One afternoon, while bumbling down the road minding his own business like a big silly goof, Mark Madsen was sucked up into a time warp. His life is now spent traveling through time, from mysterious land to mysterious land; desperately searching for a way back home and a ten-day contract with the Minnesota Timberwolves.
Tonight’s Adventure: 19th-Century Austria..
(Mark Madsen and his dinosaur friend land in a field..)
Madsen: Oof! Ah, my butt!
(Don Nelson returns to Oracle Arena after a multiple-week bout with pneumonia..)
Nelson: Stupid stray dog won’t stop following me.. (bursts into office) I’m back!
Nelson: …
Nelson: Hello?..
Nelson: (reads post-it note attached to computer screen) “Gone on road trip. Back on Wednesday. Food in fridge. Sincerely, Coach Smart.”
Nelson: (crumples note) So we’ve taken the team on a little road trip, have we Keith? Gonna have some fun without old Donnie ’cause he was outside in the rain in his underwear for too long? Fine. I can have fun all by myself!
One afternoon, while bumbling down the road minding his own business like a big silly goof, Mark Madsen was sucked up into a time warp. His life is now spent traveling through time, from mysterious land to mysterious land; desperately searching for a way back home and a ten-day contract with the Minnesota Timberwolves.
Tonight’s Adventure: 67,000,012 BC..
One afternoon, while in his laboratory trying to invent a gun that shoots guns, unemployed backup point guard Jamaal Tinsley discovered time travel. The only problem: He cannot control it. Now he is lost somewhere in the space-time continuum, looking for a way back to our reality and a contract, ANY CONTRACT!
Tonight’s adventure: ? ? ? ..
And today, I pick on a high school kid.
Bob Ryan hasn’t written anything for Lowposts in nearly two months. Partly because basketball season is over and partly because his face exploded and partly because he’s now stuck in that “Take On Me” music video.. (more…)
Previously on Skull & Bones & Dudley, Yale alum Chris Dudley was in quite the quagmire.. (more…)
(Former NBA journeyman Chris Dudley is enjoying a fine pipe smoke and a Chaucer First Folio at Skull & Bones Hall when he is approached by fellow Bonesman Charles Rutherford Hayes..)
Hayes: Mr. Dudley!
Dudley: (glancing up from his Folio) Mr. Hayes!
Hayes: How are the stocks treating you these days?
Dudley: Fine, fine. It’s a good thing those rubes out there don’t know about our Secret Stock Market!
Hayes: (rich chortle)
Dudley: (rich chortle) (more…)
While he was never considered to be an NBA star, Robert “Big Shot Rob” Horry was in the right place at the right time and won seven championships with three different teams. At the same time, first-ballot Hall of Famers like Charles Barkley, Karl Malone, and John Stockton spent their entire careers trying to win that elusive title while watching seldom-used journeymen get rewarded with rings for riding the bench. Let’s take a look at some of the worst players to win multiple championships in recent history.
1. Will Perdue: What sets Perdue apart from the Bulls’ other stiffs during the ’90’s (and there were many) aren’t just his mediocre numbers in the playoffs (3.4 points and 3.5 rebounds per game). It’s the fact that he won three rings with Chicago and then another one in San Antonio in 1999, all while playing less than 10 minutes per game. Will Perdue has won as many championships as Shaq and Duncan. Oh, and the Bulls traded him to the Spurs for Dennis Rodman in one of the strangest deals ever, and won three more titles without his valuable services.
2. Mark Madsen: “The Mad Dog,” who holds career averages of 2.2 points and 2.6 rebounds, has a chance to claim the top spot if he wins another ring or two. As it stands, he’ll have to settle for second by virtue of his two titles with the Lakers. Here is Madsen’s per game statistics during the 2001 and 2002 postseasons: 2.9 minutes in 20 games, 0.25 points (1-14 FG), and 0.6 rebounds. And let’s not forget his fancy footwork during the championship parade that set white people back at least 20 years.
3. John Salley: Although Salley was a key contributor on the ‘89 and ‘90 champion
Pistons, he did nothing to earn two more rings. He averaged 2.1 points in 17 regular season games with the Bulls in 1996, and scored 14 total points in 16 playoff games. After being out of the league for the next four years, Salley came back to play for the Lakers in 1999/00, putting up 1.6 points and 1.4 rebounds in 45 games. He then proudly proclaimed that he’d won “four championship rings, with three different teams, in three different decades and two different millenniums.” Yeah, I’m sure Isiah, Michael, and Shaq had nothing to do with that.
4. Dickey Simpkins: Simpkins won three rings despite being unable to beat out the Bulls’ three-headed monster at center (Luc Longley, Perdue, and Bill Wennington) for playing time in Chicago. He wasn’t even on the team’s active roster for the 1996 or 1997 titles, and averaged 1.2 points and 1.0 rebounds during the 1998 playoff run. And plus, what kind of man prefers to be called “Dickey” while his real name is something as awesome as LuBara Dixon?
5. Earl Cureton: Cureton’s first championship came with the 1983 Philadelphia 76ers (he averaged 0.4 points and 1.0 rebounds), but his second title came a whopping 11 years later. “The Twirl” holds career averages of 5.4 points and 4.7 rebounds in 12 seasons, although he wasn’t even in the league between 1991 and 1994. He scored four total points in two games for the Rockets in 1993/94, and then stepped up to average 1.8 points and 2.9 rebounds during the playoffs. To be honest, I thought I was writing about Bill Curley before seeing his picture.
Quick Hits:
*Greg Kite: Shockingly, another slow, seven-foot white guy didn’t quite pan out in the NBA . Kite averaged 2.5 points and 3.8 rebounds for his career (down to 0.9 points and 1.6 rebounds in the playoffs), and was the water boy on the Celtics’ ‘84 and ‘86 championship teams.
*Stanislav Medvedenko: Slava earned two rings despite not playing a single minute in the 2000 playoffs, and then averaging 0.9 points and 0.6 rebounds in seven games in 2001. Although it should be noted that in his prime, he was the master of the postgame interview.
*Cliff Levingston: Jason Caffey, Jud Buechler, and Stacey King, to name a few, were decent role players in Chicago, but I have no recollection of Cliff Levingston, who won two rings with the Bulls for his 2.8 points and 2.2 rebounds averages in the postseason.
*Lindsey Hunter: Raise your hand if you knew he was still in the league before the playoffs started. Hunter’s had a decent NBA career, but he put up a shade over two points per game with the 2002 Lakers and 2004 Pistons.
*Beno Udrih: Udirh holds career playoff averages of 2.9 points and 0.9 assists, and couldn’t surpass the immortal Jacque Vaughn in the Spurs’ playoff rotation in 2007, putting up 0.3 points and 0.1 assists in eight games. He’s also well on his way to becoming my least favorite King of all-time. This can’t be stressed enough.
In the third installment of The Absolute Zero Award (Sponsored by Crystal Pepsi) - Lowposts’ epic quest to find the worst player in the NBA - we are going to study the psychology of a crappy player. What makes them crappy? Their own lack of talent? The coach’s system? Society?
Actually, it’s probably mostly just the first one.
Most of the time, the player is young and hasn’t quite arrived. Frankly, they very well may never arrive. Other times, there are too many players at the same position playing in front of them. And sometimes, they were signed simply because the team needed a white guy so they don’t look like a bunch of dirty filthy racists. (more…)
(Anthony Mason, Andrew Bogut & Brent Barry are at the NBA Bungalow..)
Mason: (chuckle)
Bogut: (guffaw)
Barry: (hearty laugh) (more…)
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