Rider is the storm/ Nuggets swingman has no regrets about his past

0 Comments | Gazette, The (Colorado Springs), Nov 8, 2001 | by John Branch

Isaiah Rider says he has no regrets.

Not about the assault conviction for kicking a woman, apparently. Or the four days he spent in jail for violating probation. Or the conviction for marijuana possession. Or spitting on the Detroit fan or the Portland airline worker. Or the five-game suspension last spring, bringing his career suspension total to 17 days, or for leaving four NBA teams with his reputation more tarnished than when he arrived.

Ask if he has any regrets. "For what? he asks quietly in return.

For the off-court issues that seem to follow the way dust follows Pig Pen.

"Nope."

His voice is defiant, not hesitant. Fifteen seconds later, he will walk away from the interview.

Isaiah Rider has no time to look back. Maybe he wouldn't like what he'd see. Or maybe he's tired of explaining himself to nameless reporters in the five cities where he's tried to shake the doubts. Maybe he just wants the last word, for now satisfied to silently show critics that the Denver Nuggets made the NBA's best offseason acquisition. They might have. Or they may have made the worst.

It's not easy being Isaiah Rider. Trouble keeps trumping talent, and preconceived notions nag more than a tireless defender.

"To me, the bottom line is I'm in the top two guards in this league still," says Rider, a well-traveled 30-year-old. "I only want to be judged by my play at this point in time. It doesn't matter what people think."

Did you say "top two guards"? As in second-best? Or one of the best players at the No. 2 position?

He looks down at the tape recorder, its red light flashing and spindles turning.

"You'll get it on there," he says. "I'm not worried about what other people think. Period."

Then he's gone. He doesn't look back.

Isaiah Rider - you can call him J.R., which simply means "Junior" - was the fifth overall pick in the 1993 NBA draft, a flashy 6-foot-5 shooting guard around which the Minnesota Timberwolves, coming off a 19-63 season, could build.

He was late to his first practice.

That transgression proved habit-forming, but quaint compared to what would follow his next eight years. After three-year stints in Minnesota and Portland, Denver is Rider's third team in three seasons.

The Nuggets, like the Hawks and Lakers before them, signed him to a one-year contract. This one's worth $840,000, the minimum for a player with Rider's experience, plus incentives. Rider has to be on the team Jan. 10 to get the full amount.

"There weren't any risks," Denver coach Dan Issel says. "That's what made it worthwhile. It's a nonguaranteed contract, and basically we gave him one more chance to prove that he was serious about trying it again. There really wasn't any risk involved."

One more chance. It's fair to wonder how many chances a player gets if he can't make the scoreboard numbers scroll like those above a bank of progressive slot machines.

Rider made the all-rookie team that first season. He also won the slam-dunk contest at the All-Star Game. He averaged 16.4 points per game.

But headlines soured when Rider was convicted of fifth-degree assault and disorderly conduct for kicking a female sports-bar manager at Minneapolis' Mall of America. A subsequent civil suit reportedly was settled for more than $100,000. Violating his two- year probation - he didn't contact his probation officer once a month - put him in jail for four days.

In three seasons in Minnesota, he lost more than $200,000 in fines and salary for missing practices and team flights.

Rider's on-court behavior was much more tolerable. He led the team in scoring his second and third seasons. But in Rider's tenure, Minnesota never won more than 26 games. And in July 1997, a month after a streak of run-ins with the law, including arrests for possession of marijuana and cellular phones altered to charge calls to someone else's bill, Minnesota traded him to Portland.

The Blazers thought they could help Rider mature while getting 20 points a night from him. In three seasons in Portland, Rider was suspended for 12 games. The first was the season opener, his Portland debut, two days after he was cited again for possession of less than an ounce of pot, this time as he sat in the back of a car holding a lighter and a soda can converted into a pipe. Later convicted, and having pleaded no contest to the cellular phone charges, he would be suspended for the first two games of the next season, too.

He allegedly spit in the face of a Portland airline worker when he tried to charter a plane after missing a team flight. He spit at a fan in Detroit early in the 1997-98 season, costing him three games. He missed a game for walking out of the arena midway through the fourth quarter of a Blazers game. He joined friends in the stands at a game at Golden State while the game was going on. He was suspended again.

In 1999, Atlanta traded notorious good-guy Steve Smith to Portland for Rider. Rider missed his first three practices, reportedly because he wouldn't fly on the smaller regional jets. Hawks teammate Dikembe Mutombo later called Atlanta's treatment of Rider "Operation Cover- Up," saying then-coach Lenny Wilkens and his staff hid Rider's tardiness by keeping players in the film rooms until Rider arrived for practice. But the biggest problem came when security in an Orlando hotel found evidence of Rider using marijuana. Rider denied it, and said it was Mutombo and LaPhonso Ellis who ratted him out.