Bubba Wells


Charles Richard "Bubba" Wells Jr. is an American former professional basketball player, playing mostly for minor leagues. He played collegiately for Austin Peay State University and was named 1997 Ohio Valley Conference Player of the Year. Selected 34th by the Mavs in the 1997 NBA draft, the little-used small forward's NBA career was short-lived, consisting of just 39 games of the 1997–98 season. However, he did start two games in March 1998, in place of the injured Cedric Ceballos. His brief NBA career did feature one memorable game where he set the record for the shortest amount of playing time before fouling out, as part of a failed strategy to intentionally foul Dennis Rodman to limit his scoring.
His NBA career came to an abrupt end in 1998, after he was traded to the Phoenix Suns along with Martin Müürsepp, the draft rights to Pat Garrity, and a future first-round draft pick in exchange for point guard Steve Nash. Wells never played a game for the Suns. He was later traded to the Chicago Bulls, also for whom he never played. He later played for the LaCrosse Bobcats of the CBA, the Oklahoma Storm of USBL, the Memphis Houn'Dawgs of the ABA, and overseas in Greece and the Philippines. He played for the Harlem Globetrotters in 2004–05. From June 2005 through May 2015, Wells was an assistant men's basketball coach at Austin Peay.
On May 28, 2015, his appointment to the staff of Jon Harris at SIU Edwardsville was announced.

Trivia

Bubba Wells holds the dubious distinction of being the player with the quickest disqualification due to personal fouls in an NBA regular season game. Wells fouled out in just three minutes. In a December 29, 1997 game against the Chicago Bulls, then-Mavericks coach Don Nelson employed a desperate tactic to limit the Bulls' offense. He inserted Wells into the game with the express purpose of fouling power forward Dennis Rodman, a notoriously poor free throw shooter, away from the ball. The plan failed, however, when Rodman hit 9-of-12 free throws and Chicago went on to win the game 111–105. Wells fouled out late in the third quarter after registering his sixth personal foul in a total of three minutes' playing time. This strategy of intentionally fouling a bad free throw shooter is sometimes called Hack-a-Shaq, since it was later famously used against Shaquille O'Neal. The previous record-holder was Dick Farley of the Syracuse Nationals who was disqualified in five minutes on March 12, 1956.

Personal

In August 2007, Wells married Tracee Jones, the former head women's basketball coach at Tennessee State University. The previous summer Wells served as a supporter to Jones on NBC TV game show, Deal or No Deal. Wells has a daughter, Alyiah, and a son, Chase.