Opening Tip-Off

I got a call from Sports Illustrated yesterday. They’re doing one of those sidebar pieces where they ask guys to name their starting five, the best basketball players they ever shared a court with. “You don’t want that,” I told the kid on the phone. “I was in the NBA for seventeen years. I could tell you about guys like Lon McGee, who wore one pair of sneakers his entire career, held together with tape and glue and sheer will-power. Or Pig-Iron Von Ziegler, who smelled like machine oil and whose joints screeched like a stepped-on cat by the end of his career. The best? Who cares about the best? Why settle for the best when I can give you the most remarkable?”

The kid thanked me politely, but he told me that wasn’t what he needed for his piece. He’d talk to his editor, though, and mention my idea to him. He’d get back to me.

Well, I’m not going to live forever, and I can’t wait for his editor. I’ve got tales to tell, and I have to tell them while I’m still kicking. So here it is, my starting five. Not the most talented guys I’ve ever played with, but instead, the dirt workers and edge cases and oddballs and sideshow escapees. These are the guys that I’ll never forget. These are the characters.

The Shooting Guard

The second day of training camp is always the worst. The first day, the coaches understand. They’ve spent the summer guzzling Maui cocktails and wolfing down steaks at the 19th hole, and they’re feeling just as fat and lazy as the players. So, day one’s full of inspirational speeches and mission statements and trash talk and hazing of the rookies. Fun, but hardly aerobic. By day two, though, guys are fighting to keep their jobs, and it’s all running and drills and conditioning. Hard work up in the mountains, where the Phoenix Suns held camp.

But not for the Hindu.

That’s what we called him back then, long before the Greatest Highlight Ever. That summer, he was just some scrawny, undrafted Indian shooting guard. Shaven head, quiet, good posture.

Coach had us doing baseline-to-baseline sprints. “Barf drills” he called them, because we’d be running from one end of the court to the other until somebody lost their breakfast on the hardwood. Some years, there’ll be a guy who’s not proud, and he’ll yak after three steps just to be a wise ass. But not this year. This hear, we had a stubborn bunch, and nobody wanted to be first. We must have done 500 laps, and some guys looked pretty green, but nobody was willing to make the sacrificial spill. I sure as hell wasn’t willing. I had to prove to the coaches and everyone else that I still had something left. That I could still be a player in this league.

The Hindu kid outran us all. After the first minute, he’d already started lapping us. And not just the big oafs like me, but the young, springy guards, too. Twenty minutes in and he was still going at full speed, his little feet pounding the floor like a drum machine.

So, ok, fine. He was fresh and speedy and had young legs. But the thing is, he didn’t sweat, not a drop, and he wasn’t breathing hard. Everybody breathes hard the second day of training camp. Everybody sweats.

And then, by contrast, there was me, stumbling along, near passed out. A decade ago I’d been the number one overall pick in the NBA draft, fresh off a triumphant NCAA championship. By November of my rookie season, people were comparing me to the greats: the Malones, the McHales, the Garnetts. Hall of Famers. I had size, speed, and hunger. I could shoot reliably from mid-range and had about seven spin moves in the post that would’ve given Hakeem Olajuwan cross-eyes.

But then I had the injuries. Broken thumb on my shooting hand. Nagging abdominal strain. Lower back spasms. Torn MCL. They piled up. And so did the prime rib and the vodka martinis. Ten years into my so-called career, when I should have been racking up All-Star appearances and MVPs and championship rings, I found myself in Flagstaff, Arizona, just trying to make it onto the team roster.

And, yes, that second day of training camp, the first guy to barf was me.

I stood at midcourt, hunched over, hands on my knees, puke on my sneakers, trying to fight off the ten years of tears I felt welling up from my heart. Why was I still doing this? I wasn’t a player anymore. I wasn’t anybody. The thing to do was go back to the hotel, paw my way through the honor bar till I could get a flight out, go home, and stay there for the rest of my life.

I heard soft footsteps approach, and I looked into the brown, still acne-dotted face of the Hindu. Oh, you know his name: Le Sai Baba. The Fakir. He gave me that far-off stare that the league’s best defenders would learn to fear, and he said to me, in his painstaking, accented English, “I can pierce my cheeks with needles. I can sleep on a bed of nails. I can put my hand in boiling water. I can hang from a tree with hooks in my back. If you wish, I can teach you to run 500 laps and not vomit.”

I must’ve stared at him a full minute before I could catch enough breath to talk. “Yeah?” I wheezed. “And what do you get out of it?”

“When you rebound the ball,” he said, “you will pass it to me. I will score. This way, we win many games.”

Well. You know. I would have just laughed, only I was too tired to laugh. And that’s how I, a ten-year broken-down veteran, came under the tutelage of a 19-year-old foreign kid.

I spent every minute I could with him: on the team bus, at practices, at shoot-arounds. I even asked to have my locker next to his. He talked and talked and talked. And I listened. He knew stuff. He knew stuff about the body, about the mind, about meditation, about pain and pain and pain and how to will it down to something smaller that you could set aside and let do its job without breaking you.

