Former NBA star Dennis Rodman was sentenced to 104 hours of community service and three years of informal probation in Orange County court Tuesday after being found guilty of contempt for failing to pay child support, a court official said.
“Rodman also must pay current child and spousal support, and he still owes hundreds of thousands of dollars in additional back child support,” the official said.
Rodman still has to settle any remaining disputes over child support and an additional contempt charge when he appears in court June 22, the official said.
Rodman, 51, spent 14 years in the NBA but is now broke, his attorney and financial advisor told The Times this year.
“In all honesty, Dennis, although a very sweet person, is an alcoholic,” said Peggy Williams, his financial advisor. “His sickness impacts his ability to get work.”
In March, an Orange County court commissioner told Rodman that he faced a possible 20-day jail stint or community service for contempt of court unless he came up with $860,376 in child and spousal support he owes his ex-wife by Tuesday.
Rodman’s wild ways and eccentric hair are well known in Orange County, where he has lived off and on since the 1990s. He has worn a wedding dress to promote a book, dated Madonna, married Carmen Electra and been a competitor on Donald Trump’s “Celebrity Apprentice.”
His former oceanfront home in Newport Beach could have been mistaken for a police substation. The police were called there 80 times, mostly to quell raucous parties. Rodman arrived for his 40th birthday party in a helicopter — which landed illegally on the beach.
His 47-foot speedboat, Sexual Chocolate, was towed when he docked it at another person’s slip in Newport Harbor. He plied Balboa Peninsula’s narrow streets in a Humvee adorned with a painting of a naked woman and a Ford F-350 pickup with a self-portrait on the hood.
When his third wife, Michelle Rodman, sued him for divorce in 2004, Rodman sold the beach pad. At the time, he listed his previous year’s income as $570,000. He said he had $3.4 million in property and $1.45 million in stocks and bonds. But, he said, maintaining his hard-charging lifestyle cost him more than $31,000 a month.
The couple have spent several years trying to reconcile, but the marriage was dissolved this year after his wife petitioned the court again.
Rodman won three NBA championships with the Bulls in the late 1990s and also played briefly with the Lakers.
