Latrell Sprewell helps us learn about English word structure

Are you a sports fan who’s confused about inflectional morphemes?  Fret not, let examples from Latrell Sprewell’s glorious career shed some light on the subject:

I have to disagree with the first example, that one being “Latrell hates all coach-es.” True, he might hate PJ Carlesimo, probably doesn’t exchange Christmas cards with Jeff Van Gundy and wouldn’t give Flip Saunders the time of day, but I’m sure there’s plenty of love in his heart for his coach from his days at Alabama, that being one Winfrey “Wimp” Sanderson.

You see, Wimp helped to create the Latrell that we would all come to know and love.  Turn the clock back to 1992, when Wimp was patrolling the Tide bench in his plaid jackets and Latrell was helping lead the team into the NCAA Tournament.

On March 17 of that year, right in the thick of March Madness, Wimp went a little crazy and punched his secretary, Nancy Watts, right in her eye.  One settled lawsuit later and the guy’s 32-year association with the school was over.

Instead of using his coach’s actions as a cautionary tale, though, Latrell decided from then on he’d “go Wimp” on anyone who got in his way.  There was the 1995 incident where he threatened to hit his Golden State Warrior teammate (yes, TEAMMATE) Jerome Kersey with a two-by-four.  Then two years later came the infamous choking fiasco cited in the examples above.

I’m glad some sort of positive outcome has come out of that ugliness from so many years ago.  Maybe the next version of this textbook can provide some updates on Latrell’s life, such as:

“Latrell’s house was foreclose-d on”

“Latrell is miss-ing his yacht”

“Latrell is the brok-est of all the former players”

Legends of the Precipitous Fall: Chris Washburn

“Cocaine is a hell of a drug.” Rick James said it, but it could just as easily (and also just as earnestly) come from the mouth of Chris Washburn.

A whole generation of hoops fans have grown up not knowing who the hell Chris Washburn is.  That’s a damn shame, because they should.  Make no mistake about it; the guy was that talented of a basketball player.

Washburn was an almost unfair combination of size and agility.  At 6′11″ he possessed the kind of touch that was (and still is) a true rarity in players his height.

When I was a teenager, I eyeballed him in person when he was a senior in high school at Laurinburg (NC) Institute back in 1984.  In the pre-internet era, Washburn was as hyped as a high school recruit could get.  So my pop drove him and me the 30 miles to Laurinburg from our home in Fayetteville one Friday night.  We just had to check this phenom out.

While playing at what appeared to be half speed against inferior competition, Washburn was still a sight to behold.  One trip down the floor was a monster dunk while the next was a sweet fall away jumper that found nothing but net.

I didn’t know it at the time, but I was watching a guy who was TOO aware of his glorious skill set.  Even with a nonchalant approach that night he dominated the proceedings.  And that nonchalance was a result of having grown up with everyone telling him just how great he was.  In Washburn’s mind, greatness somehow came to mean that he just didn’t need to try hard.

Dean Smith and Denny Crum sent him letters when he was in the 9th grade.  And the correspondence kept on coming from all corners of the country, some even sounding downright desperate:

You’re my reason for living. Maryland coach Charles G. (Lefty) Driesell wrote to Washburn during his junior year: “Everytime I see you play I am more and more convinced that with you in our lineup next year Maryland can win the NCAA Championship.” (Sports Illustrated)

I shudder to think of the amount of mail that descended upon Washburn during his high school years.  He could have probably started his own paper recycling company and turned a sweet profit in the process.

The late Jim Valvano and NC State had won the sweepstakes for Washburn even before I saw him play in person. That year Valvano and his staff also signed Vinny Del Negro and Nate McMillan in the same recruiting class.

When you consider the fact that Charles Shackleford and Chuck Brown were also on the Wolfpack roster during those years, it’s one hell of a head scratcher as to why Valvano didn’t make another national title run with that much talent.

I’ll let Jim Weber from Yahoo! sum up the train wreck that Washburn’s time in Raleigh became:

A North Carolina high school phenom, Washburn arrived at N.C. State after scoring 420 on his SATs (400 of those were for spelling his name right). Having already been admitted to college, he blew off the test and finished in 22 minutes. He says he would have been done even sooner if he could have circled the answers instead of shading in the bubbles. Just seven games into his college career he was convicted of stealing a stereo from a fellow athlete’s dorm room and suspended for the year. Washburn insisted it was a prank.

