From the Pool to the Phelt

Just in case you've been entombed in an underground bunker (or stuck in a poker game) for the past few months, you may have missed what happened at the Olympics this year. A young man named Michael Phelps won a record eight gold medals to go with the six he already had. So, what does a single, 23-year-old guy do to celebrate an achievement like that? He comes to Vegas, naturally.

My good friend Mike Bertolini and Phelps have a mutual friend who let Mike know that Phelps wanted to come out, so Mike hooked him up with the Maloof brothers. They didn't disappoint, setting him up in the two-story basketball suite at the Palms, which is more than 10,000 square feet huge. It's called the basketball suite because it has a giant basketball court right there in the suite, along with two bedrooms and three Murphy beds that pull out of walls on the basketball court. This monster will (and did for two nights) hold up to 300 people!

With an entourage of 40 or 50, Phelps needed every bit of sleeping space available. He brought all of his friends from high school, college, and swimming. What a pal! He created a weekend that none of them will ever forget (and neither will I).
Phelps also had one request for my friend Mike; he wanted to meet some famous poker players. That's where I came in. Mike called me and asked me to bring some big names to meet Phelps. I brought Jennifer and Marco Traniello, Hoyt Corkins, Daniel Negreanu, and Michael's favorite player (sadly, that wasn't me), my pops, Doyle Brunson.

The first night, we had dinner at my favorite restaurant, Nine steakhouse. We took over about half of the joint for our four-hour dinner. Chef Barry really outdid himself with more courses (and drinks) than I could count.

After dinner, we needed to burn off some of that food, so we hit the court up in his suite. Drunken basketball is the second-best pastime. The best? A drunken poker tournament, which we also had up in his suite (of course, I won).

Next, we decided to hit the gaming tables. Phelps and I both like roulette, so we tag-teamed a table and crushed it. I won over a hundred bucks, and Michael won almost a grand! We sensed that the Maloofs were getting nervous, so not wanting to seem ungrateful to our hosts, we gave them a break and quit playing. After a few more drinks, I crawled up to my room to hibernate for about 12 hours.

When I came down for dinner at Nove, Michael was already in full swing at the bar. He immediately ordered me a Belvedere martini and had it in my hand before I could explain to him that I thought I'd already consumed my alcohol quota for the weekend. He then started making fun of one of his friends for not drinking.

His friend seemed to take great offense to this, and ordered us three tequila shots. While I was busy looking around for a bucket just in case I upchucked, my cousin Ken came up to the bar. He and Phelps got into a conversation about whiskey, and Ken ordered Michael a double shot of Jack Daniels single barrel, which didn't last long.

"Incredible!" I thought to myself. This guy was drinking some sort of mixed drink when I got here, then the tequila, then the whiskey, all in less than five minutes! If all of this wasn't enough, he then asked me why I wasn't at the pool during the day. Apparently, while I was lying in bed recuperating, he and his friends had been at the pool since 9 a.m. And they weren't out there training, either.

I figured this was just an anomaly, but he told me that he and his friends drank as much as three times a week, even during training. He quit only a month before the Olympics! Ah, to be 23 again … I'm sure that being in the shape he's in doesn't hurt, either. As much as he drank, I never heard him slur a word or seem the least bit impaired.

Michael also has the best attitude of any celebrity I've ever been around. My friend Lenny brought his 11-year-old son (my godson), who is a huge Phelps fan, down to meet Michael, and he was gracious enough to chat with him for more than 20 minutes about swimming, and to sign posters and take many pictures. In fact, over the weekend that I was with him, he must have taken literally 500 pictures with fans. Not only did he never say no to a photo request, he was totally into each and every one of them. He would hug the fan or hold his arms up with his giant childlike smile that makes the camera love him so much.

You can really tell that he's on cloud nine, enjoying his celebrity and everything that comes with it. "It's like I'm in a dream," he told me over dinner. With 14 gold medals and an estimated $50 million to $100 million in endorsements coming his way, I guess it's a pretty nice dream at that, and it couldn't have happened to a nicer guy … well, except maybe me.