Louisiana is like a big small town, which is to say that it doesn’t take much for an NBA player with roots in Baton Rouge to cross paths with a New Orleans Saint.
That’s how Celtics [team stats] forward Glen Davis, when not working out in John Lucas’ Houston boot camp last summer, managed to catch an early wave from the madness that will roll into Miami this week.
“You know what’s funny? I was hanging with Reggie Bush this summer and he told me, ‘We’re going to the Super Bowl,’ ” Davis said last week of the Saints running back. “I said, ‘I hope we do,’ and the next thing you know we are in the Super Bowl. In fact he said, ‘We’re going to win it this year.’ ”
Now, Davis wasn’t alive when New Orleans’ darkly comical Aints generation introduced bag-covered heads to the NFL, but he didn’t have to be to realize how revolutionary Bush’s pronouncement sounded.
“I think he’s right,” Davis said.
There’s no need to question Davis’ knowledge or passion for the game. He was recruited by as many Division 1 colleges for football as basketball.
Some projected him as a tight end - others at left tackle and running back.
He lived approximately 60 miles away from the Crescent City, but there was no doubting his allegiance.
“Oh, if you live in Louisiana, you’re a serious Saints fan,” Davis said. “I don’t care if you live in the tip of Louisiana or at the bottom, you are a serious Saints fan. Everybody has to pull for the Saints.”
Everyone has to pull for New Orleans, too.
Though he was in the relatively safe environs of Baton Rouge when Hurricane Katrina leveled most of New Orleans in 2005, Davis didn’t have to go far to join the relief effort.
The Maravich Center, the arena of Davis’ alma mater, Louisiana State, was converted into a triage center for hurricane victims, who were quickly brought through the doors and onto the gym floor, many of them on stretchers.
“When someone’s in need, he’s always ready,” Collis Temple Jr., the former LSU star who helped raise Davis, told the Herald of Big Baby in 2007. “The (basketball) team was going to lift weights, or something like that, and Glen saw all of those people on stretchers and just pitched in, like he was one of the doctors or medics.
“He was just so touched by it.”
That was Davis’ introduction to Katrina.
“I was a helper with first aid and lifting things, helping doctors in certain things,” Davis said last week. “I had to witness something where surgically they had to open up a lung so a guy could breathe. He wasn’t getting enough oxygen. It was tough watching someone have surgery right then and there.
“It was tough watching and being a part of it - watching people come in who were devastated. What happened was tragic. You can’t describe the emotions. You can’t put it into words. You had to be there to see it.”
Davis knew many whose lives were altered by the long-term effects.
“A lot of rich people, poor people, middle class people who had to relocate and make their home in a different state,” he said. “D.J. Augustin from the Charlotte Bobcats - he was one of those people.
“He went to Brother Martin (in New Orleans) for his first three years of high school. Then Katrina hit and he had to relocate to Texas, another high school, and he was a product of Louisiana. He became a product of Texas. Parade All-American, great point guard, and that kind of made his decision work out. But Louisiana lost him.
“I went and took a look at what happened. It was unbelievable, crazy. You see how high the water is on the houses, you see boats miles away from the coast. You see FEMA trucks. It was tough for a person to see, knowing that somebody didn’t have a place to stay.”
Next Sunday’s Super Bowl will be for all of these people.
Nothing against the Colts, but the Saints have embarked on a greater mission.
“What the New Orleans Saints have done has helped the people of New Orleans tremendously,” Davis said. “After what they lost, it’s something else they can hold close to their hearts, with a team in the Super Bowl.”
The smoking gun
David Stern probably hopes that by suspending Gilbert Arenas and Javaris Crittenton for the rest of the season, he has swept the whole gun issue out the door.
That’s the same thinking behind the league’s hand-washing position on Tim Donaghy - that the rogue referee acted alone.
But beyond booting Arenas and his young, overwhelmed teammate, the league must take a longer, harder look at its gun policy.
As the actions of then-Pacers swingman Stephen Jackson in the parking lot of that Indiana strip club and Sebastian Telfair [stats], on two different occasions, with his fiancee’s pistol show, the incidents won’t stop.
Stern’s next gut check will come April 26, when Delonte West is scheduled to go on trial in Maryland.
The former Celtic, now an integral member of the Cavaliers, was arrested in September after he was caught carrying two loaded handguns in addition to a shotgun and a Bowie knife while riding on a big three-wheeled motorcycle.
West, who has been diagnosed with a bi-polar disorder, is proof that nothing will go away quickly for this commissioner.
The naked truth
The dressing down of Greg Oden hit an embarrassing low last week, when the Portland center met with the local media to apologize for naked photos - images he had texted to a female acquaintance two years ago.
In the course of taking questions, and opening up about how humiliated he felt, a reporter from a local weekly stunned everyone present when she wondered why he was embarrassed, considering “that a lot of people were impressed” by the view.
Oden reportedly stared at the reporter in dumbfounded silence. Hard to tell what stunned him more - the suggestion that viewers were impressed, or questioning why he would be embarrassed after having his privates streamlined across the Internet.
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