Kwame Brown has reunited with the man that originally drafted him and subsequently emotionally stripped him, Michael Jordan, by signing a new contract with the Charlotte Bobcats. Michael Jordan is the majority owner of the ‘Cats and Kwame is now his employee. This right here is a shining beacon to formerly abusive relationships everywhere, if at first you don’t succeed, try try again.

You see, its tough to get past the whole “I abused you relentlessly” thing. Look at Chris Brown and Rhianna for example. They couldn’t get past their prior abusive relationship to give things another go in the present. Michael and Kwame though, see they know better, nay, they ARE better than mere mortals. Apparently they can get past those errors in judgment.

When Kwame first got into the league, he was a naive young boy. Jordan took him under his tutelage and made him a MAN. An emotionally crippled and useless seven footer on the court, but a man nonetheless. Jordan accomplished this by constantly tearing Kwame down to his emotional bare bones, at least that’s what Scoop Jackson said in this 2005 ESPN page 2 article.  Let us quote liberally:

Sticks and stones can paralyze the most immortal of men, but these words – they stripped Kwame Brown of ever having a chance to be or find himself as a basketball player and as a person.

***

“Flaming … ” That was the first word. One of life’s other “f” words followed. It came in succession. It came from Michael Jordan’s mouth. The words never reached Kwame Brown’s ears, they went straight to his heart.

In Jordan’s quest to build the next him while he was in charge and out of retirement in D.C., he broke Kwame Brown down to the very last compound. Emotionally and psychologically killed his spirit.

Want to know what that 2nd “F word” was that Jordan used against Kwame? Lets go back to an article by the Washington Post’s Michael Lehay from 2003 recounting Jordan’s last season with the Wizards (only accessible through the Post’s archives) and some more of the emotional abuse he laid upon Kwame.

As always, he reserved his harshest criticisms for 21-year-old Kwame Brown, at whom, a year earlier, he had screamed, “Flaming faggot,” when Brown complained as a rookie about being fouled in an intrasquad game.

***

But Jordan and other Wizards officials were swayed by Georgia high school senior Brown’s abilities after he dominated another highly touted prep player, Tyson Chandler, during a private one-on-one competition. But now Jordan was tired of waiting for Brown to get better.

For his part, Brown said the right things: “Anyone can learn from Michael” if that “player listens.” But, privately, Brown reeled under Jordan’s and Collins’s criticism off and on for two seasons now, desperate to receive a slice of the encouragement Jordan had lavished on him during Brown’s golden days. On many nights, he had gone from wunderkind to waste. Despairing, Brown began to seek counsel from other teammates, notably Stackhouse, who could provide solace but little else, suffering beneath the weight of his own disappointments and, like Brown, having nowhere to turn.

Wow. So now things are better between them? I mean, its cool that Kwame can turn the other cheek after Jordan helped  to ruin any chance he had at meeting his potential as a number one pick and turning him into an emotional basket-case. I wonder if Jordan is going to be any better this second go around?

Who knows, maybe Jordan has changed. Sure he’s not going to be near Kwame as much as when he was a player or general manager, but they are going to have to interact with each other at various points throughout the season. No way that goes wrong, right? When has getting back together with your abuser ever gone wrong? We all know that leopards can change their spots…oh wait they can’t? Well damn. In that case, maybe this ISN’T a good thing and I am horribly wrong about this.

This $1.3 million veterans minimum contract  Kwame got is really just Jordan saying “I’m sorry baby, have a million bucks on me, it’l never happen again baby, I just lost my cool back in 2002. It’l never happen again.”

Yeah right.

Hasn’t Byron Russell had enough? Michael Jordan already took his heart during Game 6 of the 1998 NBA Finals. Does he want to give up a kidney along with his dignity? He could get $10,000 from a Mumbai alley clinic and keep his dignity. Well, probably not.

Russell didn’t take too kindly to being called out by Michael Jordan during his Hall of Fame acceptance speech.

“I’ll play his ass right now,” former Jazz player Bryon Russell told Yahoo! Sports. “This is a call-out for him to come play me. He can come out here in his private jet and come play. He’s got millions of dollars. He can pay for the jet. He can meet me at the Recreation Center in Calabasas (Calif.).”