I made the team that year. At the end of the season, when I went home for the summer after we got knocked out of the first-round playoffs, I was voted the league’s Most Improved Player. My agent was telling me I had a respectable contract extension to look forward to. And I could go a few nights in a row without needing a drink.

Five years later, I was there for Le Sai Baba’s last game. You remember it. You’ve seen the highlight. The Greatest Highlight Ever. Game Seven of the NBA Finals, our Suns team against Deffy Thompson’s Sixers. The game’s tied, Deffy’s got the ball with 3.5 seconds left on the clock, so he has to shoot it or we all go into overtime. He fires off his smooth jumper just a little short, and I go up for the rebound along with four enemy jerseys. But I know where the ball is going, I almost always do (something the Fakir taught me), and my hands grab it, and I pass it to Le Sai. He flies. No, not jumps, not sails to the rim á la Jordan. He just flies, arcing through the air, across the court. He flies, get it? And when he reaches the basket, he dunks it for the win.

You know that old argument: Was his greatest maneuver the flying dunk, or the Indian rope trick he ended his short career with that night, climbing toward the rafters and vanishing from sight in front of the world?

You ask me, the answer is neither. In the estimation of this old broken-down power forward, his greatest trick was, well, me. His greatest trick was giving me something I never had. Something I’d mixed up with arrogance and then lost sight of altogether. The Fakir’s greatest trick was giving me some simple dignity.

I don’t know where Le Sai Baba ended up, but when I see him (and I know I will, even if I’m a cricket and he’s a king) I’m handing him my championship ring. He didn’t stick around long enough to collect his own. And I don’t really need mine.

The Point Guard

Jarie Doyle had eyes that hurt to look at. Blue, clear, bright as diamonds, they seemed to peer into you, through you, beyond you. Whenever we talked, I tried to stare at his chin.

During my second year as a pro baller, he was our starting point guard, and he was phenomenal. The point guard is the guy who typically runs the team. His job is to dribble the ball up the court and direct the offense like a traffic cop. He sets up the plays and gets guys into position. He knows where his teammates are and he knows where his opponents are, and he knows where everyone is going. It’s called court vision, and Jarie Doyle had it.

We were playing Sacramento when Doyle made the most amazing pass I’d ever seen. I was its lucky recipient. We were running down the floor on a fast break toward our basket, Doyle leading with the ball, me trailing. All Doyle had to do was lob the rock straight up in the air for me to catch and slam down for a guaranteed ESPN highlight. But I slipped on a puddle of sweat and lurched left. It was the kind of little mishap that can ruin the flow of a beautiful play, but Doyle didn’t let that happen. Somehow, without turning around, he could tell I’d changed positions, and he adjusted, tossing the ball over his shoulder and right into my hands.

After the game, I came up to him. Looking right into his razor stubble, I asked how he’d managed such a beautiful, amazing, no-look pass.

“I see things,” he said. “I see a lot. I see where you are and where you’re going. I see where you’ve been.”

Where I’d been? What the hell was that supposed to mean?

“Look at me,” he said, his voice all frosty. He was creeping me out a little, and I told him as much.

“Look at me,” he said again. “You really need to look at me.”

I lifted my gaze and met his eyes. I felt my skin grow warm. My face tingled and a weird burning headache nestled in my forehead. “Don’t,” I whispered.

“I see things,” he said. “You were always big for your age, from the time you were a toddler. People thought you were older than you really were and had higher expectations of you. Your father played ball, a little bit, but not good enough, and he accumulated empty bottles instead of trophies. He blames you for doing what he couldn’t, and yet you can never do enough. You support your mother and two sisters, but they’ll be gone soon, and all your money and fame can’t help them. You’ll keep your swagger but lose your heart. Your powerful body, the only thing you could always count on, will start to betray you. So far, you’ve avoided your father’s path. You’ve done well. Not even a sip. But very soon you’ll falter, and you’ll begin your long, slow fall.” He closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, I looked away. “I’m sorry,” he said. “But I see things.”

I shoved him into his locker. I wrapped a hand around his throat and pulled back a fist, ready to drive it into his face. He didn’t try to resist. He just looked at me, unblinking.

I knew I could shatter him. I could dig my thumbs in his eyes. Blind him. Make him stop looking at me. But it wouldn’t matter, because it was too late. Because now, whenever I looked in the mirror, I’d see in me what he saw.

The day after my mother and sisters died in the roll-over accident—in the Cadillac SUV I was so proud to have given Mom—I took my first drink. I played that night, too, scoring 26 points for a win. Jarie Doyle passed me the ball a lot, but all through that game and afterward, he wouldn’t meet my eyes.

I guess he found what he saw hard to look at.

The Center

It’s on the books. You can look it up yourself. The biggest man ever to play in the league was center Roman Slezak, the so-called “Slovenian Monster.” He was a hair shy of eight feet tall, but that’s only because he wore a crew cut. And he was broad, too. Grown men bounced off him like pinballs off bumpers. Dunking the ball was no harder for him than adjusting a shower head. Or it shouldn’t have been, given his size and physical ability. Solid muscle. Frightening guy. Inhuman.

