Josh Giddey isn’t the only one that should be under investigation.
Former pro and current Dallas Mavericks scout Eduardo Nájera would also hit on you in front of your mom during his varsity days.
Una Dia en la Playa
Few things in life are as enjoyable and relaxing as a day at the beach.
The warm glow of the sun hitting your skin, a cool breeze from the water running through your hair, and booties in bikinis as far as the eye can see.
This is as true today as it was in the late ’90s when Eduardo Nájera and the University of Oklahoma Sooners men’s basketball team took the afternoon off at Hapuna Beach in Hawaii.
The squad was in town to play in The Big Island Invitational Tournament, which attracted some of the best Division I teams in the country during that era like Khalid El-Amin’s UConn Huskies, the Collins’ twins Stanford Cardinal, and Brian “The Janitor” Cardinal’s Purdue Boilermakers.
Nájera himself was no slouch.
He led the Sooners to four straight NCAA tournament appearances while earning second and first-team All-Big 12 and third-team All-American honors, en route to becoming the first Mexican-born player to be drafted into the NBA in 2000.
Nájera along with most of the pasty white Oklahoma players had never seen the ocean before and that made some of them a little overly-excited.
Kinda Funny, Kinda Not
According to a local slacker taking a mid-day break at the beach, what happened next might make Eduardo Nájera Josh Giddey’s real twin if the following story is true.
Mavs fans may want to look away.
Our resident loafer was straight chilling when he noticed several vans pull up and some tall dudes wearing U of O shirts step out.
With nothing else to do that afternoon, he began chatting up some of the players, including Ryan Humphrey, who apparently was a cool dude.
As most of the guys were standing around and BS’ing, Eduardo couldn’t stop staring at one girl in the water.
I’m no Hawaii travel expert, but Hapuna Beach is a really popular tourist destination on the Big Island, with loads of cheeks around on any given day.
Nájera however, is simping over one girl in particular and to make matters worse, the girl is “some young 16-year-old with her mom” per our local citizen journalist.
Despite this obvious red stop sign not to proceed any further, 6 foot 8 college junior Eduardo Nájera and an unnamed teammate are undeterred, approach the teenage girl in question, and start hitting on her right in front of her mom.
Aghast, the girl’s mother hurries her out of the water while giving Nájera the evil eye.
In the end, not only was Eduardo the butt-end of some jokes, as this all went down within view of his teammates.
His Sooners also stunk up the tourney, getting beat early and had to go home to the nontropical, arid plains of Norman, Oklahoma, disappointed in more ways than one😔
If you enjoyed this story, you may also like Ben Gordon Was Cookin’ Somethin’ or Vanilla Gorillas Don’t Go to Class – Why Joel Pryzbilla Left the University of Minnesota
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