Kwame Brown has reunited with the man that originally drafted him and subsequently emotionally stripped him, Michael Jordan, by signing a new contract with the Charlotte Bobcats. Michael Jordan is the majority owner of the ‘Cats and Kwame is now his employee. This right here is a shining beacon to formerly abusive relationships everywhere, if at first you don’t succeed, try try again.

You see, its tough to get past the whole “I abused you relentlessly” thing. Look at Chris Brown and Rhianna for example. They couldn’t get past their prior abusive relationship to give things another go in the present. Michael and Kwame though, see they know better, nay, they ARE better than mere mortals. Apparently they can get past those errors in judgment.

When Kwame first got into the league, he was a naive young boy. Jordan took him under his tutelage and made him a MAN. An emotionally crippled and useless seven footer on the court, but a man nonetheless. Jordan accomplished this by constantly tearing Kwame down to his emotional bare bones, at least that’s what Scoop Jackson said in this 2005 ESPN page 2 article.  Let us quote liberally:

Sticks and stones can paralyze the most immortal of men, but these words – they stripped Kwame Brown of ever having a chance to be or find himself as a basketball player and as a person.

***

“Flaming … ” That was the first word. One of life’s other “f” words followed. It came in succession. It came from Michael Jordan’s mouth. The words never reached Kwame Brown’s ears, they went straight to his heart.

In Jordan’s quest to build the next him while he was in charge and out of retirement in D.C., he broke Kwame Brown down to the very last compound. Emotionally and psychologically killed his spirit.

Want to know what that 2nd “F word” was that Jordan used against Kwame? Lets go back to an article by the Washington Post’s Michael Lehay from 2003 recounting Jordan’s last season with the Wizards (only accessible through the Post’s archives) and some more of the emotional abuse he laid upon Kwame.

As always, he reserved his harshest criticisms for 21-year-old Kwame Brown, at whom, a year earlier, he had screamed, “Flaming faggot,” when Brown complained as a rookie about being fouled in an intrasquad game.

***

But Jordan and other Wizards officials were swayed by Georgia high school senior Brown’s abilities after he dominated another highly touted prep player, Tyson Chandler, during a private one-on-one competition. But now Jordan was tired of waiting for Brown to get better.

For his part, Brown said the right things: “Anyone can learn from Michael” if that “player listens.” But, privately, Brown reeled under Jordan’s and Collins’s criticism off and on for two seasons now, desperate to receive a slice of the encouragement Jordan had lavished on him during Brown’s golden days. On many nights, he had gone from wunderkind to waste. Despairing, Brown began to seek counsel from other teammates, notably Stackhouse, who could provide solace but little else, suffering beneath the weight of his own disappointments and, like Brown, having nowhere to turn.

Wow. So now things are better between them? I mean, its cool that Kwame can turn the other cheek after Jordan helped  to ruin any chance he had at meeting his potential as a number one pick and turning him into an emotional basket-case. I wonder if Jordan is going to be any better this second go around?

Who knows, maybe Jordan has changed. Sure he’s not going to be near Kwame as much as when he was a player or general manager, but they are going to have to interact with each other at various points throughout the season. No way that goes wrong, right? When has getting back together with your abuser ever gone wrong? We all know that leopards can change their spots…oh wait they can’t? Well damn. In that case, maybe this ISN’T a good thing and I am horribly wrong about this.

This $1.3 million veterans minimum contract  Kwame got is really just Jordan saying “I’m sorry baby, have a million bucks on me, it’l never happen again baby, I just lost my cool back in 2002. It’l never happen again.”

Yeah right.

Hasn’t Byron Russell had enough? Michael Jordan already took his heart during Game 6 of the 1998 NBA Finals. Does he want to give up a kidney along with his dignity? He could get $10,000 from a Mumbai alley clinic and keep his dignity. Well, probably not.

Russell didn’t take too kindly to being called out by Michael Jordan during his Hall of Fame acceptance speech.

