Crystal Baal
This year, former University of Washington men's basketball co-captain Bobby Jones set a dubious NBA record: most teams played for in one season (five), which doesn't even take into account a couple short stints in Sioux Falls playing for the NBDL, the NBA's minor league. After tours with Denver, Memphis (where he notched single-game career highs of 20 points, 13 rebounds, seven assists, and 40 minutes of playing time against—surprise!—the Sonics), Houston, Miami, and San Antonio, Jones is back where he began the year, with the Nuggets, the only team featuring a UW alum to make the playoffs (Brandon Roy's Blazers, Spencer Hawes' Kings, and Nate Robinson's Knicks all failed in their post-season bids).
"If it comes up, I'm pretty sure they know what I can say and they can't," says Jones of the off-season ribbing that might ensue should he meet up with his former UW teammates Roy and Robinson, all of whom came within a Mike Jensen of making the Elite Eight in the 2006 NCAA tourney. "If we're all joking around and talking about next year, they know I made the playoffs. I'm gonna bring it up eventually."
A 24-year-old Compton, Calif., native who splits his off-season between the Los Angeles and Seattle areas (he has a daughter here), Jones concedes that the lack of stability in his life this year has led him to some pretty dark corners. "I feel every emotion you can possibly feel: sad, mad, glad," he says. "I wonder if I'm doing something wrong. Is it me? Is it them? [I was] living out of a suitcase not knowing where I'm gonna be in two weeks. But at the end of the day, I'm doing something that I love, and if this is what I have to do at the beginning of my career, I know that if I can withstand that, I can withstand anything."
Jones has signed a non-guaranteed contract with the Nuggets for next year, which at least means he'll enter training camp with former Sonic coach George Karl's squad, just as he did last year. He hopes this repetition isn't ominous, and professes no shame at his entry into the record books. "I'm proud of it, but it's not something that, at the beginning of the season, I was gonna try to do," he says. "I tied it in Miami, and I was doing pretty good there (Jones averaged eight points and four rebounds in 23 minutes per game with the lowly Heat), so I thought I'd be there the rest of the year. But they wanted to look at other dudes and let me go, so I said, 'Let me break it now.' It's not a bad record; it means a lot of people want to give me a chance."
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