Earn Large Cash Bonus for Being Tall:
If you are between 6-foot-10 and 7-foot-6,
can stand up and run for 2-3 minutes at a time,
can also sit in small chairs for most of the game,
you may be eligible for millions of dollars.
Call 1-800-NBA-CNTR
You probably haven't seen this ad in your local paper and you probably never will. Odds are you don't know anyone in your town who fits the height specifications.
|  | | If only Shawn Bradley and his overpaid cohorts could dunk on Tim Duncan every night. |
That's why NBA teams pay the typical backup center more than he's really worth -- a lot more. Like replacement jockeys, they're generally hard to find based on their size alone. Their skills can't even be compared to the true big man and fans often moan about the salaries that teams pay them.
"The point is that 7-footers that are athletic and play are at a premium," Mavericks owner Mark Cuban said in an e-mail. "Like the saying goes, there are beautiful women on every street in America. But try finding a 7-footer who can score or rebound."
Apparently, the New Jersey Nets have a program that supports tall people in their dreams to become basketball players. In the past 10 seasons, the Nets have had 22 centers. Obviously the comfort of having Sam Bowie in the late-'80s was not enough, because they managed to top it the next decade with a lot of guys like Tim McCormick. In the '90s the Nets amused us with circus acts like Jack Haley, Shawn Bradley and Gheorghe Muresan.
For the 1996-97 season the Nets featured Bradley, Eric Montross, Joe Kleine, Robert Werdann and Yinka Dare, who in four years had an impossibly low total of four assists to go with 96 turnovers, 70 blocks and 86 field goals. That's in four years. Didn't they learn enough from Dave Feitl, Dwayne Schintzius and Will Cunningham?
You can't link every lucky backup to the Nets, but you might come close:
Studley? No, it's pronounced Dudley, as in Chris Dudley, the highest paid backup center in the land. The man with the largest foot in the NBA has plenty of cash to stuff his extra big stockings. Dudley made $14,490 per minute on the floor in 1999 with the Knicks and that's for averaging his usual 40 percent from the line and grabbing a whopping three rebounds per game. Don't fault Dudley though, he's simply good at making money, which is not surprising (he holds an economics degree from Yale). Dudley has two more years left on a four-year, $35 million contract and a number of teams have been crying for his services in a trade this offseason, including the defending champion Lakers.
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| Dudley |
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| Montross |
Another Nets link is current Pistons ultra backup Eric Montross, who struggled to score a point per game last year. OK, the guy only averaged six minutes. In 1997, the Nets swapped Bradley for Montross on the undercard of a seven-player deal that featured Ed O'Bannon and Sam Cassell. Eric's points per game have gone steadily down from 10 ppg in his rookie year (he was the No. 9 pick in 1994, which was the Dare draft) to last year's low with the Pistons. Montross only makes about $2 million a year, but signed an 11-year contract with the Celtics out of North Carolina that will ensure he gets paid 2005. Nice work, Eric.
Muresan proved irresistible to the Nets two years ago. Apparently it's difficult to pass up a guy who -- after getting hurt and not playing the 1997-98 season -- is best known as Maximus in Billy Crystal's "My Giant." (Or is that Muresan's "My Giant"?) When he did show up to play, the tallest player in NBA history (along with Manute Bol) didn't exactly dominate the boards. The Nets made out a check to Muresan for $862,000 for the 31 games he played in over the last two seasons. The minimum Muresan can make this year will be $673,000.
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| Benjamin |
Yes, Benoit Benjamin still can't say goodbye. Or maybe he did and nobody heard it. He's played a total of 24 games (with Toronto, Philadelphia and Cleveland) in the past four years and earned some nice pocket change. Last year he played four games with the Cavs and picked up about $120,000 for his work. Benjamin's been in the league so long that when he came in, his agent Don King (yes, that Don King) could actually be taken seriously. Signing Benjamin for one more year's work would cost a team at least $1 million.
Joe Kleine played in 28 games for the Nets at the end of the 1996-97 season. And even though this career backup barely plays anymore, he collected a cool $1 million minimum the last five years (since he had over 10 years of playing experience) before the Trail Blazers called him up last August and asked him to play another season.
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| Kleine |
Kleine made no secret about the steal when he was signed: "It's pretty simple. I was sitting at home at the end of August and somebody called me up and said, 'Who wants to be a millionaire?' I said, 'I do.' And they said, 'Is that your final answer?' I said, 'Let me call my lifeline.' So I called [my wife] and she said, 'If you don't take it, I'll kill you.'" Here's a better line: 31 minutes, $32,358 a minute. Appropriate homophone: Joke Line. By the way, Kleine was traded last month because of salary purposes in the Dale Davis-Jermaine O'Neal deal. He's expected to retire, but with Rik Smits thinking retirement, who knows...
On the subject of retirement, what about Jack Haley, who somehow lasted in the NBA by changing roles. He extended his career with the Bulls as the world's most highly paid cheerleader (he sat in a suit for 81 out of 82 games with the Bulls during the 1995-96 season) and later became the world's most highly paid babysitter (to Dennis Rodman in Chicago and San Antonio). At the height of his career Haley made a relatively low $390,000 for three straight years. But that's not bad for someone who didn't even play high school ball and got to keep a couple NBA jerseys.
Shawn Bradley probably should be a backup, but nobody can argue that he is overpaid and indeed played for the Nets. It all started with Philadelphia, which signed Bradley to an 8-year, $44 million contract out of Brigham Young after making him the No. 2 pick in 1993. Bradley was worth $1 million per foot last year, as the Mavericks reportedly paid him over $7 million. That's more than teammate Michael Finley and all-world Grant Hill. The guy shoots 44 percent from the floor and his head is only 2½ feet away from the basket. Bradley had career-low averages of 8.4 points per game and 6.5 rebounds per game. To Bradley's credit, he consistently has improved from the line, from 61 percent seven years ago to 76 percent last year. But his career has been a disappointment.
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| Williams |
To their credit, the Nets haven't stopped trying. Jersey continues to load up with centers. They've drafted three (Evan Eschmeyer, Kenyon Martin and Soumaila Samake) over the past two years to go with Jim McIlvaine and Jamie Feick, who just aren't getting the job done. In fact, centers earned approximately 39 percent of the Nets' 1999 payroll. Someone should mention that they only need to have one center on the floor at a time.
And this just in ... the Nets will be making another large donation to the family of one more center. They will be paying their former starting center, the injured Jayson Williams, the full amount of his six-year, $85.8 million deal that was signed before the 1998-99 season. Williams played 30 games under the contract.
Darren Rovell, who covers sports business for ESPN.com, can be reached at darren.rovell@espn.com.
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