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At 5 feet 3 inches, Tyrone Bogues, better known as Muggsy Bogues, holds the record as the shortest player in NBA history.

He was drafted by the Washington Bullets in 1987, but he's best known for playing with the Charlotte Hornets alongside Alonzo Mourning and Larry Johnson.

Bogues says he comes from a family of "five-footers," so when he stopped growing, it was no surprise.

"I always tell people, I think my mom had me when I was 5' 3" — I don't remember ever growing," Bogues says.

'Little Ty'

Raised in Baltimore's Lafayette projects, Bogues loved to play basketball — but he always had to prove himself. The other kids didn't take him seriously on the court, saying he was too short to play.

Tyrone Bogues had a passion for basketball at an early age. Growing up in Baltimore's Lafayette projects, he earned the nickname "Muggsy" for his scrappy, aggressive defense. Courtesy of Tyrone Bogues hide caption

itoggle caption Courtesy of Tyrone Bogues

"I was Little Ty, Little Tyrone. I always got this negative feedback from the game of basketball," he says. People told him he was wasting his time; he'd never play basketball. He remembers thinking, " 'Why were these people saying this? I know I could play.' "

When the team captains picked their players, Bogues was always left out.

"The game is being played and we got to sit over there and watch," he says. "You get tired of just watching."

So he and his friends found empty milk crates and cut the bottoms out to make baskets.

"We tied the milk crates on each end of the fence and we had our own milk crate basketball pickup game and it was a good time cause we could jump off the fence and dunk the basketball," he says. "You had to be creative in order to play and I wanted to play."

Even back then, Bogues was an aggressive defender.

"I had to play that way because I was small," he says. "A little kid that just was out there trying to create havoc, just trying to disrupt a lot of things."

That's when the older kids started to notice him.

"All of a sudden, little Muggsy started getting a little reputation in the neighborhood," he says.

Rolling With The Punches

Throughout his teenage years, Bogues continued to build that reputation on the court. He even became a star player on the Dunbar High School basketball team.

"We were the No. 1 team in the nation," he says.

Yet he still overheard his skeptics in the crowd questioning his ability to play.

"People still didn't believe: 'Well, he played in high school, he had success in high school, but it's a whole other world when you get to college.' "

Luckily, not everyone saw it that way.

Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, a school that's produced several NBA players, offered Bogues a four-year basketball scholarship.

"Wake Forest came knocking on the door and I accepted that offer," he says. "It changed my life completely."

Still, his critics were relentless.

Even the commentators at games openly criticized Wake Forest for taking a chance on Bogues.

" [They would say] 'Why did they waste a four year scholarship on a little kid that's only 5 foot 3, who can barely see over a table?' " Bogues says. "All this negativity started coming from so many directions."

It was almost too much to handle, but Bogues' talent was undeniable.

"We had the chance to play a national televised game against [North Carolina State University]," he says.

Finally, this was his chance to shine at Wake Forest. And it was one of his best games.

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Chicago Bulls' Michael Jordan (left) looks down on Muggsy Bogues during a game in 1995. Bogues, who stands at 5' 3", is the shortest player in NBA history. Ruth Fremson/AP hide caption

itoggle caption Ruth Fremson/AP

Chicago Bulls' Michael Jordan (left) looks down on Muggsy Bogues during a game in 1995. Bogues, who stands at 5' 3", is the shortest player in NBA history.

Ruth Fremson/AP

"I had 20 points, 10 assists," Bogues says. "From that moment on, I continued to keep building that reputation."

The stage was set for Bogues' professional career. By the time he graduated, he had a real shot at the NBA.

The Draft

On the night of the 1987 NBA Draft, Bogues was one of the many prospective players sitting in the crowd in New York. He had no idea what his future in basketball would look like.

NBA Commissioner David Stern said from his podium, "The Washington Bullets select" — pause — "Tyrone Bogues of Wake Forest."

"It felt like the whole world was lifted off your shoulders," Bogues says. "You felt like, 'I have arrived.' "

The 22-year-old, 140-pound, 5-foot-3 Tyrone "Muggsy" Bogues became the shortest player in league history — a record he still holds.

"All the naysayers, the people saying that you'll never [play]. Why are you even thinking about it? A guy my size wanting to pursue a game that was supposed to be meant for the big guys," Bogues says. "That was a special, special moment."

