Poor Sports:
Celebrating the Worst in Athletics

booyah Basketball Wiz

by Jeff Hause

"I think D.C. means 'Disturbed Child."
--Charles Barkley on Derrick Coleman's "DC" nick-name, an excerpt from Terry Pluto's book, "Falling From Grace: Can Pro Basketball Be Saved?"

Disturbed Child
"I have no defense - in more ways than one."
He always went "Number One." As a kid he went number one when they chose sides for pick-up games. In the NBA draft he went number one to the New Jersey Nets. And last summer he went number one all over the floor of the Intermezzo Restaurant.

Derrick Coleman has pissed away his life and his talent right along with all the booze he'd ingested in that Detroit restaurant. He is a rarity in basketball: A player who can average 20 points and ten rebounds a game and still make his team worse.

A few months after dribbling all over the restaurant floor, Coleman crashed more than the boards when his car collided with a tractor-trailer, sending his passenger, backup guard Eldridge Recasner, to the hospital (and later to a lawyer to see about suing Coleman). Derrick refused to submit to a breathalyzer test and was arrested for the fourth time in four years.

When he finally met the press to discuss the incident, Coleman said: "I'm just happy everybody's OK and that we can at this particular point in time laugh and joke about it." (Recasner was out of action with a collapsed lung at the time, making it hard to breathe, let alone laugh.)

DC was then booed for Charlotte's home opener, which baffled him. He asked: "Well, I was a little bit shocked. Me having an accident ... what does that have to do with the game of basketball?" Beyond the obvious bad choice of the word "accident" after the urination incident, Coleman's response shows he just doesn't understand the consequences of his actions.

Coleman has been in and out of basketball and legal courts since his college days at Syracuse. He was convicted of harassment and disorderly conduct when he and seven other men kicked their way into the home of a man and destroyed his TV set.

In May of 1994, three teen-agers accused Coleman and a teammate of beating them outside a New York nightclub. Coleman denied beating them and his case was dismissed (after all, he was a New Jersey Net - they never beat anybody).

Also in 1994, Coleman was accused of raping a police officer's daughter at the Westin Hotel. Unlike his zit-and-gin-blossom-covered complexion, that charge has since been cleared.

In June, 1995, Coleman and several friends, including Chris Webber and rapper Ice Cube, were leaving Legends nightclub in downtown Detroit at 2:15 a.m. when Coleman got into a profanity-laced confrontation with a Detroit police officer. "The officer disrespected me in front of my peers," Coleman told the hometown jurors, who found him not guilty. (Hard to believe he didn't respect you, Derrick.)

In April of 1999, when he was in Detroit for a game against the Pistons, Coleman warmed himself up for the game by drinking himself into a stupor at Chuck's Millionaire Club. At 2:30 a.m. he was arrested in the parking lot and charged with interfering with a police officer. Coleman suffered a sprained ankle during the arrest and sat out the game the next day. Then Coleman's attorneys worked out a plea bargain under which Coleman agreed to donate $5,000 worth of "canned goods containing meat" to a food bank in order to keep him out of the can.

Which leads us to the Intermezzo. One of the restaurant's patrons, off-duty Pontiac police officer Jerri Gray, said Coleman became angry after he was refused any more tequila. She then saw Coleman "stand up, walk over to the southeast corner of the restaurant, unzip his pants and position himself as if urinating." When Coleman walked away there was a puddle where he had been standing.

Coleman feels he is just being harrassed. He protests that the police treat him like "an animal." Sorry Derrick--most animals can be house-trained not to pee on the floor indoors.

Ironically, Coleman dreams of playing for his hometown NBA team in Detroit, but they have no interest in him: They're the Pistons--not the Pissed-ons.

Poor Sports Archive
Jeff Hause lives in Los Angeles, California, and enjoys it about as much as the Raiders and Rams did.

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