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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.

This represents the view of the user who wrote the FanPost, and not the entire Bullets Forever community. We're a place of many opinions, not just one.

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If you can believe it

This is first post in Bullets Forever history to use the “frank sinatra” tag.

It’s amazing to see how far college recruiting has come in 30 years. Then it was Frank Sinatra, now it’s free shoes and co-ed parties.

Bullets Forever: Where fancy numbers and YouTube come together.

by JakeTheSnake on Aug 2, 2008 4:59 PM EDT reply actions   0 recs

Jesus Shuttlesworth.....

...had the greatest recruiting trip ever.

Representing DC with Wizards & Stuff - Truth About It Dot Net

by Truth About It on Aug 3, 2008 10:49 AM EDT reply actions   0 recs

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