The Book of Basketball (37 page)

53.
In retrospect, we should have known that a guy named Ralph wasn’t going to be one of the best centers ever. Had he embraced the Muslim faith and changed his name to Kabaar Abdul-Sampson or Raheem Sampson, he’d have been unstoppable. Look at the names of the best players ever: they’re all great names that you’d give a sports movie character. Michael Jordan. Bill Russell. Magic Johnson. Jerry West. Larry Bird. Moses Malone. You’d never name the lead of a sports movie Ralph Sampson or Darko Milicic.

54.
Two of Sampson’s three defining moments involved Boston anyway: his scary fall in March ’86 (it happened in the Garden, so it makes you wonder if ghosts were involved), and the punch he threw at six-foot-one Jerry Sichting in Game 5 of the ’86 Finals, leading to Boston’s fans rattling his confidence in Game 6 (and the debut of the Ralph Sampson “I hope I get out of here alive” face).

55.
This was the second-best buzzer-beater other than Jerry West’s half-court shot in the 1970 Finals. How many series end on a twisting, 180-degree fling shot that happens in under a second? And they diagrammed it in a huddle to boot!

56.
Houston won Games 2, 3 and 4 by 10, 8, and 10, with Hakeem scoring 75 in Games 3 and 4. Pat Riley later lamented, “We tried everything. We put four bodies on him. We helped from different angles. He’s just a great player.” The Rockets badly outrebounded L.A. in their four wins. As
SI
’s Jack MacCallum wrote afterward, “The Rockets headed into [the Finals] secure in the knowledge that they had gone over, around and through the Lakers. And everybody else knew it, too.”

57.
Lloyd was devastating in transition and startlingly efficient: from ’84 to ’86, he averaged a 16–4–4 on 53% shooting. He’s also the starting two-guard on the “Now that I’m watching this game 20 years later on ESPN Classic, I can totally see him failing a drug test—he’s got crazy eyes!” All-Stars.

58.
Sampson went up for a dunk, got blocked, got twisted awkwardly and crashed to the ground so violently that the Garden made an
ohhhhhhh
sound and went deathly quiet. He landed right on his head and back, almost like he fell out of a bunk bed while sleeping. They carried him off on a stretcher a foot too short, so his mammoth legs dangled off it. Here’s how bad the injury looked when it happened: I actually remember where I was when I watched it live (my mom’s bedroom—she had a great TV). You know it’s a watershed moment when you can remember where you watched it.

59.
Personally, I think the Lakers should retire the number of Houston’s coke dealer, as well as the Celtic who fouled Sampson in that ’86 game in Boston.

60.
It’s really too bad that ESPN legal analyst Roger Cossack wasn’t around then—he would have been more visible than Mel Kiper Jr. during the month of the NFL Draft.

61.
Charlie Scott and Mel Daniels bailed on the league
during
the ’73 season and got away with it. So it did happen. The ABA only had the legal resources to pick their spots and block bigger stars like Rick Barry.

62.
You have to love the way the NBA operated in the mid-’70s. The Jazz said, “Um, hey, we’ve been thinking about it—we’d love a mulligan on that Moses decision,” and Commissioner O’Brien’s office said, “No problem—here’s your number one back!” Given how haphazardly things were run back then, it makes you wonder if they called O’Brien, he was on the other line, his secretary asked what the call was about, the Jazz told her, she said “Hold on” and passed the message on to O’Brien, and he waved her off by saying “Fine, fine, just tell them yes” before getting back to his phone call with Ben Bradlee or Walter Mondale.

63.
Yes, the Jazz probably wouldn’t have earned the number one overall pick three years later had they just kept Moses, since he won the MVP 3 years later. That “Moses and Magic” line just looked imposing on paper, you have to admit.

64.
This part kills me. How did they decide on $232,000? Somebody needs to write a book detailing every fucked-up thing that happened in the NBA in 1976. It could be 1,200 pages.

65.
The Buffalo pick ended up being number three overall in ’78: Portland sent it to Indiana along with Johnny Davis for the number one overall pick, taking Mychal Thompson as Walton insurance. Maybe Thompson wasn’t a Pantheon center, but he was good enough to get his own goofy Nike poster: just Thompson wearing a Hawaiian shirt and holding a parrot while sitting by a tropical pool. The implication being … I don’t know.

