The NBA, as its slogan say, is where amazing happens. But the thing is, it’s not always on the court where the “amazing” happens, if we believe these crazy NBA rumors, that is. These may or may not be true but as I always say, stories wouldn’t be told if there is no ring of truth to it.

Let me begin by sharing these 5 NBA rumors:

1.) The NBA’s Biggest (and Dirtiest) Prank?

The Washington Wizards from the mid-2000s and early 2010s were a rowdy bunch. They had issues with team plane gambling, pulling guns, and whatnot. However, the craziest story about these Wizards teams was the prank and payback by  Gilbert Arenas.

Story has it Andray Blatche pulled a practical joke on Arenas by cutting up his outfit into pieces and threw them into a jacuzzi. (I didn’t know NBA locker rooms have jacuzzis, but hey, it’s not impossible.) Gil here was a recent owner of one of the richest contracts in NBA history so it shouldn’t be that big of a deal, right? Wrong!

What Agent Zero did as payback is equal parts gross and unbelievable. It wasn’t clear if Arenas put his own excrement (or a dog or anyone’s poop) on Blatche’s shoes but either way, that shoe was treated like a privy. It also wasn’t apparent if Andray stepped into the shoe but whether he did or didn’t, that was a prank of the grossest proportions right there by Gilbert Arenas.

2.) The Jordan Suspension

Michael Jordan’s abrupt retirement in 1993 was not that his desire to play basketball was gone, but the NBA handing him a secret suspension for his alleged gambling addiction.

His answer after he was asked if he’d come back was pretty much the nail in the coffin here:  Five years down the road, if the urge comes back, if the Bulls will have me, if David Stern lets me back in the league, I may come back.” 

If it really was a suspension, I think that’s a boss move and the right call by Stern, given everything that MJ was doing back then. If he was allowed to tread that path, who knows what could happen to the man who we call the GOAT.

3.) Not His Son?

When Steve Nash announced that he and his wife Alejandra on the day his third son was born, rumors started to float about Nash finding out of her alleged cheating and the baby’s ethnicity confirmed it. 

Many said Nash found out she was cheating on him with teammate Leandro Barbosa and then Jason Richardson. Richardson was traded a month after the divorce and Barbosa later followed suit, but it’s apparent the whole baby ethnicity thing was not true (see picture). People sometimes play detective and connect the dots but they are not always good at it.

4.) Alien Abduction

Baron Davis is one crazy guy and we have Monta Ellis to back up the legend of his insaneness. But claiming that he was abducted once by aliens is the type of thing that could you a trip to a mental institution.

IN a podcast in 2013, Davis confessed:

“I was actually abducted by aliens two weeks ago,” Davis said.

When probed for details, he explained he was driving from Las Vegas to Los Angeles in the early morning recently and this is what happened:

“I see this light and it’s a big a—truck. And I said, oh f—- this is going to be traffic,” Davis said. :Driving, driving and the next thing you know there’s a steel thing and these crazy looking people – half human, half ugly-looking mother f—–s.

“They were poking me on the nose, looking at my eyes, they had my hands tied and the next thing you know I was in Montabello dude, burning rubber on the way back to L.A. at 4 o’clock in the morning.”

Not a single thing out of that statement made sense. Get out of here, DUDE!

5.) Earl “The GOAT” Manigault

I know this legendary street baller did not play in the NBA but man, the rumors what he can do on a basketball court (and then some) deserves to be talked about.

This piece talked extensively about it and then subsequently squashed the myth, but I think it was interesting. 

There are a number of tales regarding Manigault’s prowess, but the central story that propelled his legend was that he had such extraordinary leaping ability he could pull dollar bills off the top of the backboard and leave change. What made this even more amazing was that Manigault was, depending on who you talk to, somewhere between 5-11 and 6-1. Considering that the top of the backboard is at thirteen feet and the average six-foot-tall man can only touch about eight feet high standing flat-footed, Manigault would have had to jump at least sixty inches to even come close. That would mean the Goat’s “making change” was a feat on par with Michael Jordan’s game-winning dunk from half court in the film Space Jam. In other words, pure fiction.

Amare Stoudemire, who’s not a bad leaper himself, admitted he couldn’t touch the top of the backboard. So did LeBron. Dwight Howard said he can do it but no actual footage of him doing it exists. Bottom line? Earl The Goat couldn’t have done it but many called him the greatest basketball player no one knows so let’s keep it at that.

Featured Image: AP Photo/Ben Margot