Darius Rucker Recalls Rick Carlisle Playing With His Band

Country star Darius Rucker is a big time sports fan. He became a Dallas Mavericks fan after the Charlotte Hornets relocated to New Orleans.

Rucker was once the lead singer of Hootie and the Blowfish before becoming a solo country star.

He came on my NBC Sports Radio show and recalled the time the Mavs coach invited himself to play on stage. Click here for the audio link. Rucker talks about it at the 7:49 mark.

This is what Rucker told me:

"One thing that happened a couple of years ago, I’m a big Dallas Mavericks fan and Coach Carlisle is a friend of mine and he called me up one day and he goes, 'hey man, you know I’m coming to the show. I want to jam with you guys.' I say, Oh yeah, what do you do? 'I play piano. I don’t really read music but I play by ear.'"

"You know every time a friend calls and says that, you go ‘okay man, you can jam’ but you think to yourself, ‘oh, this is gonna be rough’ and Coach gets to the show and he doesn’t rehearse with us or anything and he gets up an says he wants to do Let Her Cry with us. And I’m telling you when he hits the solo, that he had everybody in the band was looking at me and going ‘Oh my goodness.' He was awesome. He was unbelievable. He was great and we tell him all the time you can come play with us anytime cause it was awesome.”

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