A couple years back, while trolling ESPN Page 2 I came across a fun Valentine's Day article. Delonte West opened up on February 14 about his ideal romantic evening, complete with a yacht, Jim Jones pumping in the Benz, some Moet, steak, skrimp, one prepubescent-tail-chasing crooner to serenade… and Popeye's chicken. Oh, and Jaws, too. Then-Celtic teammate and world-reknowned love doctor Orien Greene chimes in to add to the humor.
Some tidbits from the hilarity that ensues…
D-West: “So, I pick her up in my white convertible. From there, I'd have the music pumping on the radio. The Jim Jones pumping, you know, 'Summer in Miami' song pumping. Got to keep a little gangsta, you can't be too soft. You can't be in there playing some guy that's crying, talking about don't leave me and love me baby, wah wah and all that. So Jim Jones pumping and then from there, wind blowing through the hair, boom, we get straight to the point -- we eat afterwards because I don't want to kiss no onions. I don't want to kiss you tasting like onions and steak and mushrooms and everything.”
O.G.: “What, you taking her back to the Mot 6 [Motel 6]?”
D-West: “So, where we going then? You know, with the female readers, I might get me a superstar off this one. I might get me Beyonce or something.”
O.G.: “Take her to your yacht, dog.”
D-West: “Sit down and have some dinner, some shrimps and steaks, keep it nice and breezy. Pop some bottles, some Moet Rose. The red Moet, we ain't popping no Kristal, it tastes like urination. We ain't popping no Kris, that's $500 a bottle. It ain't that serious. It ain't going to get you drunk. Make sure you put that in there. We ain't doing a $500 bottle, we're doing a $99 wine and dine. While we're eating, have a singer. Who should I have?"
O.G.: “R. Kelly.”
D-West: “I can't afford R. Kelly.”
O.G.: “You can't afford R. Kelly? Oh, you talking about you going to actually have him on the boat singing? Oh, man, you doing it like that?! I'm telling you, you all might not come back for two, three days.”
D-West: “So, we are done eating, man, we've got to have someone singing while we're eating. OK, so from there, we're doing a midnight skinny-dipping jump. Alright? From there, hopefully she's got money because I hope Jaws gets her, boom, make sure she got me in the will, bank, I'm good. Oh well, shark got her! Jaws got her. Nah, we ain't going there.”
D-West: “One more thing: When we're on the yacht eating, we're going to have some Popeyes chicken. That's for dinner. It's to let her know, put a mental image on her mind, first and foremost, if you ain't from the hood, you don't like Popeyes chicken. Everyone there loves Popeyes chicken and the biscuits -- phew. But that's just getting it on her mind, saying, you know, 'Yeah, I can wine and dine you, but I'm a little rough around the edges and I'm keeping it real with you. I can be romantic, but this is real, we're going to eat some chicken tonight. Chicken and biscuits.'”
It's particularly funny given the timing, because the Very Next Night after V-Day, Delonte was delivered a very special message, from a newfound acquaintance... ;-)
"February 15, 2006
Dearest Delonte -
From the instant that things took off, I knew you and I would become glued to one another. As I pressed not-so-tenderly against your Adam's Apple, I hoped that our One Shining Moment could somehow remain frozen in time, perhaps like a poster where everyone could someday say they, too, were a 'Witness'. So sorry about the bruises I left on your neck and chest: just tell your homeboyz you got a hickey!
But alas, due to circumstances beyond our control, we had to go our separate ways. I truly hope we can meet again sometime soon, perhaps next season, since you won't be around by the springtime, what with the playoffs and all. (Sigh!) Thinking of you, until then...
Sincerely,
LeBron's Right Knee"
~iyf
Woe be to the one-dimensional slam dunking baller. Despite all one’s efforts to round out his game, perfect a mid-range jumper, morph into a lockdown defender, dominate the glass, and drop crazy dimes… the gravity-laden naysayers and critics persist. “Mad hops are all he’s got,” they’d whine.
Yet through it all, somehow, uni-skilled high school high-risers still manage to fill up NCAA Division I rosters, with coaches clamoring endlessly for ballers with “raw” athletic abilities and “boundless” potential, stats on vertical leap and wingspans dripping from their tongues.
Invariably, it’s a person of (darker) color holding down that coveted scholarship spot on the D-I bench, often in the form of some “fourth-year general studies major,” or “junior college transfer,” whose high school and AAU mixtapes on YouTube caused some recruiters’ jaws to drop to the floor. Many of these same cats sneak into the NBA draft, earning guaranteed-millionaire cash on this same foundation of raw, untapped, and often unrealized, potential.
