I May Be Wrong But I Doubt It (15 page)

If the Playing Is All
You’re Going to Do,
You’ve Missed the Boat

I was watching a Bryant Gumbel
Real Sports
episode last summer that had a long segment on Muhammad Ali. And it was wonderful to see that his mind was so great. The guy reporting the piece reminded Ali that thirty-five years ago he had talked about the “white devil” and Ali said, “Hey, I was wrong, because the devil comes in various colors and it has nothing to do with race or ethnicity.” While he doesn’t sound like the old Ali and it’s painful to see him suffering from Parkinson’s disease, his mind is still very sharp. It’s still Ali’s mind and it just makes you feel better to see that that’s the case. I met Ali once, in 1996 at the Atlanta Olympics. I walked up to him and said, “I’m so pleased to meet you. You’re probably the greatest influence in my life.” And he said, “Aaaaaw, I’m just another nigga.” He was a great influence on my life because of the hope he’d given black people in the 1960s and ’70s, and the way we felt so proud not just because of the great fights he won and the great skill he displayed, but because of the way he put himself out there when doing so could cost a black person his career, his wealth, and his freedom.

I guess what I’m getting at is, Ali’s boxing career has been over for twenty-five years, really, and he still has worldwide impact. He didn’t stop using his influence when he stopped boxing. Retirement may be the end of your athletic career, it’s the end of physical influence in the arena of competition. But it’s just the start of your adult life. And I guess I’m paying real close attention to all this stuff even more now that I’m new to retirement and trying to figure how best to use the influence that comes with playing in the NBA for sixteen years and making money and building relationships with other people who have money and influence.

What it amounts to is that God gave me some special stuff through basketball, and it just seems like a waste if I don’t do something more than play golf and count my money. Ali stepped out there, man. Refusing to go in the Army and being the first public person of great stature to oppose the Vietnam War so openly, embracing Islam, Ali put it way out there. As historic a figure as Jackie Robinson is, Branch Rickey had to find someone with the necessary demeanor for dealing with all the ugly racist behavior that was going to come his way. But Ali, you had to take him as he was. And even then he lost the three most prime years of his career. I mean, at some point standing for something important is what defines you, even beyond athletic achievement. John Carlos and Tommie Smith could have kept quiet and done nothing on that medal stand in 1968 in Mexico City. But because they gave that gloved salute, there was no celebration for them when they got back to the U.S. Curt Flood was pushed away forever from baseball. No TV career, no coaching, no front office, just blackballed. He could have ridden the gravy train forever if he’d played along, but he didn’t and now look what his sacrifice has done for major league ballplayers.

And those guys made significant contributions during their careers, which is even more amazing. So how can you not want to make some kind of contribution after your career? I just think if you are fortunate enough to have a productive career and you can put away some money and set yourself up, you have an obligation in your next career to do something meaningful. It doesn’t have to be in the public spotlight, it just needs to be something that can make a difference. Things have gotten a lot better for athletes and entertainers who are black, but not for regular black folks. When it’s over and you don’t have any money and you’ve squandered your influence, that’s just sad to me. I don’t know whether to be mad at the Darryl Strawberrys, the Dwight Goodens and the Mike Tysons or feel sorry for them. Mike Tyson has made HBO and Don King and all those leeches millions and millions of dollars. And for him to have no money or even a tiny fraction of what he made, it’s just unthinkable. Black and Hispanic communities don’t have so many people of wealth and influence that we can lose any.

I’ll bet you Earvin Johnson is getting more satisfaction from the impact he’s having as an entrepreneur in his second career than he did in his first. I know people will read this and think, “Oh, Charles is crazy,” but I’m serious about this. Don’t get me wrong, a lot of people got great joy from Magic Johnson’s basketball career, the way he ran the Lakers’ “Showtime” and entertained people and played some of the best basketball ever. But from being around him some during his retirement, I really believe he’s getting more enjoyment from his entrepreneurial efforts. It’s so profoundly significant what he’s doing. He’s creating revenue, creating jobs for people in communities that go years without seeing new businesses of that magnitude come into the neighborhood. And it’s not just revenue for himself he’s creating; he’s bringing people along. Earvin is improving people’s lives. Seriously, how cool is that?

