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Why did you disappear publicly at that time? If you had just told the people of Charlotte, ‘I’m so sorry. I messed up,’ I think you may have never had to leave Charlotte. — GS: I totally agree with you. I was embarrassed. I made a mistake. I was worried about my children. And it ended up my (then) wife filed for divorce. So my life, at that point, was somewhat destroyed. And I was embarrassed. … So we went to New Orleans. And I started doing the same things in New Orleans. I’m talking about the good stuff, right? I didn’t start screwing around, I can assure you of that. They embraced me and we were really making it work until (Hurricane Katrina) hit. That was devastating.
“I grew up in New Orleans,” Paul said. “I’m not who I am without being part of that city. I got drafted right after Katrina. All the relationships that I have there, it will never go away. “That city, it’s not for everybody. But for the people that’s it for, ain’t no city better.”
“I was a senior in high school when I came here after (Hurricane) Katrina,” Augustin said. “I didn’t get a chance to go to a lot of games. Then, I went off to college. My early years in the NBA, when I was with Charlotte, we didn’t make the playoffs, so I was home here early. This is when the Rockets were in the playoffs, playing Portland. Aaron Brooks was the point guard at the time. Great atmosphere, just a great energy. To be a part of this now, it means a lot to me.”
And Self also believes a successful run as a temporary home could put Kansas City on the shortlist to get an NBA team. "I saw firsthand, and we all did, what happened with the Hornets," Self said. "When Katrina hit New Orleans and they relocated to Oklahoma City, you saw how that market rallied around that team to make them basically an automatic to get a franchise if anything else was going to transpire. And then of course the Sonics moved there. I can see [KC] doing the same thing. I think people would rally around it."
Ford: "My first time getting traded, I got traded in the summer. I think after Hurricane Katrina and all that. It was when the Essence Festival was in Houston for the first time. So, I got a house to fill. Somebody bought my house and I was supposed to move out a week later, but they told me they wanted me out on Friday. Now, I've got an appearance in Milwaukee on Saturday that I'm supposed to fly to on Friday. But I decided that I was gonna go hang out. We hang out, I end up getting on the flight. My pops ended up moving all of his stuff out of his house in Houston. So I get to Milwaukee, I speak at Michael Redd's camp and he wasn't there. It was just a strange day. Who comes to somebody's camp and they ain't there? That just didn't make sense to me. [I’m thinking], ‘Gosh, something ain't right…’
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Westbrook met with the Thunder front office this week to say he would welcome a trade following Paul George’s departure to the Clippers. But an individual with knowledge of the talks said Westbrook initially broached the subject after OKC’s season ended with a first-round loss to the Portland Trail Blazers. Paul will return to Oklahoma City, where he played for the then-Hornets after Hurricane Katrina.
One of the highest-ranked Army vets believes Dennis Rodman can help make peace with North Korea ... saying Donald Trump should seriously consider meeting with the ex-NBA star to smooth things out with Kim Jong-un. TMZ Sports spoke with Retired U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Russel Honoré -- who most people remember as the guy who famously led the military recovery efforts during Hurricane Katrina.
From Golden 1 Center, De’Aaron Fox and Justin Jackson spoke of the Kings’ collective effort to support the region. The team, partnering with some sponsors, raised more than $100,000 for the American Red Cross with more expected in the coming weeks. Fox can relate to this sort of chaos. He was born in New Orleans “and I have family and friends who went through (Hurricane) Katrina, people who lived with us,” he said. “It’s heartbreaking what’s going on. My family is OK (in Houston) but I know people whose houses are flooded. It’s not a good thing going on there but it’s good that we’re together on this.”
DJ Augustin: Let me tell you a quick story about my grandfather. Because of Hurricane Ivan, I think some people underestimated Katrina. The evacuation warnings for Katrina were still “voluntary” until the day before it hit. We almost didn’t leave. Elderly people are the most vulnerable in hurricanes but I guess they can be the most stubborn sometimes. I love my grandfather, but he’s very stubborn. When the news started talking about Katrina, he didn’t want to evacuate because the last time nothing happened with Hurricane Ivan.
New Orleans is small, so everybody in New Orleans knows everybody. I talk to people over the years since Katrina happened, and everybody has different stories of what they heard from different people. My wife, who was my girlfriend then, had a friend die because she was walking through the water, trying to get to higher ground and she fell through a drain in the ground. She drowned. There was stuff like that going on and you never heard about it on the news.
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Paul's first memory of Aug. 29, 2005, was the sound of his mother's voice waking him up and directing him to the television. The images were hard to fathom as he rubbed the sleep from his eyes. "It was one of the most devastating things I had ever seen," Paul said. "That was my new home. Even though I had only just gotten drafted, it was going to be my first time away from home and I felt a connection to the city. I couldn't believe what I was watching." Hurricane Katrina had struck New Orleans that early Monday morning, and as Paul huddled in front of the television with his family, he looked at his older brother and wondered what the future held for him and his new home.
When Paul was able to return to New Orleans in October, the aftermath of Katrina was as surreal as the images he had witnessed on television. "It gave me chills and goose bumps when I went back," Paul said. "The first time you're allowed to go back into the city you could see water marks everywhere. Even watching on TV, I saw St. Charles and the French Quarter and a lot of the streets I had just been on [days earlier], underwater. There was a Foot Action and a Lids [hat store] that I had just went to, and to see them under water is something that I still can't fathom."
When he was 9 years old, Oubre's world was literally turned upside down after he and his father were forced to abandon their home in New Orleans because of Hurricane Katrina. They left New Orleans on Aug. 28, 2005, drove to Houston as Katrina was bearing down on Louisiana and began traveling a sometimes-rocky road that has made Kelly stronger and led him to the brink of being a first-round pick in next week's NBA draft. "It was an experience that I will never forget in my life," Oubre said Friday, when he worked out for the Detroit Pistons at The Palace. "It was an early stage of adversity for me. My dad made a lot of sacrifices for me at that age. We could have went back to New Orleans and had a happy life but instead we went to Houston and started a whole new life.
"With all the money and the fame and the acclaim and the advancement that we claimed we made, we really (have) not made any big steps because Katrina was the biggest smack for me," West said. "It just illustrated how dependent we are as people on other people. The majority of the people affected by Hurricane Katrina were African-American people, and with all the celebrity that we have, all the money that we have, all of this fame and fortune, we're so disbanded that when our people are literally on TV in need of help, we got nothing to bring them. "Katrina really altered how I was going to look at (and) how I was going to approach this NBA thing."
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