.jpg "066023_blto1")
I must have missed that chapter of The Purpose-Driven Life. J.J. Redick, a feckless, scripture-regurgitating devotee of inspirational self-help books, was busted last week in a DUI incident that one can only hope pushes him out of consideration by our beloved Boston Celtics. Redick was only .03 over the legal blood-alcohol limit in North Carolina — 0.11 — but the arresting officer said the Duke guard had “very glassy eyes, and a strong odor of alcohol coming from his breath.”
PRAISE THE LORD!: J.J. Redick after being arrested for DUI |
The move pushes Redick to near the top of the list of upcoming draft studs with arrest records. As reported previously, the highest-profile prospect in next week’s draft to have a serious arrest record is probably UConn’s Marcus Williams, who was involved in a precedent-setting laptop-theft conspiracy last year. However, after that column ran in the Phoenix, I was bombarded with letters reminding me I overlooked the troubled past of another draft hotshot — Redick’s Duke teammate Shelden Williams. Williams, a bruising power-forward prospect rumored to be headed to the Atlanta Hawks at number five, but very much a possibility for the rebounding-challenged Celtics at number seven, was bounced from the McDonald’s Classic high-school all-star game three years ago following an incident in which a woman was gang-raped in a hotel room while Williams was present. Williams’s version of the incident was that “things got out of hand.”Letter writers also pointed out that during his freshman year, Redick was caught in a room where weed and drug paraphernalia were found. Not surprisingly, Duke cleared him of any wrongdoing in the incident. The official version of that story now is that Redick entered the room, observed the marijuana, was about to leave, but then stayed — keeping his back to the druggies — while he checked the room occupant’s computer for an e-mail from a professor.
In other Carolina news, renowned Durham Bulls prospect B.J. Upton was arrested last week and charged with a DUI — also with a 0.11 blood-alcohol level. And it’s been a tough year for top Tampa Bay Devil Ray prospects: fellow Durham Bull Delmon Young, who along with Upton is considered one of the top minor-league players in the country, was suspended for 50 games earlier this year for hitting an umpire with a bat.
Next time, sleep it off
Meanwhile, in Iowa …
Another onetime college basketball legend fell by the wayside when Roy Marble Jr. — the all-time leading scorer for the Iowa Hawkeyes and a former member of the Atlanta Hawks and Denver Nuggets — was busted for DUIs twice in the same week. It seems possible that Marble was still drunk from his initial arrest last Sunday when he was busted again days later for driving while “spilling beer all over himself.”
Dueling wideout malcontents!
A rivalry is brewing between Cincinnati Bengal receiver Chris Henry and Pittsburgh Steeler rookie Santonio Holmes. The young hotshot wideouts have a chance to be the greatest arrest-compiling NFL receiver duo since Andre “Bad Moon” Rison and Michael Irvin stalked the league in the ’90s.
Henry, 23, surrendered to authorities in Covington, Kentucky, last week on three charges of providing alcohol to underage girls. Henry has been arrested four times in seven months, scoring a rare across-the-board calendar-year slam in marijuana, gun, DUI, and pandering arrests. The most serious incident involved a party in January in which he pulled a gun on several people in a classic “nightclub parking-lot incident” in Orlando.
Holmes, meanwhile, was arrested in Columbus, Ohio, last week on domestic-violence and simple-assault charges after a woman told police she was being assaulted by the father of her child. Holmes’s attorney, the fantastically named Sam Shamansky, issued a statement claiming Holmes was wrongly accused of domestic assault. Holmes was also arrested during Memorial Day weekend in a Miami Beach police crackdown on beach partying.
When he’s not googling “Michael Irving” and “passing the torch,” Matt Taibbi is writing for Rolling Stone. He can be reached atM_Taibbi@yahoo.com.
