Values of the Game (5 page)

Some of the very best basketball players, through their athletic accomplishments, legitimize youthful aspiration and encourage commitment. They know how hard they’ve worked to cultivate and extend their talents, but, with an appealing modesty, they also recognize their talents as a gift. By recognizing that they are not the sole creators of their own particular genius, these players reflect a perspective that at core can be spiritual. What comes to mind is Magic Johnson’s enthusiasm. (The Greek word
enthusiasmos
means “being filled with the spirit of the gods.”) Julius Erving once described what he did as literally “leaping for God.” Players like this seem to have a natural understanding of the spirit. In contrast to the greed and selfishness that is too much a part of American life, and increasingly of basketball itself, they point toward another way, one influenced more by internal peace than by envy or celebrity. As the ancient Greeks understood, great athletes not only accept the ordeal of competition and the trial of strength inherent in it, but also show us a connection between what we do each day and something that is larger than we are and lasts longer than we do.

When I was fourteen and a freshman in high school, I already stood 6 feet 3 and weighed 165 pounds. Despite my size, I didn’t go out for the football team; it was basketball I loved. The high school coach, who coached both sports but preferred football, suspected I was afraid of getting hurt. After I made the varsity basketball team that year, he decided to test my courage. During Christmas break, before the drills of official practice began, he arranged a boxing match between me and a visiting alumnus, an all-American college football player who was two inches taller and some fifty pounds heavier than I was. I took a pounding, but because I didn’t back down I think I proved something to the coach.

Courage in sports means, in the simplest terms, giving 100 percent for your team. In basketball, if there’s a loose ball, you dive for it; forget that the floor is hardwood. If you go for a rebound and get elbowed in the face, make sure that next time you go back even harder. If you’re playing tough defense and the man you’re guarding takes you into a screen set by a burly forward, fight over the screen. If you set a screen and a big forward is about to run into you with all the force of a linebacker, take the hit. Every time I see Patrick Ewing take the charge by placing his body in front of a 6-feet-9 240-pound forward going full speed for the basket, I want to hug him in admiration.

It’s worth emphasizing that courage is not the same thing as fearlessness. It means accepting and then overcoming fear—fear of injury, of failing, of looking bad, of relinquishing excuses.

In December of my rookie year, I was playing guard against Boston, but I was too slow, particularly on defense. We were applying a full-court press. I picked up my man with the ball at the inbounds baseline. Moving my feet like a water spider gliding over the water’s surface, I tried to pressure him toward the sidelines. Just past the center court line, Wayne Embry, a towering 260-pound backup center, set a blindside screen. I crashed into him and slumped to the floor as if I’d run into a brick wall. At that moment, courage meant shaking off the hurt and embarrassment and finding my man again. (If you’re slow, sometimes courage is your last resource!)

Occasionally during my ten years in the league, I would be so badly injured that I couldn’t play for a couple of games. I’d sit in street clothes on the bench, watching giants run like gazelles and jump like ballet dancers. I’d see—and hear—the bruising contact when one player boxed out another for rebounds; I’d watch all the defensive hacking and clawing, the tough fouls on a drive. Each time I’d have the same reaction: I play out there?

You can see the most visceral kind of courage in basketball when sick or injured players stay in the game for the good of the team. When a reporter asked the English runner David Moorcroft why he had never dropped out of a race even in the worst of circumstances, he replied, “I think that once you do, you’ve given yourself an option for the future.” There isn’t a great basketball player who hasn’t played with a muscle pull, a sprained knee or ankle, a sore back, contusions, a cold, the flu, or an upset stomach. Later in the hotel room, when the chills get you, you wonder whether you were crazy, but in the locker room before the game that’s one question you don’t ask yourself.

In that seventh game of the 1970 finals against Los Angeles the pain in Willis Reed’s leg was so bad that he could hardly walk. In 1997, Michael Jordan was running a fever of 102 in the fifth game of the finals against the Utah Jazz, but he played anyway. He wasn’t afraid of looking bad because of a below-par performance. He wasn’t afraid of permanent damage to his health. And he wasn’t willing to hold himself back. Calling upon some inner reserve of strength, he gave it everything he had: 38 points, 7 rebounds, and 5 assists.

