J.R. Rider Wants Back In

Isaiah Rider, one of the reasons for the dark ages of the NBA in the late 90's when people decided to start hating basketball players with dark skin because they were all "thugs", is hoping to catch on with an NBA team at the tender age of 38. Out of Minneapolis, the Star Tribune is reporting that Rider is trying to get back into the NBA and may have a shot at being invited to the New Jersey Nets training camp. I, for one, am all for it. I mean ALL for it. Isaiah Rider was one of those special kind of players for me. As a Wolves fan, I was both delighted and frustrated by his antics. You could tell that not everything was right with him. He had issues with authority and he had issues with anybody that didn't want to praise him 24/7. He had some run ins with the law and the league back in his playing days, thanks to usual occurrences such as drug use, assault, spitting on fans, receiving stolen cell phones, and ...  oh yeah ... that one time he kicked a woman in the stomach. But who HASN'T done those things?Now, he'd love to be invited to the Nets camp or "go in a heartbeat" to Minnesota. I was enamored with him from the first moment I saw him, during his last college dunk contest before he entered the NBA. I randomly came across it on TV, just in time to see him run along the baseline from out of bounds, scissor his legs as he exchanged the ball from one hand to another, and then threw it down with a vicious rip across the rim. I ended up with the same reaction as everybody in Semi-Pro when they saw the first alley-oop. I may have even said to my dad, "you can't just have people flying through the air like that and putting the ball between their legs before they dunk." I'm not sure. Everything got blurry. In today's dunk contests, it's a prerequisite to be able to pull off a variation of this through-the-legs dunk from anywhere on the floor. But at the time, it was an innovation that seemed to have belonged in the same family tree as the wheel, fire, and Richard Pryor. All were examples of avant-garde greatness. Fast forward to the NBA draft when the Timberwolves selected Rider with the fifth pick and life could not have been better for an 11-year old me. I watched him win dunk contests as a T'Wolf and throw in the most insane basketball play that I've ever seen live (I was at this game). I followed him pour in over 4,000 points in three seasons before he was traded to the Portland Trailblazers for James Robinson, Bill Curley and a first round pick that Kevin McHale defecated on and turned into something called a "Paul Grant". From then on, I watched him be part of the destruction and embarrassment of the Blazers before being jettisoned to the Hawks, attempting to pull a Glen Rice with the Lakers and then fizzling out in 10 games with the Nuggets. Now? Supposedly, "He's humbled now ... he's matured." Personally, I'd love to see him back, even at the age of 38. He was one of those players that wowed me in my youth and I naively have a soft spot in my heart for him. Whether he makes an actual team or not isn't really the point. I've always been enamored with guys like Dennis Rodman and Shawk Kemp attempting to ressurect a flatlined career. Isaiah Rider now gets to continue that legacy for troubled former players. I just want to see the shell of the creator of the East Bay Funk Dunk get out on a pro court one more time.