“Well, two days later we’ve got headlines in every friggin’ newspaper in America,” Darren continued. “‘Dennis Rodman Crashes Motorcycle,’ ‘Dennis Rodman Cited for DUI,’ ‘Dennis Rodman Gets 75 Stitches.’ So in two seconds in a strip club parking lot, we go from having Phil Jackson’s ear and a guaranteed workout with the Denver Nuggets to nothing. Zilch. Back to square one.”
After that, Darren would give it a rest. Then when I had been sober for like two months, we decided to try to bring my NBA career back from the dead. During the next year, I had close encounters of the frustrating kind with the Lakers, Knicks, Nuggets, and Cavaliers, and logged a little playing time for Fuerza Regia in Mexico and the Long Beach Jam in California. Along the way, I had a little fun as corporate spokesman for a line of “herbal sexual enhancement” products and posed nude for a billboard that would generate major buzz in Hollywood and New York City.
The NBA comeback trail began less than a month after my accident when I appeared on the Tonight Show. This was part of a public-relations campaign Darren cooked up to let the world know I was through partying and was now serious about playing ball again. I didn’t want to go on. I don’t like talking about personal shit, especially when it looks like I’m feeling sorry for myself. But they ganged up on my ass, and Thaer, Wendell, Michelle, the kids, and I all went down to the studio.
Jay introduced me as the “new and improved Dennis Rodman,” and we were off and running. I told him about the motorcycle accident while I was partying in Vegas.
“More than two beers on this one?” Jay asked.
“Oh, there was way more than that,” I said. “Way more.”
That got a laugh. Then things turned serious.
“I haven’t had a drink in three-and-a-half weeks,” I said. Today that sounds like nothing, but at the time, it was a big deal—for me at least.
The Tonight Show thing turned out great. Thaer and Wendell both said it was my best interview ever, and thanks to Jay, I got my message out without sounding sappy.
Once we got the P.R. ball rolling, Darren called up Magic, again—this was in December of 2003—and told him I was sober for real this time and looking for an opportunity. So Magic hooked us up with Phil Jackson—again.
Phil told me there were three things that had to happen if I were going to have any chance to play for the Lakers that season. First, I needed to hook up with a minor league team in the ABA (American Basketball Association) to prove I could still play. Second, I needed to start scrimmaging with Magic’s bunch at UCLA to get team owner Jerry Buss’s attention. Third, somebody on the Lakers’ team would have to get injured to create an opening.
Darren got busy. He called Magic, told him what Phil said, and asked if he would help out. “No problem,” Magic said. Then I swallowed my pride and signed with the Long Beach Jam on December 22, 2003.
“I look forward to suiting up with the Jam and playing basketball again,” I said in the press release, “My ultimate goal is to get back to the NBA.”
Like I told the Chicago Sun-Times, my agreement with the Jam would allow me to accept high-paying (as much as $100,000 a crack) “exhibition engagements and an NBA contract at any time.”
Then fate gave me a nod. The day before I signed with the Jam, Karl Malone took a jump Williams, this six-foot-10, Phoenix Suns. Malone came up lame: sprained medial collateral ligament. The X-rays were normal, according to the Los Angeles Times, and at first, they were optimistic. But 10 days later, it was clear Malone was going where he had never gone before: the injured list.
“Missing seven, eight, nine games in one spell when I haven’t missed that many in 18 years is frustrating,” Malone told the Times. “I feel like I let a lot of people down.”
The prospects were not good for the 40-year-old Malone.
“A lot of these injuries can last four to six weeks,” Coach Jackson said.
What’s more, Malone’s replacement, Rick Fox, was coming off foot surgery and was less than 100 percent—which made things easier for me to slide into the lineup.
So I was thinking, “Holy shit! Hell froze over, pigs fly—this could really happen.”
I waited. A week passed. Then another week. Nothing. I made my debut with the Long Beach Jam on January 16, 2004, snagging 14 rebounds in a 130-110 win against the Fresno Heat Wave. A sellout crowd of 4,373 came to the Long Beach Pyramid to see me play my first game since I had been shit-canned by the Mavericks two years earlier. Tex Winter, Phil Jackson’s right-hand man and the guy who invented the triangle offense, was in the stands.
