Boston Celtics legend Dave Cowens is lucky he didn’t witness the end of Dennis Rodman in a motorcycle accident.
While Rodman didn’t exactly get along with Boston in his time with the Detroit Pistons, by the time he landed with the San Antonio Spurs, the NBA firebrand had mellowed enough to invite Celtics legend Cowens on a road trip with a fraught ending.
Cowens recently related the story of the trip to the Boston Herald’s Mark Murphy, which happened when Cowens was an assistant on one of Gregg Popovich’s early teams.
Rodman, a fan of motorcycles, planned to ride his with friends to a nearby town for a day trip, and invited Cowens to join them.
Been a rich week of Dennis Rodman tales thanks to The Last Dance. Dave Cowens has a great one here about taking a motorcycle trip with Demolition Man in San Antonio, and a predictably unpredictable result. https://t.co/WGAS7yj7Lx
— Mark Murphy (@Murf56) April 28, 2020
“I had a Harley-Davidson of my own,” said the Hall of Famer.
“We had a posse — all his friends, and a big-wheeled truck. There were four or five guys on motorcycles, and we were doing a whole trip up to Luckenbach, Texas, like the song — Willie [Nelson], Waylon [Jennings] and the boys going to Luckenbach.”
Rodman had already clashed with Popovich that season, and needed approval for the excursion, which Cowens tentatively secured.
“We were going up there in the high country, and I told Pop and Bob Hill that Rodman asked me to go with him,” he explained.
“I said ‘He’s going on a motorcycle, you going to let him go?'”, Cowens said, laughing. “They said, ‘Sure, go with him, and make sure nothing happens.'”
At one point, the group became separated between two traffic lights, the bulk of the posse at a four-way intersection at the top of the hill waiting for the stragglers, Rodman being one of the late pair.
Unaware of the stop at first, both flew past the main body of the group into the intersection.
“They didn’t know there was a stop sign up there. So when they hit the stop sign, all of a sudden both bikes, they just laid them down, and both guys were flying through the air,” related Cowens.
“[Rodman] flew right by me — did a somersault in the air, head over heels, hit down on his [posterior], went back, went back on his elbows, tore the [expletive] out of the white T-shirt he had on. When he got up his jeans were smoking, actually smoking from going along the hard top. His bike was laying down, and I’m going ‘Oh my God.’ He was in a lot of pain.”
“So they put him in the truck, I told them to take him to the hospital – ‘No, I don’t want to go to the hospital.’ I said ‘No, take him to the hospital, I’m going to call Pop and tell him what’s going on,'” he added.
“I had to wait for a tow truck to come along and pick up the two bikes, go down to the local police station because someone had seen the whole thing and called it in,” explained the assistant coach.
Celtics legend Dave Cowens' surprising take on modern big men https://t.co/K4QRBoeuSV via @thecelticswire
— The Celtics Wire (@TheCelticsWire) May 1, 2020
Then, after he’d cleaned up the mess for Rodman, he had to call Pop.
“I said I don’t know what’s going on, but we’re taking him to the hospital, and we’re keeping it all hush-hush for now,” Cowens said. “Tried to hush it up as much as possible. And this is in-season.”
It’s safe to say it went over like a ton of bricks, though Popovich would eventually forgive Cowens. “He came back after about a month. I was worried,” he said. “I thought I might be getting fired.”
Rodman would end up with a dislocated shoulder with a little scar tissue for good measure, and would be traded to the Bulls soon after for the season of the “Last Dance” of the eponymous ESPN Michael Jordan documentary.
But things could have gone very differently — luckily for Cowens and Rodman both, they did not.
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