The Book of Basketball (77 page)

The third one was Jordan. He reached a high enough level of fame by the mid-nineties that every entrance was accompanied by a barrage of flashbulbs, shrieks of “Michael!” and fans screaming hysterically for no real reason, like we were attending an all-girls private school and the Jonas Brothers had just walked in. What fascinated me was the way Jordan carried himself—keep moving, keep looking down, keep a small smile on your face—never breaking character even as strange palms bounced off his shoulders, even if someone was screaming
“Myyyyyyy-kalllllllllllll!!!!!!!
” from three feet away and blowing out his eardrum. He just kept plowing forward with a tiny grin. When he reached the floor and started preparing for the game, knowing the whole time that everyone was taking pictures, staring and waiting for him to pick his nose and scratch his nuts or something … I mean, there was just something dignified about the way he
existed.
Famous people are famous for a reason.

The fourth one? David Robinson. During his rookie year in 1990, I buzzed down from college to catch his first game at the Garden. That seemed like a worthy trip at the time; everyone had been waiting for him to join the NBA for two years and the “Russell 2.0” tag didn’t seem farfetched yet. Everyone attending this game already knew what he looked like. So when Robinson emerged from that tunnel, nothing should have happened other than everyone thinking, “Cool, there he is.” Instead, we made this sound: “Whoa.” Is that a sound or a murmur? I don’t know. But it was breathtaking to watch him glide by for the first time, like standing a few feet away from a prize thoroughbred or a brand-new Ferrari
Testarossa. To this day, I have never seen anyone that close who looked more like a basketball player than David Robinson: The man was taller and more regal than we expected, but so absurdly chiseled that he looked like a touched-up model in a Soloflex ad. He walked proudly with his chest puffed out, his head held high, and a friendly smile on his face. He was strikingly handsome and even the most devout heterosexual males would have admitted it. Really, he was just a specimen. That’s the best way I can describe it. He was a freaking specimen. My dad said later that it was the only time he’d ever heard the “Whoa” sound in all his years sitting in that tunnel. We all made it. None of us could believe what we were seeing. Some guys are just destined to play basketball for a living.
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At that specific point in time, I would have wagered anything that Robinson would become one of the ten greatest players ever. Never happened. He failed to dominate the NBA despite having every conceivable tool you’d want for a center: Russell’s defensive instincts, Wilt’s strength and agility, Gilmore’s height, Parish’s ability to run the floor, Hakeem’s footwork and hand-eye coordination … and if that weren’t enough, the guy was
left-handed.
If we ever start cloning basketball players someday, Jordan, LeBron and Robinson will be one-two-three in some order.
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On paper, you couldn’t ask for a better center. In
The Golden Boys
, Cameron Stauth reveals that a twenty-five-year-old Robinson was the committee’s number four choice for the team—behind Bird/Magic/Jordan and ahead of everyone else—and there were always rumors that Chicago held internal discussions about offering Jordan straight up for Robinson before the ’92 and ’93 seasons. That’s how good everyone thought Robinson would be. The guy had everything.
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Well, almost everything. The same qualities that made him a special person also limited his basketball ceiling. Robinson might have been his generation’s most intelligent player, the guy scoring 1310 on his SATs,
playing the piano, and dabbling in naval science in his spare time.
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Do book smarts matter on a basketball court? Not really. If anything, those extra brain cells wounded Robinson. Every early Robinson story centered around him “overthinking” things and needing to let “the game come to him.” He routinely sucked in crunch time, maybe because he was thinking about big-picture things like “I need to come through or else my legacy will be questioned someday.” A peaceful Christian who tried to find good in everyone, he lacked the requisite leadership skills—much less MJ’s “keep this up and I’m bringing you into the locker room, locking the door and beating the living crap out of you” quality, for that matter—to handle Dennis Rodman as Rodman spiraled out of control and undermined San Antonio’s ’95 playoff run. He never developed the same cutthroat attitude that defined Hakeem in his prime. It just wasn’t in him. When Jordan went on his “baseball sabbatical” and left a gaping opening for Robinson to become The Guy, Hakeem bulldozed him out of the way and won consecutive titles. Everything crested in the ’95 Playoffs—Robinson’s MVP season, by the way—when Hakeem delivered such a one-sided ass-whupping in the ’95 Western Finals that it eventually found a home on YouTube in a clip appropriately titled “Olaujwon Dominates Robinson.” Hakeem slapped up a 35–13–5 with 4 blocks per game, made the game-winning assist in Game 1, outscored Robinson 81–41 in the deciding two games and abused him with one particularly evil “Dream Shake” in Game 2 that became the defining moment of the series. So much for the Hakeem-Robinson debate.
⁵⁶

