Vin and Tonic

H/t Deadspin for finding the You Been Blinded story... Vin and Tonic is having his restaurant foreclosed, which is also going to put his parents on the hook for 400 large.

Now, I don't much care what happens to Baker, and I'm sure that his folks have had more than a few opportunities to squirrel away some cash over the years. According to his page on Baseball Reference, his lifetime salary data gets you to over $112 million; if you someone go broke on that, including five straight years of going from $10.1 to $13.5 million (and yes, Isiah Thomas *did* bring him to New York!)... well, far be it from me to shed a tear for him.

But that's exactly the point to make here. The true Vinsanity has now been to six different teams, and the Celtics and Rockets have even brought him back more than once. He hasn't made an All-Star Game since he was 26; that was a decade ago. He hasn't broken ten points a game since 2003-04 with the Celtics.

He's been a pretty terrible player for a long time now, and yet, he still keeps getting work. I have no idea how, and you probably don't either, other than maybe being really impressed by his agent.

If I were running an NBA team, Vin Baker would be the last guy I'd want on my roster, and that's even with the idea that the only wat you bring him in at all is if your previous half dozen big men have hit the shelf. It's an even money bet as to who the strike hit worse -- him or Shawn Kemp.

Oh, and then there's this. He seems to like not only being drunk, but driving that way as well. Is the appeal of having Eddie Griffin II on your roster really worth it?