Bass sticks his toe in the water

Boston Celtics forward Brandon Bass will join children from the Boys & Girls Club of Boston for a swim class on Friday to promote awareness of water safety and the importance of learning how to swim. These sort of offseason community events are not atypical, but here's what makes this one unique: 28-year-old Bass is learning to swim himself. From the Boston Globe:

Heading into his third season as a member of the Boston Celtics, Brandon Bass is in top physical shape. At 6-foot-8 and 260 pounds, he is nothing but muscle and can shoot, block, rebound, and steal the ball with the best of them. But there’s one thing that 6-year-old Brandon Bass Jr. can beat his daddy at: swimming.

“My son’s the first one in the family to learn how to swim,” says Bass, a 28-year-old Celtics forward. “If you threw me out in the ocean, I would drown.”

But Bass is getting ready to change that. On Friday, he will get into the Boston Sports Club swimming pool in Waltham, the shallow end, with 10 children from the Boys & Girls Club of Boston. Together, Bass and the children will take their first swimming lesson. He will continue lessons with them for as long as his Celtics schedule permits, and when it does not, he says he will take private lessons until he learns to swim.

Though he is volunteering his time to help children conquer their fear of swimming, Bass has fears of his own. “I’m nervous, because I don’t know how to float,” he says. “I can’t tread water.”

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