66.
On January 25, 1977, one week after
SI
wrote a “Look at how Moses has ignited the Rockets” feature, Tates Locke (the guy who quickly buried Moses in Buffalo) was fired as the Braves’ head coach. This was not a coincidence. For the
Lost
fans out there, three-plus decades of bad luck for the Braves/Clippers started right after they fired Jack and replaced him with Locke.

67.
New Jersey traded the pick a fourth time, leading to the Micheal Ray era in New York. Sadly, I am out of cocaine jokes. I’m tapped.

68.
Nowadays, we have a Catastrophe Rule: an emergency expansion draft in which every team can only protect four or five guys. Then that team gets the top pick of the next draft (plus its own pick). It’s a good thing this isn’t widely known because an irate Knicks fan would have tampered with the team’s charter during the Isiah era.

69.
And one sappy Disney movie in the late ’90s with Samuel L. Jackson playing Elgin and Matthew McConaughey playing Hot Rod Hundley in a film called
Cornfield of Dreams
or
Final Flight.

70.
I bought this book for $6 online; the highlight was reading it, gleaning all the information I needed, then starting a bonfire with it in my backyard. In the words of Marv Albert, “Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is
on fire!”

71.
Looking back, it’s the biggest NBA turnover ever other than Isiah’s pass that the Legend picked off (1987) and Mail Fraud getting stripped right before Jordan’s last shot (1998). It’s too bad the ABA didn’t have George McGinnis hold the check; he would have turned it right over.

72.
Remember, Bias was supposed to take the torch from Russell, Havlicek and Bird. That’s how good he was. Also, there was a cap in place by ’86 and owners like Ted Stepien weren’t stupidly giving away number one picks anymore. It was significantly tougher to improve. Fuck.

73.
I know I mentioned this twice but it continues to kill me. Remember, Bird routinely got bored during games, spent entire halves shooting left-handed and once played an ’86 game where he and Walton tried to figure how many different ways they could run a play where Bird threw it in to Walton, then cut toward the basket and caught a return pass from Walton. You’re telling me he wouldn’t have said, “I want to see if I can get Len 15 alley-oops tonight”? I am shaking my head.

74.
My hypothetical top ten: Bird, Magic, Sampson, Isiah, Bernard, Moses, ’Nique, Moncrief, McHale, Buck Williams.

75.
I found this information online—I refused to buy
Living the Dream
because it sounded so awful. A strong statement from someone who bought
Give ’Em the Hook
by Tommy Heinsohn.

76.
Philly’s offer never became public. One year later, Harold Katz tried to swap Doc for Terry Cummings before Doc called him out and the entire city of Philadelphia turned on Katz. Although that’s not saying much. Philly would turn on me just for making fun of them in this footnote. Crap, there goes another book signing.

77.
They had just been burned by two questionable high draft picks: Ronnie Lester (bad knees) and Quintin Dailey (bad soul). They wanted a sure thing.

78.
The two best players in prolonged tryouts that included every relevant name from the ’84 and ’85 drafts? Jordan and Barkley. Chuck ended up getting cut after Knight told him to lose weight and Barkley went the other way. Other cuts: Malone, Stockton, Joe Dumars, and Terry Porter. Guys who made it: Jeff Turner, Joe Kleine, Steve Alford and Jon Koncak. I think Chris Wallace and David Duke were advisers to Knight that summer.

79.
Or they could have overwhelmed Houston for Sampson: the number two, Drexler
and
Fat Lever.

80.
You know what’s interesting? Houston just passed up the greatest player ever and I
still
feel like they made the right pick. You always go with a sure-thing center over a sure-thing guard. Always.

81.
Stern always said the entire franchise’s name during this draft except this one time: He skipped the “Trail Blazers” part, like he was trying to get off the stage as fast as possible. You can’t blame him.

82.
During the same summer
The Sure Thing
with John Cusack was released. Coincidence? I say no!

83.
Did Bowie’s staggeringly unstaggering college stats remind you of anyone else? I’m thinking an OSU center, number one pick, looked 20 years older than his age, also played for Portland …

84.
Worth mentioning: Sam was extremely polished and handled himself well. I feel bad for the guy. I mean, it’s not his fault they drafted him over Jordan, right? And he was a quality center when he was healthy. Which was only 54 percent of his career, but still.

