File this under "favorite curiosities"

by Mike Prada on Sep 6, 2007 5:31 PM EDT in The clubhouse Comment 4 comments

I'm a couple days late to this, but it's almost too significant to not discuss, if you catch my draft.

I was hoping that we could run a series of "favorite curiosity" profiles once we finish the BF Top 20, but we're running a little slow, so I'm not sure that's a reality (aka we'll see). But if we did start the series, then one man who would most certainly make the list is Ledell Eackles.

This is why I strongly encourage you to check out this post by We Rite Goode profiling the former mediocre shooting guard. It's almost too good to excerpt, to be honest, but it's funny to remember how much Eackles overrated himself. To wit:

What was best about the young Eackles was his complete lack of hesitation in putting shots up. In his second season ('89-'90), Ledell made the league's top 10 for "usage rate," which is the basketball stat measuring how many of a team's posessions a player uses--either by taking a shot, turning the ball over, or getting to the foul line--per 40 minutes. Basically, how much a player hogs a ball.

Ledell's usage rate that year: 29.5.

(To compare to current players for perspective, that's about the same usage rate as LeBron James last season, and a higher rate than Paul Pierce, Vince Carter, Iverson, Dirk Nowitzki...the list of all-stars goes on. A list that Eackles doesn't quite belong on.)

Yikes. Anytime we think about how Jarvis Hayes killed so many posessions with awful jump shots, we can think of Ledell Eackles.

The post also recalls how Eackles asked for more money than Karl Malone and Clyde Drexler, and the Bullets laughed at him and told him to sit out a year, which he did for some reason. There's also the little anecdote from 07 Seconds or Less when Eackles stood up during a Miami Heat team meeting and wrote "No Your Roll" on the board. I guess that, and his excessive weight problems, is enough to make him a cult legend in these parts.

Everyone should check that post out, though. As someone who was nary a toddler during the Ledell era, I definitely learned something new.

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"No Your Roll"

That's a t-shirt waiting to happen.

Glen Rice's reaction is priceless.

by JakeTheSnake on Sep 6, 2007 6:27 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

Sit down, dumbass

7 Seconds or Less is awesome.

I though Ledell was a capable bench scorer, but it isn't hard to see why he never really stuck in the NBA, despite his obvious talent. Selfish players are never any fun to play with and don't help you win games.

by Vanilla Gorilla on Sep 7, 2007 10:31 AM EDT up reply actions 0 recs

Ledell!!

I liked Ledell. Love to have him coming off the bench this year. The man could score. He started off as La-Dell and then became Lee-dell.
He still works for the Wizards. He's the guy who hands the awards and plaques to those people who are getting good citizenship type awards from the Wizards at halftime. He probably does other stuff too!

by hotplate on Sep 6, 2007 8:58 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs

Curiousity #2: Hot Plate Williams

Pradamaster, thanks for the very welcome love and the truly unnecessary praise. (Seriously, it's unnecessary--you're setting readers up to be disappointed by our mangled prose).

We've always enjoyed Bullets Forever and find it fitting that as BF profiles the greater DC players of yesteryear, we're recapping guys like Ledell and Jarvis.

One small clarification, so the BF community isn't misled: Eackles never sat out a full year, although the Bullets were definitely prepared for it. Instead, his contract spat took the better part of a summer, through training camp, and the first few weeks of the season.

It's one of the more entertaining and interesting parts of the Ledell story, that's for sure...we started to write a lengthier answer, but figured that dropping 10 paragraphs and a YouTube clip in someone else's comments section was bad form, so just stuck it on our blog instead.

In the meantime, we eagerly await Chris Webber's profile--a man who was really too talented to play in Washington.

by crucifictorious on Sep 7, 2007 4:51 PM EDT reply actions 0 recs