Wizards Assistant Mike O'Koren Once Wooed by Frank Sinatra

Recently, both the Pradamaster and myself seperately served as the latter part of a Q&A session with North Carolina Tar Heel blog, The Fifth Corner, who was interested in the Wizards-Tar Heels connection, currently represented by Antawn Jamison, Brendan Haywood, and Associate Head Coach, Mike O'Koren. You can read each of our posts via the links below, but I wanted to share a tid-bit about O'Koren that I came across when doing some research for my answers.

In the spring of 1976, Tark [Jerry Tarkanian] hatched the idea that Sinatra could help him land a high school star named Mike O'Koren, who had an Italian-American mother and lived in Jersey City, N.J., right next to Sinatra's native Hoboken. So rather than going in for a home visit himself, Tark sent Sinatra, who sang some songs, posed for some pictures and told the star-struck family to send their boy to UNLV. Then O'Koren signed with North Carolina. "Dean Smith might be the greatest recruiter ever; he beat Frank Sinatra on a kid from Jersey City," Tarkanian said.

From "King of the Strip," by Dan Wetzel on Feb. 13, 2007 for Yahoo Sports.

• Interview with Pradamaster of Bullets Forever
• Talking ex Heels with TruthAboutIt