When Robinson finally became a champion in ’99, it happened only because Tim Duncan assumed alpha dog duties and allowed Robinson to settle into his destiny as a complementary guy … although, of course, that title doesn’t count because the ’99 season never happened. Even if his
personality prevented him from reaching his full potential as a player (and by the way, no. 28 in the Pyramid isn’t too shabby), those same generous, thoughtful, unselfish qualities made him the greatest
person
out of anyone from his generation of stars. You know when you read about some people and feel embarrassed because you never touched people’s lives in the same way? That’s how Robinson made people feel; he’s the guy who once spent $9 million of his own money to build a school in San Antonio. My favorite Robinson memory was the way he reacted during the Steve Kerr Game, when Kerr shook off the cobwebs and caught fire in Game 6 of the ’03 Mavs-Spurs series. Since Kerr was popular with teammates and his barrage of threes was completely unexpected (he was their twelfth man that year), San Antonio’s bench was reacting like a fifteenth-seed pulling off a March Madness upset. Right in the middle of everything was Robinson. He couldn’t have been more overjoyed. You can actually see him jumping up and down like a little kid at one point. I guarantee he remembers that game as one of the highlights of his career. And in the big scheme of things, you know what? That counts for something. Nobody in the Pyramid was a better teammate or person than David Robinson. On the other hand, that’s not a great sign for Robinson’s legacy: my favorite Robinson moment was him cheering a teammate from the Spurs bench.

He only played fourteen seasons and struggled with back/knee issues for the last two—with nobody fully recognizing how much he had slipped because he
looked
exactly the same
⁵⁷
—before rallying in the 2003 Finals to help the Spurs clinch a second title. His career was hindered slightly by a late start (thanks to four college years and a two-year navy stint), too many coaches (five in his first six years), and a crummy supporting cast (before Duncan, his only teammate to make an All-Star team was Sean Elliott). He wasn’t a twenty-four-year-old rookie because he bounced around Juco schools, spent time in prison, or repeated his senior year of high school three times; the guy served our country and fulfilled his responsibilities, so he deserves historical extra credit there. If there’s a what-if with Robinson other than losing two years with the navy stint, it’s that the Spurs botched the number three pick in ’89 by drafting Elliott ahead
of Glen Rice, an indefensible decision
⁵⁸
that became worse as the years passed and Rice evolved into a crunch-time killer and murderous three-point shooter for Charlotte and Miami. Had Rice been taking the big Spurs shots in the mid-nineties, the Spurs would have snuck into the Finals during Robinson’s prime and he might have cracked Level 4. Instead I’ll remember him for one sound: “Whoa.”
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27. BILL WALTON

Resume: 10 years, 4 quality, 2 All-Stars … ’77 Finals MVP … ’78 MVP, ’77 runner-up … Top 5 (’78), Top 10 (’77) … All-Defense (2x) … leader: rebounds (1x), blocks (1x) … best player on 1 champ (’77 Blazers), 6th man on 1 champ (’86 Celts) … ’77 playoffs: 18.2 PPG, 15.5 RPG, 5.5 APG, 3.4 BPG

Imagine you became GM of your favorite team and were given the power to pull any NBA center from a time machine, then stick that player on your team—only his career would unfold exactly like it did when he played. Under these rules, would you rather have fourteen quality years of Robinson or two and a half transcendent years from Walton (one and a half as a starter, one as a sixth man)? I take Walton, and here’s why: for that one transcendent year when we catch lightning in a bottle with him, I am
guaranteed
a title as long as I flank him with a good rebounder, a decent shooter and quick guards. How many players guaranteed you an NBA title? Jordan, Bird, Magic, Russell, Kareem, Hakeem, Duncan, Shaq, Moses, Wilt (if his head was on straight), Mikan (as long as it was the early fifties) … really, that’s the whole list. Walton cracked that group for one magical year, prevailing with the worst supporting cast of any post-merger champion: Mo Lucas, Lionel Hollins, Bobby Gross, Johnny Davis,
Dave Twardzik, Lloyd Neal and that’s about it. For eleven months from March 29, 1977 to March 1, 1978, including the ’77 playoffs, Portland finished 70–15 during an especially competitive era.
⁶⁰
And everything
—everything
—ran through Walton. Maybe some centers were better in specific areas, but none was the best passer, rebounder, shot blocker, outlet passer, defensive anchor, crunch-time scorer, emotional leader and undisputed “guy we revolve our offense around” for their team at the same time. If you made a checklist of what you want from a center, he’s the only player who gets check marks in every category.
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And if you tinkered with his game to make it “better,” really, what would you do? Maybe give him Kareem’s sky hook or a few McHale low-post moves? We’re picking nits at that point, right?

