Life on the Run (26 page)

I have often wondered how I will handle the end of my playing days. No one really knows until that day comes. DeBusschere says that as long as one doesn’t puff up with the unnatural attention given a pro athlete, and keeps a few good friends, the adjustment should be easy. I don’t know if he really believes it. Tom Heinsohn says you don’t realize how much you love the game until you miss it. Forced into a premature retirement by injury, he yearned for the life again so much that he took a 75 percent cut in salary to coach the Celtics. One retired player told me he noticed the end at home in his relationship with his wife. The fears and resentment that were formerly projected into the team now fall on wife and children, making life miserable for all. Holzman says that he never regretted the end, for when it came he had had enough basketball and wanted out. In my case, I’ve been preparing for the end since my first year, but even so I can only hope that I will manage easily the withdrawal from what Phil Jackson calls “my addiction.”

When DeBusschere announced his retirement after getting a ten-year contract to become General Manager of the New York Nets, many newspapers said that he was retiring at his best. Once, after a speech I gave, a man came up to me and said, “Retire while you’re still at the top. Whizzer White did it. Jim Brown did it. Bill Russell did it.” DeBusschere talks about how sad he felt for Willie Mays struggling at the end of his brilliant career. He calls Mays’ play embarrassing. He also says of several players that they played one year too long.

In the same way that it is difficult to watch your father grow old, it’s difficult to watch your favorite player become increasingly unable to do the small things that made you admire him. But unless a man has a better opportunity, why should he stop doing something he loves? Fans want stars to retire on top in part to protect their fantasies. That makes no sense; consider Jerry West or Oscar Robertson, whose last two years of struggle didn’t diminish the twelve previous years of achievement. In a way it made them more likable than if they had sought to retain an heroic level through early retirement. The decline is sad but human, for it is the one thing that strikes ineluctably in professional sports. To miss it makes a pro’s experience incomplete.

The end of a player’s career is the end of the big money and big publicity, and at that point the future depends on past prudence and levelheadedness. The specter of Joe Louis or Sugar Ray Robinson haunts many players. DeBusschere believes that of all the Knicks Frazier will have the most difficulty adjusting to the post-playing days. I’m not so sure. “My biggest motivation not to go broke,” says Frazier, “doesn’t come from the example of Sugar Ray or Joe Louis, but from my father. When he lost all of his money, he lost everything. The new ‘Caddies’ and other presents that used to arrive at the house stopped coming. I hold back spending too much money more than I would if I hadn’t been around when something happened to my father.” Frazier clearly has thought about the change of living standard but DeBusschere wonders also whether Clyde can adjust to a life of less publicity after nearly ten years in the New York spotlight. Though his life seemingly focuses on externals, and remains naively vulnerable to the quixotic taste of strangers, I believe Clyde does seem to understand the precarious path he treads and he confidently prepares for the end with little concern for the potential terror. Maybe no fall can be as hard and damaging as that which he witnessed his father take many years before.

Perhaps the last word on the end of a player’s career comes from Danny Whelan. “When the fan is kissing your ass and telling you that you’re the greatest,” says Danny, “he hates you. They want to get you down on their level and they can’t when you’re on the top. After you retire just go to that guy who was buying you drinks when you were a player and ask him for a job. He’ll show you the door. The fan likes to step on a player after he’s finished playing if he gets a chance. A good example is Sweetwater Clifton. Just the other night some guy says he remembers Sweets with the Knicks and asks me if I know what he’s doing. I shut up. If I had told him that he’s driving a cab in Chicago the guy would have got his nuts off. Players would be better off to change their names and start anew.”

The plane flies from the lush greenery of the Pacific Northwest to the desert of Arizona. A city comes into view; it appears as a greenish-gray geometric design placed in the middle of brown blotting paper. “If you look out the plane to your right,” the captain announces during the descent, “you will see the London Bridge at Lake Havasu, near Phoenix, Arizona.”

A warm, dry wind blows steadily as we leave the plane. Inside the antiseptic terminal, we pick up our luggage and move to the bus outside, opposite a row of taxis. DeBusschere reads the Phoenix afternoon paper while the bus moves along the palm-lined drive to the airport exit. I ask him to let me see it when he’s finished. Passing through a poorer section of town, manicured lawns disappear. Small yellow-gray frame houses with front porches that sag on each end, stand in the middle of dusty plots of land. “We’ve just passed the projects,” says a rookie.