Sadly, white dudes with ups as their primary calling card haven’t marketed well in the top tier of NCAA programs. Thus guys like former Illinois high school dunk champ Eric Hobbie, now rocking rims at McKendree University in southwestern Illinois, get relegated to unremarkable Division II or III or NAIA college careers, destined for a lifetime of service as somebody’s personal trainer, mascot jobs leaping through hoops of fire off of a trampoline, and germane duties like snaring those hard-to-reach items off shelves for little old ladies at Wal-Mart.
It’s not like the young man hasn’t tried to get noticed in other ways. The sole underclassman represented in the American Midwest Conference’s All-Conference 1st Team last season, the 6-foot-6 Hobbie amassed 7.3 boards and 15.4 points per game, and 40.3 percent from three-point range, in a Pippen-esque second-fiddle role to the conference MVP, leading his Bearcats in blocks while second in steals. Boosting a top-ten NAIA program and currently riding a seven-game winning streak, Hobbie has helped make winning easy this year for head coach Harry Statham, now the winningest coach (and the coachingest coach) in all of men’s college hoops.
Before that, he was downstate Illinois’ high school player of the year, damaging opponents’ psyches as a high-flying forward for the Vandalia Vandals. Doing it all, he put up double-doubles, three thefts per game, and 42 percent from 3-point range, leading to an Associated Press All-State selection in his senior year.
You’d think Hobbie’s multifaceted game and winning pedigree would gain the warranted attention of top-notch NCAA programs. But concerns about the dreaded ‘tweener label persist. And besides, when you can do stuff like THIS to people, it’s quite easy for others to get distracted…
Even his coach, extolling Hobbie’s many virtues, struggled mightily to hold his tongue about Hobbie’s flair for the dramatic above the rim. “In practice, there were times, ‘Holy smokes! Did that happen?’ Some of the things he did were jaw-dropping.”
Hobbie would compensate for the lack of prime-time college interests by pursuing his true loves outside of basketball. And for those with ridiculous hops playing college ball, who among that group lists their top “hobbies” as hunting and fishing? Oh, and Dodge trucks?
“Deer hunting is a place I get away from things,” Hobbie said. “That’s where I made my decision for college, sitting up in a tree stand. McKendree was the best fit. I just wanted to stay somewhere close to home. I don’t fit in at a bigger school. I like to deer hunt and fish. Every day, every chance I get I do it. My dad had me deer hunting when I was 3 with him.” His biggest catch this year in the pond was an 8-pound bass. He did throw it back. Unfortunately for his opponents this season, he wasn’t as merciful on the court. Hobbie hurt them in every way possible. With an improved 3-pointer, he wasn’t afraid to step out and make his defenders guard him deep. He could also dribble up and hit the mid-range jumper, and as always, he was tough inside with a variety of post moves. He also posterized a few defenders – a kid on Flora especially felt what it was like to be Hobbied – with an explosive dunking ability that’s never been seen in Vandalia before.
Life ain’t fair for guys like Eric Hobbie. And when it isn’t, guys like him take solace by just taking it out on unsuspecting low-talent bruthas under the rim. Don’t get Hobbie-Horsed, Homie!
~iyf
December 2006
Facializer # 10 – David "Big Daddy D" Lattin
"If David Lattin hadn't dunked on you, I wouldn't be standing here running your offense." With that nugget of wisdom to his coach Pat Riley, Earvin “Magic” Johnson conveyed the impact of what would become a GREAT MOMENT IN CIVIL RIGHTS HISTORY!
