NYC prep legend / NBA vet Kenny Anderson signed up for a CBA coaching gig a few months ago, and Newsday’s Ken Beger gives the much traveled PG a chance to refute one of his more famous remarks.
It was during the NBA lockout of 1998 when Kenny Anderson, of Lefrak City and Archbishop Molloy, made himself the poster boy for greed and cluelessness with that infamous joke that if the labor dispute went on much longer, he’d have to sell one of his eight luxury cars.
Anderson is 36 now, almost three years removed from his last NBA game, and is about to embark on a most unlikely adventure as a head coach in the Continental Basketball Association.
He has two cars.
“I was foolish and immature to make a statement like that,” Anderson said on the phone from his home in Ft. Lauderdale, where he is preparing for his new job as coach of the Atlanta Krunk of the CBA. “But hey, it was done. Move on and learn from it.”
I used to live in Atlanta, but decided to let Anderson explain the team name.
“Krunk is an Atlanta term,” Anderson said. “Krunk is, ‘Let’s get fired up. Let’s get with it.’ It could mean so much. ‘Let’s get amped, let’s get excited.’ “
He seems amped about coaching, a vocation that seems fitting considering the list of coaches he’s been associated with: Jack Curran at Molloy, Chuck Daly, P.J. Carlesimo, Jim O’Brien, and Rick Pitino.
Money, such a factor for him when his car joke fell flat in ’98, is no motivation in the CBA.
“It’s not much,” he said. “This is something I want to do.”
After a part-time coaching gig with a high school team in Fort Lauderdale last season, Anderson wants to get noticed on the CBA sideline and hopes to find his way to an NBA or college bench as an assistant.
“I’m determined to get there, but I have to crawl before I walk,” he said.
The New York connections run strong on Anderson’s new team. His mentor and top assistant, Vincent Smith, is the brother of another New York point guard, Kenny Smith. Knicks point guard Stephon Marbury has agreed to outfit the players with Starbury gear.