I celebrate the night that Tommy and Gail made sweet, sweet love both as a fellow race-mixer and a basketball fan. I’m usually not one to believe in omens, but when he scored his first ever NBA points on a one-handed, fast break alley-oop, you had to know he was going to live up to the hype. I, for one, welcome our mulatto overlords.

If Rose sang or danced or wrote computer code, even if he hit forehands or curveballs and not free throws, his acumen at standardized questions concerning probability, diction and critical reading wouldn’t matter.

They do in basketball because NBA commissioner David Stern wanted to control long-term labor costs and use college ball to market his young stars. In 2005, his league began requiring American players (but not Europeans) to be at least one year out of high school to be drafted.

That essentially sends them to college ball, where outdated and hypocritical amateurism and academic rules exist not because they have any moral basis, but so the NCAA can avoid billions in local and federal taxes.

Isn’t it amazing how much clearer the picture gets when you follow the money?

Nike Sport Music – De La Soul from nikedelasoul on Vimeo.

A Durham native who starred in high school football and basketball, Rogers had returned to his hometown and was working for the city public works department as a heavy machinery operator. He was promoted to a supervisory position six months ago, according to the report.

He was also volunteering as a girls’ basketball coach at a Durham middle school and had set up a computer lab at a city public housing complex, according to the report.

His agent and lawyer, James “Butch” Williams, described Rogers as “an outdoorsman, plain and simple,” according to the report. “He hunts, motorcycles, rides horses. He loves big trucks,” Williams said.

Rogers, who was financially set, took the job with the Durham DPW because he liked working with heavy trucks, Williams said, according to the report.

“Rodney isn’t the type to sit around twiddling his thumbs. There aren’t any jobs he considers too small for him,” Williams said, according to the News and Observer. “He started his own trucking company and was usually the lead driver. He’d be out there driving to the quarry at 3:30 in the morning.”

Michael Balzarano, who oversaw Rogers at the Durham DPW, said Rogers was not working for the city as a lark until he got bored. “I didn’t even know he had lots of money. He is very friendly, very concerned, very conscientious,” Balzarano said, according to the report. “We chose him because of his ethics and his attitude. He was highly motivated. He was promoted to supervisor six months ago.”

Yes.  You read that correctly.  A guy who played 12 seasons in the NBA and was financially secure was working at the Durham Public Works department for kicks.

I was lucky enough to see him play in person when I was at Wake.  The image of him unleashing one of his patented 360 degree, left-handed dunks will forever be burned into my sports memory.  I’m not a praying man, but I’ll definitely be thinking good thoughts for Rodney and his family.

I had the pleasure of being the first return guest in the esteemed history of the podcast Jordan, Jesse, Go!  If you like old timey baseball lingo, Nebraska, and Queen Latifah, then this is the show for you.  Give it a listen right over here.  Who you calling a bitch?

Image via Flickr user Nrbelex

Dwayne Perkins was one of the first people I met when I started doing stand-up in LA.  He’s one of the nicest people in this town, and he’s one of Rolling Stone’s 5 comics to watch.

This catch by Morgan State’s Edwin Baptiste is great because it’s just amazing to watch, and it also validates the theory held by my wife and I.  Namely, that athletes are more likely to have memorable names than the average person.

Former NBA player Jon Bender helps rebuild New Orleans.

Mission accomplished…for Osama bin Laden.

Given the Palin problem, now might be a good idea to (re)-familiarize yourself with Thomas Eagleton.

 Watching the women’s 20K race walking during the Olympics reminded me of Franklyn’s bit about "taking last at the Olympics." Thank the flying spaghetti monster for YouTube. 

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.  

This is coming from a guy who spent 2 years in college…kind of, lives in our nation’s capital, is a multi-millionaire, and only works for 7 months out of the year.  Scary.