Remembering My Friend Muhammad Ali

— -- I WROTE COLUMNS for ESPN on Muhammad Ali's 65th and 70th birthdays. I was looking forward to writing again in January 2017 for his 75th birthday. That was obviously not meant to be as the world mourns the loss of this giant. Had I never met Ali, I still would be mourning. But as my wife and our family were able to become close friends with Ali and his family, it is especially hard.

I was in my late teens and a child of the 1960s. I marched against the Vietnam War and for civil rights. I was with my father, Joe Lapchick, who along with Celtics legend Red Auerbach worked summers at Kutsher's Hotel and Country Club in Monticello, New York. My dad helped integrate the NBA as coach of the New York Knicks with Nat "Sweetwater" Clifton, one of the first black players in the league in 1950. My dad knew the power of race and sport.

Suddenly Muhammad Ali was nearby and my dad introduced me. Ali trained twice during his early career at Kutsher's. When he later refused induction into the Army and became so outspoken about race, I joined thousands of others who admired this man who was clearly risking his career and even his life to take a stand -- and on such important issues. Each time I saw him on TV, I thought about his handshake.

My dad and I watched the reactions of the media and most of the white and some of the black public as he became a divisive figure for so many. This was a man who the Selective Service said was illiterate and not eligible to serve. When he spoke and became a Muslim, he was suddenly drafted knowing that his religion would not allow him to serve in the Army. My dad and I watched "Firing Line" in 1968 when arch conservative intellectual William F. Buckley Jr. tried to unravel Ali's religious sincerity. Ali leveled him with his brilliance, passion and commitment. I was locked on Muhammad Ali as a real life hero of mine.

I learned as a child the power of sport to affect positive social change. As a 5-year-old boy, I saw angry racists attack my father because he signed Clifton. I saw his image hanging from a tree with people picketing under it when I was 5.

In 1978, I was attacked in my college office for leading the sports boycott of South Africa. I had liver damage, kidney damage, a hernia, a concussion, and the N-word carved into my stomach with a pair of office scissors. The anti-apartheid movement was under way in an attempt to isolate South Africa, with boycotts of trade, bank loans, oil, travel and sports and culture.

If people were willing to go to those lengths to try to stop my father and me, they must have thought that the sports platform we were using was important.