Looking through the playoff rosters for the NBA finals, I was pleased to see a strong cadre of players from my alma mater, Kansas. And it caused me to think back on the fact that the likes of Drew Gooden and Scot Pollard must have felt really, really out of place when they came from easygoing California to conservative Kansas.
Scot played it to the hilt, though, which I always appreciated. He bleached his hair, grew his sideburns and painted his fingernails and just generally didn’t seem to much care what people thought of him. He’s still one of the more gregarious and entertaining players in the NBA, despite being nothing more than a tall body off the bench these days. Most of his best antics come to us from his time in Indiana with the Pacers:
Scot(t?) tours the Pacers’ front offices
Scot busts on Reggie Miller for 4 1/2 minutes, but Reggie buries him with a flurry of shots at the end. Sound familiar?
And who could ever forget:
As someone else who slings “clever” one-liners more often than is truly necessary, I can’t really rag Scot for that one. It was funny on one level, and yet really ill-concieved.
Drew hasn’t said much of interest on TV, sadly. But his ducktail has brought him plenty of attention:
His mother is from Finland, which probably has nothing to do with it, but it’s still interesting. He also loves Casio dork watches, as reported in SLAM:
Gooden is on a big 1980s kick, a current fad in his hometown of Oakland. The Cavs forward recently plunked down $300 on eBay to get a vintage Casio calculator watch.
Gooden, however, was a little upset he had to get into a bidding war for the watch. Apparently he’s run into another trend, as fans of NBC’s The Office are in the market because one is sported by favorite nerdy character Dwight Schrute.
The Spurs have L.A. native and former Jayhawk Jacque Vaughn backing up Tony Parker. Jacque, however, is not overtly flaky, and was known for being a serious student in college. Sadly, he is now known mostly for this:
I swear, he was really good at Kansas.
Anyway, I like the free spirits. If every one of these guys conformed, the league, not to mention the world at large, would be a dull place.
Wow, a youtube-only post. I feel so dirty.
