First off, let's get it straight on the deposed Nolan Richardson and his pointed farewell soliloquy -- hey, just because you ain't racist doesn't mean Nolan didn't run into bigotry in Arkansas. Don't take it personal. It's not about whether or not your feelings are hurt. OK? Some real bad things went down that aren't in the public domain. Since "whiner" isn't in Nolie's jacket, they might never be known.

	Just because you're not racist doesn't mean you should doubt Nolan Richardson.

Once again, whether or not you are a bigot in your heart, up in Ithaca, down in Orlando, or out in Salinas, or Rancho Cucamonga, has nada to do with what Nolie was speaking on/going through in Arkansas. Part of what he was going through had to do with ...

Everybody's packin'
... in the immortal words of Clarence Boddicker in "Robocop": "Guns! Guns! Guns!"

Everybody's got a Colt Python .357, an Eagle, Glock 9, Remmie 30.06, a sawed-off, a snubber ... even if they are drawing down a few mil a year ... maybe especially if they're drawing down a few mil a year. It's beyond "personal protection," it's beyond the Constitutionally guaranteed right to bear arms. The Constitution doesn't guarantee anything about firing arms. Or does it?

Guns backfire. Even when they don't, blowback at point blank range? Nasty. Tends to get all over, and stick. Hard to clean up.

Take the Jayson Williams sitchie. Apparently, he was fascinated by big guns, probably considered himself well able to defend himself and amuse others with his collection of shotguns. He probably was able to defend himself. Against everybody but Jayson Williams.

Jayson couldn't stand his own success. The Who Knew Estate, where he lived, with that gauche plaque out front showing him shrugging. Like Michael Corleone told that dude who wanted to marry Sonny's daughter in "Godfather II," "Don't be ashamed of being rich. That's a trick used against the poor." Jayson Williams probably felt like he didn't deserve the good life. Mix in too much time on his hands, and some kind of gun fixation, which, unfortunately for him, he documented in book form. It's like he almost thought it was funny, Wayne Chrebet knocked out by the concussion from one of Jayson's cool blasts.

If guns are around, they will be fired, and if they are fired, sooner or later, they are going to hit something -- if not someone -- you didn't intend for them to hit. Hunters don't wear orange to blend into the foliage. Some of them get shot anyway. Accidentally. Still shot. Surviving families are to shrug it off. Part of the game. You walk into the wild with a 12-gauge, you take your chances.

	Jayson Williams certainly isn't the only NBA player with a liking for guns.

Guns don't care about words like "conservative" or "liberal" or all that other crap formulating in your head as defense. If your hips are in the way, a bullet will hit you whether you work at Fox, CBS or Disney. Guns don't kill people? No? Well, people don't kill people nearly as well without guns, that much is book.

Jayson Williams would still be struggling to find his niche at NBC and translate his infectious personality to the tube, if he didn't have shotguns stuck all over his cribbini. Now the newest-latest skinny from the Illy says his brother tried to help him fix up the stock and trigger housing group of the shotgun with the deceased vic's prints.

That's pretty lame. Jayson was no doubt in shock. His brother might have been desperate to have worth in his life. Bad move either way. Suicide? How you gonna commit suicide with a shotgun in the first place, unless you're Jamaal Magliore and have arms like an octopus? It can be done. Remember Jeff Alm? But even if you can manage it, you're gonna leave a contact entry wound somewhere. You don't have to work the night shift at the cop house to figure this out ... although I have, so I know whereof.

Luckily, so did somebody at the scene. A cooler head prevailed. You can probably bet it wasn't the one who sang to the Illy.

Jayson Williams must have good lawyers. The spin is already on. Williams was quoted outside the Jersey courthouse saying, "Me and my wife would like to send out our heartfelt condolences to Mr. Christofi's family." This goes in the sympathetic portrayal box. Simple dramaturgy to help the audience, the potential jury, identify. Jayson has a wife to take care of, is the inference. Good strategy.

"Me and my wife would like to send out our heartfelt condolences to Mr. Christofi's family."

Jayson wasn't wrong to express regret and contrition. No doubt he feels regret, and has felt it ever since that night. But his wife didn't have anything to do with it, that we know of. She does now.

The Jayson Williams that was hired by NBC for his humor and winning ways to do battle with the loose soup coolers of Charles Barkley on TNT might have said, "Yeah, I got a wife. That's punishment enough." Then he would have cracked up, laughing at his own joke, which he had a habit of doing, and the habit can cause infectious laughter and camaraderie when speaking to Jayson one-on-one, or sitting on his couch in his living room downing Coronas watching some run. Jayson was Bernie Mac then.

