Let's look at the situations for a couple of my former teammates ...
Kwame Brown -- I like
that deal for Detroit and for Kwame. He’s in a quieter city now, he’s 26-years old, he’s on a veteran team, he’s growing up. In the past in D.C. and L.A. it was a case of him being a big kid in a big city, now he can settle his career down. You know that Sheed and McDyess and those other bigs will help him develop and this should be the best time of his career because in Detroit, the bigs get touches in the offense.
Don’t think that the Kwame Brown that was in Memphis is the real Kwame Brown. When you get traded, so much emotion goes into it and leaving a No. 1 team to come into a team with a bad record halfway through the season is a tough adjustment.
In the past he had the spot light on him because he was a No. 1 pick and he was in these big markets, but now he can just go out and play hard and blend in. This is going to be his year.
Juan Dixon -- Juan is one of those players out there that needs a team, because he can really help out with scoring. He needs a team to just let him play. I’ve played with a lot of players in my time in the league, and he has to be one of the top five I’ve played with in terms of points per minute. He’s just a high volume scorer. If you gave him 40-plus minutes of playing time, he’d give you 20-plus points per game average. He’s like a bigger Ben Gordon. We’ll see where he ends up. I’ll take him back in D.C. right now.
Larry Hughes --What teams need to realize is that Larry is a two guard. Chicago would have a good thing going if they play Larry at the two and let him play off of Derrick Rose manning the point. Larry doesn’t want to play the one. They tried to have him do that in Cleveland, and it didn’t work out. He’s a scorer, he defends, he’s a good two guard. In Philly he wasn’t a one, in Golden State he wasn’t a one and in Cleveland he wasn’t a one. Put him with Rose and you have an explosive backcourt.
Some Other Names in the News ...
Ron Artest -- He forced
the trade. He wanted out of there and they delivered. I think it’s a good trade for Houston. Someone is going to have to control him in the locker room, but other than that, he plays hard and he plays to win, so I think that was a good move to pick him up.
Right now Yao is the franchise player over there and he was looking out for the best interests of the team, and as a new player coming in, I guess Artest was defending himself and saying that’s what he had to do at the time. He could have said that’s he’s a different player now and he’s past that and let’s go out and play some basketball – those would have been the better words – but, hey.
Marcus Camby -- That was a steal. I think the Clippers are better than they were last year, in the sense that they got Baron Davis to leave Golden State to go there, they got Marcus Camby for two lottery tickets and a pack of rainbow Skittles. I think he helps them. He’s a borderline All-Star every year. If he was in the Eastern Conference, he would have been in the All-Star game the last four or five years, that West is hard. For the Nuggets to give him up for basically nothing, lint in some guy’s pocket, is great for the Clippers. I know they just signed Ricky Davis too. They’re going to be an athletic team. They’re going to be up-and-down the court. I think they’re going to surprise a lot of people because their team has just turned around and made themselves a contender. Contender for the playoffs, I mean. Whenever you say, “contender,” people think “championship,” but I mean they’ll be a contender for the postseason. Plus you still got the young players that were there last year, so I think the Clippers are going to come together great.
The Rest of the Free Agents -- I think Deng’s money went up and Okafor, the money he turned down, he ended up signing again. That’s good that he didn’t get caught in that loop hole where he lost money, at least he stayed at the same level. They offered him $12 million, he turned down $12 million and he ended up with $12 million.
Iguodala hasn’t signed yet, either has Ben Gordon or Josh Smith. These players right now are competing against each other, believe it or not. If one of their teams decide to go after one of the other players, that’s going to push that player out.
It’s kind of sad that you have the young, future players of this league threatening to go to Europe because Josh Childress already signed himself a deal over there. It’s going to be hard to negotiate sometimes now. Some of these owners and general managers are going to be watching out because these European teams are paying these kids money. Since their economy is on top right now, somebody like Josh Childress is getting $11 million a year over there. That $11 million a year is basically a max contract over here. That’s A.I. money. If Childress doesn’t have to pay taxes or living expenses, he’s netted $33 million in three years. A lot of players who sign $100-million deals don’t net that after their career is done in the U.S. So, congratulations to him, especially if he gets all his money over there. You hear stories about players not getting paid the full money over there, so you got to beware.
The European Trend
It’s expected for the Europeans to go back, because compared to over there, they’re making pennies in America. Juan Carlos Navarro gave up a lot of money to come over here. The economy is dictating it now. Their money is stronger than ours right now. It’s easy for these players to start thinking about going overseas when somebody is coming to them and saying, “Hey, we’ll give you $33 million and you don’t have to pay taxes.” You’re doing the math in your head and you’re like, “$33 million is roughly what Baron Davis is going to take home from his new contract, but I can get it in three years. That means if they want to keep me here, they have to give me at least $80-90 million over six years.” So, it’s one of those deals.
