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The Other Basketball Draft

There's a lot of hoopla surrounding the NBA Draft. Chad Ford and other draftniks spend weeks fine-tuning their mock drafts and talking to scouts so that they can provide up to the minute info about who's going where and the days following are full of grades and commentary from the same sources. People even spend a lot of time breaking down the fashions sported by draftees. It's a big event so it's not surprising that other stories get short shrift.

One of those stories, interestingly enough, is another basketball draft albeit one with a bit less suspense than the NBA selection process. The Harlem Globetrotters held their first-ever draft this week. It wasn't covered by ESPN, TNT or even BET so we don't know how the mothers of the lucky players reacted when their names were called nor do we know who was doing the name-calling. Well, we know it wasn't David Stern but otherwise it's a blank. Not taking part in the draft were the Washington Generals, still being run by the befuddled Chris Wallace, traded all of their picks for a bucket full of confetti and the DVD rights to The Harlem Globetrotters on Gilligan's Island.

Who did the Globetrotters pick?

• Anthony Atkinson of Division II Barton College who you might remember from his stunning performance in this years D-II championship game when he scored 10 points in 40 seconds to lead his team to the title.
• Mario West of Georgia Tech and Brent Petway of Michigan finished 1-2 in the College Slam Dunk Contest and will get a chance to flash their skills in the red, white and blue of the Globetrotters. Petway also made waves when by shaving his head to resemble Michigan's football helmets and by dunking on Greg Oden during a game against the Buckeyes. The Detroit News reports he's passing on the chance to try his hand at something he never experienced in Ann Arbor. That would be playing in games his team has a chance to win. Instead he'll be a member of the Hawks summer league team.
• Marcus Kennedy, a D-II All-American from Montevallo, is best known for sinking a half-court shot to win the South Regional in the same tournament that Atkinson and Barton College won. He was a bit of a surprise pick, DraftExpress thought he wouldn't go until the seventh round of the White Shadow draft.
• Sun Ming Ming, a 7'9" Chinese center pictured below. Sun played for the Maryland Nighthawks of the ABA this season and has his own website cunningly called sevenfootnine.com.

As you can see Sun Ming Ming isn't black, a bit of a departure for the Globetrotters. He is freakishly tall, however. Like his countryman Yi Jianlian, he's said to be unhappy with where he ended up in the draft. He was hoping to get snapped up by the Flushing Earthroamers and his agents are feverishly trying to negotiate a trade.

Things That Make You Go Hmmm

It's Atlanta Krunk day on the internets, when is it ever not Atlanta Krunk day though, and a lot of that has to do with their new head coach. Kenny Anderson, the former New York City high school phenom/Georgia Tech standout/NBA journeyman/Real World star and Salt N Pepa DJ baby daddy, was named head coach of the club yesterday. It's an unlikely week that finds both Kenny and Reggie Theus landing on the sidelines of professional basketball teams and it's an even unlikelier week when both of them are hired by former members of C+C Music Factory.

Just kidding, George Maloof was never an official member of the group that made us sweat our way through the early 90's. Freedom Williams was, however, and he's used his proceeds from music stardom to finance the purchase of the CBA Krunk. Michael Rand spoke to him about his new pursuit for his blog at the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.

RB: A player comes late to practice and he’s smellin’ like perfume. Is that something that makes you go, “Hmmmmmm?”
FW: (Laughs) Absolutely. You have to wonder about that. But that’s Kenny’s job now.

That it's Kenny Anderson's job to get after players who might be malingering their way through injury, refusing to play for teams paying their contracts and otherwise giving their coach a pain in the ass is the clearest sign yet of the existence of a higher power. If the Krunk sign Derrick Coleman then any doubt of that existence will go out the window.

Vin Is French For Wine

To paraphrase Muhammed Ali: Grass grows, birds fly, waves pound the sand, Vin Baker drinks to excess.

Former NBA All-Star Vin Baker, whose 14-year career was marred by bouts of depression and alcoholism, was charged early Tuesday with drunken driving after leaving an eastern Connecticut casino.

