DG178 - Part 1

You are forgiven if you are unable to remember the contents of the first ever dread gallery I did featuring basketball players. Hastily prepared and posted a couple of weeks (or so) before Christmas in 2008, DG#30 covered the first month of the 2008-09 College Basketball season, and all I can recall about it is that I had to look high and low and far and wide just to find enough players to make a dread gallery. Of the handful of players with dreads that I did find, most played for the so called mid-major and low-major teams that you rarely see on television. Dreads were few and far between in the big, power conferences. And the story was the same in the NBA. You had to look even far-er and wider to find dreads in the Association. So small was the roster of NBA players with dreads back then that it could be tallied with just the fingers on your two hands.

But things are different nowadays. Just a bit. I mean, it seems like every team - pro, college, or wherever - has at least one player with dreads. Many teams have more than one. Dreads have become so commonplace on the basketball court that it's unusual - and disappointing - to see a game without any. Rather than a look at all the dozens of players with dreads currently on basketball teams, dread gallery #178 will focus mostly on a small number of players from a select few games.

But first .....

DG178 - Part 2

You have arrived at the College Basketball section of dread gallery #178; and we'll lead off Part 2 with a player I was finally able to welcome to the house this season, his 3rd and final collegiate season. Chicago native Ayo Dosunmu made a lot of Illinois fans happy (including this one) when he decided to stay home and play for the Fighting Illini. And after thrilling those fans with several late clutch baskets to help win games, the 6-5, 200-pound baby-faced assassin is moving on to what hopefully will be a long and successful NBA career. Dosunmu, who goes by his nickname Ayo instead of his real first name Quamdeen, went the freeform route with his dreads; and he stayed the course, resisting his family's desire for him to cut his hair, even though it sure took its time forming into dreads. Finally in his junior season (see photo above from the game at Nebraska on Feb. 12) it started to look enough like dreads for me to welcome him to the house, and we're glad to have him.

On Feb. 23, three nights before and about 88 miles northwest of where the NBA game between the Pistons and Kings, featured in Part 1, was played, Dosunmu was one of four players with dreads in uniform as Illinois faced Michigan State at East Lansing. This is the first of 4 games to be featured in Part 2 of DG178. I was unable to find a video of the whole game, but I'm cautiously confident of the parts of the game that most of the photos happened.