Matt Taibbi: The Raptormania! Interview
1. Thank you for being with us on Raptormania!
Thanks for getting in touch with me. I think this is the first time any of my schools has contacted me for any reason other than to ask for money.
2. What was it like to be a basketball player at Bard in the 1980s?
It was mostly comical, but I'd guess the actual basketball was the weak link in the experience. But because of the somewhat less-than-serious nature of the beast, we got to be a little more original with it than most college teams. I remember, for instance, that I was typically introduced in the starting lineup as the "seven-foot sophomore from Lagos,  Nigeria."  You should have seen the look some of the opposing centers gave me after that.
3. What kind of game did you posess, and what current or former NBA player would you compare yourself to?
That's easy. I'm more or less an exact-but-smaller replica of a white Charles Barkley. When my head is shaved I even look a lot like Barkley. A typical Matt Taibbi box score line would be something like 3-9 FG, 4-13 FT, 0 assists and 17 rebounds. I especially liked missing repeatedly from two feet and getting my own rebound five times before scoring. When I subsequently played in the Mongolian Basketball Association my nickname was the Mongolian Rodman, but Barkley was always my hero.
My ultimate Barkley game came in the intramural finals one year. I ate a whole bunch of mushrooms before the game and was completely out of my skull the whole time. I think I finished with something like 2 points and 35 rebounds. I turned completely Linda Blair every time the ball bounced off the rim. I also remember cutting both of my wrists in the second quarter and having to take myself out of the game because the stigmata-like wounds were giving me a Christ complex. I kept telling all the players to be kind to each other and shit.
4. Bard played the Harlem Globetrotters to Northeastern Bible College, which no longer exists. What did it feel like to be so dominant that you wiped a college off the map, and how satisfying was it to plunder their women?
I don't recall Bard ever dominating anything. In fact I remember the opposite. The horriblest experience I ever had on the basketball court was Bard versus Yeshiva. In the pregame it looked like we would kill them -- they all of these freckly, thin-looking kids. But all I can remember from that game was seeing all of these yarmulkes flying over my head. I'm not sure if the awesome series of ferocious yarmulke-aided dunks are something my memory added later, or if they really happened. Another highlight, of course, was Bard's exhibition against the Hudson Valley Correctional facility. We had a kid named David Sochet on our team who was always talking big on the bus (he was always telling tales of his sexual exploits -- I remember him shouting about how "My balls wuzflappin'!") but who looked like a human runny nose -- a droopy white guy with hairy knees. Well, the crowd of prisoners -- almost all black and really fired up to whip us white losers -- saw him on the bench and started placing bets on whether or not he'd get in the game, which was really a rough one. And towards the end, the coach sent Sochet in, the crowd went nuts, and I just remember seeing him getting cleaned off the floor after it was over. Those dudes just crushed him.
As for plundering anyone's women, please. I remember one game where we didn't have enough money to get each player his own hotel bed on the road. So all the Bardies climbed nervously and homophobically into bed with one another on a night in which we all got horribly stoned and drunk. This guy named Kenai on our team woke up screaming - one of the other players, who shall remain nameless, had jumped into bed naked with him and had some kind of dream about his girlfriend, prompting him to roll over and whisper, "Oh, [girlfriend's name withheld]..." as he embraced his bedmate... that was about the only sex we ever had on the road. I actually believe that the school rejected our proposal for a new team name -- the "Bard-Onz" -- on the grounds that it was false advertising.
5. Do you attribute both Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert's refusal to ask you any questions about Bard basketball during your appearance on their shows to the well-known anti-Bard basketball bias in the media as a whole?
Well, my agent was very insistent that both shows make some kind of mention of Bard basketball. And the fact that there was none... look, media bias isn't something you can see and feel. It just is. And it's something, unfortunately, that we all have to live with.
6. You played under the legendary Robert Krausz, who holds the Bard all-time record for wins as a coach, with 43. Were you aware at the time that you were playing for an immortal, or did it only become clear in hindsight? And what can you tell us about his coaching style?
That was his name?
In all seriousness, Krausz was a nice guy, but he didn't really get the Bard mentality. We were far too weird for him. Another Krausz characteristic was the ungrammatical quote in the Kingston newspaper the day after the game. "Without Price, that game could easily have went the other way" was a typical Krausz quote. He was in better shape than all of us, though, that's for sure.
7. Have you kept in touch with any of your teammates? If so, can you tell us where they are now and what they are up to?
I keep in touch with a number of my teammates. One, Noah Samton, is a hotshot producer for the NBA and has two kids, lives in Manhattan. I recently ran into our point guard, Ernest Reese, in Penn Station -- he's a lawyer of some kind. Trevor Rivera was never actually one of my teammates, but he was on the team at some point, I believe -- he also works for the NBA. Chris Hanciewicz I heard had a gender-altering operation and, I hear, now performs under the stage name Kelly Preston. I can say unequivocally that it was the high point of all of our lives.
8. As one of the first Bard basketball players to go on to play professionally in Mongolia, what does it feel like to have started the now-cliched Bard to Mongolia pipeline?
Well, for one thing, the posting system has gone through so many changes since I first blazed that trail. Would you believe that my team, AltainBurgid, paid Bard less than 13 million Tugriks for my rights!??? You'd never see that today. Nowadays, of course, the Mongol scouts are all over Annandale, but what I went through as a Bard athlete in Mongolia was truly unique. The cultural differences were quite a lot for me to handle at first. For one thing, we never drank buttered, salted tea-and-milk on the bench during games at Bard. Nor did we smoke during timeouts. However, the fermented horse milk made a big difference in my play in Mongolia. I think it's only a matter of time before Bard athletes discover its properties.
9. According to Congressman Anthony Weiner, you killed the pope once, then re-killed him an additional 51 times. Do you regret this controversial exponential murder?
Anthony Weiner graduated from SUNY-Plattsburgh. That's all I'm going to say about that.
10. How has receiving critical acclaim for Spanking the Donkey, your first-rate look at the 2004 presidential campaign, made you a better Bard basketball alum?
Well, it made me appreciate all that time I spent on the road with the Bard Blazers/Raptors. Prior to the 2004 campaign, those were the most boring long drives of my life. After three months in New Hampshire, I look back on those hellish van rides to places like Utica as being like nonstop naked drug orgies. And the campaign re-acquainted me with the nature of American heroism, something I hadn't experienced since Bard's legendary game against Albany Pharmacy, when a huge Pharmacy player fell on top of then-reserve and future Bard cafeteria manager Carl Berry. As Berry writhed on the floor in agony, our coach -- Krausz, if you say so -- approached to see if he was okay. Berry looked up and through glazed eyes whispered: "Coach, put Dave [Sochet] in!" It was the most touching thing I'd seen since Brian's Song -- and I've never seen Brian's Song.