At least he hasn't let the end of his basketball career send his life into a tailspin. He's still the same Vin Baker he always was. 

Eddie Griffin, You're Not Alone

What's the difference between current NBA players and former NBA players? Current players masturbate in their cars while watching porn on their dashboard TV sets. Former players have to use their imagination. They still like to do it in their automobiles, though. Just ask Byron Houston. The former Warrior, Sonic and King was arrested in Oklahoma City Wednesday afternoon after a woman called police to report a man pleasuring himself at an intersection.

Police stopped a car at 5:45 p.m. that matched the woman's description and found Houston in the driver's seat with his shoes off and underwear on the floorboard, Master Sgt. Gary Knight said. The woman later identified Houston, 37, as the man she saw and said she's seen him doing the same thing on three previous occasions, Knight said.

Houston, who played his college ball in-state at Oklahoma State, is no stranger to indecent exposure. Nor is he a stranger to getting arrested for masturbating in his car. He was previously nabbed in August 2002 for the same offense. He was also arrested in September 2001 after several people saw him beating it on the balcony of his apartment and in May 2002 when more people witnessed his self-love through an undraped window. He pled guilty in 2003 to four counts of indecent exposure and is a registered sex offender. He faces three charges for this incident. Indecent exposure and engaging in a lewd act you probably could've guessed but he was also driving with a canceled license. What serial masturbater has the time to go to the DMV?

Starfucker, And Proud Of It

Bruce Willis' current squeeze is Playboy Playmate Tamara Witmer but if the bald lothario can't keep her satisfied she's already got a good idea about who she'd like to ride to fame and fortune next. She's not going to change streams and look for a "regular" guy. No, Miss August 2005 has her sights set on another celebrity or pseudo-celebrity, she already counts Jean-Claude Van Damme among her conquests, to keep her in the gossip columns.

If Willis doesn't work out, she'd like a crack at the Lakers' Luke Walton, or Owen Wilson - although "I heard he's a real dog." Still, "I love going out with celebrities. I'm always up for it."

Witmer and Walton actually have something in common. She's an athlete as well, a veteran of the Los Angeles Temptation, the winners of the 2005 Lingerie Bowl. I'm not sure what position she played but I'm sure she did a great job. Walton may not be as high on the A-List as Willis or Wilson, hell he's not even the third-best player on his team, but you'd be hard-pressed to find too many hoopsters in a better position than the Laker forward. He's in L.A., plays in front of celebrities every night and seems to be beating off starlets with a stick. That he came from Bill Walton says a lot about how good looking his mother must be.

You Don't Bring A Book To Read?

A tip of the very tall cap to Deuce of Davenport for this picture of Manute Bol waiting in line at the Oakland Airport. What a rough life Bol has led. First he was born in the Sudan in squalid conditions, then he lived in Bridgeport, CT and Washington D.C. during the 80's before appearing on Celebrity Boxing because he wanted to help Sudanese refugees. And now he's in Oakland, yeesh!

I hope that Bol's not flying coach, though I assume he is based on the Celebrity Boxing appearance, and if he is, I really hope he's got a bulkhead seat. I'm a foot and a half shorter than he is and it's problematic to be folded up like a card table for a long flight. Imagining what it must be like for Manute makes me think of the final scene from Braveheart. That kind of torture is just not something we human beings should subject each other to.

Once A Faker, Always A Faker

What do you do when a 20-year professional basketball career on two continents comes to an end? Some go into broadcasting, others take up coaching or scouting and still others divest themselves from the sport altogether and pursue other career opportunities. Vlade Divac has taken the latter option, although it's landed him in some hot water according to Newsday.

A Sacramento store owned by Vlade Divac and his wife, Ana, has been hit with two lawsuits alleging that it is passing off knockoff Gucci handbags as the real thing. The store's attorneys have denied the allegations in court papers.

The chain-smoking Serb had quite a reputation as a flopper during his NBA career. So it isn't too great a leap to his new endeavor. After years of passing off fake charging violations on the court he is now charging people for fake handbags. There's no truth to the rumor that when served with the papers Divac fell to the ground and convinced the police to charge the process server with assault.

