Plax on HBO: Didn't know who Bloomberg was
New York Jets wide receiver Plaxico Burress, right, talks to former Rams star Isaac Bruce during training camp at Atlantic Health Training Center in Florham Park, N.J. (Aug. 4, 2011) Credit: AP
If the Jets fulfill Rex Ryan's annual prediction and win the Super Bowl, introductions might be in order at the victory parade.
Plaxico Burress tells Bryant Gumbel on HBO's "Real Sports" -- premiering Tuesday -- that until Michael Bloomberg spoke out against him in 2008, he never had heard of the New York City mayor.
Burress recalls his attorney, Ben Brafman, telling him that an earlier bail agreement was canceled after the mayor said he should be "punished to the full extent of the law."
"And you know what I said after that?" Burress says. "I said, 'Who is Mayor Bloomberg?' "
Gumbel: "Come on."
Burress: "Dead serious. 'Who is Mayor Bloomberg?' "
The mayor had the last laugh, helping turn Burress into a high-profile example of New York City's tough gun laws, resulting in a two-year prison sentence. But Burress believes his image and status played a part, too.
"Half of those people had no idea who I was," Burress says. "They just saw an African-American over there sittin' around makin' a lot of money carrying a gun into a club and shot his self."
Burress describes that moment in detail, including seeing "the fire" from the shot through his pants, then feeling his jeans were wet and seeing the white on his sneakers had turned red.
Still, he did not fully appreciate the depth of his problem until his wife, Tiffany, an attorney, filled him in.
"I remember talking to him on the way home and saying, 'You're going to go to jail because they just changed their gun laws,' " she says on the show. "I remembered reading about them, learning them, when I moved here and I was taking the New York State bar. I told him, 'You're going to be made an example of.' "
