Longshot (15 page)

It turned out I received a concussion from the hit, and my hearing aid was severely damaged. The university would in turn fund me a new set of hearing aids—my first-ever digital ones. They were so nice. They opened up a whole new world to me, a world of sounds that I never knew existed. The jump from analog to digital was euphoric. All it took was for me to take one in the noggin.

Following a preseason tournament
in Puerto Rico, the team was called in for a meeting with Coach Majerus. He hobbled into the film room and sat on the table, wearing his usual cotton shorts, displaying his Kodiak calves, his knee wrapped up in an Ace bandage. He announced that his mother had cancer and he would be taking a leave of absence. Coach Hunsaker was to be the interim coach.

I didn't play much that year—sparingly at best, for maybe five minutes a game if at all. My best game that freshman year was against Washington State, when I scored eight points and fouled out in ten minutes. And I was OK with that most of the time, except for when Hunsaker would use me as motivation against my other teammates, threatening to bench them and play me, though he never did.
*

Things got under way quickly in the off-season when Majerus returned. He had scheduled us for a European trip during the summer. Once finals were over, we were practicing, preparing for the trip. We practiced two times a day for ten straight days. On top of all of this, there were only eight players. And with eight players, it means more reps, more activity, fewer breaks.

I ended up herniating a disc in my lower back, the L5 vertebra, halfway through the training camp. I was undercut in a drill while going up for a rebound and landed on my butt, but the pain wasn't sudden. It was later in the night that I felt the swelling come. My whole left leg was numb, my pelvis was swollen, and my genitals ached constantly. I could neither lie, sit, nor stand.

That final week of training camp, Chris Burgess's recurring back issues flared up as well. Even Majerus went down with a back problem. He was working all of us, even himself, too hard. It was quite strange to be lying on the table next to him in the rehab facility.

When it came time for us to pack up and leave, the doctors said my back might heal in time for me to at least play in the latter part of the European tour. I was relieved, as European history is my favorite field and I'd never been to Europe.
*

Majerus didn't make the trip. Not only was his back bothering him, but he had suffered a large gash on his lower leg. Instead of risking serious infection to the wound while flying, Majerus opted to stay back, leaving Coach Hunsaker in charge once again. This time it ended up being quite a pleasant experience. I daresay that if Majerus had gone on the trip, we would've practiced more. Instead, we had a great time.

All that really needs to be said about the trip is that I won the karaoke contest at a local club in the Canary Islands one night with my rendition of Lionel Richie's “Say You, Say Me,” and that I also had my first screwdriver.

There's a European custom that the hosting team will hold a banquet and feed the visiting team. After our game was over, we went to the banquet. The problem was that I was so thirsty and just dying for a drink, waiting impatiently for liquid to come out, and then
voilà!
A huge pitcher of orange juice!
Yay!
I ran up to it and poured myself a big glass and downed it like a camel. I quickly began to pour myself another, but then I slowly started to feel a tingle in my throat, which soon turned into a burning sensation, as though Bengay had just been stuffed down there. Thus I had my first screwdriver. I was nauseous the rest of the dinner.

Even if I wasn't LDS, I still wouldn't drink alcohol. I actually suffer from hyperhidrosis, which means that I sweat too much. I sweat from
my head and neck more than anyone I have ever met. I don't really sweat more in my armpits than the next person, but my head is a geyser. And with my lifestyle—always training, conditioning, and playing basketball—I sweat, and sweat some more. My shirt will be soaked when I'm done with a workout, and seven-eighths of it will be from my head, which I will wipe with my shirt. I'm getting lost in the gross details of my physiology here, but where I'm getting is that I get dehydrated very, very easily. And, being a big man at six-eleven, I need a lot to keep me hydrated.

I enjoyed my first European trip, but not so much the hepatitis I brought back with me.

 

A week after we returned from Europe, camp season began at the U. The dreaded Big Man–Guard Camp was coming up, and this would be my fifth straight year either attending or demonstrating. The mere thought of the camp inspired fear and a cold sweat in me. The camp was preceded during the week by a team camp, where various high school teams from across the country would come to gain tutelage from Majerus as well as gauge their own progress for the upcoming fall season. The only good news was that Coach Rupp had been hired onto the staff as an assistant coach. I was so thrilled to get to work with him again, but sadly, we really never saw a lot of each other, as Majerus usually had him busy with film or working out other guys.