Yeah, you know the story. 1966, Texas Western, all-black starters, underdogs, mighty whitey
Pat would have thought twice about jumping had he read that his opponent was the FIRST (no racial adjectives) high school All-American ever from Texas. On his way to 16 points and a stunning upset, Lattin would follow with three more rim-rattlers, slams on Kentucky so vicious that Ashley Judd could be heard crying from her momma's womb. But what made the posterization of Riley, and by extension, America's withering separate-but-equal mindset so remarkable is the reaction it produced.There probably wouldn't be a forty-ounce brew chillin' in your fridge today had it not been for Prohibition. That dry era in history revealed to Americans exactly what it was missing out on, and when the draconian rules were kicked to the curb, demand for booze shot up with a vengeance, and now we'd never go back. Similar thing happened in hoops. Within five years after Lattin's dominating slam, every SEC school came equipped with a brutha. Yes, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia. No National Guard required, thank you. Texas Western was so unnerved by the confrontational images Lattin & Co. projected that they changed the school's name the next year. Meanwhile, the prospect of a sea change in college hoops resonatedwith the powers in the ivory towers, who relished a return to the "glory days" of set shots, Tom Gola and Bill Sharman. They would've brought back peach baskets if the world had let them. Russell, Oscar and Wilt were allowed to play top-tier college ball merely because they were seen as freaks of nature and sold tickets. But in the emerging era of integration these schools just couldn't handle mediocre brothers coming in off the streets into their fine institutions and "taking over the game." So within a year the Dunk Nazis eliminated slam dunks from college hoops altogether. You know it as the Alcindor Rule, but Lew and all players knew it was really the Big Daddy Lattin Rule. No three-point shots, and no dunks. Sounds to me like a slightly nuanced game of contact darts. Yawn.
“…Haskins, always looking for an edge, used the racial overtones of the game to his advantage. At the start of the game he instructed the muscular Lattin to make a violent early game dunk in an effort to intimidate Kentucky.
Lattin gladly obliged and as he threw down a vicious slam, Kentucky's Pat Riley tried to get out of the way only to be called for a foul. For all intents and purposes, the game was over there. Kentucky, indeed, had never seen anything like Big Daddy D. Using their trademark stingy defense and extreme discipline - characteristics that ran against the stereotype - Texas Western cruised to a 72-66 victory and the national championship.
The fallout was both beautiful and bitter. These were still the 1960s and college athletics were run exclusively by white men. The team was hardly hailed as heroes - no one even brought out a ladder so they could clip the nets, Shed having to prop Worsley up on his shoulders to do the honors. The NCAA did, however, immediately dispatch an investigator to El Paso in search of violations (he found no wrong doing). Hate mail came by the bag load and death threats were real enough to require FBI intervention.
Some in the media, particularly Sports Illustrated, wrote scathing articles about the program and coaches spread wholly inaccurate rumors about the team's lack of academic success (in truth nearly the entire team graduated and all went on to successful lives). Haskins, for his part, was offered few coaching opportunities at bigger schools despite having won a national title at a mid-major program at such a young age.
‘I said for a long time winning the national championship was the worst thing to ever happen to me,’ Haskins said. ‘We were the villains. We were pariahs.’
It took decades for America to fully appreciate what this team had done. And then it came in a wave -- a book, a movie, a Wheaties box, NCAA recognition and now this, the ultimate recognition, enshrinement in the Hall of Fame.”)
Victim #10 – Von WaferKirk Snyder will never go hungry thanks to that dunk, and would eventually move on to a free agent deal with the Rockets. Meanwhile, Von hardly had a chance to unpack from that road trip when the Lake Show put him on a saddle to the Fort Worth Flyers. D-League time. He'd come back briefly in March but was left off the playoff roster. You'd think he'd want to come back and show some fire this summer. But Von was so listless in scrimmages, as DraftExpress.com's Richard Walker accurately put it, "Sometimes I wonder if Von knows he doesn't have a guaranteed contract."
He knows now. After hardly getting any preseason run, the Lakers waived him in October. But fear not, for Von is getting yet another chance, in the D-League with the Colorado 14ers, ballin' outta control with the likes of Julius Hodge, Pooh Jeter and Rick Rickert. Just days ago he lit up the Idaho Stampede for 31 points. Looks like Von has found his place to shine, in Broomfield, Colorado. And the next time he gets crammed on, lucky for him, no one will be there to witness it.
(YouTube BONUS: Somebody Stop Me!)
(2008 UPDATE: NEVER doubt a man named Vakeaton Quamar. Really, that’s Von’s first and middle name. He’s back in the NBA after honing his skills mostly in the minors for the past few years. Since departing from Kobe & Company, he’s made cameo appearances the last two seasons with the Clip Joint, the Nuggets, and the Trail Blazers. So far he’s survived the cut with the Houston Rockets. Just this week Chris “The Birdman” Andersen couldn’t get ‘high’ enough (sorry) to keep up with Wafer, and wound up with a new middle name… “Mud”. And oh, how the worm turns! Snyder, rumored to be a perennial locker-room malcontent, got traded from the Rockets to the Wolves last season... and now all his filthy "Kung Pow!" dunks are literally Made in China. He dropped 43 points in 45 minutes in his November debut for the Zheijhang Wanma Cyclones.)
~iyf
