Rodman's Prodigal Father Has No Regrets -- `He's Like Me,' Says Star's Dad

ANGELES CITY, Philippines - This town of cheap hotels, go-go bars and tawdry discos used to bustle until dawn, but that was before nearby Clark Air Base, one of the biggest U.S. military installations in Asia, shut down. Now, its vitality gone, Angeles feels like the end of the line, a place where characters who never quite fit into any of life's conventional niches somehow wind up.

Characters like Philander Rodman Jr., basketball star Dennis Rodman's bad-to-the-bone old man.

Philander Rodman ran off with another woman when Dennis was a child, and hasn't seen his famous son since. He says he's been in and out of jail, and left the U.S. Air Force under a cloud when he was accused of stealing military equipment. He runs a dingy bar called the Full House, and he has two Filipino wives, which he justifies because he says he's a Muslim. He has 27 children - the last born three weeks ago - "from four different wives and extracurricular activities," he boasts, swigging down a San Miguel beer.

And at age 56, Philander Rodman says he plans to keep up his prolific pace of procreation. "I got some more babies left," he said, with some of his younger children gathered around him. "I'm shooting for 30."

That's what you call bad. Just plain bad.

"They think Dennis is bad," Rodman said of his son, whose autobiography, "Bad as I Wanna Be," topped the bestseller lists this summer. "They ain't been around me. . . . They ain't seen nothin'. I'm the bad one." And you get the feeling he just might be right.

Because of the famous son he abandoned, and because this country is crazy for basketball, Philander Rodman has become something of a local celebrity. During this year's NBA playoffs - in which his son's team, the Chicago Bulls, won the league championship - Philippine reporters trooped up here from Manila to interview him. He has been featured on Philippine television. He keeps a bulging file of the various articles that have been written about him.

In "Bad as I Wanna Be," Dennis Rodman writes of his absent father: "I haven't seen him in more than 30 years, so what's there to miss? I just look at it like this: Some man brought me into this world. That doesn't mean I have a father."

A Sports Illustrated profile from 1988, when Rodman was with the Detroit Pistons, quotes him as saying of his father: "He just disappeared one day. Haven't seen him since. . . . I felt shut out not having a father, always having to look out for myself."

Philander Rodman said he now writes and sends faxes to Dennis frequently, asking to be able to see him again, but has never received a reply. He said he watches all the Bulls games he can, when they are televised here on ESPN or on local stations.

"I don't ever plan to ask him for anything," Philander Rodman said of Dennis. "I didn't make the money - that's his money. I just like to look at (him) and say, `That's my son.' "

"I understand Dennis's bitterness toward me," he said, explaining that his own father - Philander Rodman Sr. - abandoned him, leaving his family in Memphis to seek a better life up North.

Philander Rodman said he divorced Dennis's mother in 1970, in Texas, and married the woman he was dating, a military chaplain's daughter, a week later. That marriage lasted until 1977, and produced Philander Rodman III, who now plays basketball for the University of Idaho. (Shirley Rodman, Philander Rodman's first wife and mother of Dennis, confirmed her former spouse's identity in a telephone interview from Dallas.)

"You want to change scenery every once in a while," Philander Rodman said of his love for different women. "You get tired of cake every day. You want pie!"

While he hasn't been around physically to have any impact on Dennis Rodman's life or career, he said he still sees much of his own rebelliousness and lack of conventionality in the flamboyant son who paints his hair and professes a fondness for displaying himself naked.

"You can't control me. You can't control him," Philander Rodman said. "When I see him talk, I look at me. When I see him walk, I look at me. When I read this," he said, holding up his ever-present copy of Rodman's book, "I'm reading about myself."