The 6-foot-11 big man exploded in his second season under coach Jim Valvano, despite smoking marijuana and drinking before games, which left him high in the first half and sleepy in the second. He cemented his draft status by lighting up that year’s No. 1 pick, Brad Daugherty, for 26 points in an upset victory over No. 1 North Carolina. (Yahoo! Sports)

Washburn was Paris Hilton before the concept of such a person became part of the nation’s pop culture consciousness.  Here’s a guy who wanted all the trappings of celebrity excess (partying, drugs, lack of accountability, etc.) without ever having to put in the requisite hard work needed to achieve access to those things.  For him, the party after the game mattered infinitely more than the game itself.

But even while half-assing it under the effect of drugs and booze, Washburn’s talents couldn’t be denied.  So when he surprised no one and left NC State early to enter the 1986 NBA Draft, the Golden State Warriors were more than happy to select him third overall.

Even if you’re not privy to the man’s history, you can pretty much guess how Washburn’s NBA career turned out. He ended up playing in a total of 72 games, averaging 3.1 points and 2.4 rebounds in the process.

A scant three months after his NBA debut, Washburn landed in rehab with a cocaine problem.  He was suspended for a year by the league after a positive drug test before the 1988-89 season and was banned for life after another positive test in the summer of 1989.

Keep in mind that Washburn went in the same draft as Maryland great Len Bias.  The day after they were both made instant millionaires, Bias died of a drug overdose.  Yet with that cautionary tale hitting so close to home, Washburn STILL continued to make the wrong choices.

You can imagine where the guy’s life went after being banned.  For Washburn, the decade of the 90’s was basically a blur of relapses, jail time and for a short time even homelessness.  When he should have been terrorizing NBA opponents and solidifying his Hall of Fame credentials, he was instead panhandling on the streets of Houston.

As Weber reported in his earlier referenced article, Washburn has been clean for the last 10 years.  He’s even taken to giving speeches, passing along essentially the same cautionary tale he ignored a quarter of a century ago.  But unlike Bias, Washburn is here to tell it himself, so hopefully the message can resonate a little better with the people now hearing it.

Ken Tysiac of the Charlotte Observer caught up with Washburn after one of those speeches and provided the following:

Washburn gave some typical, obvious advice.  He told the players to stay away from drugs and show up early for practice.  He counseled parents to take control of their sons’ college selection process.

Most important, he testified to what can happen to someone who gets involved with the wrong crowd.  In his hometown of Hickory, Washburn said, people talk proudly of a local guy who’s made his mark in sports, retired race car driver Dale Jarrett.

“They never say anything about Chris Washburn,” he said.  “And why is that?  Because of the choices I’ve made.” (Charlotte Observer)

Legends of the Precipitous Fall: Steve Blass
Legends of the Precipitous Fall: Joe Charboneau
Legends of the Precipitous Fall: Russell Cross

Auburn’s new basketball arena has some curious sightlines

Some of the worst college basketball arenas you’ll ever step into just so happen to be in the SEC.  With the exception of Kentucky and Arkansas, most schools in the league have a football palace sitting next to a basketball coal pit.  That distinction pretty much sums up where the SEC’s priorities lie.

Georgia’s Stegeman Coliseum is an ode to all the worst aspects of 60’s architecture.  Tennessee’s Thompson-Boling Arena is so vast and cavernous that it borders on being too vast and cavernous.  And don’t get me started with the circular seating arrangement of the Tad Smith Coliseum at Ole Miss.  There, the guy in the front row at halfcourt ends up about 30 feet further back from the action than the guy in the front row on the baseline.  Huh?

Auburn’s Beard-Eaves Memorial Coliseum was right there with the rest of them.  The facility wasn’t quite as bad as the basement dungeon set up by Buffalo Bill in “The Silence of the Lambs,” but the fortunes of the Auburn men’s basketball team could make it seem just as depressing.

