NBA rookie hazing is a tradition as old as time. The vets mostly just get a laugh out of this, but the rookie hazing ceremony does so much more than just that. By laughing along with the vets, the rookies slowly get integrated into the culture of the team, thus allowing for better chemistry between players. Of course only when the hazing is harmless and not meant to hurt a youngster physically or mentally.
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Just this season, we’ve seen two amazing rookie pranks involving the cars of two first years. The first, which happened to the Spurs’ Stephon Castle, saw his teammates take the wheels off his car. They then filmed the entire thing to get his reaction and he seemed genuinely amused by it.
He wasn’t the only one either. Earlier this month, the Cavs pranked rookie Jaylon Tyson by filling his entire car with popcorn. What makes it funnier is that Donovan Mitchell foreshadowed the prank by very publicly eating a box of popcorn all through the game.
These may seem relatively tame but for Anthony Davis, his rookie prank involved his $189,000 worth Bentley Continental GT and a tub of (what appeared to be) Vaseline. As he recalled on the DeepCuts podcast, he came out of a game during his rookie season to find his dream car slathered in Vaseline.
“It’s like Vaseline, right? And they put it on the front windshield, the back windshield, and across the windows,” he said. “So I use the door, and I’m like, what’s on my door? And I get in there and I’m like trying to turn on my windshield, and I’m like why’s it smearing?”
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Since the Continental was his dream car, AD was understandably incensed. However, he revealed that his head coach at the time, Monty Williams, simply told him that the ritual was part of the rookie experience and that in due time, he too, would get to haze a rookie the same way.
Thankfully, this calmed down AD. He did not create any scene after it or go after his veterans for destroying his dream car.
While AD still has the car in his collection, it’s unclear whether he ever got the smell and overall texture of the Vaseline out of his beloved GT Continental.
