John Salley

Quick Stats: John Salley
Host "Best Damn Sports Show Period" and former NBA player
Daily Driver: 2007 BMW 750 LI
Other cars in his collection: 2008 Volkswagen Jetta
Favorite road trip: Highway 1 up the California Coast
Car he learned to drive in: 1971 Dodge Dart
First car bought: 1985 Peugeot 505 Turbo

John Salley may be one of the bad boys of the Detroit Pistons and a four-time NBA champion, but bring up last year's participation of "Fast Cars and Superstars: The Gillette Young Guns Celebrity Race" stock-car race on ABC-TV, and he bristles at his performance on the track.

"It was terrible -- if I would've done the Grand Prix first I would've killed that, but I had to learn to drive," he says of his elimination in the third episode. The Grand Prix he refers to is the annual Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach Pro/Celebrity Race, in which Salley will race this weekend for the second time.

Despite growing up in the projects in Brooklyn, Salley, who is now a host on the "Best Damn Sports Show Period", was an unusual city kid, in that he wanted to drive early on and liked to drive. Salley learned to drive in a 1971 Dodge Dart. "My brother let me drive. I was 14 and he was teaching me in the back in my project in Brooklyn," he says.

"My mom used to let me park. I had a classic Caprice, and when I would run home, she was like, 'All right, you got to practice parking.' And I would be in the big parking lot. I lived in the projects; I lived on the eighth floor. She would watch me pull the car, go around, and parallel park. She would say, 'Let's see if you can do it in one take. And I would do it and see if I could pull forward, came back."

His mother said when he was old enough he could get his permit, so at age 15, Salley got his driver's permit. He laughs when he recalls having a good reason to go to Kingdom Hall.

"I was a Jehovah's Witness so she let me drive back and forth to the Kingdom Hall because I had a permit," Salley says. "There was a reason to go to the Kingdom Hall because I could drive. When it was over, I would grab the key and I would run out and do it again -- driving. Then I would drive all the way back home. It was pretty cool."

Salley got his driver's license at 16 and even impressed the test administrator. "It was funny, when I went to take my (drivers) test, it wasn't even like I was taking a test. It was like I was just driving this dude and he's telling me which way to go. He's like, 'how long have you been driving?' I said, 'I just learned.' You know, you ain't getting a brother saying, 'I've been driving five years illegally!' You ain't getting me."