“I’ll play his ass right now,” former Jazz player Bryon Russell told Yahoo! Sports. “This is a call-out for him to come play me. He can come out here in his private jet and come play. He’s got millions of dollars. He can pay for the jet. He can meet me at the Recreation Center in Calabasas (Calif.).”

Russell may get his wish if he and Jordan accept Utah Flash owner Brandt Anderson’s offer to donate $100,000 to a charity of the winner’s choice if they play a game of 21. What could be better than getting schooled in the same place you got schooled 11 years ago? They could make it a 1998 Finals class reunion. Someone call Greg Foster out from behind the counter at Joseph Smith’s Rice Cakes and Skim Milk! Scottie Pippen can take his place. He needs the money. Hopefully Troy Hudson can take some time off from Nutty Boyz Entertainment to come out for the weekend.

It ain’t easy going brass in the record business. Selling 78 T-Hud albums out the trunk is hard work.

This idea could start a trend of goats attempting to get revenge for past wrongs. Craig Ehlo and Frederic Weis must be itching for a chance to repair their reputations after getting posterized. I’m still waiting for my rematch against Oliver Miller. No fucking way he can eat more Shetland ponies than me this time!

He’s Baaaaaack! Well, almost. Isiah Thomas has been talking to the LA Clippers for a possible management role to assist GM/Coach Mike Dunleavy so says ESPN.com. Assist him in doing what, I wonder? Assist in trading away all the talent they have and accumulating a ton of overpaid power forwards maybe?

I’m not sure there can be a greater collection of suckage than if the LA Clippers and Isiah Thomas join forces. The team should just go ahead and change their name to the Los Angeles Black Holes since the only thing black holes do is suck. This would be the suckiest sucking black hole that ever sucked.

If this happens, the only thing that can make this team suck even more is if Michael Jordan buys on as a co-owner and they figure out that no one has signed Penny Hardaway, Alonzo Mourning, or Robert Horry, signing them on for one last Space Cowboys like run at glory.

Personally, I think it has to happen. It makes too much sense. Hear me out. Of all stupid and incomprehensable moves that Donald Sterling has ever made as an owner, this one makes the most sense in its brainlessness. How? Well, of all the stupid moves that Sterling could make, this is the stupidest, which means its the most likely stupid move he could do, which means it makes the most sense that this deal gets done. Its almost like it was a foregone conclusion that Isiah would eventually end up in LA. It is truly a match made in heaven…and it must happen.

Ok, so I’m just getting my blogging feet back under me after being worked to the bone for the last 2 months…not that I’m complaining, it is good to have a day job in this world. But all that time in the office got me thinking back to some interesting highlights of the sports world before there were sports blogs to beat current stories into the ground like there are today. So I’m going to kick off a new feature here on the Deuce, the Flashback post.

Flashbacks work so well on TV shows when they can’t think of new material, so why can’t it work here? Let me start it off.

Lets go back to 1994 when Michael Jordan signed a minor league contract with the Chicago White Sox after retiring from basketball because he was tired of dominating the game…or as he called it “loss of desire”. This started a new phase for Michael…one which involved a great amount of sucking. Playing for the Birmingham Barons, a Sox farm team, he achieved the highly mediocre career average of .202 with 3 home runs, 51 RBIs, and 11 errors. The only thing he was good at was stealing bases, he grabbed 30 bags in his time in the minors.

In March of the next year, Jordan was back in the NBA but wearing his Barons number 45 instead of his traditional #23 apparently that caused him to lose some of his super powers because he wasn’t quite the same player he was when he left. That is until the next year when changed his number back and went and won a championship…then 2 others the next two years. All was right again in Chi-town and the people were happy to forgive his one year diversion away from the NBA…but they will never forget.

So lets flashback and watch some Youtubes of this weird story in the history of one of the NBA’s greatest players…and one of MLB’s worst.

Here’s a clip of Jordan being interviewed by Tom Brokaw about the entire baseball thing, its a good 7 minutes, but well worth your time as a flashback to the days when Jordan realized he was a mortal man.

