Vegas League Memories

I feel confident that anyone reading FreeDarko on the daily wishes, on some level, that he could spend these simmering months hanging out in half-empty gyms and watching lottery picks drop thirty. Luckily, one brave reader dared to crossed the abyss separating fantasy from reality, and sent us the pictures and captions to prove it. Without any question asked, here is Pichi Campana Aguanta's photo diary from the NBA's outskirts, as edited by yours truly to contain almost zero basketball action:

Most of my pics from the trip turned out all sighting-of-the-yeti blurry, and even though it makes me sad, it kind of perpetuated the legend of potential. I mean, would we even care about Bigfoot if we had nice clear snapshots of him relaxing with friends?



Out of all the coaches/legends in the building, Eddie Jordan had the most presence. He was nice enough to pose for the picture and I almost asked him for life advice because he seemed so wise.



Van Gundy's head with Fred Hoiberg in the background. For some reason no one was sitting anywhere near Van Gundy. He seems like a nice enough guy when he does broadcasts, so I couldn't understand why there was no one within 15 seats of him. But some Knicks fans filmed the back of his head for the whole game, so that put a hop in my step.

Also, JVG was sitting behind McHale and Hoiberg and the rest of the Minnesota people, and some tall, old European guy (who I can only assume is some famous scout) came in the door and had the whole TWolves front office standing up and shouting strange inside jokes at him, to which he replied with some odd reply in broken English that made no sense. Strange all the way around, and JVG seemed legitimately annoyed at the whole scene.



Elgin Baylor must really enjoy not being the laughingstock of the league anymore. He was getting mobbed for autographs.



Dunleavy spent the whole game trying to avoid small talk with the chatty father and brother of, I think, Andris Biedrins



Chris Mullin actually looked great, but perhaps the camera saw something I missed. He was wearing some vintage 1984 short shorts too. So was Dunleavy for that matter. Very strange.



D'Antoni has all kinds of Italian mannerisms. When he started drawing up a play on a piece of scrap paper for this guy (who looks like I should know who he is but all I come up with is Jud Buechler), I tried to see what the play looked like but the crowd pushed me out of the way. Insert your own joke here about what the play was.



Kaman spent the whole day on press row for some reason. He was also nice to the huge fat kid on the front row who kept shouting encouragement at him as he took stats.



This is just for the requisite Amare sighting, but also to give some love out to Britton Johnson, one of the finest high school players to come out of the great state of Utah. Good to see him keeping the dream alive.



Isiah and Vinny Del Negro, with Isiah fighting off a crazy middle aged white guy who is shouting "Isiah, you my boy, you gotta fix da Kicks, you my boy."

Anyway, it was a great weekend all the way around. I have to agree with Simmons on one thing, though: more C-list NBA players need to date C-list celebrities. Even the dudes making the 400k minimum ought to be able to pull something better than some of the arm candy they were trotting around. And overall, I was surprised at how family-oriented a lot of the players are. I mean, it's gotta be hard to pull chicks with your mom and an uncle hanging on your everywhere you go.