Meanwhile I was hungry to get with Magic, hungry to scrimmage with his guys up at UCLA, and I was calling Darren three or four times a day. “Have you heard from Magic? Do you have a time? When do I need to be there?”
Nothing.
By this time, I’d been sober for about three months.
After my second game with the Jam, I realized I was nowhere near being in basketball shape. So we told the media I strained a calf, and I sat out nine games.
A month passed. Malone was still down. I, on the other hand, was healthy again, and said goodbye to the Jam in February, “with hopes of making it back to the NBA,” as the team press release put it.
Nothing.
On March 9, I returned to the Jam for the ABA title game against the Kansas City Knights. I pulled down 14 rebounds in 23 minutes in a 126-123 win before scouts from the Lakers, New York Knicks, and Toronto Raptors.
“I was a little more aggressive, had my hops, my deer legs back,” I told the San Diego Union-Tribune. “If I’d played 30, 35 minutes, I’d have gotten 20 [rebounds] easy.”
The payoff for the title win wasn’t big. The owner gave the team “a $5,000 bonus to disperse among themselves,” as the Jam press release put it. Whatever. I now had a sixth championship under my belt.
“I think the Lakers should get me at least as an insurance policy,” I told the San Diego Union Tribune, “All the [players] are falling like flies. They know I know the offense, know the system, know the guys.”
Nothing.
Meanwhile I was still trying to hook up with Magic.
Nothing.
Finally, on March 12, Malone returned to the Lakers, and my NBA hopes for the 2003-2004 season were over. Malone would reinjure his knee in the second game of the playoff finals on June 9, and the Lakers would go on to lose the series to Detroit 4-1.
I’m still wondering if I could have made a difference.
I don’t know why Phil Jackson never pulled the trigger. He had every opportunity to do so. Maybe he got cold feet because of all the drama going on with Shaq and Kobe that season, not to mention Gary Payton, who never quite jelled in L.A. As for Magic, he knew I was sober, serious this time, but with his crazy schedule, with all his business interests, personal appearances, this, and that, we just never hooked up.
On April 19, 2004, I pled guilty to DUI for the Treasures motorcycle crash, and a couple of hours later, I was pulled over on Santa Monica Boulevard in L.A.A reporter ran me down, and here’s how they told the story on celebrities411.com:
“The cop said, ‘Where’s your license?’
‘My friend has it,’ I said.
‘You mean your friend carries your license?’
‘Yes.’”
So Thaer pulls up beside us, and the cop asks, still quoting celebrities411.com, “‘Why do you have his license?’
“‘Because he loses it all the time.’”
It ain’t easy being me.
That same spring, at about the same time the Lakers were dragging their feet, I put a call in to Isiah Thomas, my old Detroit teammate and current Knicks GM, to see if I could get on their playoff roster. Isiah was like, “Not right now, but let’s talk about your joining our summer league team.”
The way it worked, the Knicks were going to have a mini training camp that summer up in Westchester for about a week, then they were going to fly out to Long Beach to play against some other summer league teams. If I did well, th
ey would sign me for the coming season.
So Isiah ran this by the powers that be, got an okay, and the Knicks booked my flights, reserved me a room at the Westchester Marriott, the whole nine yards. All I had to do between then and mini-camp was lie low, not say a word to the media about anything to do with the Knicks.
After that, “We just kind of sat back,” recalled Darren. “I didn’t need to call anybody else. I knew this deal was going down. There was no doubt in my mind.”
Then about a week before the summer league started, I flew into New York City to make the talk-show rounds. I was then the corporate spokesman for a line of “herbal sexual enhancement products,” EnjoyRX for women, and EnduranceRX for men, “available in pill form or as a taffy chew.” The company thought I could “reach a target demographic” that they were “extremely interested in.”
Cool.
