Sometimes You Feel Like a Nut!

The life of a professional basketball player has to be rough, all the money and the sex magnet appeal of being a professional athlete just has to be taxing. It's why people crack and can't quite make it in the league sometimes. They have to run home and cry themselves to sleep on their huge ass piles of money if they haven't spent it all on commodities with no equity (that's a fancy way of saying drugs, cars that no one else would want, and making it rain). Though he is not in the NBA, we are going to commemorate Mike Vick's trip to Leavenworth, Kansas with the first round of the NBA's all crazy team. And yes I realize that I didn't finish the Star Wars and Back to the Future article yet, but whatever. Let me go through the qualifications for this team.

1) the person must have an innate desire to self-destruct in such a way that since we as people without millions of dollars and with a few shreds of dignity cannot understand their need to do things that make no sense at all.

2) simple violations of the law don't count. They have to be compounded like Vick testing positive for pot after knowing that he was going to be pissed tested far enough in advance to clean out his system. In fact law breaking is not even necessary, there just has to be a large "what the fuck? factor" in discussing the person's actions. Kind of like one of the hottest girls you know dating an abusive asshole even though she knows she is slumming it. If you can look at the person and say why then we are in the ball park.

3) Said person had to have enough talent that you genuinely were intrigued by theri craziness. They could have been or were good enough to play at a level that sane players covet.

And with this I give you the Captain's version of the all crazy team!!!I apologize for the era specific selections, but these guys deserve it. I might need to amends this and maybe use the Delorean one more time and go back and write this in 1996. This team would have competed for the Larry O'Brien trophy in 1996. Two members went to the final that year. So maybe this is the All-Crazy starting five in 1996. This makes the selections almost irrefutable.

Point Guard: This one was a toss up, but I am going for bang for your buck and getting a tweener quarter back here because let's be honest know one in their right mind would want to distribute the ball on this team.Unless it was 1996 and this would have been a hell of a starting five. The inaugural member is Mad Max. Vernon Maxwell went into the stands for a fan beatdown long before Ron Artest graduated from scaring the shit out of AAU kids. Vernon was a master of giving oponents the stink eye, in some ways I think Capt'n Jack stole a page from Mad Max... both have rings. Not a bad start for the team.

Shooting Guard: Latrell Sprewell- This guy has more kids to feed than Travis Henry and Shawn Kemp combined. Not actually, but he is responsible for one of the most memorable quotes of all time concerning feeding children after rejecting a contract worth several million a year. We haven't even got to the part where he decides to choke his boss. I guess we just did though. It isn't that I haven't thought about choking various bosses over the years, but there was a certain amount of what's that word? Restraint. That's it restraint. When I wanted to choke my boss I was mopping up hurl and lung butter and slinging ranch dressing, and living below the poverty line. Spree was making millions and playing a game for a living. I also love Spree's broken hand incident on his yacht. There should have been an Unsolved Mysteries episode about this Robert Stack talking about metacarpals.

Small Forward:Isiah Rider- J.R. scored, and scored in bunches. He made an over the back half court shot while in Portland that literally brought me out of my chair and made me want to practice throwing a basketball over my shoulder while twisting toward the basket from forty feet away. I broke a window. J.R. got charged with false imprisonment. Look at his stats ( http://www.basketball-reference.com/players/r/rideris01.html ). Even they are pschizzed out, the way his scoring average fluctuates makes Congressional voting records look consistent. I am not sure how a guy that had this kind of jaw-dropping talent just decides to check out mentally to the point that no team will take a chance on him.

Power Forward:Shawn Kemp- I know it isn't cool to make fun of addiction, but that really isn't the point. Look at this from a purely logical standpoint, how does a professional athlete taking coke gain enough weight that he can't jump anymore. Kemp jumped so high in the 95-96 Finals that his went over the top of the square on the backboard. Dwight Howard hops. Team USA wouldn't include Kemp because they were worried about how he was conducting himself. One of the top ten players at the time in the NBA, and there were concerns that he would cause an international incident. Team USA has been anchored by Allen Iverson. Wow. Kemp's aversion to birth control has already been noted. The thing with the Reign Man is that his talent level can be most closely compared to Amare Stoudemire. If you didn't watch him with the Sonics, or with his first season in Cleveland he was that good. He did make admirable progress in comeback attempts, but I am going with a time period approach. At one period in time he was one of the best players in basketball and people honestly had no idea what he was going to do next.

Center:Ok we are taking the All-Star game approach. The next guy couldn't be left off the team and could play center though giving up some size better than Ben Wallace in his prime. Another former Piston, I am talking about none other than the WORM. If your teammates and friends nickname you the Worm you know that there is something going on here. Dennis Rodman was the best rebounder in basketball for years, and this is when Charles Barkley was in the league. For the record Barkley isn't crazy, he is just an asshole who happens to be right most of the time and the greatest player to play without a ring to show for it. Rodman though... he married Madonna. Long after anyone thought she was like a virgin. To bring Doc Brown back into this I would love to have a time machine and go back to see all of David Robinson's responses to Rodman when they played in the same front court. Can you see conversations between Rodman and Avery Johnson. This might be the single most regrettable missed opportunity for a reality show in sports history.

This starting five might have been a bit of a hodge podge as far as size, but it would have been a cornacopia of crazy. The things is if you look at this time period and their ability to play this team would have been crazy good. I hate myself for that pun. This is the Captain siging off for now...