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USA Basketball’s ‘Candy Guy’ Ellis Dawson Visits TODAY Show

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3 months ago

August 2, 2024

USA Basketball’s ‘Candy Guy’ Ellis Dawson Visits TODAY Show

From Charleston Chew to Swedish Fish, the 2024 Summer time Olympics have worldwide taste, due to Ellis Dawson. You could possibly even say he’s a Life Saver for Crew USA.

You might not know Dawson’s identify, however he has gained notoriety amongst Olympic viewers for his function because the “sweet man.” Sure, Dawson has been noticed hauling sweet to offer out to members of the USA males’s basketball workforce. He’s additionally in command of uniforms and different issues, however he says sweet is the massive job.

“That is crucial factor for our guys,” he stated on TODAY on Aug. 1. “One in all my roles is simply to be sure that we’ve all the pieces prepared.”

Ellis Dawson (proper) introduced alongside some sweet to point out the TODAY crew.TODAY

Dawson stated Daybreak Staley, who coached the ladies’s workforce to gold on the postponed 2020 Summer time Olympics in Tokyo, loves Werther’s Unique, however he didn’t single out which sweet is LeBron James’ favourite.

“He form of varies,” he stated. “He form of goes along with his mode and his temper.”

Dawson went viral July 31 after he was featured in a short video on NBC Sports activities’ TikTok carrying Tupperware containers filled with sweet, together with a Ziploc stuffed with sweets in the course of the U.S. males’s basketball workforce’s victory over South Sudan.

“USA basketball’s sweet man is the hero we didn’t know we would have liked,” the clip was captioned.

“The place was this place on profession day?” somebody joked within the feedback, whereas a number of different individuals famous his resemblance to “Bob the Cap Catcher,” a person who went viral for retrieving a swim cap in the course of the ladies’s 100-meter breaststroke preliminary race July 28.

A New Mexico native who has labored with the NBA’s Orlando Magic, Dawson is a stalwart of USA Basketball, having labored for the group since 2005 when he was introduced on as a supervisor of aggressive applications. In 2009, he was promoted to assistant director, nationwide workforce operations and is presently listed as director, nationwide groups operations.

“As assistant director, nationwide workforce operations, Dawson assists in all sides of the boys’s and girls’s aggressive applications, together with participant personnel and basketball operations throughout trials, coaching camps and competitions,” his biography on the USA Basketball website reads.

“Moreover, he assists with the workforce outfitting; coordinates attire stock and video tools; maintains the USA Basketball video library; in addition to assists in coordinating the USA Basketball Officers Program.”