So I flew to New York to promote this stuff on a bunch of talk shows including The View on ABC. I was sitting there with Barbara Walters, Star Jones, and the rest of them, and they were yapping, yapping, yapping—I couldn’t get a word in edgewise. So finally, I said something like, “Y’know, I came here to make an announcement, and nobody’s letting me talk.” Well that didn’t even slow their asses down.
They were talking, talking, talking until out of nowhere, Star Jones went like, “We’re not being fair to Dennis. He’s got a big announcement.” Now Star had on this New York Knicks jersey, number 10, insinuating I was going to say something about signing with the Knicks and getting my old number back. But I was cool, remembering what Isiah said: “No media.”
So I changed the subject, told them I was there to make a special announcement. “I’m gay,” I said, and we all started laughing. “No, I’m kidding. I’m kidding.” Big joke, y’know? They kept on asking me about the NBA, and I said it looked like I was coming back, but I wasn’t going to name the team. “You’ll find out soon.” Shit like that. Later they gave me a chance to talk up the benefits of EnjoyRX and EnduranceRX, which was my only reason for being there in the first place, and that was it. Just another day in the media factory.
Didn’t think a thing of it.
Two days later, Darren got this call from Isiah.
“I could just hear in his voice that something was wrong,” Darren recalled.
Isiah was like, “I’ve got a major problem.”
Seems the owner of the Knicks pissed in his pants when he heard I said I was gay on The View, and he didn’t want me on the team.
Darren goes ballistic, screaming and yelling, and Isiah was giving it right back to him. Then everything settled down, and Isiah was like, “I love Dennis like a brother, but my hands are tied. There are people above me.”
And there’re people under you too, brother—like this guy named Dennis Rodman, who got totally fucked.
I signed up that July to play in the NBA summer league out in California, but tore a calf muscle the first day of practice and never made it back onto the court. After I got over that injury, I had another go-around with the Denver Nuggets.
This time I made it to the workout—on September 21, 2004— but cut it short because of ingrown toe nails. I got those taken care of, and about a week later, I was back at the Pepsi Center for a two hour scrimmage.
“I was running, jumping, and doing my thing,” I told the Denver Post. “I think they freaked out. They couldn’t believe I am 43 years old.”
According to the Rocky Mountain News, General Manager Kiki Vandeweghe “declined to comment.”
Coach Jeff Bzdelik said, “He played well.”
Darren predicted Denver would “sell out every game.”
Partying?
“Rodman says he has been sober for more than a year,” the News reported.
Kiki told me, “I think you should stay another day.”
I declined. I thought they’d seen enough. I knew I had. As I was leaving, former Laker star Michael Cooper, then a Denver assistant coach, said, “I’ll see you Monday,” which was the first day of the Nuggets training camp.
“I’ll call you tomorrow,” said Kiki.
“It’s a slam dunk,” thought Darren.
“I’m looking forward to a phone call,” I told the Rocky Mountain News.
So it was around six o’clock the next night and still no call. We were freaking out. Darren had left a couple of messages. Reporters were calling. No word. Finally, this sports geek from a radio station called. The training camp roster was out, and my name wasn’t on it—another dropkick to the gonads, this time from the Denver-fucking-Nuggets, for God’s sake. Kiki made it official when he finally called Darren at like nine o’clock. But there was still hope. NBA rules allowed 20 players in camp, and there were only 19 on the Nuggets’ list.
That very same day, I signed to play two exhibition games in the Liga Mexicana de Basquetbol (Mexican Basketball League) for Monterrey’s Fuerza Regia—as part of what sperts.net called, “[my] quest to prove to the Denver Nuggets that [I was] committed to returning to the NBA.” It also had something to do with my “quest” to make a few bucks: the dudes paid me $50,000, which turned out to be about $1,500 dollars per minute.
I played just six minutes in my first game in Mexico on October 8, 2004, sitting down after I strained a groin muscle. The fans booed the shit out of me. I made it up to them two days later, playing 24 minutes in my second and final Fuerza Regia game, before 11,000 fans in a 107-95 win over Correcaminos of Tamaulipas. I pulled in something like a dozen rebounds.