Larry Bird’s last seasons in the NBA are a classic example of this kind of courage. After nine years of wear and tear, his back was giving him a lot of trouble. Each time he left the locker room, Bird moved as if he were disabled, but when he got to the hardwood, out there before the crowd, something happened to him. “It was as if he’d been given a new back,” former Celtics CEO Dave Gavitt told me at a Hall of Fame induction ceremony. “He didn’t seem to realize he was in pain until the competition was behind him.” When Bird finished the 1991–92 season, the prognosis was grim; his body had finally worn out. His contract contained a two-year option for $4.5 million a year, which would automatically take effect on August 15 if he didn’t notify the club of his retirement. On August 12, Bird went to see Gavitt and announced that he was going to retire. Gavitt, aware of the August 15 deadline and of all the years of dedicated service Larry had given the Celtics, asked him whether he wanted a few more days to think it over. “I know what day this is,” Bird replied. “If I’m not going to play and know I can’t play, I’m not going to take the money. I’m not going to take one cent I don’t earn.”

Sometimes the motivation to play while you’re in pain is not simply victory but an urge to prove yourself to your peers. During my second season in the NBA, I was a guard and still not performing up to my expectations. In January, Cazzie Russell, a Knicks starting forward, broke his ankle, and Red Holzman had me take his place. It was my big chance. A few days later, we flew into San Diego for a game. I began feeling ill shortly after we arrived at the motel, and by the time I reached the locker room I was nauseated. When the game began, I was still sick, and after a few times up and down the floor, I went over to the bench during a time-out and vomited into a bucket. We were shorthanded that night, and I was determined not to come out of the game. Several times during free throws, I held the basket pole and dry-heaved. I kept telling myself, “Put it out of your mind. Keep playing.” The other players were laughing, but I have no doubt that every one of them understood what was going on in my head.

Shooting involves its own kind of subtle courage. When all the money is on the line, a brave player wants the ball. He is willing to stare defeat down. His confidence builds with the pressure. The standing joke on many teams is about the scorer who wants the ball for three quarters but can’t be found at crunch time. Technically his shooting is perfect, but his fear of failure is too great.

If you’re a shooter and you start missing, you have to keep taking your open shots. This is no small thing. Missing makes some players nervous. They begin to hesitate, consciously or subconsciously. Taking another shot is a torture instead of an opportunity, so they stop shooting altogether. The great player is willing to keep trying.

For most of my years with the Knicks, all five starters would take the shot. When one of us missed, the others never complained, never blamed. We were a team. We understood this, but sometimes the crowd didn’t. In 1971, in the seventh game of the Eastern playoff against Baltimore, the score was Baltimore 93, New York 91, with about ten seconds left on the clock. On a broken play for Walt Frazier, I got the ball with four seconds to go and only the baseline open. I took two dribbles and then the shot, but Wes Unseld, the Baltimore center, got a piece of it, and the ball hit the side of the backboard, ending our dreams of a second straight championship. To this day (most recently on a 1998 visit to the floor of the American Stock Exchange), perfect strangers ask me, “Why’d you miss that shot back in ’71 against Baltimore?”

The foul line is the place where a player is most exposed. You’re there all alone. No one is guarding you. There are no excuses. The only thing that defeats you is pressure and a lack of courage. In 1968, in a game against Boston, I was fouled during the last minute and a half, with the Knicks It point ahead. If I hit both foul shots, we’d probably win; if I missed, we could lose. This was one of the few games early in my career when the coach had put me in at crunch time. I wasn’t a starter, and in that game I was shooting 1 for 10 from the field. Needless to say, I felt the tension rising. As I went to the line, the ref compounded it by handing me the ball and saying, “Now we’ll see what you’re made of.” Despite the warm words, I sank both shots.

A similar situation occurred during a Sunday game in the 1997 NBA finals between Utah and Chicago, Utah jazz forward Karl Malone—nicknamed the Mailman, because he always seems to deliver in the clutch—missed two free throws with seconds to go in the game. Utah lost. Much was made of Scottie Pippen’s words to Malone before his shots: “Hey, Karl, the mailman don’t deliver on Sunday.” But the real story was what happened afterward. Many players would have offered some excuse for the misses—maybe even blaming it on Pippen’s attempt at psyching. Not Malone. He took full responsibility. He missed, next time he’d do better. Another kind of courage.

