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Music

Former Miami Heat Star Rony Seikaly Is a Real DJ, and I Love Him

It turns out Rony Seikaly is as killer as a house DJ in the club as he is as a character in 'NBA Jam.'

Photos by Fernando “Holiday” Vargas

I grew up idolizing the Miami Heat. When the NBA expanded in 1988, the Heat and Magic were added to the league roster. With their first pick, they selected Lebanese player and Syracuse legend Rony Seikaly. With the crafty, hard-working Seikaly at the center of court, the Heat largely earned disappointing season records, and those teams were re-tooled and largely forgotten by NBA history. But Miami sports aficionados remember Harold Minor’s sweet jams and Rony’s hairy and muscular Adonis of a body.

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Since retirement, Rony has ventured out into DJing, producing, real estate, and general Man-About-Town-ness. Most people who’ve lived in Miami long enough, myself included, have their own Rony Seikaly stories. My barber plays tennis with him. Rony’s nephew once sent me a vicious message calling me a “faggot” on AOL 3.0 because I bitched about Rony losing us a game or something in my profile. Et cetera. Recently, Seikaly, or the “Spin Doctor” as he has affectionately been nicknamed—due to his propensity to spin records as well as he spins around a low-post defender—has begun to take steps forward in his music, truly making waves on the electronic music scene. He has a hit show, "Sugar Free Radio," on Sirius XM. This year, he was on the stage at Ultra Music Festival.

Because of his unspoken presence throughout my entire life, I was shockingly nervous and giddy when I learned I would be able to interview Rony. I usually do not get star struck, but I grew up throwing down helicopter dunks in NBA Jam with the man. He was part of my formative years.

While preparing for the interview, I also realized I knew absolutely nothing about Rony’s music. I had dug myself into a hole. So I found the Soundcloud for his radio show and pressed play on the hour-long segments. He was supposed to call me around 3 PM, but in the grand tradition of the musician interviews, that turned into 7 and then 9. Before I knew it, I had waited at my computer listening to about seven hours straight of "Sugar Free Radio." And I was scared. I hadn’t even noticed because I had been…enjoying it? It was a groovy almagamation of disco, sci-fi blips and bloops, and Afro-Caribbean music. As a perpetual crank when it comes to listening to any sort of electronic music, I didn’t know what was happening to me. Was my anxiety over the interview getting the best of me? Had my nostalgia taken over and caused me to just accept it? Or…was it…good?

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When the phone rang with an unknown number, my heart exploded and I nervously paced around the room, waiting to pick up on the third ring. Rony apologized to me on the phone for the time misunderstanding. While initially he only planned on playing tennis that day, he got sucked into a golf game. “That’s OK Rony! Haha, no worries!” I hoped I wasn’t being a pushover. I didn’t want to creep him out. I tried bring up local stories and people who might be mutual acquaintances, but I could tell he was getting impatient. I would have to change the pace.

Note: What follows is a rendering of a night out at Rony's club, Wall, along with my conversation with him. Some of this interview is a paraphrasing of what was said, as it was a 40-minute phone conversation, and a lot of things would be repeated or scattered in different parts of the conversation.

Do you feel that you’ve always been an underdog? As a basketball player? As a musician?
Yeah, coming out of college as a white boy from Greece I was definitely an underdog. People said he can’t play in the league. And then look at me. And then [when people heard the music I liked] they were like “Why the fuck are you playing that shit? Get that shit out of here.”

Who are you most excited about seeing or playing with at this year’s Ultra?
Well music, especially this kind of music, is always changing and evolving so I always like to watch other musicians to learn new things or learn new tricks. It’s just like when I was playing basketball, my game was always evolving. I always watched other big men. I would always learn something new watching Kareem. What to do with my elbows in the paint, where to go, throughout my career. You always have to try to learn new things and evolve.

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Do you think you would do well in the current NBA?
Are you kidding? The guys from the old guard would wipe the floor with these guys. Hakeem, Kareem, Magic, Larry. They would kick their asses. Basketball these days has lost its identity. It used to be there’d be a big guy in the paint and he’d get double or triple teamed. Who do you see getting triple teamed anymore? No one. It’s all about athleticism these days. I mean just look at that guy on the Pacers [Roy Hibbert]. Every time people come down the floor people have a tough time guarding him.

When Magic Johnson announced himself as HIV positive, people in the league were scared. You were one of the first people to stand up and challenge him to a one-on-one match. My family and I always looked up to that as a kind of a heroic thing to do. And recently Magic Johnson thanked you in an interview. Talk about that a little.
So people were not very educated at the time as to how HIV spread. I was lucky that my family raised me to be educated at a young age and I felt I knew more about it than other people in the league. You know, Magic and Larry, when I was entering the league, really helped to [to raise the ceilings] of everyone’s salary. I felt it was the least I could do. I owed my whole career to him. He was the reason I was able to come in and play basketball. He earned me that higher salary. So I came over to him and said “Let’s play.”

