The Book of Basketball (9 page)

Bradley: “A team championship exposes the limits of self-reliance, selfishness and irresponsibility. One man alone can’t make it happen; in fact, the contrary is true: a single man can prevent it from happening. The success of the group assures the success of the individual, but not the other way around. Yet this team is an inept model, for even as people marvel at its unselfishness and skill involved, they disagree on how it is achieved and who is the most instrumental. The human closeness of a basketball team cannot be reconstructed on a larger scale.”
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Russell: “Star players have an enormous responsibility beyond their statistics—the responsibility to pick their team up and carry it. You have to do this to win championships—and to be ready to do it when you’d rather be a thousand other places. You have to say and do the things that make your opponents play worse and your teammates play better. I always thought that the most important measure of how good a game I’d played was how much better I’d made my teammates play.”

Bradley: “I believe that basketball, when a certain level of unselfish team play is realized, can serve as a kind of metaphor for ultimate cooperation. It is a sport where success, as symbolized by the championship, requires that the dictates of the community prevail over selfish personal impulses. An exceptional player is simply one point on a five-pointed star. Statistics—such as points, rebounds, or assists per game—can never explain the remarkable interaction that takes place on a successful pro team.”

In different ways, Russell and Bradley argued the same point: that players should be measured by their ability to connect with other players
(and not by statistics). Anyone can connect with their teammates for one season. Find that connection, cultivate it, win the title, maintain that connection, survive the inevitable land mines, fight off hungrier foes and keep coming back for more success … that’s being a champion. As Russell explained, “It’s much harder to keep a championship than to win one. After you’ve won once, some of the key figures are likely to grow dissatisfied with the role they play, so it’s harder to keep the team focused on doing what it takes to win. Also, you’ve already done it, so you can’t rely on the same drive that makes people climb mountains for the first time; winning isn’t new anymore. Also, there’s a temptation to believe that the last championship will somehow win the next one automatically. You have to keep going out there game after game. Besides, you’re getting older, and less willing to put up with aggravation and pain … When you find someone who at age 30 or 35 has the motivation to overrule that increasing pain and aggravation, you have a champion.”
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I didn’t see the words “stats” or “numbers” in there. It’s all about winning. You can tell which current teams may have discovered The Secret well before the playoffs. The Celtics finished the 2007–8 preseason as a noticeably tighter group; already rejuvenated by the Garnett/Allen trades, traveling together in Italy without cell phones had bonded them in an unconventionally effective way.
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They hatched their own catch-phrase, “Ubuntu,” a Bantu-derived word that roughly means “togetherness.” They hung out even after returning to the States; instead of three players heading out for a movie or postgame dinner, the number invariably shaded closer to nine or ten. Before every tip-off, Eddie House and James Posey stood near the scorer’s table and greeted the starters one by
one,
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with Eddie performing elaborate handshakes and Posey wrapping them in bear hugs and whispering motivational thoughts. Bench guys pulled for starters like they were the whitest, dorkiest tenth-graders on a prep school team. When the starters came out for breathers, the roles reversed. And that’s how the season went. The player most responsible for that collective unselfishness (Garnett) placed third in the MVP balloting because of subpar-for-him numbers; meanwhile, the Celtics jumped from the worst record in 2007 to the best record in 2008. Where’s the statistic for that? (Shit, I forgot: it’s called wins.) But that’s what makes basketball so great.
You have to watch the games. You have to pay attention. You cannot get seduced by numbers and stats.
Even as I was frantically finishing this book, I couldn’t help noticing LeBron’s ’09 Cavaliers developing Ubuntu-like chemistry and raving about it constantly—how much they loved each other, how (pick a player) hadn’t enjoyed himself this much playing basketball before, and so on. Talking about it, they had that same look in their collective eye that a buddy gets when he’s raving about killer sex with his new girlfriend:
This is amazing. I’ve never had anything like this before.
And I was thinking, “Where did I just read something like this?” Then I remembered. It was a quote from a December 1974
Sports Illustrated
feature about the Warriors:

There are a super group of guys on this team. Players who put the team ahead of self. I think basketball is the epitome of team sport anyhow, and we’ve got players now who complement one another for the sake of the team. Team success is what everyone here is after. I’ve never seen a guy down on himself after he had a bad performance, as long as we won. In the past he might have been more concerned about his poor shooting, and even if we had happened to win the game he wouldn’t have been any happier.

You know who said that? Rick Barry. That’s right, the single biggest prick of that era. Something clicked for him on that particular Warriors team: he was feeling it, he felt comfortable discussing it … and yes, he earned a Finals MVP trophy six months later. Any time a star player raves about his team like Barry did, you know that team is headed for good things. You just do. Of course, any team can channel a collective unselfishness for one season. How do you keep it going after winning a title and the riches that go with it? Former Montreal goalie Ken Dryden explained that winning

becomes a state of mind, an obligation, an expectation; in the end, an attitude.
Excellence
. It’s a rare chance to play with the best, to be the best. When you have it, you don’t want to give it up. It’s not easy and it’s not always fun … when you win as often as we do, you earn a right to lose. It’s losing to remember what winning feels like. But it’s a game of chicken. If you let it go, you might never get it back. You may find it’s a high-paid, pressureless comfort to your liking. I can feel it happening this year. If we win, next year will be worse.
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Russell lived for that pressure, defining himself and everyone else by how they responded to it:

