A. Yes.
B. No.
C. Too motherf*cking drunk to tell.

Ya think?

“Mr. Vick, you have visitors, sir.”

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A quick rundown on my favorite subjects. Click on their name to read article. Drumroll, please.

10. Eric Gagne

Original Magazine: Men’s Edge

Setting: Dodger Stadium. Dugout. Opening week 2004.

Liked: Getting into a discussion of “The Zone” with Gagne, and him telling me under his breath not to start the interview until his teammates cleared our vicinity. He was afraid they would give him shit for being interviewed, yet again.

Quote: “Wait’ll these fuckers pass.” Me: “You mean, those fuckers right there?”

9. Anthony Carter

Original Magazine: ESPN Magazine

Setting: Staples Center. 2007-2008 Season

Liked: His humbleness. Admitted the reason he was forced to play in Italy in the beginning of the 2007 season was because he partied too much. Also liked his candor about how he needed to stop drinking in order to truly focus on his job. Note to Melo.

Quote: “Anyone who said they expected this of him is crazy.” George Karl on Carter’s play with Nuggets.

P.S. Article never got published because the editor was worried that I made up my comments about Carter’s option of selling drugs and robbing people or playing ball in A.C.’s hometown of ATL. Like most editors, overworked and unwilling to go the extra inch.

8. Derek Lowe

Original Magazine: Men’s Edge

Setting: Telephone interview.

Liked: How D. Lowe wasn’t afraid to mix it up with a few nicely placed curse words and impressions.

Quote: “This generation of players is completely different. They understand kind of what happened before. But I think the majority of players don’t really care.”

P.S. Later ran into him at a Laker game
and tried to introduce myself but he was totally faced and surrounded by women grabbing for his loins. I decided not to compete with them in the Loin Grab Comp.

7. Randy Couture

Original Magazine: Men’s Edge

Setting: Telephone interview.

Liked: Really personable guy for being such an ass-kicker. Taught me how to ruin someone in a street fight with elbows and knees — oh my!

Quote: “Everybody picks on the seventh graders. This ninth grade kid decided I was the guy he was gonna pick on and he started harassing me at lunch hour. I hit him with a double-egg and put him on the ground and punched him in the face about five times. Nobody ever really picked on me after that.”

P.S. If you haven’t seen his performance in Red Belt, you definitely should, great fight movie. Get it here:

6. Lamar Odom

Original Magazine: ESPN

Setting: Lakers’ practice facility in El Segundo.

Liked: Having to maneuver my recorder from one side to the other as L.O. got his beard trimmed in a back room by one of his posse members. Felt good to finally get L.O. and his posse members to crack a smile with my Kobe Bryant impression. I asked Lamar what Kobe said to him when he raised his jersey over his mouth: “Hey Lamar! Pass me the fucking ball, man!”

Quote: On why it’s good to have Kobe as a teammate: “The open looks that I get. You know, he demands so much attention. We get a bunch of television games. You know what I’m saying? That’s because of him. You could feed off the energy. When we walk into a game, he has a great following. So his followers becomes your followers.”

P.S. Once again, nixed by ESPN Magazine. However, later an excerpt appeared on the ESPN Magazine blog.

5. Elton Brand

Original Magazine: ESPN, Los Angeles Magazine, L.A. Times

Setting: Santa Barbara, Los Angeles

Liked: That I was interviewing “The Horse” at the old city college where I had dropped out of my first, and only, journalism class after one week. The teacher was a prick. He locked the door at 8 sharp. My hangovers hadn’t cleared up by that time. Also liked how available EB was when I was the Clipper Blogger for the L.A. Times. (Got fired b/c the Times’ Weasel NBA Editor wanted to be my best friend and I refused his lonely-ass advances and he made up some shit about how my speling and grammer sucked.)

Quote: “Kaman has the biggest entourage on the team. He has five friends that are down with him, in his crib.”

P.S. Elton later asked me if I wanted to run his film company. Had a bunch of meetings and emails with him. Ended when I told him politely that the idea he wanted me to turn into an award-winning screenplay was just not going to happen. It was THAT bad. And I was THAT close to being a full-fledged posse member. Aw, shucks, ma!

4. Luke Walton

Original Magazine: Some forgettable named assholian magazine that still hasn’t paid me. You’re on notice, pal!

Setting: Telephone interview.

Liked: Walton needed hardly any prompting at all. Took the rock and ran with it up and down the court with glee. When I was at Laker camp later in the year, remembered who I was — and didn’t have any women grabbing for his loins.

