What a difference 10 years makes.

In 2000, South Africa was the consensus pick to host the month-long international party known as the 2006 FIFA World Cup, but shady backroom politics of the worst kind doomed South Africa's bid.

A FIFA delegate from New Zealand, who was supposed to vote for South Africa, abstained from voting, handing Germany the crucial vote needed for a one-vote winning margin. So Berlin, not Johannesburg, played host to the final game of the World Cup in 2006.

South Africans cried foul and wondered if an African nation would ever host a World Cup.

By the time Jose Lima milked the last few major league pitches from his arm, playing for my beloved New York Mets in 2006, he was a mere shadow of the all-star hurler who had baffled hitters years earlier.

But one thing Lima could still do was put on a show.

If the umpire had the audacity to call his borderline pitch a ball, Lima would throw his arms up in protest, stomp across the mound but then stop acting up just in time to avoid getting thrown out of the game for showing up the umpire.

On the basketball court, Kenny Anderson was known for astounding cat-quick moves that would take him from a sea of bigger defenders in the paint to two points in the blink of an eye.

And in many ways, his personal story of beating financial ruin to graduate from college this Saturday - more than 20 years removed from his glory days on the basketball court - is no less remarkable.

Anderson, 39, holds a special place in the hearts of New York City–area basketball fans not only for his on-court skills, but also for how his personal life skidded out of control so quickly.

Embattled Washington Wizards guard Gilbert Arenas will serve 3 months in a halfway house for bringing guns to his locker room to scare a teammate.

Prosecutors recommended Arenas get three months in jail, but defense attorneys successfully argued that Arenas didn't deserve time in jail for what he considered a prank.

Arenas may have to wait for a slot to open in a halfway house facility maintained by the District of Columbia.

Arenas, 28, pleaded guilty earlier in the year to violation of the district's gun laws by bringing four guns to the Verizon Center as part of what he called a prank on teammate Javaris Crittenton. The two were feuding over an unpaid debt from a card game.

It was the feel-good story of the 2009 college football season, when Mark Ingram Jr. took the Heisman Trophy and tearfully thanked his father, a former NFL star, who watched his son's games from a prison cell.

But harsh reality has intruded on the Hollywood tale.

You can't blame disgraced basketball player Jayson Williams for not thinking ahead.

Though he is currently serving a five-year prison sentence for fatally shooting his limo driver in 2002, Williams is fighting drunk-driving charges in a case where prosecutors said Williams blood-alcohol level was more than double the legal limit.

Williams was found bloodied in the front passenger seat by N.Y.C. police officers, after an accident earlier in the year. Prosecutors have said surveillance video and witnesses put Williams as the sole occupant in the car that crashed in to a tree in a January 5th accident.

Williams faces an additional year in prison for the drunk driving charge.

The light bulb of intelligence in Gilbert Arenas' head, that light that's been dim for years and was shut off completely a few months ago when he brought guns in to his basketball locker room, might be showing signs of life.

Arenas told Esquire magazine he now understands he deserves to be punished for bringing guns in to the Washington Wizards locker room in what he says was a prank on a teammate in December.

Now maybe Arenas also grasps that 2 plus 2 equals 4.

Iverson had taken a paid leave of absence from the tea after disclosing his daughter's illness.