There used to be a part of me that wondered why professional athletes were so willing to carry such large entourages.  I mean, they pay living expenses for guys who really provide them nothing more than a buddy.  Then, the picture started clearing for me.

I think the first time it dawned on me that entourages are valuable to a professional athlete was when Carmelo Anthony was arrested at the Denver airport for possession of marijuana.  His excuse was that one of his friends had used the bag and left his weed in there.  Anthony had just picked up the bag and decided to leave town with it.  It makes zero sense.  When I travel, I don't just grab a random bag without any regard for what might or might not be in it just so I will have a carryon.  Typically, I put my laptop in it, have a mp3 player, a book maybe...my carryon is more important than the luggage I check.  So, I initially thought Carmelo was throwing his friend under the bus after attempting to sneak narcotics through airport security.  After thinking about it, of course Carmelo scapegoated one of his entourage, they owed him, and they should be more than willing to take the fall.  Their meal ticket relies on Carmelo being able to bring home the big checks, and a pot bust could have cost him millions in endorsements.

Since then, I have noticed a trend.  Randy Moss pawned a half smoked joint found in his Benz after a traffic incident on a friend who had borrowed the car.  When Michael Irvin was found to have a crack pipe in his car, he said he took it from a friend to keep his kids from seeing the paraphenalia.  Moss got burned for loaning out his luxury car, and Irvin was just a good dad who apparently did not want to throw away someone else's property.

Today, I saw another event where a player blamed his illegal activity on someone close to him planting it there.  Sebastian Telfair, a point guard for the Portland Trail Blazers, got into some trouble when he snuck a gun onto the team jet when the jet was swept by TSA.  I beleive he was in route to Oklahoma City and may have taken Charles Barkley too seriously when he called the state a vast wasteland.  (Perhaps he was expecting Mad Maxx to meet him at the airport.)  Anyway, Telfair was the ultimate "bros before hoes" friend when he pinned his wife for putting the gun under his pillowcase.

One thing that is important to know about me is that I bleed orange and black.  Oklahoma State University is as much a part of my personal identity as my red hair, my love for sports, and my regionally awkward affiliation with the Democratic Party.  It is why OU fans make me their first call after the Sooners beat the Cowboys in football, and it's one topic people who hardly know me can coax me into a conversation about.  Despite orange's clashing nature with my complexion, it is the number one color in my wardrobe.

Eddie Sutton is one of the main reasons I initially became swept up in the school's universe.

I possess a bachelor's degree in accounting from Oklahoma State, and I would like to say I chose that route because Oklahoma State has an excellent accounting program.  They do, but that was just a bonus for me.  When choosing a college, my eggs were all in one basket, I wanted to spend my time in the place whose sports I had supported since first being immersed in the state rivalry.

A perfect storm basically occured to win my affections.  Baseball had always been my first love, and when I started learning what college was, Gary Ward was leading the OSU Cowboys to 16 consecutive Big Eight baseball titles and was a perennial participant in the College World Series behind great players such as Robin Ventura, Pete Incavaglia, and Jeromy Burnitz.  Then, when I started to learn the rules of football, Barry Sanders was winning the Heisman.  That left only basketball, a sport I was beginning to play, as the only disappointment at OSU.  The program was very mediocre, kind of like Kansas State's basketball program now.  They were not terrible, but they were never a real contender to go to the Big Dance either.  Then, along game Eddie Sutton to change that entirely.

Sutton's pedigree is well documented.  No article is compete without dropping in the fact that Eddie played point guard at OSU (then Oklahoma A&M) under the legendary Hank Iba, or that Eddie has taken four teams (Creighton, Arkansas, Kentucky, and Oklahoma State) to the NCAA tournament.  His reclamation project at Oklahoma State has been a feel good story for a decade and a half.  Sixteen years ago, when Sutton was embroiled in controversy at the University of Kentucky, I (as an eleven year old) understood little about what caused his ouster.  "Recruiting violations" (for which he was personally cleared) might as well have been Greek to me.  "Alcoholism," though, was something I was very familiar with.

