Sydney Wicks was the "original" Jail-Blazer? IIRC, he was bounced out of town on his keister. Widely booed every time he returned (with the Celtics?). What Wicks knucklehead stories do you recall?
Huh? Wicks wasn't even close to being a Jail Blazer. He was never caught smoking pot, or driving recklessly, or participating in dog fights, or getting in trouble at strip clubs, or punching his teammates, or cursing at rental car staff, or any of the other things the "Jail Blazers" did. The worst you can say about him is that he was a bit of a loner, and he had an ego. Period.
"Caught" is the operative word here. True story: A friend of mine from (Lakeridge) high school was Wicks' personal dope dealer. And, according to my friend, not only did Wicks smoke mass amounts of pot, he hosted "great" parties. as well. (Not sure how he hid all that, actually.) Just because he wasn't caught doesn't mean he wasn't a true knucklehead and "worthy" of being a jail-Blazer ......even though the name hadn't been coined at the time. As David Lee Roth so eloquently said, though, it's all water under the dam.
Honestly? Good for Sydney Wicks. It was the fucking seventies, who wasn't getting stoned and partying? Secondly, why the hell are we talking about Sydney Wicks 30+ years after his last game as a Blazer?!
A friend of yours was his "personal dope dealer?" Excuse me if I take that with a big grain of salt. But even if true, it hardly makes much of a case. Walton smoked pot as well, but that doesn't make him a Jail Blazer, either. By the way, last time I checked, "throwing great parties" was hardly an illegal act.
When I say "personal dope dealer", I meant that he often cruised over to Wicks' house, sometimes more than once a week, delivering the goods. Who knows, Wicks may have had other contacts, as well. Secondly, a "great" party was simply an euphemism for dope-fest. Question: Would you have considered, for example, Damon a jail-Blazer? If so, why? What were his biggest offenses in this regard? Was he simply a doper, as well? In all honesty, me thinks the Whitsitt era jail-Blazer stigma was so prevalent, any given Blazer at that time could, say, simply be caught for speeding, then, fairly or unfairly, thrown into that bunch. Now that I think of it, it might be very easy to say that, in some cases, the jail-Blazer moniker was an unfair rap. Otherwise, throw the whole lot of them into the mix.