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How do you think the league is going to deal with openly gay players in the locker room now?
You know, it’s to be seen. There’s always that thing about ‘Oh I don’t want a gay player in my locker room.” But who cares? If you’re gay, you’re gay. It’s about your personality. The only thing that matters is that you can play.

A week later I was to attend Rony’s show at Wall at the W Hotel. I asked him about being a part owner of Wall: “Yes, and I can play within that spectrum. I’m able to take my musician hat off and put my business hat on. We’ll have EDM musicians come to Wall because that’s what people want to hear.”

The Wall was an elegant, sexy space, with black and purple wall colors, a minimalist gold orb hanging from the ceiling, and a giant screen behind the DJ booth. It was sleek and tantalizing, much like Rony himself. I spotted Rony nodding his head behind the DJ booth to the opener. It seemed like the perfect space for his kind of music. I was able to briefly meet Rony before the show. He showed a genuinely happy grin and welcomed me to his club.

While best known for other projects, Rony has had lifelong aspirations to be a musician. “I’ve been making music since I was 14-years-old. I love disco and '80s style electronic music. I was always interested in making dance music. I looked up to Louie Vega and he really helped me out when I got started. But as house music has become more fragmented, the scene’s changed.”

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I asked a few guests their opinions about the show and Rony beforehand. I ran into a group of three who had been listening to Rony on the radio for over two years now, originally when he had a show called “Sunrise Radio.” They flew down all the way from Toronto to see him. They had flown down last year and were able to run into him. They spoke about how welcoming and kind he was and how they’d be his life-long fans. He always tweeted back at them.

The radio show is what I consider a pivotal point in Rony’s musical career. While the struggle for affirmation as someone who could be seen a gimmick musician has been tough, he has finally established himself as a force in the house music world. “The music I do for the radio show is more melodic. It’s underground. I play a lot of deep house. It’s for people driving on the road. When I perform live you know it’s a lot more…oomph…a lot more energy. You’ll see when you come to club Wall. It’s a small sexy space. I put a lot more energy into my live performances.”

Do you think the radio show has changed your fan base and how people listen to you?
It’s been huge. I love being able to play the whole spectrum. It’s very difficult to come up with something every show. A new hour every week. I come up with brand new tracks every week and I’ve been doing that on a consistent basis. People say I’m on this [electronic music] bandwagon. But then I’ve been on this bandwagon for more than fifteen years. You don’t see a lot of musicians coming up with a new hour of music every week. It’s not a gimmick.

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For the most part, people who knew that Rony was playing were a rarity. Many of the other guests were either at the event because they were staying at the W Hotel, which the club was attached to, or because they knew a promoter, or because they just wanted a place to be. I was curious how this would affect the dancing situation when Rony finally went up.

To my surprise, the guests exploded during his 1-3 AM set. The way the club was set up, there were three columns in front of the DJ booth. The ones on the right and left flanks were riddled with the non-dancing, bored drinkers, who were just making an appearance. However, the middle section was packed with engaged people thrusting and twitching to Rony’s pumping sounds. I was one of them. His crisp, synth-heavy beats reminded me of Johnny Jewel, and the Afro-Caribbean beats got the rhythm in my blood flowing. I could hear the two-three clave inspirations that I’m sure Rony picked up from living years in Miami. He coolly stood high above the DJ tables, smoking a cigarette, controlling the party. The only thing that would be cooler is if he took out a Spalding right then and there and spun it on his finger infinitely, like the Iguana at the Start scene of NBA Jam.

The vibe was different and far more personal than the kitchen-sink self-promotional behemoth that is Ultra. “Everything at Ultra now is EDM, which is a bunched of mashed together noisy radio bullshit,” Rony had told me. “I think house music is great. It’s organic. People always forget that house music started in here in Detroit. It went over to Europe and became trance and it came back here as something else. It’s making the late natural transition from noisy to sophisticated.”

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Does it make you more nervous to guard Shaq or to play or a packed audience?
It’s two different worlds. Totally different. Basketball is just…pressure. Playing music is fun. You know when I played basketball I wasn’t living in the moment. You go from practice to another city to another game and you think, “Where has it all gone?” When your career’s over it’s hard to remember anything. So now I’m living in the moment. And every moment is fun. A lot people talk about trying to find their passion in life, you know? I’ve just been lucky where I can have multiple passions.

Have you ever played as yourself in NBA Jam?
No, (laughs) I’ve never played it. But my 11-year-old daughter plays as me in the new one. She unlocked me.

Is it surreal to watch her play as you?
I mean my whole life is surreal, you know? How the fuck did I get here?

Note: Fernando “Holiday” Vargas came to this show as well and the photos are his. He was robbed the next day of his entire camera kit in a parking lot while walking to his car. See more of his work at cityneversleeps.com and show him some love.

Jonathan Peltz is a writer living in Miami, and he will take on any challengers in NBA Jam. Reach him at .

Want more of Jonathan's Miami escapades? Here's his interview with Afrojack and a story about going to Cam'ron's sad birthday party.