Several years before that, my dad had sat down my sisters and I and explained to us that he needed help.  He had three young children and he was allowing his addiction to alcohol mean more to him than his duties as a father.  From that point on, Alcoholics Anonymous idioms were bandied about my house the way some families do sing alongs.  Before I hit puberty, I understood that it was important to take things one day at a time and make the decision every morning to stay sober.  I knew that surrounding yourself with supportive people, rather than facilitators to one's debilitation.  What I also knew was that addiction could be beat.  My father took to twelve step programs like Tom Cruise to Scientology.  From that point on, he was a virtually perfect father.

I had hoped that Eddie Sutton had a similar kind of conversion.  Knowing it was possible to kick the habit, I had even forgotten Sutton had ever had bouts with alcoholism.  Only when a bitter Kentucky fan called into the Sports Animal, or when a media piece was done on a troubled player whom Sutton had taken under his wing was aired would the factoid be mentioned.  Then, there was an automobile accident last Friday, and Sutton was issued a citation for driving under the influence.

The accident report specifically mentioned a bottle of hydrocodone being found in the car, and by Oklahoma law, DUI means anything that inhibits ones driving.  For those who love Coach Sutton, that was enough to ignore the speculation that Eddie had started back on the bottle.  In the Summer of 2004, Eddie was knocked down and escalator while trying to catch a plane at LAX.  Sixty-seven at the time, his bones were cracked and he was in pain.  Several months later, while jogging, he was nearly hit by an automobile and had to dive into a ditch to protect himself.  That cracked some more bones and damaged his back.  Last season, he was walking with the assistance of a cain, and at the beginning of this season, he missed the season opener when he was hospitalized with back pain.  Prescription pain medication, while something that should have stopped him from driving, would have been an acceptable explanation.

Doug Gottlieb, an ESPN college basketball analyst who played for Sutton the years I was in Stillwater, is as close to the program as anyone.  He was quoted saying, "I've never sensed - in all the three years I was playing for him and the six years since - I never once suspected that (Sutton) was back drinking."  He then echoed mine, and most Cowboy faithful's desires when he said, "I think we all just want to hear Coach Sutton say, 'I have a bad back, I was in a hurry to catch a flight, I took too many pills and this is what happened.  If this is not what happened, it's a concern.  He always talked about being accountable, and I would hope that whatever mistakes he's made, he would do the same. It would be not only disappointing but shocking if this turned out to be a mistake involving alcohol."  (For full disclosure, I attacked another blogger for suggesting alcohol in one of his postings.)

Accountability has been as much a staple of Sutton's tenure at OSU as the three D's (Discipline, Defense, and Dedication) passed down from Coach Iba.  His humbling experience at Kentucky gave Coach Sutton a deeper understanding of what caused people to stray from society's expectations.  It gave him freedom to accept players who might have had a troubled past and help them toward their own reclamation project the way Eddie found it with his return to his alma mater.  Gottlieb, for instance, started his college career at Notre Dame but was exiled when he stole a credit card.  Since being taken under Eddie's wing, he found a more righteous path and has been very successful in his chosen career.  Current Cowboy JamesOn Curry lost a scholarship to North Carolina when he was arrested for selling marijuana to an undercover police officer.  He was accepted to the program under a "no tolerance" policy, and to this point, he has been a model citizen at OSU.  Other at risk players have reverted back to their troubled ways after departing Stillwater.  Glendon Alexander is currently in a Texas prison for theft, and Tony Allen of the Boston Celtics is in trouble for his role in a Chicago area brawl last Summer.

Now that he has admitted to succumbing to his alcoholism again, will Eddie receive the same zero tolerance policy he outlined to Curry?  Pat Forde of ESPN.com called for his head in an article posted last night.  He felt that Sutton should do a perpwalk into retirement and that his continued presence at OSU was a hindrance to moving on.  I am certain several other members of the media will make similar declarations.  To me, it will be nothing but an indication of their ignorance of Sutton's status at the school.  Unlike at Kentucky where Sutton was an outsider benefitting from a tradition created by Adolph Rupp, Oklahoma State basketball is Eddie Sutton.  The tradition of Hank Iba had been lost for decades by the time Sutton returned to Stillwater and gave the school a national presence, including two Final Four appearances and thirteen trips to the NCAA tournament in his fifteen completed seasons.  He taught all of us fans how to appreciate well played basketball and how disciplined players could beat more talented players.  Few who follow this program are calling for this to be his swan song, let alone his son, Sean, the "head coach designate" who looks to benefit most when Eddie's career is finally over.

