NBA stars flock to Las Vegas barber

Ron Kantowski, Las Vegas Sun

Published September 25, 2006 at midnight

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LAS VEGAS — Anybody who watched Team USA in the world basketball championships knows how good it looked.

Not how well it played, but how good it looked. Anybody who watched the NBA millionaires launch bricks in the semifinals against Greece and fail to defend the pick-and-roll play that is more ancient than their nemesis’ homeland also knows there is a difference.

But if you’ve got to lose to a bunch of guys with long names and two-hand set shots, the least you can do is look coifed when they put the bronze medal around your neck.

If Team USA had only done its job as well as Darryl Jones did his, perhaps it wouldn’t have had to settle for third place.

Jones is a Las Vegas barber who lowered LeBron James’ ears before Team USA left for Japan. Ditto for Dwyane Wade, the most valuable player in the Miami Heat’s NBA championship drive. And Chris Paul. And Gilbert Arenas, who wound up not making the trip, but at least still looked sharp while faking a groin injury to save him the embarrassment of being cut.

And even Brad Miller.

The Sacramento Kings’ center watched intently as his Team USA teammates one by one climbed into a barber chair that was set up in a suite at Wynn Las Vegas to have Jones take a little off their tops.

Then it was his turn. Miller just sat there with a petrified expression on his face, as if Jones’ chair had 20,000 watts of electricity running through it.

"Then both of us just bust out laughing," Jones said, assuring Miller that yes, he knew how to cut a white guy’s hair and to get his big backside in the chair.

Jones, a lanky 33-year-old who likes to cut hair in baggy basketball shorts and wears his in cornrows, has always been a Basketball Jones although, he admits, he doesn’t have a lot of game. "Just a little set shot," he says.

A few years ago, when he was still playing for UNLV, Shawn Marion, who has a lot of game, walked into Studio I, a barbershop at the corner of Owens Avenue and H Street in the Nucleus Plaza on Las Vegas’ West Side. He was looking for his regular barber, a fellow named Steve.

Steve wasn’t in. But in those days, it was three or four chairs, no waiting. So Marion asked Jones to "hook him up." That was in 1998. Now they’ve got each other on speed dial. When Jones called and left a message for Marion, the Phoenix Suns’ all-star returned it within 15 minutes.

Jones handed me the phone. When I asked Marion about what kind of barber Jones was, he was more enthusiastic than when the Trailblazers play matador defense.

"He’s the best one, definitely," Marion said. "That’s why I still go to him."

Three days later, Marion was sitting in Jones’ chair at Executive Cuts, a new shop just across the street from his old place of employment. Executive Cuts has modern amenities, such as HDTV monitors, but has retained the charm and good-time vibe of old-time barbershops, such as the one that served as backdrop for the popular "Barbershop" movies.

Executive Cuts is owned by a friendly woman named Angie Richard, who comes off as a female version of Calvin Palmer, the character played by Ice Cube in those movies. Jones told me there’s a female barber who puts her name on her things, just like the actress Eve did. And he used to cut alongside Old School Charlie — think Cedric the Entertainer, only without the crazy gray-flecked part in his unkempt Afro.

A few minutes later, one of Jones’ former co-workers, a wannabe reggae artist who goes by the name Bahama, probably because he grew up in the Bahamas, drops by for a razor trim. It isn’t long before he’s talking to Jones and a couple of visitors about Mike Tyson, George Bush’s foreign policy, the weather ... heck, just about anything that might pop into your mind when you are sitting in a barber’s chair.

I kept expecting/hoping that somebody was going to drop Marvin Gaye into the tape deck.

Maybe this is why Marion and the others keep coming back to see Jones. Not only are you going to look good when you leave, you’re going to feel good, too.

Thanks to Marion’s word of mouth, Jones has branched off onto other celebrity heads. He has cut the hair of Tyson Beckford, the world’s highest-paid male model. And that of Joe Torre, the world’s highest-paid baseball manager.

I had to resist the temptation to ask Jones if he used Yankee clippers.

But I did ask if he gets frazzled when he takes them to the head of somebody famous. Or even Brad Miller.

"I guess maybe you do get a little nervous," he said, as I detect him looking at my recent haircut with an expression that says he hopes I didn’t pay too much for it.

"But I’ve been doing this for a long time."

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