NBA

Basketball

Diane von Furstenberg was a young socialite when she first started showing her designs to New York boutiques and magazine editors in the late 1960s. The dresses she created weren't very expensive and they definitely weren't couture. They were wrap dresses — made of gentle jersey, gorgeously patterned, with a deep-cut V-neck and light belt.

"It's a dress that was practical and pretty and sexy," von Furstenberg tells NPR's Audie Cornish. It's been described, she says, as "a dress that you get the men with ... but he doesn't mind taking you to his mother."

It sold by the millions.

In her new memoir, The Woman I Wanted to Be, von Furstenberg tells her unlikely story of success. Her mother was a Belgian Holocaust survivor — a history von Furstenberg was always aware of, though her mother didn't speak of it often.

"She had tattooed numbers on her arm, but she had it removed because people kept on looking at it," von Furstenberg remembers. "And when she did talk about it, she protected me. ... She didn't want to burden me with the heaviness of it all."

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The Woman I Wanted to Be

by Diane Von Furstenberg

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Read an excerpt

On her mother's strength

My mother was very minute; she was small and very slender. But she was probably the strongest person I ever met. She was very strict. Today, one would say maybe she was a "tiger mom," but I'm glad she was like that because she built my character. ...

I never questioned my mother. I never questioned anything about her. I just tried, always, to make it easier for her because, even though she wouldn't show me her scars, she was wounded — and I knew that. And therefore, I always was a good girl and trying to please her at all costs. And so, I never, ever questioned anything about her.

On a New York magazine cover story that portrayed Diane and her first husband, Egon von Furstenberg, as a cosmopolitan, "prince and princess" couple

It's just that we were very young, Egon and I, and good looking. And he was a prince and I was a princess. When I actually read the article — it was a cover story and it says "The Couple That Has Everything: Is Everything Enough?" Somehow, when I read that, I just thought that's not really who I am and, therefore, I can't really be a couple — I have to be me. And that, in a sense, kind of made us separate. I don't know if it's the only reason — probably not — but it was kind of the turning point. But we stayed very, very good friends. It's just that I did not want to be married.

On not wanting to be dependent

I never wanted to be dependent on anyone, whether it was my father or my husband. When I was a little girl — a young girl — I did not really know what I wanted to do, but I did know the kind of woman I wanted to be. And I wanted to be an independent woman, a woman who is in the driving seat, and who is in charge of her own life. And that clearly means, also, being financially independent. So that's really what I wanted to be and I became that woman. I was lucky that I became that woman very, very early in life, you know, in my late 20s. And that's that.

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Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, wore a Diane von Furstenberg wrap dress during her visit to Australia in April. Von Furstenberg, who created the wrap dress some 40 years ago, says she realizes how rare it is for a dress to hold its place in fashion for so long. Chris Jackson/Getty Images hide caption

itoggle caption Chris Jackson/Getty Images

Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, wore a Diane von Furstenberg wrap dress during her visit to Australia in April. Von Furstenberg, who created the wrap dress some 40 years ago, says she realizes how rare it is for a dress to hold its place in fashion for so long.

Chris Jackson/Getty Images

On her initial discomfort with being called a "designer"

It's not reluctance. It's humility. You know, I worked in this mill for this Italian man who taught me everything and then I made a few samples and then I brought them to America. You know, I made easy little dresses. That's what I did. I didn't think I was actually designing them and I didn't think I was making a fashion statement. Yet, this year, I celebrate the 40th anniversary of my famous wrap dress. And I sold millions of them and generations and generations of women have worn it. So, all of a sudden, it just hit me. I said, maybe I did not want to make a fashion statement, yet I did. And it was actually more than just a fashion statement; it turned out that it was sociological. So I guess, then, now I am accepting it.

On why the wrap dress took off in the '70s

It's a dress that's both proper and seductive — practical and sexy. It just has everything. You know, you can go in a boardroom and make a presentation and feel feminine, and yet not exposed. ... [With no snaps or zippers] you could take it out and slip in and out of it making no noise.

On whether the intent was to create a dress that could be taken off easily

None of it was the intent, but it was the reality.

