Players spend their entire lives preparing for the moment their names are called by the NBA Commissioner at the NBA Draft. However, reality begins to set in once team activities start. The experience of being a rookie in the NBA isn’t as smooth sailing as many believe.
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Traditionally, rookie hazing has been a prominent aspect of locker room culture across all sports. The majority of teams, if not all, practice some sort of hazing. Former Boston Celtics Point Guard, Troy Bell went through the tumultuous hazing process, which soured his time in the NBA.
In the 2003 NBA Draft, the Celtics drafted Bell with the 16th overall pick. He was an amazing athlete at Boston College with a bright future in the NBA ahead of him. From his first day with the Grizzlies, his veterans welcomed him to the league with open arms.
Bell didn’t fuss over the typical rookie duties such as carrying bags, getting donuts before practice. But things reached a boiling point once the team’s pranks became increasingly out of hand.
“They invited us to some restaurant,” Bell said on the Scorer’s Society podcast. “I wasn’t even trying to go. I get there and order a salad. They ordered up all this stuff that they weren’t going to eat. The bill is like $1000. They tried to hand it to me. I’m not paying for this $1000 bill, I got a salad.”
The restaurant incident rubbed Bell the wrong way, but his feelings toward the team only worsened. Shortly after, the veterans put together a prank involving his car and an abnormal amount of popcorn. Bell nearly lost it.
“They got me with popcorn, and that almost got me in jail. I guess they open your sunroof and take those circus bags of popcorn and dump those through the roof. They weren’t really treating anybody good back then,” Bell said.
Bell didn’t have the best relationship with his colleagues, which may have played a big role in his NBA career ending after one season. He doesn’t hold a grudge toward all vets, naming Kevin Garnett as the ideal model for leadership toward rookies.
“I heard that [Kevin Garnett] asked the rookies to do wild stuff, but he also would take you out and do fun things. Just take you under his wing. We didn’t have none of that,” Bell revealed.
Time has passed since Bell’s short tenure in the NBA, allowing him to release any animosity toward his former teammates. Subsequently, he went on to have a lucrative career overseas spanning over a decade. Thankfully, the locker room culture in the NBA has changed drastically, removing the possibility of more cases like Bell’s.