85.
If you ever get a chance to watch this clip, check out the look on the guy who’s on the phone for Chicago—he’s so delighted, it looks like he’s getting blown under the table. We’ll never know for sure.

86.
Jason Robards won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar as Bradlee in one of my favorite performances ever. He owns every scene of a movie with Redford and Hoffman in it. Within seven years, he was playing the lead in
Max Dugan Returns.
I don’t get Hollywood.

FIVE
MOST VALUABLE CHAPTER

SAY WHAT YOU
want about the NBA, but fifteen of its running features and subplots distinguish it from every other professional sport (in a good way):

1. A wildly entertaining rookie draft that helped calibrate my Unintentional Comedy Scale. Things settled down over the last few years when agents and PR people realized things like, “Maybe we shouldn’t send him to the draft dressed like a pimp” and “Maybe it’s not a good idea to give David Stern a full body, genitals-on-genitals hug after you get picked,” but it’s still one of my favorite TV nights of the year, if only because Jay Bilas has a ton of length and a ridiculous wingspan.
   

2. A dress code for injured players that, after an adjustment period, ultimately led to fashionably dressed scrubs hopping onto the court after time-outs to dole out chest bumps and high fives. We witnessed a blossoming of the Overexcited Thirteenth Man in the ’08 Playoffs; if Walter Herrmann was the Jackie Robinson of this movement, then Brian Scalabrine was Larry Doby and Scot Pollard was Don Newcombe. Where else can you see a $2,000 leather jacket get stained with sweat by a chest bump?
   

3. Courtside seats that serve a double purpose: First, they’re hard to get without connections or unless you have six figures sitting around for season tickets. If you’re sitting in them, your success in life has been validated in some strange way, even if everyone sitting in every non-courtside seat probably thinks you’re an asshole. (It’s the same phenomenon as sitting in first class and watching everyone else size you up in disgust as they’re headed to coach, multiplied by fifty.) And second, it’s the best possible seat in any sport. You’re right on top of the court, you hear every order, swear, joke, insult or trash-talk moment, and if you’re lucky enough to be sitting right next to one of the benches, you can hear them discussing strategy in the huddle.
   ¹
   There isn’t another sports fan experience like it. I’d even argue that the twelve seats between the two benches—six on each side of the midcourt line, or as they’re commonly known, the Nicholson Seats—are the single greatest set of seats for any professional sport.
   

4. Cheerleaders dressing like hookers and acting like strippers. Can’t forget them.
   

5. Foreign players entering the NBA with heavy accents, then picking up a hip-hop twang over the course of a few seasons from being around black people all the time. I call this “Detlef Syndrome” because Schrempf was the ultimate example; by the halfway point of his career, he sounded like the German guys in
   Beerfest
   crossed with the Wu-Tang Clan. It’s just a shame that Arnold Schwarzenegger didn’t train at an all-black gym in the seventies; we really could have seen something special.
   ²
   

6. An even weirder phenomenon than Detlef Syndrome: for reasons that remain unclear, the NBA causes some journalists to write NBA-related columns or features like they’re “writing black.” Unquestionably, it’s the worst journalistic trend of the last twenty years other than the live blog. I never understood the mind-set here:
   There are a great many black players in this sport; therefore, I must make my prose a little more urban.
   Really? That’s logical? I don’t get it. You feelin’ me? Word. This is one phat book I’m writing, yo. Recognize.
   

7. Real fans yanked from the stands to shoot halfcourt shots for cars, money or whatever else is being offered. What other sport allows fans to become part of the action like that? Of course, they never come close because of the little-known rule that only unathletic people, females or people weighing over three hundred pounds are chosen for the halfcourt shot. But still, at least it’s exciting.
   ³
   

8. The most simple yet revealing statistics in any sport: points, rebounds, steals, blocks, assists, free throws, field goals, threes and turnovers. Over the past ten years, a series of stat freaks inspired by the baseball revolution pushed a variety of convoluted statistics on us, but really, you can determine the effectiveness of nearly any player by examining an NBA box score. Rarely does a post-1973 box score deceive, although a few subtle stats could be created to make things even better. We’ll delve into this during the Wes Unseld section.
   ⁴
   