That’s all changed now with the construction of a new building across the street.  The Auburn Arena features every bell and whistle that Beard-Eaves lacked:  New practice facilities with all the trimmings?  Check.  Killer locker rooms?  Check.  A concession area devoted solely to the student section?  Check.   A more intimate feel?  Check.  Better sight lines?  Well, uh, not so much of a check.

Oh, the vast majority of the seats are designed to be as close to the action as possible (think Virginia’s John Paul Jones Arena).  But there are a few seats that aren’t exactly prime:

I can’t tell for sure what section number that is or if those seats will even remain in place once the season starts.  What I can tell you is this: I sure as hell wouldn’t want to be sitting there.

Ex G’town hoopster Kevin Millen continues Tennessee’s tradition of crazy politicians

I’m now convinced that all the really crazy politicians come from Tennessee (sorry South Carolina, you lose).  You’ve probably already seen this one:

But were you at all familiar with Kevin Millen’s run for Congress?  He’s the former Georgetown basketball player (circa early 90’s) who basically went crazy because John Thompson didn’t turn him into a player we’d actually remember.  It got so bad that restraining orders had to be taken out barring Millen from not only the Georgetown campus, but the city of Washington DC as well.  Here’s more background from Washington City Paper:

Though things didn’t go well on the hardwood, Millen did earn a degree in finance at Georgetown, in 1995. But rather than capitalizing on that prized sheepskin, he went home to Memphis and, for reasons nobody can explain, spent a couple of years stewing about what had gone wrong during his college days.

“He wasn’t the same Kevin Millen I knew, I can tell you that,” says Jeff Walker, his high school coach. “He was angry, just mad at the world. He looked the same as the nice, fun-loving, absolutely trustworthy kid I remembered, but he sure wasn’t the same.”

According to his former attorney, Celicia Hoover-Hankerson, Millen had telephone conversations with Thompson from Memphis about possibly getting an administrative position with either the Washington Bullets or the Georgetown athletic department. When neither job came through, says Hoover-Hankerson, “that set something off.”

Millen left Memphis and came back to D.C. His first brush with the law came in 1998, when he was legally barred from the Georgetown campus for repeatedly making menacing phone calls and showing up at Thompson’s office unannounced. According to newspaper accounts at the time, Millen was telling everybody around him that Thompson had kept him from being a pro. He was also ordered by a D.C. Superior Court judge to go back to Memphis. (Washington City Paper)

That was written in 2002, and in the intervening years he’s gotten his life together to the point where he decided to run for Congress in his native Memphis.  Trouble is, he’s still as crazy as a Ron Artest postgame interview.  After losing out in the GOP primary, here’s the open letter he provided:

Good Morning Everyone,

I will be asking each person to realize what they have done by not voting for Kevin Millen. The first thing you have done is allowed each black constituents to tell white people bow down and apologize to me for slavery, cracker. Secondly, you will be allowing a health care bill that will hurt All Americans, to be instilled in the United States of America. All Republicans in Memphis have turned this Republican Party into the dumbest and weakest Republican Party ever. You have allowed the judicial system to keep violating your constitutional rights. You have allowed the police to keep violating your constitutional rights. I tried to help, but people say it’s your first time running for office, that’s why I didn’t know you. How many people knew Harold Ford Jr.? How many people know Steve Cohen? How many people know any of the city council or the county commissioner? How many people even know any of the judges? Some say you were not on T.V. T.V. is nothing, because I knocked on doors, put out flyers, email all business in Memphis and around the U.S., to try to make Memphis more attract to recruit more business. They said the money issue some Republican spent almost 3 million dollars and still didn’t win. They chose a clodpoll for the democratic party and a idiot to win the Republican Party. O’well they want to be a bunch of faggots and idiots, you can’t change what doesn’t want to be changed. You cannot help nothing that does not want to be helped. You can try to hamper a person from moving ahead by telling lies, pulling up signs, and people believing lies to make sure that person does not move ahead. This is why I only had 1199. Life goes on and again, thanks to all the voters whom wanted a serious candidate that was going to stand up for Tennesseans especially Memphians. Since every wants to be experiments in Tennessee, you all have chosen the right two candidates to represent the parties. Yes, you all have chose two experiments, so that they can experiment on you. Memphis City Schools just might do another policy to hamper the youth, because these people enjoy making their youth illiterate. Experiment, extolled xen permitted enourmous rights in massive extrinsic negative times…reread the web page because it’s coming down very soon…
www.kevinmillenforcongress.com