Childress might not have been a star in the NBA, but he’s going to be a star over there. He’s going to be the main focus. All it is going to take for us to wake up is for a European team to take one of the big stars in their prime. You know, for instance, if they made a run at somebody like Kevin Durant when his rookie deal is up. If they throw something like $100 million at him, tax free, then what are you going to do?
Right now they’re taking a college recruit like Brandon Jennings or Josh Childress, but when they start taking bigger names then the NBA might start looking at itself like, “Hey, our negotiation strategy is not looking good right now.”
For me, if the circumstances were right maybe I could see myself going overseas when my time is done in D.C., but I’ve never really thought about it. I don’t know if I could go to another country and just live. I mean, I can vacate, but live? I can’t even understand my kids, let alone another language.
My Pool
I’m actually disappointed that
those pictures are on the net. That’s part of my personal life that got out. I’m disappointed that somebody that doesn’t even work at my house any more took pictures and put them on the Internet. I don’t know if he sold them or if he just put them up there, but I think it’s wrong. But hey, that’s something that comes with the territory I guess.
The thing is with somebody like that, you trust them to be on your property and then they take pictures and put them online. It’s not what I expected. I found out because Daren from the Wizards PR told me, “Hey man, I saw your pool.” So I go, “Oh yeah, you stopped by?” “No, they got pictures online.” “Pictures online?”
They beat me to the punch. I looked at the pictures and the pictures they got are like four months old, they’re not even recent pictures. So everybody is like, “I’ve seen your pool!” and I just want to be like, “It’s not done.”
Of course, if you’re a Web Site you’re going to post the pictures because you think it’s news, but, if I take a picture of the Trump Tower while it’s under construction and say, “This is the new Trump Tower,” people are going to put it up, but it’s not done so that’s the first problem and secondly, how the hell did you get on the property to take a picture anyway?
There are going to be real pictures that are going to come out when it’s done. I’ll put the pictures out. But that’s not going to be for another three months.
And then you start comments like, “I see he’s having fun with his new contract.” No, actually I started this process a year and a half ago. It’s been being built that whole time. Finally it’s at a point where it’s going to be done soon and yes, from the pictures, it is like the Playboy Mansion’s grotto, only doubled.
The guy who actually built the grotto for Hugh Hefner is the same guy who is building mine, so I knew what I had to do to top Hef’s. I had my people call Hugh’s people and got it crack-a-lackin’.
It’s actually been coming along great, it’s just been a little slower than I expected. They said it was supposed to be done in April. But they’ve got caught up on landscaping and all of that. I haven’t really done anything with my money on the last contract, so the biggest two purchases I’ve ever had are the pool and that party I threw two years ago.
I always wanted a pool and then I also have the shark tanks in there. When I saw that part in the story, I knew who took the picture.
I’ve been in love with fish tanks and sharks for a while. (
And not just shark jokes.) I actually bough Ken Griffey Jr.’s old tank online and have that in my living room. I knew somebody who was selling it in Orlando. Actually, the company ended up buying it back from me and building me another one for the same price because the old one was too tall. It was like 10 feet tall and there was too much water pressure to have it in my living room, or whatever, so they build me one that was rounder and shorter. I’m going to have exotic fish in there, a couple sharks, some black tips, some bonnet heads … that’s my mild tank.
Then I have the tank in the grotto that’s going to have semi-aggressive fish like lemon and leopard and puffer fish and the fish with poisonous spikes that’s in
Deuce Bigalow.
Then I’ll have my personal shark tank that’s going to be in my basement. My basement used to be my weight room but I’m converting it to a shark tank. I cut a whole wall out down there and replaced it with a 10,000 gallon shark tank. That’s going to be my aggressive tank, only filled with bullhead sharks. If anybody knows what a bullhead shark is, it’s the No. 1 killing shark in America. It can go in salt water and it can go in fresh water. I’m going to have a salt water tank so I can have my eels and my stingrays too.
I’m going to have three bullheads in there. I originally wanted six, but the guy who has to clean it once a week said that he’s not going to get in the tank with six of them, he’ll get in with three. Once they get big enough, I’ll have to get rid of them. The guy who cleans the tank actually goes and catches the sharks himself, because you know, these sharks you can’t just go buy, they’re illegal.
Ever since
Jaws there’s been something about fish and sharks that I’ve always liked. Also when I saw
Cribs and Ice T had a shark tank in the back of his place, I was like, “Oh man! That’s what it is!!” I’ve been trying to plan this shark tank for the last seven years of my career I’ve been talked out of it by my mentor, Otis Smith. He first talked me out of it when I was a rookie and I was going to spend my whole paycheck on a fish tank. I was like “Man, I want a fish tank, that’s all I want to leave with, if I don’t get another dime I can know I got a fish tank,” and Otis shut that down. So this has been years in the making.