Earvin found something great in retirement that he’s passionate about and good at and he’s making a huge contribution. It’s not easy finding the right fit when you retire from something so high-profile and financially rewarding when you’re still in your thirties. It’s very difficult because the first thing you have to do is be honest with yourself and most guys aren’t honest with themselves. First thing is you’re not going to work a nine-to-five job. Guys making the minimum are getting $1 million for playing basketball, so there’s almost no chance you’re going to a nine-to-five job, make $60,000 and be passionate about whatever it is. You’ve got to convince yourself, “I’ve had the greatest time of my life playing pro basketball. It’s never going to be more exciting or more glamorous than it was when I was playing, so let’s get on with the next phase of life.” Then you have to realize you’re going to get bored just playing golf every day. Then, with the help of people you trust and whose advice you value, you have to try to figure out what it is you’re good at and what it is you want to do with the rest of your life.

I’m thirty-nine years old and I’ve never had a real job.

I played organized basketball from nine until thirty-seven. That qualifies as my whole damn life.

Even before the leg injury in my last year, I said to myself, “I don’t want to play like this.” Yeah, I could have played two or three more years on my name. But I knew I was too good to play the way I was playing. Later in my career, I was playing all right, but just all right. I watch Hakeem Olajuwon and Patrick Ewing play now: both of those guys are right at forty, and I hate watching them play. I hate watching Michael play now. I say that because these guys playing now couldn’t have stayed on the court with Hakeem and Patrick and Michael ten years ago, and I love those guys.

Even before the injury I suffered at the start of the 2000 season, I’d already announced I was going to retire. The Rockets had promised they were going to pay me $12 million, then changed it to $9 million as we got closer to the season. As long as I’d been in the NBA, teams had done under-the-table deals with players, and I vehemently disagree with the league’s punishment of the Timberwolves for a practice that’s common around the league. I wasn’t going to play. But six weeks before the start of the season, I said, “Well, the NBA has been great to me. I could bitch about this, but I’ve had it too good—I’m going to go ahead and play.” So I was twenty pounds overweight when the season began and that’s probably why I got hurt.

The thing I was thinking was, “Man, I got carried off the court in my last game. I’ve got to go out there and try to play again.” So I did. I just felt I needed to walk off the court for the final time. So I did the rehab and came back for that one more game. Rudy Tomjanovich said, “Get a rebound and score a basket.” And the funny thing was, I went up and down the court ten times and couldn’t get near the ball. I meant to jump five times and the ball was still a week away. I wanted to jump, it just wasn’t there. I would look at the rebound coming and think, “Shit, that ball is a long way away.”

Anyway, the last basket of my career was an offensive rebound basket, which was fitting.

The only part I miss is the basketball. The stuff that goes along with it, I don’t miss. It wasn’t easy, getting past ball. And when Michael called and said, “I want you to come back,” you gotta say to yourself, “Damn. He thinks enough of me to ask me to come back with him.” You walk around puffing your chest out for a few days because it sounds like a good idea at the time. But a professional athlete knows his body. I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again: Michael was getting in shape but all I was getting was tired. You come to the realization, “I’m almost forty years old; this ain’t workin.’ “ If the Greatest Ever’s body breaks down, mine sure as hell would have broken down. Michael’s got highway miles on him; I’ve got off-road miles.

It’s a difficult transition. People wonder, “Why can’t these guys stay out of trouble?” It’s harder than you think it is. You’ve gotten spoiled and relatively lazy. You’ve got twenty-four hours a day with nothing to do and money to get into stuff you shouldn’t. How many second careers are there that most guys can do beyond going into TV, coaching or working in the front office of an organization? I wonder how many guys have their degrees when they retire. I wish there was a study to consult about the percentage of guys who do. I didn’t complete my degree at Auburn. I went back the first couple of summers; I had promised my grandmother I’d graduate. But I was making $1 million a year early in my career, and I wound up obviously making a lot more than that. If I’d needed to go back and graduate, I would have, but I didn’t. Of course economics are a consideration. If you don’t have access to that kind of wealth you’d better have more formal education and you’d better have your degree.

