another year in prison for Jayson Williams

Former New Jersey Nets basketball star JAYSON WILLIAMS gets AN EXTRA YEAR IN PRISON for drunk driving, after already being sentenced for manslaughter in the death of his limousine driver.

I’m fascinated by this case, and have mentioned it several times here, because of its possible lessons about how easy it is to be fooled by people (even easier, of course, in the case of celebrities we’ve never met). Jayson Williams always seemed like one of the wittiest, most enjoyable, well-balanced humans in the league. The TV networks made him a studio host after he retired, enjoying his sense of humor in the way I always had. (The best was when his coach snapped and made an anti-Mexican slur at a reporter, and the half-Puerto Rican Williams commented: “No wonder Coach hates me. He thinks I’m Mexican.”)

Michael Jordan returned suddenly from retirement in spring 1995. We in Chicago were heartbroken when Jordan couldn’t get the Bulls through the playoffs, and they lost to Orlando. But the problem was obvious: ex-Bull Horace Grant ate us alive in that series. The Bulls needed a real power forward to replace Grant.

Jayson Williams looked like the obvious choice. The other power forward of that caliber was DENNIS RODMAN, not too many years removed from a near-suicide, and with a general air of insanity about him. If you had asked me at the time which player the Bulls needed, I would have said: “Williams!”

The Bulls’ GM at the time was the much-maligned, almost Dickensian figure JERRY KRAUSE. Krause went for Rodman instead, even though Rodman had once shoved Scottie Pippen into a basket support during a game, leaving Scottie with a permanent scar on his chin (Pippen: “I think of Dennis Rodman every time I shave.”)

Williams’s hilarious one-liner at the time: “The Bulls brought me in for three days of psychological testing. The next day they traded for Dennis Rodman.”

Williams could get away with the line at the time because no one would have picked Rodman as the more sane of the two. Not even an issue at the time. Williams was a well-spoken comedian and Rodman seemed always inches away from psychological meltdown. It was easy to assume that the joke was on Krause here.

But all I can say is that Jerry Krause had some darn good psychological tests at his disposal. Rodman has stayed largely out of the news since retirement, and is really just a flamboyant and likable party boy with a depressive streak. Williams was the real sociopath, though none of us knew it. During his trial for accidentally (we assume) shooting his limousine driver and trying to cover it up, we also learned that he shot one of his own dogs right in front of his friends on another occasion. Behind that wise-cracking smiler was a fairly dark character, while Rodman turns out probably to have been harmless all along. In any case, the Bulls made the right choice, and it’s impossible now to think of the second Chicago dynasty with Rodman. He was an indispensable and extremely fun part of the process.