"Yours for $5000. Priced to move."

Okay. This is the best. And by “the best,” I mean “kind of the worst except for the sheer ridiculousness of that headline.” The Houston Chronicle published an in-depth report on Sunday chronicling an alleged scheme to smuggle gold from Africa to America that involved former NBA All-Star Dikembe Mutombo.

Dikembe Mutombo represented that the gold belonged to him and “his people,” said St. Mary, whose work as a trader in rough diamonds has taken him to dangerous places with sketchy characters. Asked why the transaction would take place in Kenya, Mutombo said there was “too much shady stuff in Kinshasa” — Congo’s capital — and that Nairobi was closer to his village, St. Mary said. Mutombo was to supply both product and paperwork, and Lawal was to provide funds for the purchase and to cover expenses.

St. Mary was to evaluate the gold and find buyers.

“He had an answer for everything,” St. Mary said of Mutombo as they went through the details of the proposed deal.

At various points over the next two months, St. Mary thought the whole thing smelled fishy. [Houston Chronicle]

The whole thing is honestly a little confusing. Apparently Mutombo claimed the gold was his while setting up the deal, but then he started demanding a huge upfront fee. And later some guy had to pay $30 million when the deal went south because an African general was holding his people and plane hostage. I don’t know. The most important takeaway of the story is this: this needs to be turned into a movie. Like, A LOT. I feel like Dikembe Mutombo: Gold Smuggler could be a great film if we got the right director attached. For example, me. I want to direct this movie. And write it. I’ll film the whole thing in the jungle, where I will go mad with power and exceed my budget by $50 million. When I eventually turn in my final cut, it will be seven hours long and inexplicably include an extended sequence involving Rafer Alston playing streetball with African warlords. It will be like Blood Diamond meets Above the Rim, with a splash of Apocalypse Now.

I await your offer, Hollywood.

Via SB Nation

I’m not sure I could recognize Philadelphia 76ers guard Lou Williams if he passed me on the street, so it’s good news that I wasn’t the guy who tried to rob him on Christmas Eve. For both of us, I guess.

Maybe the guy recognized him from his weird shirtless, pensive-stare-at-probably-porn background on Twitter. Regardless, Williams seems like a cool guy and I wouldn’t wish Holiday Murder on even my least favorite sports celebrities (even the Kardashians get a “kill them on a less wistful day” nod). It also allows me to use my two best armed robbery pop culture references, the episode of Fresh Prince where Will gets shot so Carlton flips out and buys a gun for revenge and the episode of ‘Dawson’s Creek’ where Joey gets held up but the robber gets hit by a car so she takes him to a hospital and gives him all her money there, but I’m not going to make them.

Maybe Lou didn’t get robbed at all, and this is just a worked cautionary tale to get players to bail out their hoods, like ‘Christmas Shoes’ for basketball players. Who knows?

[by way of Larry Brown Sports]

This part is supposed to be the story:

Raiders starting middle linebacker Rolando McClain has been arrested in his hometown of Decatur, Alabama, for allegedly assaulting an individual, holding a gun to his head and firing a shot next to his ear.

But probably the only thing you’re going to notice is that epic, cheesy, socially-uncomfortable photo of him being led into a police car captioned “McClain smiles for the camera after he was arrested by Decatur police”.

As the story goes, the victim got into a fight with a guy named Jerradius Willingham and, by proxy, McClain. He lost. As he was crawling to his car, McClain held a gun to the guy’s head and made him beg for his life. Instead of blowing his brains out, McClain held the gun next to the victim’s ear and fired it. He’s been charged with discharging a firearm within city limits, third degree assault, menacing and reckless endangerment. It’s the second time this year he’s been present when shots were fired. He’s 22. That’s the picture he took as he was being arrested. It’s funny, yeah, but Jesus.

“I didn’t do anything and am being treated stupidly by these policemen” is the only reason I can see to pose like Norbit in your arrest photo. If he seriously held a gun to another human being’s head and tried to blow out his ear drum because he thought it’d be funny AND posed like this as he was being taken away he is beyond f**ked. Maybe not professionally, a topic that requires tons of editorial columns to assess and over-analyze, but personally and in his physical brain he is f**ked.

[via SFGate]

As Eric Freeman of the excellent Ball Don’t Lie points out, there are positive and negative aspects to being 7-foot-6. On the negative side, even mundane, day-to-day activities like buying clothes, walking through doorways, sitting in cars and fitting into pre-19th century buildings become impossibilities. There are a few positives, though, like being able to make millions of dollars for a couple of years as a basketball player, and that when a Monstar steals your talent all he’s really stolen is your ability to be tall (and you’re still that, you didn’t shrink) so you’re more-or-less unharmed.