On her long, complicated relationship with the wrap dress

I took it for granted, that little dress, even though it paid for all my bills, it paid for my children's education, it paid for my houses, it paid everything — my fame, my success. But, the moment this year that I decided that I was going to honor it, I looked at it in a completely different way. And I looked at not just what it had done for me, but its place in society and how incredible and rare that is that a dress lives that long. So now, I am totally proud of it.

More on Diane von Frstenberg

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Diane Von Furstenberg Designs Hospital Gowns

On whether she feels her mother's influence in her own success

She used to say that I was her torch of freedom, and I feel it. I feel that I carry in my hand the flame — the flame of freedom, the flame of something that was taken away from her. And she did survive it. And she wasn't supposed to have a child and I was born. So my birth was a miracle. So it is, to some degree, my duty to honor my mother and honor her sufferings with a lot of joie de vivre because, at the end, life had won.

Interview Highlights

On one significant hallucination he had as a young man

That was a big one for me. I was taking an art history class. And when the screen went white, I hallucinated a huge, green, rubbery amphibious creature coming up from the bottom of the screen and it shocked me so badly that I can still feel it in the soles of my feet and my hands. ... It happened at a time when I was actively sort of looking for a sign. I needed direction in my life and I didn't have a lot of self-confidence and I didn't know where I was going to go or what I was going to do. And this frog provided me with the answers to that by way of making me feel that I had within me everything that I needed to go forth and make myself a productive life.

On the odd jobs he worked to supplement his income when he couldn't support himself by cartooning

For one thing, I worked at an advertising agency. And then for most of the '80s, a good friend of mine got me a job at a studio that made animated cartoons for children. And they weren't the kind of animated cartoons that you could take a lot of pride in. ... I don't want to badmouth my employers. They were awfully good to me. But the company was called Ruby-Spears. And the cartoons that I worked on were things like the Mister T show, Rubik the Amazing Cube, which was launched five years after the [Rubik's cube] fad was dead. ... I worked on the storyboards for those things and other things.

i i

A page from Jim. Copyright 2014 Jim Woodring/ Fantagraphics hide caption

itoggle caption Copyright 2014 Jim Woodring/ Fantagraphics

A page from Jim.

Copyright 2014 Jim Woodring/ Fantagraphics

On the frequency of his "apparitions" later in life

I haven't [seen any] for a couple of years now, actually. Last one I saw, I came up the stairs of my house to the second floor landing and I saw a guy standing at the end of the hall ... wearing a leather harness on his face and grimacing and staring at me. And at first I thought it was my reflection in the mirror until I realized there was no mirror there. And then I just lingered long enough for me to scrutinize it. And, as I usually do, I drew it. I made a picture of it. And it's a scary image.

On his reactions to hallucinations

It isn't frightening because something in me knows that it's not threatening. I don't know what it is. It's hard to explain how easily I can accept these things even though they're completely irrational. The one that I had before this, which was about four years ago, I looked out my window and I saw Thomson and Thompson from the Herg stories, the Tintin stories, in black and white walking down the street behind a 9-foot-tall hooker in red hot pants. When it resolved into what it was, it was just a woman and her two kids walking down the street but for about 10 seconds, I saw the aforementioned group in completely lifelike detail. It was as if they were really there.

More on Jim Woodring

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A Weird, And Wonderful, Cartoon 'Congress'

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Cosmetics giant L'Oral purchased Carol's Daughter, a beauty company that sells natural hair and skin products for black women, earlier this week. It may seem like an unlikely chapter in the story of a business that began in a Brooklyn kitchen.

That story began in 1993, when Lisa Price began blending body butters, oils and natural fragrances in her Brooklyn home. At her mother's urging, Price brought the goods to craft fairs and began to sell them. Those products sold well and did even better when she added hair care for black women who, like her, wore their hair in its natural, unstraightened state.

Two decades later, that kitchen-born brand has a devoted following among African-American women. Carol's Daughter items now sit on shelves at Target, Sephora and Ulta and are sometimes sold on the Home Shopping Network. At one point, Price even expanded to seven brick-and-mortar boutiques, where customers could get advice and demonstrations on how to use the products. Carol's Daughter earned an estimated $27 million in sales last year and claims celebrity fans including Jada Pinkett Smith, Gabrielle Union and Mary J. Blige.

A Beloved Brand, A Troubled Business

Somewhere between 2010 and 2011, Carol's Daughter began to struggle. Sales were down in the boutiques, and a passel of competitors also began to flourish by servicing the burgeoning natural hair care market. According to BusinessWeek, Price eventually sold to Pegasus Capital Advisors, although she remained the face of the company.