The Nuggets weren’t impressed. So I signed with (but never played for) the Orange County Crush. With a little help from my lawyer, I switched teams after maybe a hundred people showed up on the campus of UC-Irvine for the Crush’s first game, signing a two-game deal with the Long Beach Jam.
My debut was delayed by “minor” knee surgery on December 9, 2004, and I played my first game on February 13, 2005, pulling down 12 rebounds in a 108-106 victory against the Ontario Warriors. Then my knee injury flared up, and I wouldn’t be able to play in the second game.
In the middle of all this, I posed nude for a billboard for the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). In the picture, I had my chin in my hand like “The Thinker” and sported bright red hair. “Think Ink, Not Mink: Be Comfortable in Your Own Skin and Let Animals Keep Theirs,” the copy read. As for the visual, the message was: “Be like Dennis, adorn yourself with tattoos rather than fur.”The billboard was part of PETA’s “Rather Go Naked Than Wear Fur” series. I was in good company: Pamela Anderson, Kim Basinger, and Christy Turlington also posed. My billboards would get a lot of attention when they debuted in Hollywood and New York in February 2005. It was a nice distraction.
Meanwhile back at the NBA, there was one more slap in the face to endure before I wrapped up the 2004-2005 season.
Cleveland, “The Mistake on the Lake,” March 2005.
Rick Mahorn, my old Detroit teammate, called. The new team owner, a guy named Dan Gilbert, wanted to talk to me one on one. He was apparently looking to shake things up, and if the conversation went well, there could be a 10-day contract in it for me. Whatever. We had a nice 30-minute talk; then, you guessed it, I never heard from him again. I don’t know what the guy was afraid of. There wasn’t shit I could have done that would’ve made things in Cleveland turn out any worse. After this guy took over, the Cavaliers, a team with superstar Lebron James, went on to lose 16 of its last 27 games, fell from fourth in the division to not even making the playoffs, fired their coach, fired their GM—did everything but set fire to fucking Lake Erie. And you’re telling me the man was worried about what kind of havoc Dennis Rodman might wreak on the team? I mean there is your occasional “distraction,” then there’s your total destruction. The dude took a wrecking ball to the place. Shit. Think Cleveland might have made the playoffs with Lebron James and Dennis Rodman in the line-up?
The Cleveland nibble would be my last chance at a NBA comeback during the 2004-2005 season. It wasn’t a good year.
After being jerked around by my “friends” in the NBA, I was getting a little paranoid. The league had offered me nothing but blind alleys and dead ends, and, all in all, my attempt at a comeback had been a rat fuck of gigantic proportions.
It was like everywhere I went, bringing Dennis Rodman on was okay with this guy, okay with that guy, okay with another guy, and then, at the last minute, all of a sudden, the deal falls through. Somebody up above, I figured, maybe even at the league level, was shutting my ass down. NBA Commissioner David Stern was a likely candidate. I’ve got no evidence. Just an inkling. Call it intuition. But I’m thinking all these years later, Stern was getting his final sweet revenge on the last of Detroit’s “Bad Boys.”
Stern became commissioner in 1984, the same year Michael Jordan came into the league. Early on, when Detroit was winning back-to-back titles in 1989 and 1990, Stern loved the “Bad Boys,” and had no problem with us living up to the name—kicking people’s asses, throwing people down. But when Jordan and the Bulls started coming on, he turned his back on us. All of a sudden he was like, “These guys are dirty.”
We weren’t dirty. We were men playing basketball—not boys, but men.You drive the line, you will pay. Bill Laimbeer was known for putting your ass on the canvas, and Rick Mahorn did the same thing. Back in the day, when somebody knocked you on your ass, you got up and played. Today, somebody knocks you on your ass, and they call a “flagrant foul.”What horseshit. Like I told the Chicago Sun-Times, “They’ve watered down the game with zone defenses and calling more contact fouls.” Now if you’re trying to hurt somebody, that’s different. But if a guy goes to the basket, gets hammered, and falls wrong, that’s just part of the game—or at least it should be.
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