They say misery loves company

Stuff that happened last week proved what William Shakespeare once said was right: "Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows."\nFor one thing Alan Henderson and Glenn Robinson are now teammates. Teammates?!\nPerhaps the notion that Robinson and Henderson are teammates should not be so strange. After all, it's just basketball, and neither of them had control of the situation. From what we know, neither of them has personal animosity toward the other.\nBut at the same time, I almost would have expected Yasser Arafat and Ariel Sharon to give each other a big bear hug in the middle of downtown Jerusalem. Or sound emanating from Britney Spears' lips at a concert.\nRobinson and Henderson were united last Friday when the Milwaukee Bucks traded Robinson to the Atlanta Hawks. Robinson, who was arrested last month and charged with misdemeanor counts of domestic battery, assault and illegal possession of a firearm after a confrontation with his ex-fiancee, is a career 21-point-per-game scorer who was taken first overall in the 1994 NBA Draft. The Bucks needed to shake up the team given they had far too much talent to miss the playoffs as they did, and while it is hard to believe that a team employing handcuff magnet Anthony Mason would start making moral judgments, Robinson's legal troubles made him trade bait.\nHenderson was the 16th overall pick in the 1995 NBA Draft and has spent his entire career with the Hawks. Predicted by most to be an NBA bust simply because his college coach was Bob Knight, he won the 1998 NBA Most Improved Player Award and has averaged 10.5 points per game in his career.\nThe rivalry between the two began in 1991 when Robinson's Gary Roosevelt team faced off against Henderson's Indianapolis Brebeuf team in the state championship game. Robinson had already signed on with Purdue, and Henderson had committed to IU. Whoever was the third best player in the state wasn't close. Mr. Basketball was on the line, and clearly this was going to be a preview of many matchups to come.\nRoosevelt won 51-32, and Robinson, who had the much better supporting cast as it turned out, got all the personal honors.\nAlong with Chris Webber, Jalen Rose, Juwan Howard, Jimmy Jackson, Shawn Respert and Calbert Cheaney, Robinson and Henderson played a great role in a golden age for Big Ten hoops, a period where a conference matchup between Top 10 teams was practically a weekly occurrence.\nThe IU-Purdue rivalry was never better. Their two 1994 matchups were classics with Purdue winning in overtime in West Lafayette and IU eking out an 82-80 win in Bloomington with Robinson scoring 39 on one impossible fadeaway jumper after another and Henderson preserving the win with a blocked shot at the buzzer with a lead created by Todd Lindeman's two made free throws seconds earlier. (Yes, that Todd Lindeman, and I have the videotape as proof.)\nBoth among the greatest frontcourt players their respective schools have ever had, Robinson ended the collegiate rivalry a year early when he opted for the NBA Draft. Henderson stayed four years, got his degree and plans on going to medical school some day.\nThey are different people from different backgrounds, and neither has backed down from the other. It's going to be weird watching them as teammates.\nSpeaking of misery, Bud Selig continued to voice his on Saturday. Speaking at the National Association of Black Journalists national convention, the Major League Baseball Commissioner called the Minnesota Twins' success this year an "aberration" and said the Twins are still a top candidate for contraction.\nThrough Saturday night's games, the Twins led the American League Central by 16 games. This is not an aberration. Fred Durst getting a Ph.D. is an aberration. Eminem thinking of others is an aberration. A pass in a HPER pickup game is an aberration. The Twins are so far ahead that the White Sox and Indians have traded away most of their best veteran players for young prospects and called it a season.\nIf you do think a 16-game lead can be an aberration, then answer this: After borrowing $3 million from Twins owner Carl Pohlad in 1995 and then failing to disclose it until this year, how can Selig have any credibility when discussing the Twins' situation? And how can anybody sympathize with Pohlad, the Mr. Burns of baseball whose net worth according to Forbes is $1.8 billion, after he pockets the revenue sharing money he currently receives instead of spending it on players?\nSo I guess Selig will be rooting for the Yankees in case of a playoff series against the Twins.\nTalk about strange bedfellows.