The big redhead deserves credit for peaking on the ultimate stage: the ’77 Finals, when he averaged a 19–19–5 with 4 blocks and slapped up an ungodly 20–23–8 with seven blocks in the deciding game, then ripped off his jersey and celebrated shirtless with the delirious Portland fans. It’s on the short list of most dominating individual performances that actually meant something, right up there with Russell’s Game 7 of the ’62 Finals, Wilt’s Game 5 against Boston in ’67, Pettit’s Game 6 of the ’57 Finals, Jordan’s Game 6 of the ’98 Finals, Frazier’s Game 7 of the ’70 Finals, Kareem’s Game 5 of the ’80 Finals, Magic’s Game 6 of the ’80 Finals, Duncan’s Game 6 of the ’03 Finals, Hakeem’s Game 5 in the ’95 Spurs series and Bird’s Game 6 of the ’86 Finals. Fortunately, NBA TV and ESPN Classic run an inordinate number of ’77 Blazers games; it’s one thing to read about Walton, and it’s another thing to marvel at his Unseld-like outlets, Bird-like passing and deadly bank shots, as well as the way he constantly lifted his teammates and made them better. He controlled the basket on both ends. That’s the best way to describe it. We haven’t seen anything like it since.
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Quick tangent: during that star-crossed ’78 season when Walton’s body
broke down right as the Blazers were decimating everyone, they played in Boston right before my Christmas break. I had just turned eight. For me to remember a random Celtics game from December ’77 means that it left a significant imprint on me. And here’s what I remember: Portland showed up in Boston and absolutely kicked the small intestines out of us. It’s not like we were good anymore; that was the year Hondo retired, Heinsohn got fired and everything fell apart. They caught us at the perfect time. With that said, the Blazers reached a level that I hadn’t seen in person before. They turned the game into a layup line for four quarters. Every time we missed, Walton grabbed the rebound and started another fast break. There was no conceivable way to beat them. We missed, they scored. We missed, they scored. They were a machine. I remember leaving the Garden with my father and feeling like we had both been beaten up or something. By the time I turned twenty-five, I remembered the score being 151–72; actually, the final score was 113–81. But you get the point. Other than the ’86 Celtics and ’96 Bulls, that’s the best team I’ve ever seen in person. And all because of Walton.

You can’t overstate how damaging those lost Walton years were for anyone who truly cared about basketball. From a comedy standpoint, it would be like Eddie Murphy releasing
48 Hours
and
Trading Places
, disappearing for the next eight years, coming back and releasing
Beverly Hills Cop
, then disappearing for good. From a musical standpoint, it was like Cobain killing himself right as Nirvana was recording the follow-up to
Nevermind.
Of course, the perfect pop culture comparison would be Tupac Shakur—funny because you can’t find a blacker guy than ’Pac or a whiter guy than Walton—because their careers started out stormy (Walton’s injuries and political activism, ’Pac’s jail time and brash lyrics) and had an ominous, this-could-end-at-any-time feel (thanks to Walton’s feet and ’Pac’s death wish), only they returned at full strength and blew everyone away for a solid year (Walton’s 70–15 stretch, Tupac’s
All Eyez on Me
album)
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before getting pulled away for good (Walton because of his feet,
’Pac because he was murdered). Then they lingered for the next decade or so, with Walton’s comebacks repeatedly getting cut short
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and Death Row Records repeatedly releasing lost songs and re-dubs that weren’t as good as the stuff ’Pac made when he was alive. The big difference was that Walton found redemption on the ’86 Celtics; Tupac won’t find redemption unless he returns from the dead. (And don’t rule it out.) I do wonder if Walton and Tupac were helped historically by their brief apexes; we romanticize them years later and wonder what could have been, only Tupac loved the thug life too much and Walton’s misshapen feet were never meant to handle the NBA. They each had a fatal flaw and that was that.