The Book of Basketball (2 page)

The ultimate Cowens moment happened when Mike Newlin flopped
for a charge call against him. You didn’t do these things to Cowens; nobody valued the sanctity of the game more than he did.
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He berated the referee under the basket, didn’t like the guy’s response, screamed some more, then whirled around and spotted Newlin dribbling upcourt. Sufficiently enraged, he charged Newlin from behind at a 45-degree angle, lowered his shoulder like a football safety and sent poor Newlin sprawling into the press table at midcourt. Watching it live (and I happened to be there), it was a relatively terrifying experience, like being ten feet away in Pamplona as a pissed-off bull targets an unsuspecting pedestrian. And that wasn’t even the best part. While pieces of Newlin were still rolling around the parquet floor like a shattered piggy bank, Cowens turned to the same referee and screamed, “Now that’s a fucking foul!” So yeah, Cowens was white and Russell was black. But Cowens would have been worth four bucks a game if he were purple. Same for Havlicek. Because of them, my father stumbled into a Celtics season ticket and never looked back.

Our first season coincided with the Celtics winning their first title of the post-Russell era and the suddenly promising Simmons era. My memories don’t kick in until the following year, when we moved to Chestnut Hill (fifteen minutes from the Garden) and Dad started bringing me more regularly. The people in our section knew me as a miniature sports encyclopedia, the floppy-haired kid who chewed his nails and whose life revolved around the Boston teams. Before games, the Garden’s ushers allowed me to stand behind our basket on the edge of the court, where I’d chase down air balls and toss them back to my heroes. I can still remember standing there, chewing my nails and praying for an air ball or deflected jump shot to come bouncing toward me, just so I could grab it and toss the ball back to a Celtic. When I say this was thrilling for a little kid … I mean, you have no idea. This was like going to Disneyland forty
times a year and cutting the line for every ride. I eventually built up enough courage to wander over to Boston’s bench
⁷
and make small talk with the amused coaches, Tommy Heinsohn and John Killilea, leading to a moment before a Buffalo playoff game when a
Herald American
photographer snapped a picture of me peering up at an injured John Havlicek (wearing a baby blue leisure suit and leaning on crutches), then splashed the photo across the front page of its sports section the following day.
⁸
By the time I turned six, you can guess what happened: I considered myself a member of the Boston Celtics. That spawned my racial identity crisis in the first grade (fully described in my Red Sox book) when I gave myself the Muslim name “Jabaal Abdul-Simmons.” I didn’t know any better. I wanted to play for the Celtics and most NBA players were black. Besides, I had more in common with them—my favorite sport was black, my favorite player (Charlie Scott) was black, my favorite comedians (Flip Wilson, Jimmie Walker, and Redd Foxx) were black, most of my favorite TV shows
(Sanford and Son, The Jefferson, Good Times, The Mod Squad)
starred blacks, and I even made my mother take me to Roxbury in 1975 to see Keith Wilkes’ one and only movie,
Cornbread, Earl and Me
.
⁹
It pissed me off that I was white. So I made my first-grade teacher call me “Jabaal,” wrote “Jabaal” on my homework and tests, colored my own face in drawings, and that was that.

Meanwhile, the ’76 Celts were hanging on for one last championship run. Silas and Havlicek had seen better days. A washed-up Don Nelson—that’s right, the same guy who later coached Milwaukee and Dallas—was playing with a protruding potbelly that made him look like the beleagured dad in about ten different seventies sitcoms. Every key player (including Cowens and Jo Jo White, the best guys on the team) had already peaked statistically, only we didn’t have young legs off the bench because
Auerbach had uncharacteristically butchered a few draft picks. Golden State looked like the prohibitive favorite until the defending champs self-destructed in Game 7 of the Western Finals under bizarre circumstances: in the first few minutes, Phoenix’s Ricky Sobers jumped Warriors star Rick Barry and landed a few punches before teammates pulled him off.
¹⁰
At halftime, Barry (a notorious prick) watched the tape and realized his own teammates hadn’t leaped in to save him. Fuming, he spitefully refused to shoot for most of the second half—no lie, he
refused
to shoot—playing hot potato anytime someone passed him the ball. And that’s how a 42–40 Suns team advanced to the Finals, upsetting the defending champs on their home floor as their best player played an elaborate game of “eff you” with his teammates.