Even with all the talent, the mental sharpness, the fun, the confidence and your focus honed down to winning, there’ll be a level of competition where all that evens out. Then the pressure builds, and for the champion it’s a test of heart…. Heart in champions has to do with the depth of your motivation, and how well your mind and body react to pressure. It’s concentration—that is, being able to do what you do under maximum pain and stress.
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So really, repeating as champions (or winning a third time, or a fourth) hinges on how a team deals with constant panic (not wanting to lose what it has) and pressure (not only coming through again and again, but trusting it will come through). You can handle those phenomenas only if you’ve got a certain framework in place, and as long as the superstar and his sidekicks remain committed to that framework. Wilt captured one title
(’67)
and was traded within fourteen months. He only cared about winning one title; defending it wasn’t as interesting, so he gravitated toward another challenge (leading the league in assists). Meanwhile, Russell still ritually puked before big games in his thirteenth season. He had enough rings to fill both hands and it didn’t matter. He knew nothing else. Winning consumed him. Merely by being around Russell and feeding off his immense competitiveness, his teammates ended up caring just as much. You can’t stumble into that collective feeling, but when it happens—and it doesn’t happen often—you do anything to protect it. That’s what makes great teams great.

And that’s why we remember the Jordan-Pippen teams so fondly. What cemented their legacy wasn’t the first five titles but the last one, when they were running on fumes and surviving solely on pride and Jordan’s indomitable will. My favorite stretch happened in the Eastern Finals—Game 7, trailing by three, six minutes to play—when the exhausted Bulls wouldn’t roll over for a really good Pacers team that seemed ready to knock them off. Remember Jordan beating seven-foot-four Rik Smits on a jump ball, or Pippen outhustling Reggie Miller for a crucial loose ball in the last few minutes? Remember how the Bulls crashed the offensive boards
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that night and did whatever it took to prevail? Remember how Jordan struggled with dead legs and a flat jump shot, so he started driving to the basket again and again, willing himself to the foul line like a running back moving the chains? Remember Jordan and Pippen standing with their hands on their knees at midcourt in the final seconds, completely
spent, unable to summon enough energy to celebrate? They would not allow the Bulls to lose that game. You don’t learn about a great team or great players when they’re winning; you learn about them when they’re struggling and clawing to remain on top. By contrast, the Shaq/Kobe Lakers only won three titles when the number should have been closer to eight. Since it was mildly astonishing to watch them implode at the time, I can’t imagine how it might look for fans of subsequent generations.

Wait, they had two of the top three players in basketball at the same time and only won three titles in a diluted league? How is that possible?

For the same reason that downgrading to Aguirre made the ’89 Pistons better. For the same reason that everyone in the eighties would have committed a crime to play with Bird or Magic. For the same reason that players from Russell’s era defend him so vehemently now. For the same reason that every player from the last dozen years would have rather played with Duncan than anyone else. It’s not about statistics and talent as much as making teammates better and putting your team ahead of yourself. That’s really it.
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When a team of talented players can do it, they become unstoppable for one season. When they want to keep doing it and they can sublimate their egos for the greater good, that’s when they become fascinating in a historical context.

For the purposes of this book—loosely described as “evaluating why certain players and teams mattered more than others”
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—I couldn’t find that answer just through statistics. I needed to immerse myself in the history of the game, read as much as I could and watch as much tape as I could. Five distinct types of players kept emerging: elite players who made
themselves and everyone else better; elite players who were out for themselves; elite players who vacillated back and forth between those two mind-sets depending on how it suited their own interests;
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role players whose importance doubled or tripled on the right team; and guys who ultimately didn’t matter. We don’t care about the last group. We definitely care about the middle three groups and we really, really,
really
care about the first group. I care about guys who ralphed before crucial games and cried on television shows because a simple replay brought back pain from years ago. I care that someone walked away from a guaranteed title (or more) because he selfishly wanted to win on
his
terms, and I care that someone gave away 20 percent of his minutes or numbers because that sacrifice made his team better. I care about glowing quotes from yellowed magazines and passionate testimonials from dying teammates. I care about the things I witnessed and how they resonated with me. And what I ultimately decided was this: when we measure teams and players against one another in a historical context, The Secret matters more than anything else.

One final anecdote explains everything. Right after Russell’s Celtics won the last of their championships in 1969, a crew of friends, employees, owners and media members poured into Boston’s locker room expecting the typical routine of champagne spraying and jubilant hugs. Russell asked every outsider to leave the locker room for a few minutes. The players wanted to savor the moment with each other, he explained, adding to nobody in particular, “We are each other’s friends.” The room cleared and they spent that precious piece of time celebrating with one another. Lord knows what was said or what that moment meant for them. As Isiah told Dan Patrick, we wouldn’t understand. And we wouldn’t. After they reopened the doors, Russell agreed to a quick interview with ABC’s Jack Twyman, who started things out with the typically shitty nonquestion that we’ve come to expect in these situations: “Bill, this must have been a great win for you.”

Russell happily started to answer: “Jack …”

The rest of the words didn’t come. He searched for a way to describe the feeling. He couldn’t speak. He rubbed his right hand across his face.
Still no words. He finally broke down for a few seconds—no crying, just a man overwhelmed by the moment. You know what he looked like? Ellis “Red” Boyd during the climactic cornfield scene in
The Shawshank Redemption
. Remember when Red finished Andy’s emotional “hope is a good thing” letter, fought off the lump in his throat, stared ahead with glassy eyes and couldn’t even process what just happened? The moment transcended him. You could say the same for Russell. The man had reached the highest level anyone can achieve in sports: the perfect blend of sweat and pain and champagne, a weathered appreciation of everything that happened, a unique connection with teammates that he’d treasure forever. Russell knew his ’69 team was running on fumes, that they were overmatched, that they probably shouldn’t have prevailed. But they did. And it happened for reasons that had absolutely nothing to do with basketball.
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