I am the red menance and I am at your front door!

Seriously, not nearly enough was made of this story, but it was enough at the time to endear the "Power Twins" to me: Viktor & Sergei. Enough so that in NBALive I gave them matching asymetrical tattoos (a black star on thier forearm) and armbands.




Viktor & Sergei, when CSKA Moscow won the championship.
Check out that cup, you can drink booze from it!

Namely, this tidbit:

“The journalist asked me about the dog, and I decided to play a joke on Sergei,” Khryapa says. “I told him the dog was named Monia, as a diminutive of Monika. I looked in the Internet the next day, and everyone was writing about how I named the dog after Sergei. So I called Sergei and asked if he was OK with it. He said it was fine, and the name stuck.”

Okay, so Viktor's dog is named after Sergei, sorta. But then there's this gem...

The two were virtually inseparable in the Russian capital. They would emerge from the locker rooms after games wearing matching gray sweat suits and would often hang out together at the Starlite Diner, a kitschy American burger joint in central Moscow.

MATCHING grey sweatsuits?! Sadly, Monia has yet to become the NBA equilivent of the KGB super-agent assassin in From Russia With Love, and Viktor's still a ways off from being "smooth yet devastating like moonshine vodka."

-d.d.