So that was one break for the Celtics. The other one happened organically: this was the final year before the ABA/NBA merger, the league’s weakest season for talent since the Mikan era. For most of the decade, the ABA had been overpaying talented prospects from high school and college, including Julius Erving, Maurice Lucas, Moses Malone, David Thompson, and George Gervin, all breathtaking athletes who would have pushed the rigid NBA in a more stimulating direction. Each league offered what the other was lacking: a regimented, physical style highlighted by the selflessness of its players (the NBA) versus a freewheeling, unpredictable style that celebrated individual expression (the ABA). When the leagues finally merged, three years of disjointed basketball followed—team-first guys awkwardly blending their talents with me-first guys—until everyone worked out the kinks,
¹¹
the league added a three-point line,
Bird and Magic arrived, and the game landed in a better place. The ’76 Celtics were too old and slow to make it after the merger, but we didn’t realize that yet. We also didn’t realize that white guys like Nelson had a better chance of eating the shot clock, digesting it, and crapping it out than guarding the likes of Erving and Thompson. The game was changing, only nobody could see it yet.

After Boston and Phoenix split the first four games of the Finals, Game 5 started at nine o’clock to accommodate the wishes of CBS, a network that didn’t totally care about the league and had no problem tape-delaying playoff games or moving them to wacky times. Know what happens when you start that late for a crowd of loony Boston fans during a time when anyone could afford a ticket to the NBA Finals? You end up with the rowdiest, craziest, drunkest Boston crowd of all time. With four full hours to get plastered before the game and another three during the game itself, not only will the collective blood alcohol level of the crowd never be topped, neither will the game. I’d tell you more, but I snoozed through the fourth quarter, Phoenix’s remarkable comeback, and the first two overtimes, sprawled across my father and the gracious people on either side of him.
¹²
With seven seconds remaining in double OT, I awakened with the Celts trailing by one and everyone standing for the final play. (In fact, that’s why I woke up, because everyone in our section was standing.) Almost on cue, I watched Havlicek haul in the inbounds pass, careen toward the basket (dribbling with his left hand on a bad wheel, no less), then somehow brick home a running banker off the wrong foot just before time expired, leading to the scariest moment of my young life: thousands of delirious fans charging the court, with many of them leapfrogging people in my section to get there. It was like a prison riot, only a benevolent one. And I was half asleep when it happened.

You know the rest: the officials ruled that one second remained, referee Richie Powers got attacked by a drunken fan, the Suns called an illegal time-out to get the ball at midcourt, Jo Jo drained the technical free throw, Gar Heard made the improbable turnaround to force a third OT (I remember thinking it was a 50-footer at the time), then the Celtics narrowly
escaped because of the late-game heroics of Jo Jo and an unassuming bench player named Glenn McDonald. Even though I slept through some of the best parts, Jabaal Abdul-Simmons became the coolest kid in school the following day—not just because I attended the most famous basketball game ever played, but because my parents allowed me to stay awake until one-thirty to see it.
¹³

We clinched the franchise’s thirteenth championship in Phoenix two days later. Within two years we devolved into one of the league’s most hapless teams, which wasn’t necessarily a bad thing for the Simmons family: not only could Dad (barely) afford a second ticket by then, but thanks to a fleeing base of paying customers, they upgraded our seat location to midcourt, right alongside the Nancy Parish Memorial Tunnel (I’ll explain later), where players, coaches, and referees entered and exited the arena.
¹⁴
My seat happened to be two rows in front of Dad’s seat—we couldn’t get two together unless we moved away from the tunnel, which we didn’t want to do—but I could hop under the railing, stand in the tunnel, and chat with him during time-outs. Even better, a bizarre collection of injured players, old-timers, and media personalities gathered in the tunnel and watched a quarter or two, leading to one of my favorite childhood memories: a washed-up Marvin “Bad News” Barnes standing eighteen inches away from me, milking some bogus injury, wearing a full-length mink coat and leaning against my railing. Every few minutes, after a good Celtics play, he’d nod at me with one of those “What it
is
, Tiny White Dude!” smiles on his face. And since I wasn’t over my racial identity issues yet, I spent the entire time marveling at his coat and hoping he’d legally adopt me. Didn’t happen. Although we did have this exchange:

ME
(finally mustering up the courage after three quarters):
Mr. Barnes, when are you coming back?

