Great read from Ira Winderman discussing the high stakes card games that go on throughout the league -- at 35,000 feet. Playing poker during flights between cities is a ritual as common as pre-game warmups for players on all 30 of the league's teams, and if it's not monitored by the team's authority figures, it's one that can get completely out of control.
Veteran guard Derek Anderson gives us an idea of how crazy things can get, and says he's seen players lose a ton of money in a very short amount of time.
I've heard guys who have lost $30,000 on an hour plane trip," Charlotte guard Derek Anderson, the former Heat reserve, says. "It's amazing - $30,000 in an hour."
"You leave Chicago, you have $30,000. You arrive in Detroit, you don't."
That was probably the longest one-hour flight in history for the poor sap who dropped $30K on a card game. Now anytime we hear outrageous stories about the gambling habits of athletes, it's important to keep perspective. According to the article, the average NBA player gets a game check of $66K, so while $30K seems like a ton of money to us common folk, it's not like these guys will be homeless or starving after a loss like that.
While the league has refused to adopt a policy on these types of card games, some teams have felt the need to put their own rules in place. When Alvin Gentry was with Detroit, he first tried limiting things to "cash only," before eventually putting a stop to it altogether. As he put it, the IOUs are where the trouble comes in. A legendary example of which is the story of Tyrone Hill and Charles Oakley, which was so awesome that I feel it must be recounted here.