I played with him his only season, when we were both on a Seattle team going nowhere. It was supposed to be our year. We’d gotten the draft rights to the Slovenian Monster, and we planned to ride him all the way to championship glory. But we stank.

Everybody blamed Roman, and everybody was right. He was fine in practice—more than fine, he was unstoppable, a force of nature, a devourer of men—but when game time came, he couldn’t do anything. He let himself get pushed all over the court by skinny guys a foot shorter than him. When he caught the ball, it was like someone had clonked him over the head with an anvil. He couldn’t decide what to do, and he’d just sit there with his stupid baby face and look like he wanted to cry until the shot clock ran out.

After trying everything else they could think of, the coaches called on me to see if I could figure out what Roman’s problem was. “You’re our resident head case,” they told me. “If anyone can pry open his mind, it’s you.”

It’s always nice to feel useful.

One day after a late practice, I lay in wait for him. He was always the last one dressed, like he didn’t want to strip down around the other guys or something, so I stood quietly outside the locker room. Roman didn’t come out, and I passed the time by drinking vodka from my flask. More time, more drink, still no Roman. The Monster continued to hide.

When I couldn’t stand it any longer, I went inside. I found him hunched over in front of his locker like a rock formation, quaking with sobs.

“Hey, Roman,” I whispered, trying not to startle him. He seemed like a nice kid, but so did Lenny in Mice of Men, and I didn’t want to end up like something soft and pretty and limp. “C’mon, dude, whatever it is, it can’t be that bad.” I knew from bad. Oh, yeah. Nobody had a life as bad as mine, so if anybody had a right to blubbering, it was me, and cue the violins, thank you.

Roman looked up at me, snuffling.

I dragged over a folding chair and sat down across from him. I’ve always been a big man, but next to him, I was a child. “Roman,” I said, “you should talk about it.”

“Uh-uh,” he said, wiping tears with the heel of one mighty paw.

“It’s not good to keep stuff bottled up, man. It starts to get all yellow and infected. And then, whatever’s ailing you, it runs out and sickens everything. Your friends. Your family. Your game.”

Subtlety, that was me.

“Eleven,” he said, snorking.

I waited, but he gave me nothing more. “Eleven,” I repeated. “Hey, is Speedy bugging you?” Speedy Taggart, our back-up point guard, wore the number eleven on his jersey. He was as good a guy as you’ll ever play with, but if I found out he was doing something to mess up Roman’s game, I’d stuff him down the toilet.

Roman shook his head. “Everything different here. I learn English, but everything different. Everybody ask questions, but agent say talk to nobody. People give me things—presents, liquor, drugs, girls. Agent say don’t get in trouble, keep low profile. Everybody always looking at me, expecting me to make great play, do great thing, save team. Eleven.”

Eleven. Eleven. How many strippers did we have for Little Elijah Clarke’s birthday party? Could it have been eleven? Naw. And Roman wasn’t even there for that. He never partied with us. “Eleven?” I asked, but Roman just cried.

I tried to be understanding and sympathetic. Really, I did. For about eight seconds. Then, “Holy shit,” I barked. “You baby! You little ... you whiner! Don’t you get it? You made it. You got out of whatever radioactive Slovenian goat-hill podunk you came from and climbed all the way to the top: The National Basketball Association. Do you have any idea how many guys would give anything to be where you are now?” I didn’t have a guaranteed contract that year and was a bit sensitive on the matter. “Look, baby, our record’s 3 and 16. We stink. At this rate we’ll be out of playoff contention before the All-Star break. So you get that mammoth chin of yours up and start playing the way you can, or God help me, I’ll make you eat your own jock strap.”

He looked at me and his eyes kinda got funny, and I got afraid. Maybe I’d awoken something. Which is what the coaches wanted me to do, but they weren’t in the room with the Monster and I.

Then his face crumpled. He started sobbing again. “Eleven,” he said. “Only eleven.”

I got a weird notion. “Wait a minute,” I said. “You’re not ... ?”

He nodded, miserably. “Eleven.”

“Aw, shit,” I said. “Aw, no shit. You’re eleven.”

He winced like I’d slapped him. “Agent say don’t use bad language. But everyone here use bad language. Everything different.”

“Well, sh — shoot.”

I felt for the guy. I understood the pressure people put on a kid growing up, practically from the first time he touches a ball. Coaches, business execs, even the people who are supposed to have your back and take care of you. The people who call themselves your friends. Your family. Your own parents.

“Alright, son,” I said, putting a hand on his granite-slab of a shoulder. “Let’s take you home. We can get ice cream on the way.”

Roman rode the bench the rest of the season. I hung out with him as much as I could. We ate a lot of ice cream together. And at the end of the season, when he hugged me good-bye at the airport before heading back to his radioactive goat hill, he nearly squeezed my lungs flat. “Quit crying,” I told him, doing a bit of blinking myself.

Now, when you ask me the best big man I ever played with, I can’t say Roman Slezak. And not just because the eight-footer wasn’t very good. It’s just that he wasn’t very big.