Another player hums Otis Redding’s hit, “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long,” and a third, hearing the song, reminisces, “Hey, remember J. R. on Saturday night radio out of Nashville, brought to you by Randy’s Record Shop?”

“Yeah, I remember,” a rookie says. “Jimmy Reed be singin’ “Just ‘A Runnin’… Just ‘A Hidin’” [he begins to sing]…. That’s blues.”

“Yeah, man,” another player says. “I’ve seen motherfuckers down South sittin’ next to that radio on a Saturday night cryin’. Especially if they got a little white lightnin’ in them. They’d be listenin’ to the blues and shaking their heads, ‘Oh, my, yes.’”

DeBusschere throws me the paper opened to a story about a house owned by the Phoenix Suns’ Dick Van Arsdale, who was my roommate during my rookie year. He is a handsome man, 6′5″ and blond, with a personality as sturdy as his durable legs. I had returned to Oxford after the 1967–68 season to take examinations for my degree, when one morning at breakfast I read in the
International Herald Tribune
that the Knicks had sent Van Arsdale to Phoenix in the expansion draft. It was my first contact with owner-controlled player movement. My reaction was sadness at losing a good friend, but, in retrospect, the more important effect was that I came to understand the power of owners. “They can send me anywhere overnight,” I thought. “How can you form close friendships if the next day you might be gone?” I had always seen trading from the fan’s viewpoint, but then I saw the human cost involved. I don’t like the fear their power over me evokes. I don’t like the idea of a man owning, selling, and buying another man as if he was an old car.

The Van Arsdale deal occurred during the off-season and Dick had time to relocate his family. If the trade had taken place during the season, Van, like any other player, would have had 48 hours to report to his new team, whatever the hardship. By signing a contract, players automatically agree to the possibility of a forced move without advance notice. Sportswriters jokingly refer to the movement of “horseflesh.” General managers point out how trades benefit all parties, as if they were the “invisible hand” of basketball. Owners call their control of players essential to the structure and integrity of professional basketball. After Van’s departure I realized that no matter how kind, friendly, and genuinely interested the owners may be, in the end most players are little more than depreciable assets to them.

The lobby of the Del Webb Townehouse is filled with suntanned ladies and men wearing brightly colored alpaca sweaters—the professional golfers are in town for the Phoenix Open. The size and blackness of our group creates a minor sensation until we escape to the elevators. After telephoning a local friend I go to the lobby and rent a car for our two-day stay.

Having a car encourages a kind of exploration, particularly in the West. I know the physical layout of nearly every city in the league. I form many impressions from behind a steering wheel. Sometimes I spend a whole afternoon just cruising the streets and countryside.

I notice Danny talking with the bellman, a retired army sergeant. I ask him where he is heading and he says Scottsdale. He’s meeting some baseball buddies. Five professional teams have spring training in Arizona. I offer him a ride and he accepts, talking of lawyers and trials the whole way.

“When I was a boy in San Francisco,” he says, “I used to cut school to go to the courthouse and listen to trials. The best criminal lawyer I ever saw was Jake Erlich. He used to put me in the front row. I knew he had a winner when he wore a white shirt and big diamond cuff links. The jury couldn’t take their eyes off the diamonds during his summation. He’d win every time.”

“Did you ever think about becoming a lawyer?” I ask a little self-consciously, thinking about all the times the same question has been posed to me.

“No,” Danny answers, “I just went to listen to the stories.”

“What was the most dramatic trial scene you’ve witnessed?” I ask in a different version of the “What was your greatest game?” question.

“That would be in the Errol Flynn rape trial. The prosecutor got up and established this and that and made it pretty convincing. Then Jerry Geisler, Flynn’s lawyer, got the woman involved on the stand and said, ‘You were lying in bed, right?’

“‘Yes,’ the woman answered, as Geisler, himself, fell to the courtroom floor.

“‘And you had your legs spread like this, right?’

“‘Yeah,’ she said, and Geisler starts movin’ like he was screwin’ right there.

“‘And you were moving like this, right.’

“‘Yes.’

“Shit,” Danny says, “he won the case right there.”

