Former Seton Hall star Herb Pope's robbery conviction echoes 'White Men Can't Jump'



Mike DeCourcy @TSNMike
Updated at 10:27 a.m. ET

Art imitates life. Life imitates art. And Herb Pope is on his way to prison.
A former star at Seton Hall, Pope pleaded guilty Thursday in U.S. district court to a series of charges that include armed bank robbery and could be sentenced to nearly 10 years in prison. Pope has had a troubled life that included being shot four times while a senior at Aliquippa High in western Pennsylvania. So maybe what occurred when he was involved in a robbery at Sewickley Savings Bank in a Pittsburgh suburb wasn’t all that humorous.

MORE: Most heinous crimes connected to athletes
Then again …
At some point in the process of robbing the bank, Pope informed tellers at the bank he was a professional basketball player from Aliquippa.
Anyone who knows anything about basketball in the Pittsburgh area knows that a professional player from any part of the region is only slightly more uncommon than a unicorn. So it couldn’t have been all that difficult for authorities to track down Pope.
This called to mind the scene from “White Men Can’t Jump” in which the character of Raymond, played by former NBA star Marques Johnson, put on a stocking cap to rob a nearby liquor store to fund his gambling on pickup basketball. The store owner immediately recognized him.
“Raymond, is that you?”
“Man, this ain’t Raymond!”
What many might not know is that writer/director Ron Shelton got the inspiration for that scene from a an actual incident from the 1970s, when a 7-0 former NBA center named Reggie Harding disguised himself to hold up a gas station in his neighborhood three times.
By the third, the owner simply said, “Reggie, I know it’s you.”
“No, man, it ain’t me,” Harding replied. “Shut up and give me the money.”
Pope scored more than 1,300 points in a four-year career that began at New Mexico State before a transfer to Seton Hall for his final three seasons, ending in 2011-12. He averaged 15.1 points and 10.4 points in his final season.
Police found Pope four days after the Sewickley robbery at the home of Tyler Bridges, in part because the automobile in identified as the getaway car for the two robbery suspects was found parked in front of Bridges’ home. A case against Bridges, Pope’s half-brother, is pending.
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported another man police found at the home said he had been paid to do tattoo work on the two men; some of the bills he had been given were identified through their serial numbers as being part of the stolen money.
There was no report of what the tattoos said.