'85 NBA Draft Revisited: Did A.C. Green Have Chronic Hiccups?

(Editor's note: This week, VICE Sports takes a look at some of the quirkier stories from the historic 1985 NBA Draft on its 30th-year anniversary. You can read the entire series here.)

There are some words on Wikipedia that you can't ignore; some promises of deep, darkWikipediaholes that you can't scroll past.

For me, those words were "chronic hiccups" on A.C. Green's page. Green was a 1985 Los Angeles Lakers first round draft pick—23rd overall—who played 16 seasons in the National Basketball Association, won three championships, and played in a record 1,192 consecutive games. He was an All-Star. And maybe he had chronic hiccups. Or maybe not.

"Green suffered from singultus, or chronic hiccups, during his NBA career, the hiccups only stopping when Green was running or working out," his profile reads. "Reportedly, Green never slept more than two hours at a time due to the condition. He has since recovered."

Hiccups! Imagine it, a 21-year-old Green on draft night, fresh out of Oregon State, sitting next to his phone and holding his breath, hoping no teams would catch wise to his hiccup problem. Green, powering past opponents on the court while NBA scouts watched, dashing off to the bathroom to drink some water while standing upside-down. Green lying in bed at night, every night, twisting in the dark. Hic. Hic.

Did the Lakers know?

I begin to research Green's hiccups. The most compelling account comes from a 2004 ESPN story by Jeff Merron that quotes a former Phoenix Suns locker room attendant named Gerry Feldlawn, who said that NBA insiders had conspired to keep Green's affliction a secret. Green played for the Suns for three years in the midst of his iron man streak, posting a career-high 14.7 points per game in 1993–94.

"He'd be in agony," Feldlawn told Merron of Green's hiccups. "Part of my job was to get the tapes set up, and he'd come in there and he couldn't talk, couldn't breathe. When he was running or playing or working out they [the hiccups] would stop, but other times he didn't get a minute's rest. I guess he played because when he didn't play, life got a whole lot worse."

"He told me he never slept for more than two hours a night," Feldlawn added, "and boy, some days you could just see the absolute weariness in the man's eyes."

But here's the thing: Gerry Feldlawn doesn't exist. Very little hiccup evidence does exist, in fact.

I start looking for Feldlawn by writing to the Suns, who check their personnel files and find nobody with that name. The Suns switched from paper records to digital records in 2000, the human resources manager explains, and everything before the switch has since been destroyed. In theory, Feldlawn's mid-'90s tenure could have occurred. But there's no way to know for sure.

"I am sorry I am unable to confirm or deny," writes the Suns' HR person.

With no other traces of Feldlawn available online, I turn to Jeff Merron's other source: a chronic hiccup specialist named Philip Bluedrop, MD.

"I've heard about Mr. Green's case, and I'm not surprised to find out he's recovered," Bluedrop told Merron. "It happens all the time—after one year, five years, even 30 or 40 years."

Surely Bluedrop, who Merron wrote had "been researching singultus for 25 years at Mt. Presyterian [sic] Hospital in Bozeman, Montana," could shed some light on the matter.

The only problem: Mt. Presbyterian Hospital in Bozeman, Montana, doesn't exist, either.

I reach a receptionist at Bozeman Deaconess, the primary hospital for the city's 40,000 residents. Does she know of a Mt. Presbyterian Hospital in Bozeman? Never heard of it, she says. Well, does she know of a doctor named Philip Bluedrop, a 25-year—perhaps now 35-year—veteran hiccup specialist? A pause. Never heard of him, she says. How about any Bozeman doctor at all who specializes in chronic hiccups? A longer pause. Certainly, by this point, she must think I am a prank caller. No, there are no chronic hiccup specialists here, she says. There are no Bluedrops in Bozeman, she adds.

The day Merron's article ran in 2004, David Letterman presented a Top Ten List lampooning the finals-bound Lakers: the "Top Ten Signs Your Team Is Not Going To Win The NBA Finals", as read by several NBA Hall of Famers. No. 7, delivered by George Gervin: "Power forward has been out two months with the hiccups."

I keep looking. I hit what seems like paydirt: a teaser for an interview Green did in 2010 with Los Angeles radio station K-Earth 101, The Greatest Hits On Earth!

"Former NBA Player A.C. Green called in this morning to set the record straight over the myth concerning his hiccups," the teaser reads.

The myth! Set the record straight!

"Apparently that story is just that, it's a myth," continues the teaser. It's here: the call with K-Earth 101 will reveal everything. The answer is mere moments away.

I look for the play button. I'm ready to have AC Green set the record straight. But there's nothing; just a recording of a promo where a boy named Skyler correctly identifies The Animals as a band and wins tickets to see the circus.

I write in. Does The Greatest Hits On Earth! know the truth about Green's hiccups? "Wow! I don't even remember that!" the host writes back. "We don't keep archives back that far."

Of course not.

My spirit falters: I may never know if Green had the hiccups. Green himself has declined either to hiccup during regular YouTube analysis or to comment on the matter.

In despair, I turn back to Jeff Merron's original article from 2004. A closer read offers some clues. Green isn't the only athlete ascribed an unusual affliction by Merron: Cal Ripken gives himself 42 stitches across his own chest after a recreational slam dunk mishap; Chuck Bednarik duct tapes a broken ankle and carries on playing.

I approach Merron for a second time. I'd spoken to him once previously when I was trying to track down contact information for Gerry Feldlawn, the nonexistent Suns locker room attendant. This time I ask Merron if this was all a work of satire.

Absolutely.

"I don't even know whether I made it up myself," says Merron. He didn't say anything earlier, he explains, because he didn't recall inventing it in the first place. "Back in those days, Page 2 would have a lot of phone meetings where people would be throwing up all kinds of ideas. So I don't know whether I made it up or somebody else thought of it and I wrote it."

Until it ceased publishing in 2012, ESPN's Page 2 was a hub of offbeat sportswriting. Bill Simmons got his start there, and Hunter S. Thompson was a contributor until his death.

"That was where we put a lot of features that didn't really fall under any individual sports section," says Merron, who left Page 2 in 2006.

The genesis of the Green column was another weird athlete injury: Cubs slugger Sammy Sosa's sneeze induced back injury. To the best of VICE Sports' knowledge, this sneeze did actually occur.

"The thing I liked about that story is when I was a kid I used to read these books called Strange But True Baseball Stories and Strange But True Football Stories," says Merron. "And you would read about during World War II when they were desperate for players, you'd actually get a one-armed pitcher or something like that."

Indeed, Merron's column concludes by citing the bravery of Kirby Kyle, "a lean southpaw from Tennessee" who loses a leg, then an arm, and then his vision in Woody Allen's Radio Days, and continues to pitch for the St. Louis Cardinals.

Until I reached out, Merron had no idea that his tale of Green's hiccups had become a legend. "Back then there was barely any social media, so I wouldn't have known about it getting around that way," he says.

How exactly Green's hiccups got from Page 2 to Letterman to Wikipedia to K-Earth 101 is unclear. But the story proved irresistible, and for years the internet's iron man has been prescribed spoonfuls of sugar on forums and asked about the state of his diaphragm in interviews.

"The iron man idea lent itself easily," Merron says. "He's a big target."

In regards to the hiccups: As far we know, Green has not had any more more than usual. Probably.