Is That A Basketball Under Your Jersey Or Are You Just Glad To See Me?

Dontrelle Willis earned some kudos in the press for pitching and winning a game hours before his wife gave birth to their daughter earlier this week. That's nothing. A member of the Syracuse woman's basketball team (the Orangewomen?) had a baby last Thursday at an hospital in the city less than two months after starting at forward. Fantasia Goodwin didn't tell any of the coaches or trainers about being in the family way until just before the final game of the season February 25 against Cincinnati. Goodwin, a junior transfer from Monroe College in the Bronx,  was held out of the lineup for that game, the only one she didn't start all season for the 9-20 team. It's not that unusual for women athletes to compete while pregnant and part of the reason is that many universities don't have a policy in place to deal with pregnancies and athletes fear losing their scholarships.

"We have got to protect their scholarship," Sorensen said. "If we have a situation where we're asking or requiring an athlete to step forward and say she's pregnant, but it's going to result in her scholarship getting yanked, then of course nobody's going to step forward because they stand to lose everything."

One Louisville hoopster played until she was eight months pregnant without letting anyone in on her condition. Goodwin scored 14 points in 28 minutes in her last game on Feb. 24 and averaged 12 points and 6.8 rebounds for the season. Those aren't bad numbers at all, until you realize that she was playing for two.

Liveblogging The WNBA Draft

Live from Cleveland with Linda Cohn at the helm of the coverage, WNBA commissioner Donna Orender handling things from the podium and oversized women squeezed into ill-fitting business casual...the excitement is palpable as we wait for the Phoenix Mercury to break the tension and announce just who will be the first overall pick in this year's draft. There's really nothing quite so exciting as....ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

Oh, damn, I fell asleep. Accept this picture of Keeley Hazell as penance.

Jim Harrick Finds The Silver Lining

When Jim Harrick lost the University of Georgia head coaching job it didn't seem like it would spell the end of his relevance on the college scene. After all he'd bounced back from losing the UCLA job as a result of lying to investigators about recruiting improprieties and sidestepped allegations of sexual misconduct at Rhode Island to a better job in Athens. Plus coaches from Jerry Tarkanian to Steve Fisher to John Calipari have overseen programs that fell afould of the NCAA but saw themselves move onto other Division 1 jobs. Yet Harrick hasn't been able to regain his footing since losing the Georgia job in the face of an academic scandal. In case you've forgotten the scandal exploded when the final exam of a basketball coaching class taught by assistant coach Jim Harrick Jr. was leaked. It features questions like "How many halves are there on a basketball game?" and "How many points do you get for a 3-point field goal?"

Harrick hasn't fallen so far to be sitting in his mother's basement blogging or anything, though. He's coaching in the NBA D-League with the Bakersfield Jam where the New York Times' Lee Jenkins caught up with him. Harrick coaches another former national champion, Mateen Cleaves, and Gerry McNamara but he doesn't let such starry company delude him from his place on the pecking order.

Harrick has one team rule: No sniveling. Before every practice, he starts his pep talk the same way: “Fellas, it’s great to be here. You could easily be in Iraq with a gun on your back.”

Sometimes he does switch up the message -

"Fellas, it's great to be here. You could be in summer school taking my son's class for the second time."

"Fellas, it's great to be here. You could be getting anally raped in San Quentin by an Aryan meth dealer."

"Fellas, it's great to be here. You could be on the Celtics."

"Fellas, it's great to be here. Pacman Jones could be making it rain on your ass."

"Fellas, it's great to be here. Micheal Ray Richardson hates you fags who can't make it in the Association."

"Fellas, it's great to be here. I just sent a guy in Nigeria $500 so that he could get the fortune that rightfully belongs to him."

"Fellas, it's great to be here. Did you see that 300 picture? You could be one of those freaks."

"Fellas, it's great to be here. You pay so much less in taxes when you pull in 18K a year that we're doing you a favor!"