Being that tall also, as we’re learning today, makes stories about people stealing your special tall-people things super, super sad.

Last Friday, someone burglarized the barn on [former basketball star Shawn] Bradley’s property. The only item that was taken was a bicycle made specially for him in 2006.

“Whether you’re 7 feet 6 inches or normal height, stealing someone’s bike is low,” an upset Bradley said Wednesday. [...]

After Bradley retired from the NBA in 2006, the 7-foot-6 center said he needed to find a way to keep the weight off. Trek made a bicycle just for him.

A bicycle made just for him.

Ignoring the fact that Shawn Bradley has a barn to house his special bicycle like he’s Pee-wee Herman and ignoring the fact that somebody broke onto an NBA millionaire’s property and all he took was his special 8-feet-tall megacycle, how f**king sad is this. It gets even worse when you read his follow-up, which sounds exactly like a five-year old explaining why this particular stolen big wheel is the biggest deal ever — he namedrops his brother. His BROTHER.

“My brother is 6 feet 10 inches and he can’t ride it,” Bradley said.

Read the rest of this entry »

You guys. Holy crap. Just read this:

Brandon Kelly of Petaluma told the Santa Rosa Press Democrat on Tuesday that he’s a fan of Woods and got the idea after watching “Drive” — a recently released movie starring Ryan Gosling as a stunt driver who moonlights as a getaway driver.

“I threw the hot dog toward Tiger Woods because I was inspired by the movie ‘Drive,’” Kelly said. “As soon as the movie ended, I thought to myself, ‘I have to do something courageous and epic. I have to throw a hot dog on the green in front of Tiger.’”

Jesus Backflipping Christ. That quote might be the most delightful three consecutive sentences in the English language. I’ve read it 100 times, and it keeps getting better. I’m not exaggerating when I say that his journey from “Drive is awesome” to “I must do something courageous and epic” to “I’m going to chunk a hot dog at Tiger Woods” is easily the most important philosophical quandary of our time. I must know more about this hero. AT ONCE. I propose two options:

1) A “30 for 30″ documentary about the incident, complete with a frame-by-frame analysis of the throw and interviews with all the relevant parties.

2) A Frost/Nixon style series of interviews where I sit down with Mr. Kelly and pick at his brain with hard-hitting questions like “Let’s say, hypothetically, that you hadn’t been able to get your hands on a hot dog… what then? Pretzel? Nachos? The people have a right to know.”

My point is this: this man’s story must be told.

(video and picture via the handsome and talented Vince Mancini)

Does this look like somebody who’d have a severe drug problem?

38-year old pro wrestler Travis Tomko (aka “Tyson Tomko” or just “Tomko”) has topped Houston Astros outfielder Jordan Schafer getting arrested for marijuana possession at a Cheesecake Factory as the month’s most random and least baller sports-world arrest by robbing a CVS Pharmacy of its Oxycodone, then going to a local Chili’s restaurant to ask for a soup spoon, ground up all 178 pills and inject them into his body. It also tops “Booker T once robbed a Wendy’s” as the best WWE fast food tragedy.

According to the police report, obtained by TMZ, Tomko went to a nearby Chili’s … where he asked his waitress for a spoon. When the server brought him a teaspoon, he asked for a “deeper spoon” … and when he got it, he took it to the men’s room … where he remained for 30 to 40 minutes.

Cops were eventually tipped off … and when they arrived on the scene, one officer says Tomko had “needle marks and blood running down his arm” … and had just flushed something down the toilet.

Tomko was taken into custody — and allegedly told police he has a “severe drug problem.”

To his credit, I spent 40 minutes in the bathroom the last time I was at Chili’s, too. He was taken to a hospital, then immediately taken to jail.

Tomko spent five years in TNA Wrestling and held one-half of their tag team championships, making him at least as good of a wrestler as Cincinnati Bengals cornerback Pacman Jones. He’s spent a lot of time in Japan, as well, but is best known for his seven-or-so years in World Wrestling Entertainment and that one time Christian asked him to “drop a beat” so he could battle rap John Cena and was refused. According to this report, that might’ve been the only time he’s ever said “no”.

Before becoming a wrestler, Tomko was a bodyguard for Limp Bizkit, and you can see him milling about in the “My Generation” video, so at least it’s comforting to know that getting sent to jail for shooting up 200 off-brand drug store painkillers in the worst of the family restaurants isn’t the saddest thing that’s ever happened to him.