Former Memphis Grizzlies star Jason Williams was asked about the most brutal rookie-hazing stories from his NBA career during a recent appearance on the Flagrant podcast. Williams, who played alongside the likes of Grant Long in Memphis back in the early 2000s, talked about a particular story that involved Grizzlies veterans hazing Croatian International Gordan Giricek.
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Giricek played for the Grizzlies for just one season before being traded to the Orlando Magic. The European star was selected as the 40th overall pick in the 1999 NBA draft and had already played pro basketball back in Croatia and Russia for almost a decade. This led to him believing that he was not a rookie when he joined the NBA.
However, according to Jason Williams, nobody on the Grizzlies roster saw him as anything but a rookie. This meant that the vets on the side chose to “haze” the player. According to Williams, Giricek refused to bring donuts for the vets in spite of being asked a number of times.
Williams went on to claim that he himself had asked Giricek to bring the donuts if only to get the veterans let him be. However, that did not happen, as Giricek was determined to prove his non-rookie credentials. Things of course, did not end well for Giricek. Williams claimed that he was tied up with duct tape and rolled over on the court by the vets as punishment.
“Next day, no donuts. So at the end of practice they put a bin up…they dumped all that sh*t out there. Duct taped his legs-Giricek the rook, duct-taped his legs, hands behind his back, butt naked, put him in the laundry bin, filled it up with ice, rolled him into the shower, rolled him out onto the pyramid floor, left his a** there for like three hours bro. Nobody found him,” Williams said, as the whole room burst into laughter.
While the reaction obviously sounds brutal, Williams claimed that he was not sure if rookies these days got a similar treatment from the vets. He claimed that he himself would have been scared of the Memphis vets that were there at the time, and concluded that rookies should simply “not mess with the OGs,” as Giricek did.
Gordon Giricek was once choked out by Shaquille O’Neal during his Phoenix Suns days
According to CBS, Grant Hill himself revealed a story from his Suns days, when he played alongside both Giricek and Shaquille O’Neal. Hill claimed that back during the 2008 season, O’Neal and Giricek would regularly get into arguments.
That was due to Giricek’s constant refusal to pass to O’Neal inside the paint. The Croatian would instead shoot the ball after staring Shaq off.
This eventually led to an extreme reaction from O’Neal, who ended up choking Giricek out before a game in the locker room. As one would expect, Giricek’s 1-year-stay at the Suns proved to be his final year in the NBA. He went on to play for the Turkish club Fenerbahçe next and concluded his career back in Croatia with Cibona Zagreb, where he first went pro.