Economic considerations determine so much of what guys pursue for a second career, and whether they do something they really want or do something just because they need the money. Take that Fox
Celebrity Boxing.
How sad was that? I only watched to see Manute Bol. First of all, how much are the celebrity boxers getting paid? We know Fox is getting paid because the show had a huge prime-time rating. But you don’t participate in stuff like that unless you need the money. It’s so sad to retire and need money that badly, although Manute’s case is a little different because of the charities he was heavily involved in. And “Refrigerator” Perry was pretty much as big as it got in the mid-1980s. He had to make a little money during that period. But here he is in this
Celebrity Boxing
. And let me tell you who’s really pathetic: Darva Conger. She does that stupid Fox marry-a-millionaire show where she marries that clown, then when the whole world is talking about it—like she didn’t know what she was doing when she signed up for it—she says, “Oh, I’ve made a big mistake here, and all I want to do is go back to my private life and be left alone.”

I was feeling for her a little bit. Public life can be hell, especially when you go from nobody knowing who you are to everybody getting into every aspect of your life. So I’m thinking, “Okay, anybody can make a mistake and if all she wants is her private life back, we ought to cut her some slack and let her do that.” Next thing you know, she’s posing for
Playboy
magazine, and I’m thinking, “Oh, this is how you go about getting your private life back?” Now, she’s on in prime time in
Celebrity Boxing
? Come on now. I guess she didn’t exactly want that private life back, did she? Darva being on it is bad enough, but to see Manute and the Fridge . . . I’m telling you, it’s difficult. You’re in your late thirties, early forties, and you just can’t play golf every day and sit around. But on the other hand, there’s got to be a plan and you have to be honest with yourself. What really helps is to be around somebody who goes about it the right way when you’re young so you can get some idea of what the hell is going on.

You know who really prepared me for retirement? Julius Erving and Moses Malone. And I was twenty-one years old when I met ’em. I was fortunate because Doc has a great sense of business and Moses is so streetwise. Doc was starting his transition from playing to retirement when I first got to Philly. Those guys were a fountain of information. And I’m fortunate to have been able to pick their brains, and that they were so free with their time and their advice. I’ll tell you one thing that bothered me a little bit at the end of my career. I knew my body was breaking down and I couldn’t play the way I used to, and I thought one of the ways I could contribute to the league was to help some of the young guys. It’s only right, since I had benefited from the advice of veterans, to be there for a new generation of young guys. I looked forward to it, to tell you the truth. But when I tried to be there for ’em, their attitude was like, “Hey old man, sit your ass down somewhere over there. You’re trying to hold us back.” And you just kind of sit there and say to yourself, “Can you believe this shit?” It’s not just me either. I’ve talked to other guys near retirement and they’ve had similar stories to tell.

I guess I just want guys never ever to take for granted how unbelievable our lives are, how much influence we have and how much impact we can have. Man, I want to see guys maximize their impact after athletics, not throw it away while they’re still playing on entourages and silly crap. So my story isn’t complete yet. In ten to fifteen years, if I’ve helped some struggling people build something good, then it’ll be a complete story.

To me, this is all connected if you want to try to fight poverty and illiteracy and racism. The legacy of slavery is that nothing was passed down. We’re still at the point where a successful black person is taking care of, or at least helping out, the previous generation in his family, instead of the other way around. You ain’t got many black kids having college paid for by a trust fund. We still don’t own much of anything. Most of the blacks who are successful don’t own stuff. It’s athletes and celebrities. We’re not able to provide an economic path for the next generation.

Just look at a few examples in sports. Jerry Colangelo, the owner of the Phoenix Suns and Arizona Diamondbacks, brought his son Bryan aboard years ago. Jerry is the CEO of the Suns, Bryan is the president of the organization. I’m not trying to accuse Jerry of nepotism. But it’s just like Jeremy Schaap coming into broadcasting largely because of his late father, Dick. Or it’s like Joe Buck following Jack Buck or Chip Caray following his father, Skip Caray, and both of them following Chip’s grandfather and Skip’s father, Harry. It’s the family business. Even if they don’t own it, they own a stake in it. I love working with Ernie Johnson, Jr., who’s a damn hardworking guy, and he would be the first to tell you how much he owed his father, Ernie Johnson, Sr., who was the broadcast voice of the Atlanta Braves for so long. With damn few exceptions, black folks don’t have that in industries that produce wealth or ownership. It wasn’t until I was playing for the Olympic team and met Bishop Desmond Tutu that I even considered the impact I might have overseas because of my athletic career. It didn’t really cross my mind until he brought these little South African kids wearing our basketball jerseys telling us that there were no black men in positions of huge influence where they live.