The very first day of camp, Majerus was right on me. I actually appreciated it: as the saying went, “Coach Majerus rides hardest those he thinks will be good.” Majerus walked out and called me out to the court.

“Post position, Lance. Arm bars high.” I obeyed. “Throw him the ball. Call for it.”

“Ball!” I yelled. I caught it, meeting it with two hands.

“Always meet the ball,” Majerus said, turning to his audience. “Check over your shoulder to see what the defense and your other teammates are doing. Drop step.” I obeyed. “Eyes not up soon enough. Five sprints. Go!”

I ran over to the sideline to begin my sprints as Majerus talked to his audience: “We run sprints here, down and back being one sprint, not only to help discipline, but as a form of conditioning as well, as we
spend so much more time learning than we do running in the flow of practice. Lance will run them hard, or else he will run some more.”

I finished, breathing hard for air, and jogged over to the post to resume the demonstration.

“Post position. Call for it. Meet it. Check your shoulder. Eyes up. Drop step….” Majerus choreographed as I followed the beat. “Stop! Don't move.” I froze as Majerus walked up to me, touched my lead leg, and pointed at my toes. “Toes are not pointed to the sideline,” he explained to the audience. My toes were barely a few degrees shy of that, pointed to the corner. “Five sprints. Go!”

I ran over to the side and put in five more sprints. My co-demonstrator, Cameron Koford, then stepped up to fill in for me while I was running, only to be sent on his own set of sprints for not calling for the ball loud enough. The audience waited for me to finish my sprints as Koford joined me on the side.

We went through the motions again: Position. Call for it. Meet it. Check your shoulder. Eyes up. Drop step. What was hard was that we paused between every piece of the move to show the proper positioning, causing our legs to flare up with lactic acid and inducing incredible discomfort, not to mention killing any natural flow. “Lance will shoot a hook shot over his shoulder, with his arm raising up and releasing the ball between the 10 and 1 o'clock positions. Shoot it!”

My legs, having stood in a half-squat position, shaking and burning for nearly thirty seconds after having run so many sprints in just the first two minutes, tried to leap as I took my shot, only to barely lift up off the ground. I shot my hook between the 10 and 1 o'clock positions. I missed it as it careened off the front of the rim.

“Always aim at the back of the rim,” Majerus immediately began to lecture. “Never miss it short. Five sprints!” I ran back over to my side and ran some more.

Koford filled in while I ran. I could never rely on Koford to give me a breather, as he always got sent on sprints much quicker than I ever did: “Post position. Call for it. Meet it. Check your shoulder. Eyes up. Drop step. Shoot it. Five sprints, Koford! For releasing the ball outside of the 10–1 o'clock position.”

Koford rejoined me on the sideline. This went on for an hour. After our post demonstration, we were running a team defense demonstration. “Britton, toes not pointed to the rim!” Majerus chided as Britton
Johnson caught the ball at the three-point line. “Five sprints, go! Lance, fill in while Britton runs.” I ran up and took my shirt off to go skin, as Britton had been a skin while demonstrating. “Lance, keep your shirt on. Go on the other team. Trace, go to the top.” I ran over, picked up my shirt, and fumbled to put it back on. “Lance, too slow! Five sprints.”

By the end of the first day I was exhausted. As I was eating dinner in the dorms with one of the high school teams, their coach came over to me and patted me on the back as he set his tray down next to mine. “I'm going to sit next to this guy,” he told his team, “as Majerus is hardest on the players with most potential.” And to me: “Let's see where you go.”

I scoffed: “Careful what you wish for. You may be sent on sprints as well just for talking to me.”

They thought I was joking. Most people didn't know that even coaches were not spared the sprints. I had seen Coach Strohm, Coach Shelton, and Scott Garson run sprints. I had even seen Coach Rupp, in his own gym at East High School, run sprints assigned by Majerus.

The week of team camp came to an end, only to usher in the Big Man–Guard Camp that weekend, where we simply pushed the reset button and repeated the cycle: Position. Arm bars high. Call for it. Meet it. Check shoulder. Drop step, stay low…. It was a forty-eight-hour camp, but it always felt like it lasted a week, as the two mornings always came early at six.

