Schedules! Trades! Shark Attacks!

Let's not get distracted from the real story of the summer: shady bookies hanging around the NBA.

Well, OK, bookies may not be the only real story, but it's what I have at the moment.

Agent Steve Kauffman recounts the following anecdote about a cold night in Philadelphia with his client Wayne "Tree" Rollins (who is now coaching the Washington Mystics): 

This takes me back to a night, it must have been during the 1979-80 season, after a Hawks/Sixers game in Philadelphia. Back in those days everyone flew commercial, so the Hawks spent the night in the city after the game instead of just leaving immediately. Tree Rollins and I went to a club at 17th and Locust. It was famous for backgammon -- there were backgammon tables everywhere -- which gives you a sense that the place wasn't exactly risky.

I saw Tree coming out of the bathroom, and he looked like he had almost turned white. He looked sick, terrified. He was about 23, or 24 at the time. A young guy. He showed me a piece of paper with a name and phone number scribbled on it. He was freaked out, and he was saying we had to go outside immediately.

Once we got outside, he told me what happened in the bathroom. Tree had some minor injury at the time, and Hawks had a game coming up against New Jersey, I think. There was a guy in the bathroom, who seemed like a fan. He was asking Tree: "Hey are you feeling OK? How's your injury? You going to be able to play tomorrow?"

Then he kept asking. More questions, like "How is Danny Roundfield playing? Everything OK with him?"

Then finally he said "Would you like to make some extra money?"

Then Tree kind of freaked out, but managed to mumble something.

The guy said here's my number, call me tonight, call me tomorrow and we'll talk.

When Tree told me all this, at that point it was so drilled into me what we were supposed to do. The head of the NBA's security was Horace Balmer. You didn't mess around with this kind of stuff. You went straight to Horace, and he made sure that we all knew how to reach him around the clock. I always had his phone numbers on me.

This was about midnight. I'm almost sure I called Horace at home. I told him what happened and he said he'd take care of it.

Horace never told us another thing about it, but we learned later that the guy was some low-level bookie from Northeast Philadelphia who was arrested the next day.

Three or four minutes on the phone with Horace and that was it. Problem solved.