There have been times when basketball players have shown a courage that many working people can understand. In the early years of the NBA, the players had no benefits and were paid poorly. But a small group of the players decided to form a union to get themselves out of third-rate hotels on the road and, more important, establish a pension system and health coverage. The owners ignored them until the 1964 All-Star Game, when the players refused to play until the owners recognized the union. The owners threatened to fire them, but the players stood firm: No recognition of the union, no All-Star game. In the locker room, these All-Stars were well aware that they were acting on behalf of every other professional basketball player. The owners relented, and the All-Star game took place that night. It was a familiar story, one that had already been played out in many industries in America. For me, it reinforces the idea that with a little courage, even if you wield little power individually, you can make great things happen when you join forces.

In basketball, just facing the crowd sometimes takes courage. The crowd intimidates and wears you down. It is unforgiving. It can inflict personal pain, as it did to me in my rookie year. The fans in New York expected nothing less than immediate stardom from me, and when it didn’t happen they became hostile. After the first ten or so games, people would start booing whenever my name was mentioned. A few of the unrulier fans would throw things at me as I left the floor. On the street, strangers frequently greeted me with ridicule. Every night that I went into the arena was a night of potential embarrassment before the home crowd. It was as if I’d been put in the ring with the heavyweight champion and couldn’t get away. But by the end of the year, I had gained confidence by the sheer act of persevering.

By contrast, I found it easy to steel myself against the derision of crowds away from home. Most are merciless toward the opposing team. The air is filled with boos and catcalls. To the crowd, the opposing players are the enemy. Their humanity is denied; in the early years of the league, black players had to face a constant barrage of racist epithets. Some players get angry at the fans who sit right behind the visitors’ bench in many arenas and shout obscenities or make loud and uncomplimentary remarks about a player’s ability, or his looks, or his family pedigree. Some players get rattled when the crowd stands and waves behind the backboard in an attempt to distract them. For most, though, this kind of audience hostility toward the visiting team is nothing new. It brings back memories of high school games and summer leagues, when the slightest disagreement with a call might precipitate a fight or at least a lot of sounding off, and the audience occasionally became menacing. Once you’ve been through those adolescent wars, the away-from-home crowds in the pros can seem like a piece of cake.

Leadership means getting people to think, believe, see, and do what they might not have without you. It means possessing the vision to set the right goal and the decisiveness to pursue it single-mindedly. It means being aware of the fears and anxieties felt by those you lead even as you urge them to overcome those fears. It can appear in a speech before hundreds of people or in a dialogue with one other person—or simply by example.

To the Bulls’ Phil Jackson, the key leadership function for a coach in the pros is getting the players to commit to something bigger than themselves. In the simplest sense, winning is the purpose of playing, but to achieve that end a coach frequently has to create a context larger than the immediate game. At each level I played, the desire to win was a reflection of a deeper desire: In my small-town high school, the motivation was to beat the big city schools; in college, the challenge was for a group of athletes who were primarily students to beat the best in the NCAA; in the pros, the larger purpose was to show that a team without a dominant star could win the NBA title. Pete Carril’s idea of leadership was to ask his players to give a little more than they thought they were capable of giving and by so doing achieve a bit more than they were capable of achieving. That’s why Princeton on occasion became a giant killer.

A wise coach doesn’t do all the talking. Sometimes, with the right group, he’ll let the team members put pressure on players who are problem children. In 1994, the Bulls, without Michael Jordan, were playing the Knicks for the Eastern Conference semifinals. In the last seconds of a close game three, Jackson called the game-deciding play, with Toni Kukoc rather than Scottie Pippen as the shooter. An angered Pippen took himself out of the game. Kukoc hit the shot and the Bulls won, but Pippen’s highly visible act of insubordination posed an immediate challenge for Jackson. Phil declined to come down hard on Pippen in his postgame interview. In the locker room, however, he closed the door, announced that he thought the team had something to say to Pippen, and then left the room. Bill Cartwright, a quintessential team player who was in the final year of his career, was so upset that he was close to tears as he asked Pippen how he could have let the team down after all they had sacrificed for as a group throughout the year. Other players chimed in along similar lines. Pippen, man enough to see his error, apologized on the spot, and in the next game he was back contributing to the Bulls’ performance. If Phil himself had confronted Scottie, the result might not have been as positive; by harnessing the team to do his work, he was more effective.