Troy Murphy makes dean’s list at Columbia, misses NBA socks (Ball Don’t Lie)

As Troy Murphy explains it in a wonderful profile on the erstwhile NBA player by New York Times scribe Andrew Keh, there isn't much he misses about a game he once played at the highest level for 12 seasons. "I miss the socks. The socks were unbelievable. There's something about NBA socks." Instead, as we learned from Keh, Murphy is enrolled at Columbia University. We've seen active NBA players complete degrees from the colleges for which they played — as Vince Carter did from the University of North Carolina in 2001 and Jeff Green did from Georgetown University in 2012 — but enrolling at an Ivy League institution after pocketing $66 million from six different teams makes Murphy a rare bird. "My life has always been planned out," Murphy said, smiling. "You got a schedule in August, and you knew on St. Patrick's Day you'd be playing in Cleveland, or you'd have an off day. It's exciting not knowing. Not knowing is intriguing." Very cool, and not just because Murphy circled St. Patrick's Day as soon as the NBA schedule dropped. A stretch forward before it was popularized as a term, Murphy declared for the NBA draft following his junior season at the University of Notre...