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:
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.