And here is a baby faced Reese Davis breaking down the “Jordan Cruiser”, the bus which Jordan bought for the Birmingham Barons when he was with them in the minors. Pretty swank for those guys, but its no Madden Trailer. Check out the youthful coach Terry Francona there too wow.

Finally…here is the return of the king to his court.

I imagine that if you have as much money as these guys probably do, you too can hire Michael Jordan to come to a gym and school your ass in some one-on-one. It appears as if John Rogers, CEO of Ariel Investments, does have a slight bit of game however…and by game I mean he can actually make an uncontested layup. I just get the feeling here that Jordan is just playing the side-show freak role. This cannot be fun for him, seems like he’s just whoring himself out for more cash to go out with Oak in Vegas. Kind of sad what Jordan has become.

Larry Brown has already started to take digs at the Bobcats roster and the guys who gave it to him, Michael Jordan and Rod Higgins.

“I’m concerned about who’s going to be our third point guard. I’m concerned if we have a small forward that can guard,” Brown said. “I’m concerned if we can find a power forward that can play…”

“When I got the job I told Michael and (GM) Rod (Higgins) that we needed three point guards that could bring the ball up against the press, one of them with size. We needed two small forwards that could defend. And we needed five big guys and try to make them as athletic as possible,” Brown said.

So how does this roster mesh with what he wanted?

“I don’t know if it does,” Brown said. “We’ll just have to wait and see how it plays out.”

Yes, its true, Larry Brown has already thrown his bosses under a bus and training camps are barely starting. If the season goes south quick he will always be able to say that he wasn’t given the roster that he wanted. He just gave himself an out to say, “Its not my fault we sucked, I told them what we needed to win.”

The man can coach, we’ve all seen him coach up a team quite well, but he doesn’t normally start burning bridges before a game gets played. Usually Larry saves that for much later in the season. Should be fun times in Charlotte this year.

Via Blue Ridge Now.com

So, the ESPY’s just happened and this is about the only interesting story that I could find that came out of the whole event. ESPY host Justin Timberlake recounted the story of his first meeting with Michael Jordan…and his pants got a little wet.

“When I was young… I wanted to be Michael Jordan. It was weird, I heard (Gary Wright song) Dreamweaver in my head when he walked in the room.

“He was like, `Hey man, my kids and I, we’re big fans of your music,’ and I was like, `That’s cool…’ Up until the point where he walked away and I realized I had peed a little.”

Yea, Mr. Dick In The Box couldn’t contain himself when he got near his idol, ole #23. I can sympathize though, when I met my idol, Lancelot Link Secret Chimp i shat my pants and flung it at him. In retaliation of course.

Since Pope Benedict XVI has decided to come up with seven new sins out of freakin thin air, I think its only fair that someone should come up with a set of Seven Deadly Sins specifically geared towards the world of sport. Here goes nothin’ and may God have mercy on my soul:

1) Thou shall not get caught using performance enhancing drugs.
- See, its ok to use them, its ok to give them to your teammates, its ok to shoot them in other’s rear ends, its even ok that you sell them and supplement your already hefty income that was unjustly given to you because you aren’t naturally that good…just do not get caught doing any of it. Its the ultimate don’t ask, don’t tell, don’t get caught. Don’t get caught, and you’re a hero like Albert Pujols, not sayin’ just sayin. Get caught and you’re vilified…unless you’re Shawne Merriman.

2) Thou shall not get caught cheating
- Ok, so everyone cheats in sport. To paraphrase the famous quote is if you aren’t cheating you aren’t trying to win. If you get caught cheating however, you are found breaking the sin and of course the torches start getting lit and you begin a slow march towards execution.

3) Thou shall not create a rap/rock/blues/jazz/etc. album
- You are an athlete. You are not a musician. No one cares that you think you have talent besides playing a game. You don’t. Stop trying or you shall be mocked and ridiculed for all of eternity.

