REBOUND

About one of the NBA's ``bad boys'': an uninspired, sometimes sketchy account of Rodman's relationship with a rural family during his college days in Oklahoma. In 1982, 12-year-old Bryne Rich accidentally shot and killed his best friend. He was in a deep depression for nearly a year, until, at a basketball camp, he met a lanky 6'8'' black man from Dallas nicknamed ``Worm.'' The friendship was immediate, Bryne's mother, Pat, describing it as ``a supernatural thing'' that saved her despondent son. Over the next three years, Rodman practically lived on the Rich farm, the group braving small-town disapproval and racial sniping. While Pat and her husband believed the friendship did wonders for their son, Pat struggled with gossip about her and Rodman, avoided being seen with him, and frequently lectured him about dating white girls. (She claims she didn't know the word ``nigger'' was a derogatory term until she looked it up.) Throughout his All-American college career to his selection by the Detroit Pistons in 1986, Rodman stayed with the Rich family; at one point he begged to be adopted and began calling himself Dennis Rich. The authors make little comment about the difficulties of his being scolded for taking small change, charging purchases to their names, forging their checks, wearing Pat's jewelry, and staying out too late; and while only slight space is given to the friendship between Bryne and Rodman, more is devoted to Pat's agonizing over the social implications of having a black man in the house, and to buzzing over racial differences. Rodman's NBA career and his many difficulties, including an alleged suicide attempt in 1993, are given scant attention. Perhaps too close to the situation, the authors fail to capture what in other hands might have been a unique and inspiring story. (Eight pages of photographs—not seen)