YouTube

Still, store sales faltered. In May, five of the seven boutiques were closed and Carol's Daughter Stores LLC filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. Fans worried that their favorite products would disappear.

Then on Monday, company founder Lisa Price posted a video that quickly got passed around on Facebook.

In it, she explained that Carol's Daughter would be "joining the L'Oral family." Price said the French cosmetics giant would "take what I built and solidify its place in history and beauty and I don't have to wonder if in 20 years from now, 30 years, from now, if there'll still be a Carol's Daughter brand." In a statement, a L'Oral spokesperson said that "Lisa Price will remain in her role, serving as the creative visionary and spokesperson for the brand and will continue to lead product development."

Will Customers Follow Carol's Daughter?

Even if the Carol's Daughter brand moves forward, some wonder if the customers will follow, since it's no longer a black-owned business. Noliwe Rooks, a professor at Cornell University specializing in black women and image and gender issues, says the intense interest in the future of Carol's Daughter comes from customers' deep emotional attachment to the brand — and that the attachment begins with Price.

"Her love for that community, and love for black women and economic possibility for black people is as much a part of her creation story and her narrative as whatever her products would do for your hair," Rooks says.

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Lisa Price, the founder of Carol's Daughter, at its pop-up store in New Orleans in 2011. Johnny Nunez/Getty Images hide caption

itoggle caption Johnny Nunez/Getty Images

Lisa Price, the founder of Carol's Daughter, at its pop-up store in New Orleans in 2011.

Johnny Nunez/Getty Images

Rooks points out that Price founded Carol's Daughter at a time when many black women were starting to wear their hair in its natural state, and many had difficulty finding products that would work for their hair's unique texture.

Now there are several beauty bloggers posting how-to videos using homemade products that mimic Carol's Daughter. Hair care companies like Mixed Chicks and Miss Jessie's, both founded by biracial women, serve curly-haired women of all ethnicities. Carol's Daughter has also vied for customers outside the black community, leaving some of the company's early fans feeling alienated.

A blogger who goes by the name Honey Bii noted one Carol's Daughter ad campaign that featured several racially ambiguous women — as opposed to the African-American ones who helped to launch the brand.

"I'm not fair-complected," Honey Bii says, "and by no means do I feel that they [the ads] have to have this Afro-centric feel to it. But I feel like she sold us out." The thinking was that, in reaching for a broader demographic, Price was overlooking her original base.

"She really was, specifically, aiming at black women, who have a variety of hair textures," Rooks says. "But I'm not sure that's a niche that's as lucrative today." Hence the multicultural approach.

Ken Smikle, president of Chicago-based Target Market News, which monitors black consumer patterns, says the sale of Carol's Daughter to L'Oral makes sense: "Cosmetics is tough," he notes, "and it would be more logical for a company already engaged in the market to want to make a purchase and extend their ability to serve black customers."

L'Oral has a mixed track record with that.

Missteps In The African-American Market

On one hand, in 1998, L'Oral bought the "SoftSheen" line from Carson Products, a black-owned hair care firm, and it has maintained the line without a problem. On the other, in 2008, it featured Beyonce Knowles in its Feria hair color ads — and endured a storm of outrage on black social media sites. Bloggers were convinced the company had lightened Knowles' skin to appeal to a more mainstream aesthetic. L'Oral emphatically denied that, saying in a statement that "it is categorically untrue that L'Oral Paris altered Ms. Knowles' features or skin tone." But suspicion continued.

Smikle says L'Oral will have to master its learning curve as it reaches out to new customers, but — to paraphrase the company's motto — it'll be worth it. There are women of color here and beyond the U.S. who are just waiting for cosmetics made with them in mind.

"This is a good deal," Smikle asserts. "It's a good deal for the industry and it's certainly a good deal for those who are loyal customers of Carol's Daughter."

And probably a good deal for Lisa Price, who, L'Oral says, will still have a role in the company. Now the brand that she started in her kitchen will reach women around the world, and her products will be on shelves for a long time to come.

Correction Oct. 24, 2014

A previous Web version of this story incorrectly said that Carol's Daughter filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. It was actually Carol's Daughter Stores LLC that filed.