The last hour on the last day I'm sure I set some sort of record for sprints in an hour. We recapped everything we had gone over in the last two days. But on this day, Koford went down with pain, leaving me as the lone guinea pig. I demonstrated and ran, and ran and demonstrated. Toward the very end of the final hour, Majerus was talking to the audience while my soaked shirt leaked sweat all over the baseline: “Lance is now going to catch the ball, then outlet and follow, and then…” For whatever reason, whether from sheer fatigue or because he was turned away from me, I didn't understand what it was that he said or was ordering me to do. I gave him a quizzical look, and he noticed it.

“Lance, you look confused.”

I shrugged and stammered.

“It's OK if you're confused, just tell me.” He looked to his audience, smiling at himself, showing them his magnanimity.

“Yeah. I don't understand, Coach.”

He sighed and shook his head. “Twenty sprints!”

I blinked in disbelief and looked to Coach Strohm, who was covering his mouth, disguising his laugh as he pretended to be rubbing his 5 o'clock shadow. I really think Majerus was trying to show his benevolent, caring side but had not expected me to accept it and admit my confusion—putting him in a bind. He was such an impatient man, he had not the motivation to follow through.

When camp was over and the kids filtered out, all of my teammates gathered in the film room, waiting for Coach to come in and outline the rest of the summer and his expectations for us as a whole and individually. Scott handed us our handwritten checks, and Chris, who was seated next to me and had worked during the camps but not demonstrated due to his back problems, looked at my check and then did a double take on his.

“How come you got so much more than me?” he asked.

Without skipping a beat, I responded matter-of-factly, “I got a dollar for every sprint I ran more than you.”

 

When school started, Coach Majerus felt that we were all soft and not tough enough. He had the idea that we should take boxing lessons as a form of both conditioning and toughening—two birds with one stone. I ignorantly at first thought that all boxers just stood there and punched. It wasn't like they had to run and jump. I have since learned proper humility. I now have the utmost respect for boxers, because not only is it ridiculously tiring; you're also getting punched in the head and stomach while at it.

The first day of boxing lessons came after we'd lifted weights and were already tired. For the first two weeks we shadowboxed, working on simple jabs and hooks, progressing to combos as time went on. That first day, as we jabbed the air and jabbed some more, my shoulders burned like hot coals.

After two weeks, we were finally taught how to wrap our knuckles, which took some of the gents about twenty minutes to figure out. We then were handed gloves and told to simply shadowbox each other. I was paired up with Koford, who was seven feet tall, with a seven-foot-three-inch wingspan. Even he didn't understand and respect his reach. As the whistle blew, I gave Koford a couple of air jabs, clear away from his face. Koford then bared his teeth, shrilling like Chewbacca, and countered
with his own air jab. The next thing I knew I was on my back, staring up at the many stars circling the blazing midday sun, which was piercing through my blackout.

“Koford, what the hell are you doing?!” Jason Veltkamp, our strength coach, screamed from across the turf field.

Koford held up his hands in genuine confusion: “I was just boxing. I didn't mean to hit him.” I sat up, not noticing the blood that was gushing down my nose. Koford could never do anything right.

A week later, the kid gloves came off and we were unleashed. Jason even had a tournament pool allowing bets to be placed on us. Trace Caton, the team heartthrob, and Chris Burgess were paired up one day. It didn't last very long. On first glance, you placed money on Chris, due to his size. But Jason knew to put money on Trace and was videotaping the fight.

Chris went for a full hip-powered hook on Trace, who ducked and uppercut Chris right in the gut. Chris immediately hunched over in reflex, allowing Trace to follow with his strong hand and power-punch Chris right in the head. Even though they were wearing helmets, it really made no difference, as Chris dropped like a bag of potatoes. It took twenty minutes for Chris to come to and walk out on his own. Once Chris was able to give a thumbs-up to signal he was OK, which proved quite difficult for him, such was his daze, Jason immediately took his video camera to his office and replayed the fight, and replayed it some more, until his whole office was packed with football players narrating the force of the crushing blow inflicted upon Chris: “
Oh! Ah! Bam!
” Coach Majerus even requested a copy when he heard about it from Scott and Strohm, who laughed themselves silly upon seeing it. Everyone thought it hilarious except for Chris, of course.