Jeff Wilhelm/Charlotte Observer
Chris Washburn doesn’t have to go far to be reminded of the dark days when he was a 6-foot-11 addict wandering the streets of his hometown looking for drugs.
As Washburn sits in the shade behind his recently opened restaurant on the fringes of downtown Hickory, he is able to briefly flash the gap-toothed grin that was so familiar to fans of Atlantic Coast Conference and N.C. State University basketball 25 years ago.
“I would sit right here and do my drugs,” says Washburn. “This was a good spot for it.”
In the mid-1990s, the building that now houses Washburn’s Wings and More offered a hiding place for Washburn to smoke crack cocaine. Washburn, whose promising professional basketball career was short-circuited by drug abuse, had returned to...
It began when he thought the bluegrass was greener. So he left his home state of Texas, left a program he built from the dirt up, and left the person and coach he used to be.You cannot describe what happened to Billy Gillispie as... more »
Jim Calhoun had seen the finish line approaching for a while. The preferred sport of analogy in his case always had been boxing, because most everyone who knew him, observed him over the years, came to understand how much he... more »
Near the end of the trailer for Wildcats, a 1986 sports comedy with a 13 percent Rotten Tomatoes rating, a voice-over actor informs prospective moviegoers that during the film, “Goldie Hawn tackles the impossible.” The movie... more »
So there is an out-of-court settlement in the Lance Thomas jewelry charade. The lawsuit brought against the former Duke basketball player by jeweler Rafaello & Co., will never go to trial. That's convenient. Except it really... more »
Email
Print
Share