4) Thou shall use prophylactics when engaging in sexual behavior.
- For this, its ok to be a womanizer, it’s your birthright as the ultimate alpha-male, just do it right and don’t spread your seed. For every Shawn Kemp, Travis Henry (not his actual kids in the picture…least he doesn’t think they are) or Elijah Dukes that is spat on there’s a Wilt Chamberlain who does it right and is praised for it. Don’t be a dork, cover your pork.

5) Thou shall not get caught harming animals for fun.
- No one knows this rule better than Michael Vick, Tripp Isenhour, Pedro Martinez or Qyntel Woods. Pedro gets a bit of a pass because he did it in a country where its legal, but pretty much any athlete who does anything cruel to an animal meets a pretty unfortunate sports demise. The Lord looks down on those who harm the lesser species. We’ll see what happens with Pedro this season.

6) Thou shall not get caught gambling.
- Tim Donaghy, Pete Rose, Wayne Gretzky’s wife, Michael Jordan’s mysterious retirement for baseball all have some ties to gambling and all have never be the same. The easy solution is to wait til you’re out of sport like Charles Barkley here to publicly gamble away all your money. People find that kind of gambling far more light hearted, but if you do it while you’re active in sport you shall have a pall cast upon you…and you might get forced to run a team in Charlotte named after a guy called Bob for all of eternity.

7) Thou shall not beat on your lady, get caught, arrested, and have a mugshot taken like this
- Sports, by their nature, are very aggressive. It takes an aggressive person to participate at the highest of levels of sport. The problem some have is leaving that aggression on the field or court of play. Those who choose not to will forever be branded WIFE-BEATER and those scarlet 2 words will follow you until your death…Jason Kidd.

The new Jordan XX3′s are set to be released this month and what is going on with that pattern on these shoes? They look like they have one of those “3-D” image posters that you’re supposed to stare at for an hour while somehow relaxing your eyes just to see a lame T-Rex jumping out at you on em. Truthfully, I don’t know anyone who actually wears the Jordan brand of shoe anymore. Long gone are the days when kids were skipping school and lining up at the store to get the new Jordan’s for the year. At this point, these shoes are for the collectors and completionists out there that have the other 22 Air Jordans that Michael Jordan and Nike have made over the years.

Who really wants to wear a sneaker of a recently divorced, womanizing, deadbeat father, front office mismanaging, shell of an athlete with a massive gambling addiction who hasn’t played a game in 5 years where when he did play SUCKED HORRIBLY AND WAS RUN OUT OF TOWN? Anyone? Anyone? I don’t see anyone lining up for the new Isiah Thomas’ or the new Billy King’s showing up at Foot Locker anywhere so why is there another Jordan shoe?

Also, who in their right mind would drop $230 dollars ($185 dollars for the national release edition) on a sneaker and then actually wear it anyway? I just dropped $65 bucks on an $85 running shoe at DSW and I am afraid to wear those outside because I cannot imagine the horror of running down their treads let alone a scuff or tear on those suckers.

Nike needs to stop, they’ve exploited Jordan’s name long enough to finally make his 23rd edition of the shoe brand. Let’s hope its the last…and someone bring back British Knights while we’re at it, their commercials were dope.

His Airness had a good crossover as a player, now Michael Jordan is crossing over his restaurant enterprise into a new venture. Jordan started up a Mexican restaurant around a month ago named SolToro. We all know about Michael’s steakhouse in NYC, as well as his ill fated Jordan’s in DC and Restaurant in Chi-town, but now MJ has ventured into uncharted territories with some classy Mexican food in the ever popular Mohegan Sun casino to go along with his sportsbar and steakhouse in the same building…and we have the video of the opening. Check it out.

What better to open the restaurant with some classy A list celebrities like Ahmad Rashad! How “classy” is Jordan here showing up in jeans with a cranberry red sport coat, the man is worth like a half a million dollars, he couldn’t do better than that? I also love that a casino that has 3 Jordan restaurants is the Mohegan Sun and not any Vegas casino or even an Atlantic City one, but an Indian casino in Connecticut that is really known best (and possibly only) for their large poker room. When asked why he put another restaurant here his answer was “Why not?”, well i guess that is as good a reason as any.