midwest Region, might stand for more than just a team with too many answers to guard, a team with dazzling all-American Ayo Dosunmo, the Chicagoan son of Nigerian immigrants, and a team that out-gutted a strong Ohio State, 91-88 in overtime, to win the Big Ten tournament. No, with its soaring camaraderie, its players from four countries and four coast-to-coast states and one territory that once beat the United States at an Olympics (that would be Puerto Rico), and this Georgia-Jamaica love, Illinois might stand for the big idea of sport as the world’s greatest connector.
So Bezhanishvili got going about the postgame celebration: “I was trying to collect the whole moment, within me. You know, I was trying to really absorb everything and really just, I don’t know, it’s hard to explain, enjoy it and at the same time see all those people who I’ve been with such a long time, every single day, working, and see them also from all the angles, see them so, so happy, just brings me so much joy, and I was trying to absorb that, and it was amazing. It was amazing. It was so amazing. It was amazing.”
Cockburn, half-teasing: “Amazing.”
Bezhanishvili: “Wasn’t it amazing, Kofi?”
Cockburn: “Amazing.”
Bezhanishvili: “Wasn’t it amazing?”
Cockburn: “Amazing.”
Bezhanishvili: “Oh my God.”
Then Cockburn, who scored 16 points with nine rebounds and averages 17.6 and 9.6, started talking about his love for Bezhanishvili, who scored 12 points with six rebounds and averages 5.3 and 2.8, and here came the word “limitless.”
“If you know me and Giorgi,” Cockburn said, “you know that we love each other and the extent of our love is, it’s limitless.”
Bezhanishvili: “Apartment 402!”
(That’s apparently a key part of their address.)
“It’s limitless, like, you know, we’re always together,” Cockburn said. “We enjoy being together. You know, he brings me so much joy, so much happiness, with just his energy and his approach, and his whole, like, personality. Just being able to share this moment with him, you know, after being with him for such a long time, and building that bond, it’s just an amazing feeling, you know, just to see that smile on his face.”
Bezhanishvili: “How was it?”
Cockburn: “I said it was amazing.”
Then Bezhanishvili said: “Apartment 402, baby. Four-oh-two. … Him and me, we live together. We are together every single day. We have so many joyful moments off the court. And when we see each other on the court, be successful? Come on, man! It’s just such an amazing feeling.”
Next came an unexpected interlude, from Bezhanishvili: “My mom can’t go to sleep right now [in Vienna]. She can’t go to sleep. I was on the phone with her. She’s all pumped up, all amped up. I’m not going to say how much she had to drink but, you know, she’s just really, really amped up, really, really happy, celebrating with my brother at home, um …”
When he followed that by saying, “Diverse liquids make you really happy as well as your son’s success,” Cockburn laughed and reached over and held Bezhanishvili’s head in his hands. Then Bezhanishvili spoke in Georgian to thank his grandparents, who watch all the interviews but cannot decipher them.
Next spoke Cockburn: “I feel like we both know how much we love each other, how much we don’t mean any harm to each other. We want the best for each other. Just knowing that feeling, it’s like, I can’t tell him anything wrong, and he can’t tell me anything wrong. You know, everything we tell each other is for the best. And we are so emotional, you know, we’re both international players and we’ve both been through the same journey. It’s just trusting each other and knowing that we’ll be there for each other no matter what happens. It’s just the love we have for each other. That love carries over into whatever we do in life. We just trust each other ultimately, and that’s how it is.”
“You know,” Bezhanishvili said, “we have so many conversations even at our apartment, at 402, and we have so many conversations about our families, our journeys. You know, he’s telling me a lot about his country, his family, his culture. I’m doing the same thing. In practice we go at each other. And sometimes, you know, we have almost fought a couple of times, but we know we’re not going to hit each other. It’s all competing, and it’s all making each other better.”
Then, Cockburn: “Sports brings people together because when you have a love for a certain sport, you dedicate most of your life to that sport, and sport becomes a part of you. And you know, when you share that sport with somebody else that has that same feeling about it, it’s an automatic connection that’s created right there.”
It’s clear in the way Illinois plays, and in the way it hugs, and in the way its entire bench locked arms in a picturesque visual in the game’s tense moments, that here’s a togetherness that might be rare even among champions. “It’s really hard to obtain,” said Brad Underwood, the 57-year-old coach just getting started after toiling his way through the ranks and reaching Division I head coaching at almost 50. He said that not long after Illinois media relations director Kent Brown had heard “amazing” enough times that he asked Bezhanishvili how to say it in Georgian, that unique language with its own alphabet.
“‘Amazing?’” Bezhanishvili said. “Oh my God, I’m thrown off right now. I’m thrown off. (Pause.) Saotsari. Saotsari.”
Cockburn: “Saotsari.”
Bezhanishvili: “Saotsari!”
Cockburn: “So we won’t say ‘amazing’ anymore; we say ‘saotsari.’ ”
Bezhanishvili: “Saotsari! Saotsari! Saotsari!”
