American basketball small forward and power forward, nicknamed “the Worm”, he played for the Detroit Pistons (1986-1993), San Antonio Spurs (1993-1995), Chicago Bulls (1995-1998), Los Angeles Lakers (1999), and Dallas Mavericks (2000) of the National Basketball Association (NBA).
By 1993 he had two championship rings on his way to a second straight rebounding title. He had played in two All-Star games and was the NBA Defensive Player of the Year twice. He was wildly popular in Detroit, loved what he did and the adulation that went with it. He had it all, a Ferrari, name recognition, money, fame and glory.
Yet, on an April night in 1993, he debated killing himself with a shotgun. It was his seventh and last season with the Pistons and the team was going downhill fast. He was making $2.5 million a year and looking at the guys who were making ten times that, feeling out in the cold and sorry for himself. Always flamboyant, always an exhibitionist, always driven, he decided in that conversation with his shotgun that he was going to be whoever and whatever he wanted to be. From bottoming out, he emerged with a fuller identity.
The first thing he did was bleach his hair blond. The fans went nuts. When he was in college he had stuck quarters in his ears to get attention. Now he went over the top. He moved on to pink hair, a ring in his nose, multiple earrings, painted fingernails. Sometimes he wore women’s clothing, “exploring his feminine side.” He said that a sequined halter top and tight leather shorts “made him feel like a whole person, not just one-dimensional.” Rodman’s second book, released in 1997, Walk on the Wild Side, was full of sex and obscenities, so much so that Oprah Winfrey cancelled an appearance that Rodman was scheduled to do on her show. Included in the work were details of his affair with a transsexual and the reasons for which he dates white women versus black women, as well as other information about his “identity.”
Rodman said, “Fifty percent of life in the NBA is SEX. The other fifty percent is money.” Far from the time when he was a skinny throwaway kid, the women adored him, they were all over him, a long way from his first sex experience, with a prostitute when he was 20.
His steady girlfriends were usually white women, and he could have a woman at his side at any time with 15 minutes notice. In early 1995 a Hawks cheerleader sued him for $1.5 million, claiming he gave her herpes, which he flatly denied. He won the case but not before it cost him $225,000 in lawyers’ fees. His first wife, Anicka Bakes divorced him in 1993; they had a five-year-old daughter.
Madonna came into his life in 1994 at a Knick’s game at Madison Square Garden. In April, one of her people called to invite him to Miami where she was going to interview him for Vibe, the hip-hop magazine. When he arrived at her house he said, “I’m Dennis,” she said, “I’m Madonna,” and they both said, “Great.” After the interview, they were all over each other. After going out to a gay bar for the evening, they ended up back in Madonna’s bed. For the following six months when they were together, the media attention was incredible. He was living with a girl in San Antonio during the time until they broke up.
Rodman writes that he thinks about death a lot. That he does not do drugs. That he is bisexual in his attitude but not physically. He wants to play his last game in the NBA in the nude. He wants to walk off the court, taking off one garment for every step. Whatever he does, we can safely bet that Dennis Rodman will catch our attention.
On 14 November 1998, in Las Vegas, Nevada, he married actress Carmen Electra (born 20 April 1962), impulsively and the media reported, too drunk to know what was going on. After nine days, he filed for annulment. The couple were seen together often enough after that for the public to be confused about what their status might be.
On 31 May 2001, prosecutors in Newport Beach, Califonia formally charged basketball’s bad boy with three charges of disturbing the peace stemming from a raucous birthday party at his oceanfront home on 12 May. In response to repeated complaints from his neighbors, Rodman stated in all innocence that all he wanted was to have some fun. Apparently his self-absorption is sufficient to block out such distractions as consideration of anyone else.
Rodman was with his first wife, Anikta Baktes, for six years, married two years and divorced in 1991. As his fame increased, the abuse kept pace. His nine-day marriage to Carmen Electra was barely a pause in his electric lifestyle. In 1999, Rodman met Michelle Moyer, with whom he had a son, Dennis Jr. (“D. J.”, born 25 April 2001) and a daughter, Trinity. Moyer and Rodman married in 2003 on his 42nd birthday. Michelle Rodman filed for divorce in 2004, although the couple spent several years attempting to reconcile. The marriage was officially dissolved in 2012, when Michelle again petitioned the court to grant a divorce.
Rodman entered outpatient rehab for alcohol abuse in Ft Lauderdale on 5 May 2008. He had been arrested five days prior on suspicion of domestic abuse.
Link to Wikipedia biography