9. What other sport offers the broken-nose mask that Rip Hamilton popularized? For how prevalent these things have been for the past thirty years, I can’t believe we never came up with a nickname for it. A few years ago I launched an unsuccessful movement to name it “the Schnozzaroo.” Never caught on. What’s strange is that they’re such an afterthought for players who care deeply about their postgame wardrobe, their appearance, their shoes—and yet they’ll slide on these homely, bland plastic masks without sprucing them up. Shouldn’t they be painting them the way goalies decorate their masks in hockey, or maybe even wearing an intimidating, Hannibal Lecter-style mask for a big playoff game? What about putting advertising on it (like the Nike logo)? We need to spruce up the Schnozzaroos. You have to love a league that just spawned this paragraph.
   

10. Telecasts with Hubie Brown, a man who mastered the hypothetical first-person plural tense over the past twenty-five years and transformed it into a common conversation device. What would our lives have been like without Hubie? I wish Paul Thomas Anderson had cast him as Jack Horner’s assistant director in
    Boogie Nights
    , just so we could have had a moment like this one during the filming of
    Spanish Pantalones:
    “Okay, let’s say I’m Dirk Diggler in this scene. I’m hooking up with Rollergirl, I’m on a waterbed, I’m horny as hell, I’m Spanish, I’m hung like a horse and my pants are
    on fire.
    Now I’m thinking about rolling Rollergirl over from missionary to doggie style because I know that I’m keeping my options open and I can go right from doggie into another position. I also know that I should be
    thinking
    about using a Spanish accent….”
    

11. The unique-to-the-NBA phenomenon where a traded player looks dramatically different in his new uniform. Sometimes it looks like he’s been reborn, sometimes it’s like he’s finally found the perfect color/style, sometimes he looks like something’s drastically wrong, and in rare cases the uniform makes him look slower, fatter and less athletic (like Shaq when he joined the Suns). I remember when Kwame Brown got traded to the Lakers and looked magnificent in his new duds: his arms looked bigger, he seemed more imposing and he carried himself differently. For all we knew, he had transformed into Jermaine O’Neal. But absolutely
    nothing
    had changed talent-wise except that he turned a Wizards jersey into a Lakers jersey. As we soon found out. Because Kwame Brown sucks. Still, for those first few Lakers games, he looked pretty damn good. It’s just unfortunate that actors, politicians and singers can’t take advantage of the new-uniform phenomenon; people like Jakob Dylan, Matt LeBlanc, Joe Biden and Adam Duritz could have remade their careers.
    

12. In my lifetime, David Stern narrowly edges Pete Rozelle as the commissioner with the most dominant personality, someone who always kept his league in complete control, gained such power and prominence that we actually wondered if he had fixed certain games or banned certain superstars without telling us, spawned a generation of legendary, Bill Brasky-like “Did you hear about the time Stern spent twenty minutes
    f-
    bombing _______________[name at least two executives from any company, sponsor, network or the league itself from the past twenty-five years]?” stories and anecdotes, and left such a legacy that he inspired one writer (in this case, me) to make a semiserious case in one column for why David Stern should be our next president. Just like there will never be another Magic, Michael or Larry, there will never be another David Stern.
    ⁵
    

13. Mothers who show up for home games, go overboard supporting their sons and sometimes make fools out of themselves. Every time I think back to a Sixers game during the Iverson era, it makes me jealous that I can’t write this book right now with twenty thousand fans cheering me on as my mom sits in the front row wearing a Simmons jersey, whooping it up and holding a sign that says,
    MY BABY IS THE SPORTS GUY AND HE’S ALL THAT!
    

14. Tattoos. Tons and tons of tattoos. No other sport has you saying things like, “I wonder what those Chinese characters stand for” and “Wait a second, is that Notorious B.I.G.’s face on the point guard’s right arm?” My buddy JackO has been arguing for years that, along with a game program, home teams should hand out a tattoo program that explains the origin of every tattoo on both teams (complete with pictures). Like you wouldn’t thumb through it during time-outs?
    

15. The Most Valuable Player award that matters the most.