We finally arrive at Lulu Belle’s, an old-fashioned saloon-steak house, with red velvet interior. Danny gets out, ready for a night of baseball reminiscing and serious drinking. I head back to Phoenix, somewhat wishing that the game were tonight. A weekend of three games in three nights is physically tough but there is little dead time. The road can be a bore without games. I remember five days in Kansas City when the walls of my Holiday Inn room seemed to laugh at me in the way prison walls must mock the expectant parolee, telling him that his departure will necessarily be decided by someone else, and that in the meantime, only dreams can reduce the monotony.

I
HAVE COFFEE WITH DEBUSSCHERE AND A SPORTSWRITER
,
DURING
which the discussion deals with the difference between basketball today and in the 1950s.

“In the fifties,” Dave says, “basketball was a power game with big muscle men around the basket. Defense was mainly for the guards, maybe because the jump shot wasn’t widely used by big men. There wasn’t much finesse. Then along came Wilt and Russell who controlled the inside. Opponents had to do other things. You had to break down the floor before Wilt or Russell could get set, and you had to be good from the outside. Quick men and coaching also became a bigger part of basketball. The concept of team defense resulted from big men cutting off the traditional way of scoring. You had to learn how to defense the guys other than Wilt or Russell. You had to press and double team so that guys wouldn’t be as effective even though they kept getting better and better at shooting.”

I always thought that the use of a small forward was the biggest innovation of my career years. In the past other teams had used players such as Frank Ramsey, George Yardley, Cliff Hagan, and John Havlicek, but when I came into the league most of the forwards were 6′6″ or over. I had to play guard. Because I wasn’t quick enough I got burned often; when I had a chance to return to forward I was relieved. When writers asked Holzman how he could play me, a small 6′5″ forward against men 6′9″ he told them that a disadvantage was often an advantage. What he meant was that when an opposing team saw the difference in height they often forced the action toward my man, thus disrupting the normal flow of their offense, and forcing my man to take a bigger scoring responsibility. Often their hopes of taking advantage backfired when my man missed shots, or passes went awry when they tried to get the ball to him. Meanwhile on offense I was quicker than the bigger man and could maneuver for shots more easily. After Holzman used the small forward successfully, every team accepted his redefinition of the game and put men 6′4″ to 6′5″ at one forward position.

The balanced team defense is also a Holzman innovation. Boston had a team defense, but its practitioners were allowed a larger margin of error with Bill Russell under the basket. Willis Reed and Jerry Lucas are not as dominant, so the margin of error for the Knicks is smaller. Each defensive man has to accept the responsibility for his own man and also to aid a teammate in trouble. Once he understands that and acts on it, the various types of presses are simply technical adjustments and our double teaming becomes a well-executed, known defensive maneuver. With team defense understood, pressure defense is assured, and with pressure defense the game’s emphasis shifts from muscle to quickness, from pure individual physical skill to coordinated, intelligent group responses.

I pick up a Phoenix friend for lunch and we drive along Central Avenue to Indian School Road, named for the Phoenix Indian School which is in the center of town. He tells me there are forty Indian tribes living in Arizona. In the early days of statehood most of the Indians lived on reservations where there were no schools. Indians termed “promising,” as my friend put it, came to Phoenix where they lived in dormitories and attended classes. Today they still come from grade school age through high school, looking for the magic skills that will allow them to assimilate gracefully into modern America. The trees and green fields surrounding the school provide a pleasant environment. Up Central Avenue a few blocks stands a Jesuit high school, a reminder of the first white men to penetrate the Indian civilization.

“When guns are outlawed,” a sign says on a passing car, “only outlaws will have guns.”

We turn onto Arcadia Drive where 60-foot eucalyptus trees tower over our car. All the streets off the drive are lined with low-slung homes set in comfortable green and surrounded by Phoenix palms and orange trees with trunk bottoms whitewashed as if they were the legs of horses taped for a race. The only influence of the desert here is the dry air and the parched mountains in the distance. We stop for lunch at the Old Hatch Restaurant in Scottsdale. Sitting outside at a table on the balcony in the warm March sunshine, with Camelback Mountain backdropping the two-story buildings of Scottsdale’s Fifth Avenue section, I sense why so many people have left their homes and migrated here.