LOS ANGELES—Dennis Rodman, a five-time NBA champion and sometime buddy of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, was released from jail on Sunday after being detained overnight on suspicion of driving under the influence, police said.
Rodman, 56, was stopped at 11:11 p.m. Saturday for a vehicle violation, said Lieutenant Rachel Johnson of the Newport Beach Police in Newport Beach, California, south of Los Angeles.
TMZ reported that Rodman failed a field sobriety test and was taken to the station, where he failed an alcohol breathalyzer test as well.
Johnson said Rodman was cooperative with police and was released shortly after 6 a.m.
“Dennis is taking this seriously and will take positive steps to address his personal issues,” Rodman’s lawyer, Paul S. Meyer, said in a statement to the New York Daily News. “He appreciates the professionalism of the Newport Beach Police Department.”
Rodman, a two-time NBA Defensive Player of the Year, pleaded guilty to driving under the influence in 1999.
He played 14 seasons in the NBA with the Detroit Pistons, San Antonio Spurs, Chicago Bulls, Los Angeles Lakers and Dallas Mavericks before retiring in 2000.
Last year, Rodman made headlines when he travelled to Asia hoping to arrange a trip to North Korea in a bid to “alleviate some of the pressures as far as communication between the US and North Korea.”
Rodman has made multiple visits to North Korea, where he has spent time with the country’s leader Kim—a long-time fan of the Bulls.
“I basically hang out with him all the time, we laugh, we sing karaoke, we do a lot of cool things together,” Rodman said in a 2017 British television interview.
He is also friendly with US President Donald Trump — who once fired Rodman on the reality television show “Celebrity Apprentice”.
In December he told AFP in an interview in Beijing that Kim and Trump “are pretty much the same people.”
“They love control,” Rodman said, but added that warnings of nuclear peril because of the bellicose language between the two were overblown.
“Ain’t nobody got no finger on the button,” Rodman said.