I would throw up a link to his web page, but true to his crazy word, he’s already taken it down.  Here’s my question: if you’ve been barred from going to DC, would winning a congressional race supersede that?  Hmmmm…

How the Kentucky vs. Chicago Sun-Times fight turned me into a giant p@$$#

A few days ago, I took a screen capture of an article by Michael O’Brien of the Chicago Sun-Times and referenced it in a post on this site.  The article in question, “Source: Davis will choose Kentucky,” was posted on yourseason.com, which is the Sun-Times site devoted to coverage of high school sports.

In that article, O’Brien referred to “rumors” about the recruitment of prep basketball star Anthony Davis, who’s a rising senior in Chicago.  In case you don’t know anything about the kid, Davis is considered by most recruiting services to be one of the top 10 players in the nation.

What rumor was O’Brien referring to? According to him, Davis was on the verge of signing with Kentucky, but his commitment had been up for sale to the tune of $200,000.

In my post regarding his article, I chastised O’Brien for using the Sun-Times as a vehicle to pass on a recruiting rumor that sounded like the kind of fodder you read on college message boards.

In my opinion, if he really had an angle on impropriety of that magnitude, then he should have gotten a Lloyd Lake type of person to go on the record and provide details of what he or she knew.

The reason I utilized a screen capture of O’Brien’s piece is because a few hours after it was initially posted, the Sun-Times removed all references to Davis’s services being up for sale.  As of today, I couldn’t find the cleaned up version of the story on yourseason.com, either.

My thinking at the time was that O’Brien’s assertion was on the ridiculous side (the figure sounds inflated) and undermined any credibility he had as a writer.  Besides, spreading a rumor only hurts the subject of the rumor, just ask Brett Favre’s penis.

I didn’t think anything more about the matter until I woke up yesterday morning and had this waiting in my inbox (for the record, I’m on Kentucky’s media mailing list):

There’s more legal babble in the rest of the letter, but you get the drift.  Now let me first say that I’m not under any pretense that this site is widely read.  Oh, more of you read my ramblings with each passing week (thanks for that, by the way), but your numbers are by no means in the millions.

Therefore, I don’t think anything I’m doing would come across the computer screen of a lawyer from Sturgill, Turner, Barker & Moloney.  No delusions of grandeur here.

Still, I sought advice from a major radio personality (look at me anonymously namedrop, I’m such a Peter King-ish toolbag) that I know who’s also worked in the newspaper business.  I asked him if I should take the post down.  Here is his unedited response: “Delete that shit fool!”

So I deleted that post in which I had referenced O’Brien’s article and included the screen capture.   In my mind, I had technically republished what Kentucky’s lawyers had said not to republish, and I didn’t want to end up like the one unlucky douchebag out there that the music industry chooses to sue over illegal file sharing.

So imagine my surprise today when finding out that Michael O’Brien has a new article on yourseason.com, an article in which he isn’t backing down from his original assertions:

Sources from three separate universities told the Sun-Times that Davis Sr. asked for money in return for his son’s commitment, with the amounts ranging from $125,000 to $150,000.

When reached Thursday, Davis Sr. declined to respond further, saying:  “Thanks for ruining my son. Thank you very much.”

Georgette L. Greenlee, an attorney representing Davis Sr. and his wife, Erainer Eberhardt-Davis, also denied the original Sun-Times story.

“Mr. Davis has not asked any university or college for any commitment fee for his son, nor has anything been offered to him or Mrs. Davis,” Greenlee wrote Thursday. (Chicago Sun-Times)

It doesn’t appear that O’Brien and his employer are going to be pushed around by Kentucky’s lawyers, so this should get GOOD.  But while he’s providing more detail about where his information is coming from, it doesn’t change my original criticism.

I understand the need for a journalist to protect sources, but hard core college sports fans hear rumors about improper recruiting every single day.  If Michael O’Brien is to make us believe any of this, he needs to produce his Deep Throat for the world to see.

Next Page »