Should the best case scenario occur, Eddie will get the most out of the treatment he is seeking.  Next season, after the sixth game, Eddie will hoist a trophy for achieving his 800th career victory, and next season will end with a more mature team winning his first national championship.  Then, he will retire with the legacy that should be remembered and take on the role of consultant that Coach Iba played in Sutton's early years at OSU.

With eight days remaing until the trade deadline, the most sought after player in all of basketball is...Kelvin Cato?  The rarely used reserve center (and his expiring $8.6MM contract) has made the Orlando Magic the NBA's most attractive trading partner.  At the moment, the Magic have two offers on the table that are difficult to turn down, but only one can be executed.

To Orlando:

SG/PG Jamal Crawford (signed thru 2011 for a total of $49.68MM--$6.48MM currently)

SG/PG Penny Hardaway (expiring $15.75MM contract)

One of:

PG Nate Robinson (rookie contract of $1.2MM)

PF David Lee (rookie contract of $860K)

SF Trevor Ariza ($640K, expiring)

From Orlando:

PG Steve Francis (owed $62.46MM thru 2009 -- $13.77MM currently)

C  Kelvin Cato (expiring $8.6MM)

Why would Orlando choose this deal?

The bigger question is why New York is the one making this offer.  Or another question, is Isiah Thomas mentally handicapped?  I wrote in an earlier blog entry that the Knicks should do whatever they could to rid themselves of Stephon Marbury, who drags the team down with his selfish play and has a suffocating contract.  Instead, Thomas is trying to go the opposite direction and is looking to acquire Marbury's doppelganger from Orlando.  The tandem of Francis and Marbury would put two undersized shooting guards (masquerading as point guards) on the floor at the same time, and there are not enough basketballs in the Big Apple to satisfy those two.  In return, Thomas is offering a tall point guard who has the most reasonable (with "reasonable" being a relative term) contract of any player Isiah has acquired, one of his promising young players, and one player who was finally going to be out of the Knicks cap hell at seasons end.

Orlando would choose this deal in preperating for the summer of 2007.  Getting rid of their two largest contracts, and with the deal of Grant Hill expiring after next season, the Magic will be way under the cap for the 2007 free agent class.  By all expectations, there should be many promising targets that Summer and Orlando could be the prime location ready to woo them.

Aside from the cap flexibility, the Magic get one, maybe two starters out of the deal who can be built around.  Their best case scenario in this offer is Trevor Ariza (the Magic should get Fran Vazquez from Spain for next season making Lee unnecessary, and Nate Robinson is 5'7" tall).  Assuming that is the finalized deal, their depth chart could look like this:

PG - Jameer Nelson / Keyon Dooling

SG - Jamal Crawford / DeShawn Stevenson

SF - Grant Hill / Hedyet Turkoglu / Trevor Ariza

PF - Dwight Howard / Pat Garrity

C -  Tony Battie / Mario Kasun

Surely that is not a team that can win now, but that actually could help them in the long run.  Unlike offer # 2, the Magic keep their 1st round pick for this season and losing more would improve the draft position.  Then, of course, Fran Vazquez (last year's first round pick) will reinforce the squallid front court, and they can make a push for another impact player in the 2007 free agent class.

OFFER # 2:  Detroit Pistons

To Orlando:

C/PF Darko Milicic (signed thru 2007 for $9.35MM -- $4.14MM currently)

PG Carlos Arroyo (signed thru 2008 for $12MM -- $4MM annually)

From Orlando:

C  Kelvin Cato

1st Round Draft Pick

Why would Orlando choose this offer?