Russell may get his wish if he and Jordan accept Utah Flash owner Brandt Anderson’s offer to donate $100,000 to a charity of the winner’s choice if they play a game of 21. What could be better than getting schooled in the same place you got schooled 11 years ago? They could make it a 1998 Finals class reunion. Someone call Greg Foster out from behind the counter at Joseph Smith’s Rice Cakes and Skim Milk! Scottie Pippen can take his place. He needs the money. Hopefully Troy Hudson can take some time off from Nutty Boyz Entertainment to come out for the weekend.

It ain’t easy going brass in the record business. Selling 78 T-Hud albums out the trunk is hard work.

This idea could start a trend of goats attempting to get revenge for past wrongs. Craig Ehlo and Frederic Weis must be itching for a chance to repair their reputations after getting posterized. I’m still waiting for my rematch against Oliver Miller. No fucking way he can eat more Shetland ponies than me this time!

He’s Baaaaaack! Well, almost. Isiah Thomas has been talking to the LA Clippers for a possible management role to assist GM/Coach Mike Dunleavy so says ESPN.com. Assist him in doing what, I wonder? Assist in trading away all the talent they have and accumulating a ton of overpaid power forwards maybe?

I’m not sure there can be a greater collection of suckage than if the LA Clippers and Isiah Thomas join forces. The team should just go ahead and change their name to the Los Angeles Black Holes since the only thing black holes do is suck. This would be the suckiest sucking black hole that ever sucked.

If this happens, the only thing that can make this team suck even more is if Michael Jordan buys on as a co-owner and they figure out that no one has signed Penny Hardaway, Alonzo Mourning, or Robert Horry, signing them on for one last Space Cowboys like run at glory.

Personally, I think it has to happen. It makes too much sense. Hear me out. Of all stupid and incomprehensable moves that Donald Sterling has ever made as an owner, this one makes the most sense in its brainlessness. How? Well, of all the stupid moves that Sterling could make, this is the stupidest, which means its the most likely stupid move he could do, which means it makes the most sense that this deal gets done. Its almost like it was a foregone conclusion that Isiah would eventually end up in LA. It is truly a match made in heaven…and it must happen.

Ok, so I’m just getting my blogging feet back under me after being worked to the bone for the last 2 months…not that I’m complaining, it is good to have a day job in this world. But all that time in the office got me thinking back to some interesting highlights of the sports world before there were sports blogs to beat current stories into the ground like there are today. So I’m going to kick off a new feature here on the Deuce, the Flashback post.

Flashbacks work so well on TV shows when they can’t think of new material, so why can’t it work here? Let me start it off.

Lets go back to 1994 when Michael Jordan signed a minor league contract with the Chicago White Sox after retiring from basketball because he was tired of dominating the game…or as he called it “loss of desire”. This started a new phase for Michael…one which involved a great amount of sucking. Playing for the Birmingham Barons, a Sox farm team, he achieved the highly mediocre career average of .202 with 3 home runs, 51 RBIs, and 11 errors. The only thing he was good at was stealing bases, he grabbed 30 bags in his time in the minors.

In March of the next year, Jordan was back in the NBA but wearing his Barons number 45 instead of his traditional #23 apparently that caused him to lose some of his super powers because he wasn’t quite the same player he was when he left. That is until the next year when changed his number back and went and won a championship…then 2 others the next two years. All was right again in Chi-town and the people were happy to forgive his one year diversion away from the NBA…but they will never forget.

So lets flashback and watch some Youtubes of this weird story in the history of one of the NBA’s greatest players…and one of MLB’s worst.

Here’s a clip of Jordan being interviewed by Tom Brokaw about the entire baseball thing, its a good 7 minutes, but well worth your time as a flashback to the days when Jordan realized he was a mortal man.

And here is a baby faced Reese Davis breaking down the “Jordan Cruiser”, the bus which Jordan bought for the Birmingham Barons when he was with them in the minors. Pretty swank for those guys, but its no Madden Trailer. Check out the youthful coach Terry Francona there too wow.

Finally…here is the return of the king to his court.

I imagine that if you have as much money as these guys probably do, you too can hire Michael Jordan to come to a gym and school your ass in some one-on-one. It appears as if John Rogers, CEO of Ariel Investments, does have a slight bit of game however…and by game I mean he can actually make an uncontested layup. I just get the feeling here that Jordan is just playing the side-show freak role. This cannot be fun for him, seems like he’s just whoring himself out for more cash to go out with Oak in Vegas. Kind of sad what Jordan has become.