The Seattle U Redhawks announced today that they have signed junior college transfer Cydnee Ceballos to join the team in the 2014-15 season.
The 6-foot Ceballos comes to Seattle from McCook Community College in Nebraska, where she managed to attract the attention of DI scouts despite her team's poor performance this season, as described briefly in an article by Marjie Ducey of the Omaha World Herald.
Six-foot sophomore forward Cydnee Ceballos, the daughter of former NBA all-star Cedric Ceballos, leads the team with 15.7 points a game. She's drawing lots of looks from low Division I to D-II schools. "Pretty talented offensive player. She's had five consecutive double-doubles,'' coach Jon Froelich said. She's the leading rebounder in Region IX with 10.3 a game.
And while those are some impressive basketball credentials for her as she comes to the Redhawks, the name itself probably stands out more prominently to NBA fans.
While current Seattle U coach Joan Bonvicini was starting her 17-year tenure at Arizona, Cydnee's father Cedric Ceballos was playing for the Phoenix Suns in the early stages of his 11-season NBA career. Although the peak of his career was probably in Los Angeles where he became an All-Star in 1995 and might be remembered for having a 50-point game for the Lakers in 1994, he's probably best remembered for his blindfolded dunk in the 1992 NBA Dunk Contest (when it was still routinely interesting).
Yet perhaps the most overlooked part of Ceballos' legacy was that of all the NBA players who tried their hand at rapping over the years, Ceballos could make a case for being the best (though I decided long ago it was Dana Barros and others who have reviewed the issue more recently seem to agree).
Rob Cressy of BaconSports.com has broken down this video so well that I'll leave you with an excerpt.
He won a slam dunk contest, his jersey, regardless of team, is sought after by hoopsters, and you can now add badass rapper to the list. I'm not talking in a Steve Francis or Rashad McCants kind of way. I'm talking about having genuine flow. Like, he's impressively good...That video is an explosion of awesomeness.
Did you see what I saw? That was Warren G rocking the Duke #44 jersey. Do you know who wore #44 for Duke? Cherokee Parks. Up until this point in life I've never seen another person other than Cherokee Parks and myself rock a Cherokee Parks jersey.
Those are the small joys that come from accumulating enough useless basketball information.