Ricky Blanton’s hoops keepsakes

While watching his infant son’s every move with the attention of a detective on stakeout, former LSU and professional basketball player Ricky Blanton tells the stories behind a career’s worth of plaques and pictures.

“Every photo has significance,” he says.

There’s a photo of his first NBA dunk and another of his first minutes on an NBA court, playing for the Chicago Bulls (right). It doesn’t hurt that Michael Jordan’s in the photo.

And there are his LSU days, when the Tigers reached the NCAA Tournament four years in a row under his and Dale Brown’s guidance.

Among those mementos: the 1985 autographed poster commemorating LSU’s win over Kentucky for the SEC Championship (this one’s bound for his office wall). Or a newspaper clipping that 14,000 fans supposedly wore to one of his last home games against Florida. “It poured down rain that night,” he says, laughing.

There’s an action shot of a lay-up from his first game following the death of his teammate, Don Redden. “I hadn’t slept for three days, and I somehow managed to create 30 points and 10 rebounds.”

• Autographed LSU poster from 1985, “A winning tradition” across the bottom

• SEC Basketball Legends Plaque from 2002 (each school honored a past player)

• A 1989 newspaper cut-out worn by 14,000 LSU fans

• A photo from the 1989 Georgetown game in which Blanton hit the winning shot. The game set a record for attendance at nearly 55,000

• A 1986 photo from his first game following the death of his friend and teammate, Don Redden

So many memories—but Blanton’s too humble to display the whole collection.

“It makes me feel uncomfortable,”

he says. Besides, the photos don’t match “with anything in the house.”

But memories leap to life at every glance. “At the time, it was my glory,” he says, “but now I sit back and realize how much work went into it.”