BAD NEWS
(gregarious):
Wrgrghjsdhshs nmdmakalkm nbbd jsjajajp ldksaksjhj, lil’ man!
¹⁵

The News only played thirty-eight games for us, but that exchange personified everything. Celtic Pride had been tossed out the window in less than twenty-four months. Nelson and Hondo retired. Silas and Jo Jo were dumped under bitter circumstances. A miserable Cowens lost some of the fire that made him special. Heinsohn was canned so that he could realize his potential as the biggest homer in the history of sports announcing.
¹⁶
Worst of all, Auerbach nearly jumped to the Knicks after owner John Y. Brown recklessly traded three first-rounders for Bob McAdoo without telling Red first. In the old days, head cases like Barnes and McAdoo never would have
sniffed
the Celtics. We had become just another struggling team in a struggling league, a desperate franchise making desperate moves and searching for an identity. Then, just as quickly, everything changed. Auerbach won the power struggle with John Y.,
¹⁷
drafted Larry Bird as a junior eligible in 1978, and had the foresight to wait a year for Bird to graduate from Indiana State.
¹⁸
Even as the franchise was going to hell, we had a potential savior on the horizon. Following an acrimonious contract dispute, Bird signed for a then-record five-year $3.25 million deal, strolled into camp, and transformed a 29-win laughingstock into a 60-win juggernaut within a few weeks. As far as reclamation projects go, it happened even more quickly than Swayze cleaning up the Double Deuce (and we didn’t even have to hire Sam Elliott). We mattered again. Larry Legend
would capture three championships and three MVP awards, help save the NBA and become the most popular Boston athlete ever. During that same time, I hit puberty, graduated from high school and college, and started living in Boston on my own. By the time Bird’s career ended in 1992, my life was just beginning.

Now …

Consider the odds. From the time I could walk, my love for playing and following sports dwarfed everything else. I developed a special connection with basketball because my father bought a single season ticket only after my mother vetoed his motorcycle career. After catching two titles in our first three years, a calamitous chain of events crippled the franchise and frightened off so many fans that my dad and I leapfrogged into the best possible seats in the best basketball arena in the world, and as if that weren’t enough, our seats got upgraded right before one of the five greatest players ever joined the team. This wasn’t just a lucky chain of events; this was like winning the lottery three different times, or better yet, like Justin Timberlake banging Britney Spears, Jessica Biel, Scarlett Johansson, and Cameron Diaz in their primes, only if he had added Lindsay Lohan, Angelina Jolie, and Katie Holmes
¹⁹
for good measure. I spent my formative years studying the game of basketball with Professor Bird and relishing every subtle nuance that went with it. There was something contagious about watching someone constantly look for the extra pass; by osmosis, his teammates became just as unselfish, even potential black holes like McHale and Parish. It was like watching a group of relatively humorless guys spend time with an inordinately funny guy; invariably the inordinately funny guy raises everyone else’s comedy IQ.
²⁰
When you watched Bird long enough, you started to see the angles he was seeing; instead of reacting to what had just happened, you reacted to the play as it was happening.
There’s McHale cutting to the basket, I see him, get him the ball, there it is … Layup!
Bird gave us a collective sixth sense, a more sophisticated way of appreciating the sport. It was a gift. That’s what it was.

And that’s why you’re reading this book. I grew up watching basketball played the right way. Guys looking for the open man. Guys making the extra pass. Guys giving their best and coming through in big moments. By the time Bird retired, I had earned my Ph.D. in hoops. When your favorite team lands a transcendent player in your formative years—Magic on the Lakers, M.J. on the Bulls, Elway on the Broncos, Gretzky on the Oilers, or whomever—it really
is
like winning the lottery. Even twenty years later, I can rattle off classic Bird moments like I’m rattling off moments from my own life. Like the time he sprang for 60 as Atlanta’s scrubs exchanged high fives on their bench,
²¹
or the time he dropped 42 on Dr. J in less than three quarters, frustrating Doc to the point that they started strangling each other at midcourt.
²²
I have a hundred of them. Bird’s greatest moments also became some of mine. Funny how sports work that way. I find myself missing those buzzworthy Bird moments more and more, the ones where everyone in the Garden collectively realized at the same time, “Uh-oh, something magical could happen here.” Suddenly there would be a steady murmur in the arena that resembled the electricity right before a rock concert or a championship fight.
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As soon as you felt the buzz, you knew something special was in the works. You probably think I’m a raving lunatic, but I’m telling you, anyone who attended those games knows exactly what I’m trying to describe. You could feel it in the air:
Larry’s taking over
.