But that style didn't go over equally well on the tube, in studio. Seemed a little too hucky-bucky, kind of shucky-jivey. Wasn't really cool. Barkley gets away with a lot because you accept he hasn't given any thought to what he says, it's off the cuff, and he has better natural delivery and doesn't laugh at his own jokes. It's visceral reaction, and even if it doesn't have anything to do with truth, or reality, it sort of excuses us when we think the same way.

When Barkley says The Masters is being blatantly racist to lengthen the track, in Chuck's mind, to keep Tiger from winning, he's way out of his depth. He can give hoop analysis of the NBA variety off the cuff without thinking, and that seems charming, and is. He can't do the same with golf. Seen his swing? That thing is enough to make your own back hurt.

By all accounts, Jayson Williams has great winning ways, has done a lot for people who don't have it like he does. Most everybody who knows him -- or has met him -- likes him. After a certain point, that becomes suspect. Somebody's trying a little too hard to be liked. But still we like him. We want to like him. Something about him. Wasn't expected to do much in the Association, found a niche at the hardest thing there, rebounding. Walk year coincided with his statistical spike -- he'd double-digit boarded coming into a third year running and was the underground talk of the league, and the Nets set him up. Then, ba-da-bing, broke his leg in a horribly unrepentant sort of way. He was through, but that's why the teams of the Association pay Lloyds of London the big bucks.

Don't know what's going to happen to Jayson. The prosecutor, Mr. Lember, over in Jersey, seems giddy enough. If there's any Helter-Skelter going on around here, well, Jayson ain't the only one.

No, that doesn't bring Mr. Christofi back.

But you do get the feeling this could've happened to a more deserving person. Like who? Well ... at least Jayson felt remorse about not having to earn out his contract. He always said that. He'd rather be out there playing for the money, the $30-odd million left on his contract that might be forfeited, depending on how a clause containing moral turpitude language is read later on.

Real moral turpitude is not being true to your talent.

We can't say that Jayson Williams did that.

But Penny did. Sad. Damn near sad as Jayce.

Monster waste of talent
Penny Hardaway became the biggest waste of talent in The Association, if not in the history of The Association. It briefly pains me to admit this.

	Penny Hardaway is one of the biggest wastes of talent in the history of hoop.

Penny's grandmother was one of the most magnificent women I ever met. Raised him alone in a three-room, tar-paper shotgun wood frame that could loosely be described as a real house, in Memphis. "Miss Hardaway" was a former Arkansas sharecropper who brought in many a cotton crop with her and her older children's and husband's bare hands, and once, while walking down a dusty highway in the '40s, was hit by a piece of concrete flung from a car full of the laughing faces of some people whose kids probably didn't go on to become charter members of the Nolan Richardson Fan Club.

She survived, moved to the city, lost her husband to death. Her time in formal education was spent heaping food onto plates at a local elementary, and cleaning house for a local doctor who paid her not much of a wage, yet said what she was looking for out of those three rooms she'd never get. Miss Hardaway was bound to put the lie to all that noise. She'd raised three of her own, then took in Penny while his mother, Faye, wild-childed, ran off to Oaktown behind some dude. You know the drill. Miss Hardaway heated the three-room tar-paper shotgun with the lit eyes on the gas stove in winter. She kept Penny's belly full, and loved him so deep I can't do it justice here. At 75, her stomach was flat as a book, the only book she once had in those three tiny rooms. The Bible.

Penny was gifted. Had it all set out for him. Playing out front with Shaq in the hole, just as Kobe does it now. Beat Jordan in the NBA playoffs back in 1995. Not many can say that, no matter what the circumstances. Hell, Jordan never even got taken to seven games in the Finals. Kobe has no problems now, compared with Penny, or Jayson. Reports last year said Penny pulled a piece on a honey -- a honey who bore him a child, a real Li'l Penny -- in Phoenix.

Pine time. Lloyds of London isn't paying off his. Better that they would. And I say this with sadness, since I've met Penny, kind of know him, and in fact went to consult with him about his reps when he came into The League because I wanted him to make it, and these reps, for the most, they aren't grinding away helping these guys, making them better, enhancing careers and generally assisting in the mark's social maturation. They are there for the cheese, quicker the better. Later for the rest, smoove.

What struck me was what the high school coach of that LeBron James boy from Akron said. Last summer, when Jordan was getting back into game shape and invited in players from all over to Chicago to work out, the coach said, "I heard that the two best players in the gym were LeBron James and Penny Hardaway."

Well, if that's the case ... where it's at?

All I heard is that Penny and Stef didn't even speak to each other earlier in the season. That's pathetic on somebody's part. I ain't speculating, but Stef and Penny put together don't make one Jason Kidd. Jason Kidd has no more physical ability than either of them. But in hoop, there are levels to the game, mental and physical ...

