YouTube Gold: Bad John Brisker

No one wanted to see this guy coming, including most of his teammates.

The NBA has a long history of eccentrics. Marvin Barnes didn't want to travel to different time zones because he “didn't want to get in no damn time machine,” Darryl Dawkins named his dunks, Bill Walton could and would talk about anything under the sun and there’s absolutely no need to get into Dennis Rodman’s personality because many of you will be reading this around breakfast time.

John Brisker fits in here somewhere.

A 6-5 player out of Toledo, Brisker started in the ABA where his combative nature and raw strength left a lot of people pretty intimidated.

Actually, volatile is probably closer than combative. He could go off at any time.

While he was in the ABA, he fought Wendell Ladner so often that once Ladner came into his locker room and asked him if wanted to wait for the game to start or just fight right now. Another time he got into a fight during the tip-off.

Brisker had talent but he was not an easy person to deal with, as you’ll see in this video.

His career didn't last long - he spent three seasons in the NBA but clashed with coach Bill Russell and when Seattle had enough of him, no one else was interested.

After his career ended, Brisker went off on his first trip to Africa. Spencer Haywood tried to persuade him not to make a second trip, fearing that something bad might happen to him.

All anyone knows about his apparent demise is that he made some calls from Uganda and then just disappeared. He was declared dead after seven years.

By the way, there are three former Blue Devils in this video. When you see the team picture of the Pittsburgh Pipers, Steve Vacendak is in the back row and is the second from the left while Art Heyman is in the bottom row, third from the right. Mike Lewis also makes several appearances.