“I’ve heard guys who have lost $30,000 on an hour plane trip,” Charlotte guard Derek Anderson tells the Sun-Sentinel’s Ira Winderman. “It’s amazing ” $30,000 in an hour.” And it turns out, Pat Riley might know someone like that, too.
Legendary in NBA circles is the spat between retired power forwards Charles Oakley (above) and Tyrone Hill over a dice game in 1999. Hill lost $54,000. He didn’t pay quickly enough for Oakley’s tastes. Interest was demanded. Finally, $108,000 later, contentiousness that had spilled over to the court ceased.
At 35,000 feet, tensions can get just as dicey. “About 10 years ago,” Pat Riley says, “there was a game on a plane when I was in New York, and I felt in that game that night one of the players really got hurt, financially. I know how he was with money, and I think it bothered him in the next game.”
Much as I had to take issue with a Hall Of Fame coach like Riley, it seems highly irresponsible to trash Marty Conlon like this after 8 years out of the league.
In addition to thoroughly trashing Phoenix’s Steve Kerr for what looks to be a disastrous acquisition of Shaquille O’Neal, the Post’s Peter Vescey claims to be “in sticker shock” over State Farm Insurance hiring LeBron as a celebrity endorser.
Apparently we should be thankful he wasn’t going 200-mph. Maybe I’m boundlessly brain dead, but isn’t the insurance company’s marketing idea to use LeMans a little like Milk Bone sponsoring Michael Vick?
Having signed LeMans, State Farm is changing its slogan: “Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there . . . through 2009-10.”