<div class="quote_poster">Quote:</div><div class="quote_post">Mark Packer hosts a drive-time sports talk show in Charlotte, N.C. It is carried by radio stations around the state. Last week, Cedric (Cornbread) Maxwell, the former NBA player, was serving as a co-host. Cornbread was talking about the wave of high draft choices headed from the Atlantic Coast Conference to the NBA -- Wake Forest's Chris Paul, the North Carolina foursome of Marvin Williams, Raymond Felton, Sean May and Rashad McCants, and N.C. State's Julius Hodge. Maxwell came off as a tough critic. He wouldn't have Paul on his team, he said, for one reason: Paul's sneak punch to Hodge's groin during a late-season game, proving the Wake guard was a low-class individual. Callers promptly argued this with Maxwell -- Paul fans wanting to write it off as one mistake by an otherwise honorable young man. Maxwell also dismissed McCants as a player he would want, questioning both his attitude and his ability to create shots for himself at the pro level. This time, the callers were more than willing to join in taking shots at McCants. As SI.com's Grant Wahl wrote last fall, "McCants Studies" was an unofficial North Carolina course, and it has remained so -- even after his third and last Tar Heels season produced a national championship. "He's one of the most interesting guys to follow we've had down here," Packer said in a phone conversation Wednesday. "He would follow a night when he was unstoppable with a night when he was not in the game at all. "There are going to be nights at Target Center when the fans will say, 'This is the greatest 14th pick ever.' And there will be nights when they say, 'How could they have picked him?' " Packer laughed slightly and said: "You guys in Minneapolis are going to have fun covering him. After losing Randy Moss, one sport's craziest enigma, you probably could use another mystery man. Now you have him." The Timberwolves took McCants, an actual 6-3 (not 6-4), with that 14th pick Tuesday night. On Wednesday, they introduced him at a news conference -- revealing a No. 1 jersey that will replace his college No. 32 (intentionally, a reverse Michael Jordan) at North Carolina. The McCants controversies were frequent at North Carolina. He feuded openly as a freshman with coach Matt Doherty. He was sent to the locker room for on-bench indifference early in his sophomore season, this time by coach Roy Williams. He was cut from the U.S. junior national team in the summer of 2004, even as coach Kelvin Sampson of Oklahoma was calling him the most talented player on the team. Sampson said there was one area where McCants had to improve before making it big in the NBA: "teammates issues." Last fall, McCants made it clear his junior season would be his last at North Carolina, then added: "You're not allowed to say certain things, but once you get out of jail, you're free. I'm in my sentence, doing my time." Williams went bonkers when he saw that "jail" quote. He made McCants appear at a news conference to suggest the media had distorted the meaning of his words. Not much changed in his last season -- good nights and nothing nights -- except the final result. The Tar Heels, after a winter of ongoing teammates issues, put all the talent together and won a national title. McCants was the first of four underclassmen to announce he was bailing. His father, James, a classic, meddling Little League father during his son's career, said promptly after the victory over Illinois: "Rashad is declaring [for the NBA]. What is left for him to do?"</div> Source