According to multiple sources, Orlando has actually been the one to make this offer and they have done so on multiple occasions.  An ESPN article suggests this deal is on the verge of happening with the only hang up being how much lottery protection the Magic would receive on the pick.  Considering how weak this year's draft is considered to be, the Magic should be generous with their requests.  If they do not get into the top 3 to 5, they can likely do better with their 2007 pick.

Giving up basically nothing, this deal would be great for the Magic.  While Milicic would be the most focused on portion of the trade, Carlos Arroyo is actually a really good point guard and has a reasonable contract.  Remember, Arroyo was often the best player on a surprising Utah Jazz team that just missed out on the playoffs the year after John Stockton retired and Karl Malone left for the Lakers.

As for Milicic, he needs an opportunity to prove himself.  Buried in the Pistons depth chart, he has never had a chance to show the promise that made him a second overall pick in a draft that included Lebron James, Carmelo Anthony, Dwayne Wade, Chris Bosh, Kirk Hinrich, and several other players that have made a huge splash for their teams.  This is not to say that Darko can be written off as a bust, yet.  The Pistons were only in the position to draft him because of a decade old trade, and not because they were a rebuilding team.  Quite the opposite, in fact.  Darko has a championship ring from his rookie season when he sat behind veterans Ben Wallace, Rasheed Wallace, and Corliss Williamson.  Since then, the Pistons have actually upgraded the positions Darko is challenging to play by acquiring a former Dream Team player in Antonio McDyess.  So, it is no surprise that the Pistons have not allowed him to learn on the fly while they try to win championships.

A team like Orlando can use him, though.  Outside of Dwight Howard, their frontcourt is weak and they can give Milicic valuable minutes.  In return, the young (he cannot legally drink in this country until June of this year) seven footer could pair with Howard to give the Magic twin towers to build on.

Should offer # 2 be the direction Orlando goes, their depth chart may look like this:

PG:  Carlos Arroyo / Jameer Nelson / Keyon Dooling

SG:  Steve Francis / DeShawn Stevenson

SF:  Grant Hill / Hidyet Tukoglu

PF:  Dwight Howard / Pat Garrity

C:  Darko Milicic / Tony Battie / Mario Kasun

Again, not a team that can win immediately.  Getting Francis off of the point, though, could work wonders from the beginning.  Then, next season, with Vazquez's arrival, the Magic could make a challenge for the playoffs.

RUMOR:

The Knicks, according to league sources, are willing to trade Malik Rose and perhaps Trevor Ariza to the Sonics if they can get Danny Fortson and Reggie Evans in return, reports the New York Daily News.

According to the Seattle Times, a Knicks scout attended Sunday's game between the Nuggets and Sonics.

ANALYSIS:

Of course the Knicks would make that trade.  Trevor Ariza is on the inactive list and Malik Rose is an undersized power forward who brings nothing to the table except a bloated contract.  Fortson and Evans are fantastic defensive players and rebounders.  While both Evans and Fortson have made requests to be traded, certainly the Sonics could get something more in exchange.

 RUMOR:

On Saturday, Florida Today reported that Orlando had made inquiries, but Assistant GM Otis Smith told the newspaper that no deal was imminent.

ANALYSIS:

For Darko's sake, this deal should happen.  Unfortunately, the deal is incredibly stacked in Orlando's favor, so it probably will not.  In essence, Detroit would have to give up their only reserve point guard and a player who could develop into something special (just not on a deep Pistons team) for cap relief and a draft pick that would likely fall into the same well Milicic has been trapped.

If the Pistons are willing to give up on Darko for cap space, a team that should get into the running is Oklahoma City.  Since the Hornets are under the cap, they could absorb Darko's contract and send back only a first round draft pick in return.  Or, the Pistons who may need more guard play might be interested in Arvydas Macijaukas who has been buried on the Hornets guard depth.

As an Oklahoman, I feel obligated to defend my state from the attacks made by Charles Barkley in a recent interview of Hornets star Chris Paul.  For those who are not familiar with the jabs Barkley took, he informed Paul that Oklahoma was "no place for black people" (hypothesizing that the only brothers were the OU Sooners and the Hornets), and teased the rookie about living in a "vast wasteland" and having "chickens and cows" in his yard.

