Empty the Bench

Everything is coming up ETB this afternoon. The dentist says “no cavities” (and gives us four tubes of Sensodyne–score!), the ATM dispenses $60 when we only requested $40 (and the receipt confirms the asked-for amount), and now two of our favorite athletes from the past year, Stephen Jackson and Pacman Jones, both make headlines and give us another opportunity to pay them the homage they so deserve. Next we’re waiting for a pig to fly by the office window so we can donate $1 million to the local orphanage.

And so here we have two updates on stories that broke months ago about two well-paid professional athletes flushing their lives/careers down the toilet in the name of keeping it real. Coincidentally, two strip clubs are the setting for these sordid stories. It almost sounds like a fable, doesn’t it?

We’ll lead with the lovable loser from the Golden State Warriors, Stephen Jackson, who was involved in a shooting outside a strip club last October while… wait for it… already on probation. Today it was announced that Jackson intends to plead guilty to criminal recklessness for bucking off a few rounds during the melee:

Stephen Jackson will admit to criminal recklessness in firing a gun outside a strip club and, if the plea agreement is accepted by a judge, pay a $5,000 fine and perform 100 hours of community service, a spokesman for the prosecutor’s office said Monday. In return, the Golden State Warriors player will have a one-year jail sentence suspended and a felony converted into a misdemeanor conviction, spokesman Matthew Symons said.

“The judge will either accept it or not accept it. I would be inclined to believe she would accept it, but that would be speaking for her, so I can’t do that definitively,” Symons said of the plea agreement.

Well why shouldn’t she accept it, Mr. Symons? At the end of the day, Jackson didn’t really do anything wrong. What, he fired off a few rounds in a crowd to help break up a fight he had absolutely no involvement in whatsoever? That, friends, is the act of a good samaritan, not a pea-brained criminal. We sincerely hope he does not have to serve any jail time or has his impeccable record tainted with a felony conviction. We want Stephen Jackson on the loose, roaming the streets, just itching to do something worthy of coverage on ETB. Judge Gifford, we trust you’ll make the right decision.

As for Pacman Jones, whose pursuit to break the Guinness World Record for “Most Visits to a Strip Club in One Year” is coming along nicely, he and his entourage had a run-in with Johnny Law last night at a–you guessed it–strip club in DeKalb County, GA. Appropriately enough, the name of the joint? Club Blaze. Amazing.

Suspended NFL player Adam “Pacman” Jones was being sought by police for questioning about a shooting early Monday involving members of his entourage after a fight at an Atlanta strip club.

Jones, his group and three other people got into a fight, apparently over a woman, at a club around 4 a.m., officer Ariel Toledo said. After everyone involved left the strip club — the three people in one car, and Jones and his entourage in three other cars — someone in Jones’ group shot at the car, and the others returned fire, Toledo said. Toledo said Jones was not present when the shots were fired.

Mmhmm. I’m not sure that “taking a piss” counts as not being present. As you may recall, Pacman has already been suspended for the 2007 season, which might not be such a good idea given all the spare time he’ll have on his hands. His attorney, Manny Arora, had this to say about the incident: “”Adam was not involved, they’ll tell you, in the shooting. His car wasn’t there or anywhere near the scene. They simply are just asking him … much like any other witness, if anything happened inside that might help them figure out who was involved.”

There you have it, folks: Pacman’s car wasn’t there, so he had nothing to do with anything. So move along, nothing to see here.

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3. Pacman Jones: Suspension Looming?


4. Pacman’s Dots Go Missing, Blinky Suspected


5. Pacman Jones Still America’s Greatest Hero