“Hey, Michael! How much you want to bet on this game?”
The scene was the 1993 NBA Finals in Phoenix, and the voice was loud, braying and, to fans at the time, as familiar as the strains of NBC’s “Roundball Rock.” This was Robin Ficker, the NBA’s heckler extraordinaire, doing what he did best: burrowing deep into the skulls of the NBA’s elite.
A D.C.-area defense attorney until he was disbarred last year, Ficker spent much of the 1980s and '90s at courtside cheering for the team then known as the Bullets (now the Wizards), ripping every opposing player of note who came through Washington.