The "chickens and cows" comment is not surprising.  My state is mostly unknown through much of the country.  Back in the day when I would spend my time chatting with strangers on AOL Instant Messenger, I would get asked by people from other parts of the country if I rode a horse to school.  The thing is, they seriously believed this was a common practice.  Oklahoma's tourism department has done nothing to dispell such an image.  Brochures and commercials crafted to beckon outsiders accentuate the open praries, Native American reservations (which are much more modern than the images they choose), and the Cowboy Hall of Fame.  It is no wonder people still think the state north of Texas still looks like a Rodgers and Hammerstein musical.

Regardless, Sir Charles stereotyping us based on this image annoys me.  I mean, how would he feel if classified his home state based on the mental images it conjured in me.  As a native of Alabama (a state he talks of governing some day), Barkley's home makes me think of plantations and lynchings.

Which brings me to the question of Oklahoma being a "place for black people."  Having taken Oklahoma history as a required class at my Oklahoma City high school that had a student body consisting of approximately 70% African-Americans, I know that the state of Oklahoma has never allowed its residents to own black people.  That makes it pretty unique for states on this side of the Mason-Dixon line.  In fact, this posed a problem to the state's founding fathers.  The United States hesitated to allow statehood because Oklahoma's entrance into the union would have given "non-slave" states a majority of senators.  Breaking that tie was not something the Southern states would accept because they did not want Congress to outlaw slavery.  At one point, the territory was nearly split into two states, Sequoia and Oklahoma, in order to assure that the Senate would not be tipped.

My high school make-up alone pretty much takes care of Barkley's assessment of the state's African-American population being limited to the Sooner football team and the Hornets players.  Really, though, is Oklahoma City more white bread than other NBA cities.  Using census data, I have found that 12.3% of the total population of the United States of America is of African decent.  The population of Oklahoma City is 15.6% black (compared to 7.6% of the state on the whole).  That figure places OKC at 21st out of 29 NBA cities (there are two teams in Los Angeles).  On the whole there is a large range.  Detroit is 81.6% black while about 2% of Salt Lake City is African-American.  Most interesting, however, is that the second whitest city in the NBA happens to be where Barkley spent his best years in the league, Phoenix.  Sir Charles is not on record as calling Arizona a bad place for people of color.

Even without the history, I would argue that Oklahoma is a great place for anyone to live.  Cost of living is low, crime is minimal, traffic is bearable, winters are tame, the people are incredibly nice, and a disproportionate number of beautiful women live here.  (That last one was geared more to the fellas.)  No matter what your ethnicity, such things should be attractive in choosing a place to call home.

The realistic side of me knows I should not be giving any weight to Barkley's snide commentary.  If it were anywhere else, and any other blogger were taking him to task, I would be saying, "learn to take a joke."  Mostly, I should have been prepared.  When I first learned that Oklahoma would be hosting the Hornets, he was one of the first concerns that occured to me.  Certainly, becoming a "big league town" was great for the place I call home, but I knew the media would not be happy coming into a place that lacked the glitz and glamour most major league franchises operated from.  After watching him lobby the Mavericks to beat the Spurs two seasons ago for fear that TNT would make him broadcast from San Antonio, I knew he could be brutal for a place's image.

On the other hand, this could be great for the state.  Backlash against Barkley's race baiting will raise Oklahoma's profile and get it defended.  Governor Brad Henry has escalated it into a war of words, saying "Obviously, Charles Barkley doesn't know what he's talking about.  Anyone who follows Barkley knows he's notorious for saying ridiculous things that have no basis in fact, and this case is a perfect example."  A plethora of invitations have been sent to the former NBA star and current television analyst including all-expense paid offers from a local television station, and the Oklahoma City chamber of commerce.  Thus far, Barkley has resisted, insisting that Oklahoma is not on his list of places to visit.  In the end he may have no choice in the matter.  With another win tonight, the Hornets are currently slated as the sixth seed in the Western Conference playoffs.  After a season in which the NBA did not put any Hornets on national television, TNT may have to send Charles to commentate from the Oklahoma Ford Center.

We will make sure to have some cow and chickens ready for his hotel room.