More on that, next go round.

Now Penny is living comfortably in Pine City. They broke him. Don't know who, exactly. The rigid physical play in The League? They will back you down if you have more ability because that's all they can do to the very talented physically, is to try to break you mentally. If you show up weak, like punk wood, they'll light your butt up, then finish you. The old "friends," who showed him how to use a piece? Penny got shot in the foot before he was 20 years old. His "reps"? Of the Shug Knight School of Muscling In representation. Whatever. For all his physical ability, his place on and in the Suns, his potential, has now been replaced by one Joe Johnson, who was coached by ... Nolan Richardson at Arkansas.

	Kobe Bryant is now facing challenges from all angles -- like this one from Reggie Miller.

But Nolan, he can't recruit.

Besides that, he was just a recruiter.

He hypnotized his own self
Even at the highest levels of the game, these are still human beings, out there trapezing and whizzing about. The highest level of the game has a name, and it's still Michael Jordan. Twenty to 30 guys in The League have more physical ability than him now. But about their will, we'll see.

Kobe's being tested now, on all fronts. They're trying to get into his head. Jordan, they tried that on him, early on, Isiah and them. But he would not wilt, and when another generation came in, he was already in all their heads, and he never let go of that edge.

Jordan's edge was always mental. They believed.

Jordan did, too. He hypnotized his own self, too. And in doing that, yes, he became the best baller ever, and many other attendant phenomena. But as a certain Melody said, one bit of residue from that was that he learned to think like an athlete, not a legend.

Road Dog: "He thinks like an athlete, not a legend?"

RW: "Yeah."

	Michael Jordan is having a very hard time saying goodbye to the game.

The legend that walks like a man
Legend? We do know at least one. Not only did he score 30 a game in hoop in high school out on Strong Island, he is considered to be hands down the greatest lacrosse player who ever lived. This was all work he did with his left hand. What he did with his right hand was haul rock.

Dick Schaap boycotted the Heisman Trophy voting for 30 years because the legend didn't get one. He left the NFL, The League, at age 29 -- screw 39, dude left at 29! -- after changing ball, setting a standard for football running backs, and now, 37 years later, he's still the standard by which they are all held. We'll have to check the Association in the year 2040, see if Jordan holds up as well. The comeback? It didn't help Jordan's legend. Helped the Bullets ... I mean, the Wizards ... and it helped the Association. It didn't help Jordan's legend. When in doubt, he put on the jock strap again.

I thought he was looking good in one of them sweet suits with the shoulders up in the executive suite. Up there, he could never be beaten, down on the floor. He'd never throw a rod in his knee. He'd be immortal in the songs sung by the fire. When in doubt, a legend moves deeper into the frontier, not back over safe ground he's already plowed and left to the homesteaders.

Who I am talking about, as a legend, not an athlete? Who was Jordan's superior, not in his chosen occupation, but as a legend? As an athlete, he was only Jordan's equal. But he thought broader.

Who is this dude?

You know, of course. Jim Brown, All-American.

	By retiring early, Jim Brown enhanced his legend.

On the heels of his Nike Air Jordan ad campaign, Spike Lee has come up with "Jim Brown: All-American" as an HBO doc. It's actually five docs, that's how much legend there is to Jim -- Jim coming up, hooping and doing everything else, Jim at Syracuse, Jim chilling the entire NFL, bouncing at 29; Jim as sex symbol movie star; Jim as the down brother who goes deep into the bloodhole belly of the 'hood, sticks his jib between gangs, keeps street cred across en-tire generations and soci-eco sub-groups. Go'on, Jim. Jim even made Richard Pryor stop doing dope. For a little while, anyway.

About this doc, you'll have to get The Sports Guy or Eric Neel to tell you what they think about that. Me, I'll lay out this time, other than to say I think Dog put in hella work and captured Jim in a way I'd never seen anyone do. Dog got Jim in all his complexity, including his flaws, his issues. Jim's issues usually wore skirts. I wouldn't know anything about issues like that. You neither, I imagine.

When Jim at 60 walks onto the grid in a sleeveless shirt, I think, "Guns! Guns! Guns!"

I think of how Jim Brown, All-American, no matter what else you think of him, no matter where he went, no matter what the opposition, how hostile the environment -- he never needed one.

Ralph Wiley spent nine years at Sports Illustrated and wrote 28 cover stories on celebrity athletes. He is the author of several books, including "Best Seat in the House," with Spike Lee, "Born to Play: The Eric Davis Story," and "Serenity, A Boxing Memoir."