Quote: “My dad can walk through a garden and name out every single plant. The first thing he does every morning is a walk off his yard. He checks out all the plants and yells at the gardeners.”

P.S. Work on your J, Luke!

3. Barry Zito

Original Magazine: Men’s Edge

Setting: Telephone interview.

Liked: Going all Self-Help with Mr. Zito. Should be an example to all athletes. Unfortunately, he’s not. Read any books lately Manny?

Quote: “It taught me the power of the mind, and how powerful words and thoughts can be. Everywhere we go, people tell us how hard life is and how we have to struggle. It’s up to you if you want to focus on that.”

P.S. Also once wrote a piece on Barry going on surf trips with Brent Mayne & Ryan Klesko (the worst interviewee ever).

2. Brett Favre

Original Magazine: Heartland USA

Setting: Telephone interview. Fahvera on the Farm.

Liked: That Favre wasn’t doing any lengthy interviews at the time and I got 45 minutes. How he just took charge of the entire interview/huddle and just spilled his guts. Having my ESPN Mag editor telling me he wished I’d done it for them. Well, duh!

Quote: On the possibility of Something About Mary 2, “I hope they don’t call me.”

P.S. This interview was stretched out over the years and enabled me to buy many, many Cup O’ Noodles. (This version is just a small excerpt.)

1. Gerry Lopez

Original Magazine: Water

Setting: Phone interview.

Liked: Speaking to one of my few teenage-years heroes, as I idolized his smooth, soulful surfing style while growing up on the California sand.

Quote: “It’s always easier to ride the horse (or wave) in the direction it’s going.”

P.S. A freelancer’s bread and butter is being able to resell his article (sometimes in different forms) after a certain grace period with the original magazine. When it came time to do that with this article, Lopez, through his contact, said he wanted half the money for the next magazine. Suddenly my hero wasn’t my hero any longer. Sucks to grow up!

“You put your left foot in…”

1. Kobe I don’t care what the ESPN talking heads are saying about Jason Kidd being the team leader, because he’s won a Gold, blah, blah, blah. FYI: Jason Kidd is getting up there. He’ll do all right, but his lack of a shot is going to put him on the pine in favor of much better shooters: Chris Paul and Deron Williams. Though Kidd will look nice waving a towel, and eating dim sum. Kobe Bryant just lost an NBA Championship. C’mon! How badly do you think he wants to win this thing? Bryant will set the pace for this Dream Team incarnation through his defensive intensity and killer will power. No one else in the world, that we’ve seen, comes close in these departments. KB24 is your leader. End of story. And that thing about him having to sacrifice his offensive game…well, sure, they all have to do that. But you don’t think Kobe is going to be chucking up shots? You don’t know Kobe. 2. A Committed USA Basketball Program After getting pummeled in 04′ and 06′, it was time Team USA got serious and realized their prima donna asses couldn’t just walk into international play and dominant like “days of old.” Yes, as they all reminded us a hundred times: The rest of the world has caught up. That they did. And, SHOCKER, it’s not only happening in basketball, kids! Let’s hope KB & Co. sets a good example for all of us. Shows us how we need to get our own asses back to the grind and concentrate on the fundamentals that make the machine go. That, and stop waving our righteous “number one” finger in everyone’s face, thinking that the finger, itself, is all powerful. It ain’t. It’s a finger. Get over it, fat-ass. Hint: Edukation, mo’ fos! 3. Melo George Karl must watch Melo in international comp and say: “WTF? How come he don’t do that for us.” All right, harsh on Karl. He’d probably use “doesn’t.” In any case, Melo is going to be a scoring machine. In fact, Chinese fortune cookie say: All goes mellow if Melo is scoring. OK, that was a lame fortune cookie. But show me a fortune cookie that isn’t. Heck, is the Dalai Lama going to make an appearance at the pole vault in these games? That would be cool. What’s the Dalai have to do with basketball? Not a goddamn thing. Just wanted to bring us back to reality. And the reality is this: lots of crappy stuff going on in that Chinese country we’re all going to be celebrating in a few weeks. I can’t wait to see if some ballsy athlete steps forward in some kind of protest. You can bet that won’t be Kobe Bryant, or anyone else on Team USA. They’ve got way too much on their plate, bro. I mean, really: Who cares about world peace when our basketball reputation is on the line? Prediction: Iran takes silver. In the Most F-d Up Country competition.