My Jersey Collection Plans
My collection is too big to show off at my house, unless I just want to make it look tacky and throw jerseys up all over the place, but my house wasn’t designed like that. My jersey collection is something I’m going to do probably later in life.
Right now I’m just collecting them and collecting them. I think I’ll probably build a gym. It’s one of the things I’m saving my money for. I want to build an all-glass gym and put the jerseys throughout the gym.
I’m still trying to think whose jersey I’m going to display in the middle, because you can argue it. I know Michael Jordan is going to be there, I just need to figure out who is going to be on the left side of him and on the right side. It’s hard to figure out who is going to be there with him.
For the middle, the mecca of basketball, I’m going to do Jordan and then maybe Magic and Bird, that makes sense to this era. But how about a Bob Cousy, a George Mikan, Wilt Chamberlain, a Kobe Bryant, a LeBron, a Tim Duncan … it’s going to be hard. That’s why I’m going to wait until I’m done, because you don’t know. It’s easy to judge the current players in my class, who I’ve played against, but if you look at basketball all time …
Actually, I got it. Oscar Robertson has to be there in the middle. If you average a triple-double for most of your career, you have to be next to Jordan. The Big O is No. 2. As for No. 3, whoo, I don’t know.
To display them, I’m going to have all the different jerseys for each guy all in a row. Like LeBron, LeBron signed probably like 15 jerseys for me since he’s been in the league. I have his football jersey, Olympic jersey, All-Star jerseys, his rookie Cavs jersey, his home, away, alternate, throwback … I have all these jerseys of him so when it comes to showing off a guy like that it will be all in a row.
My Fans
You got to always
thank the fans for their support. So far I’ve been getting good feedback. I don’t know if I’m only hearing the good stuff and not hearing the bad stuff, but I appreciate it. I don’t know where I first heard this from, but it’s actually stuck with me: They say whenever you’re in the public eye, you got to always have a smile on your face, you got to always be approachable. Everybody has bad days, but if you’re a professional athlete or a movie star and people notice you, you can’t ever have a bad day in the public because to somebody who’s never met you, if that’s the one time they come in contact with you and you brush them off because you’re having a bad day, they’re going to think you’re a bad guy. You’re not going to remember them, you’re going to keep it moving, but they’re going to remember that for the rest of their lives and they’ll tell their friends your mean and then their friends will blog to their friends that you’re mean, and boom, that’s how it starts.
The Election
I’m not into politics, but I see what’s going on in the presidential race and I’m seeing rappers make songs for Obama and Mr. McCain doing all his stuff and I’m thinking, this is getting out of control, people. Whatever happened to Democrats and Republicans? You vote for who’s who.
It’s hard for me to vote, because since I’ve been in the NBA I’ve been in the upper class so I’ve been a Republican. If you have any type of money, you’re a Republican, period. So, it’s hard because you see a better looking president in Obama – I don’t even want to say because he’s black, but he just looks the part – and then you have McCain who is Republican and I’m like, man. I know Obama is going to raise taxes on the upper class from 20-60 percent, that’s what I’m looking at. To be honest, I stopped paying attention a long time ago when it was Bush and Gore when Gore won the popular vote, but Bush was the president.
Basically, what that told me was that everybody in America voted for Gore, but somehow, Bush became president. I am confused. Obviously, our vote doesn’t really mean anything. Then you have this thing called the delegate, then you got the super delegate and then you got the hidden delegate that nobody knows about. If you’ve never heard of the hidden delegate, that’s like when you’re buying a car and they say the taxes on the car are 20 percent, and then when you look at your statement, they charge you an extra three, that’s the same thing. It’s the hidden fee delegate that nobody knows about who has all this power. They actually get to pick who they want for president. So when I start looking at it like that, that’s when I stop paying attention because at the end of the day, our votes really don’t matter. I don’t mean to be rude about it, but it seems like it doesn’t matter. If Gore wins by thousands of votes and Bush is president eight years later … come on.
There’s another reason I don’t vote – I don’t want jury duty. If you’re not registered to vote, you can’t get jury duty. I know that campaign Diddy had a couple years ago, “Vote or Die,” yeah if the alternative is jury duty, I’m going to die. I’m not going to get in one of these cases where they blow the jury members’ houses up to get out of the trial, I’m cool. I’ve seen too many movies.
For whatever president that wins, what can I tell you? Do a good job. Change the world. I remember when we were voting for class president in high school, the guy who won was the guy who said he’s going to put the vending machines in the school cafeteria. That’s who I voted for. So until I hear vending machines or lower gas prices, I’m not voting. As soon as I hear, “Yeah, I’m going to lower gas prices,” then you got me, I’ll sit in jury duty.
