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Values of the Game
 About the Book
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Preview
PASSION
YOU BEGIN BY BOUNCING a ball - in the house, on the driveway, along the sidewalk, at the playground. Then you start shooting: legs bent, eyes on the rim, elbow under the ball. You shoot and follow through. Let it fly, up, up and in. No equipment is needed beyond a ball, a rim, and imagination. How simple the basic act is. I´m not sure exactly when my interest turned to passion, but I was very young, and it has never diminished.
When I was a teenager, alone in the high school gym for hours, the repetition of shooting, shot after shot, became a kind of ritual for me. The seams and the grain of the leather ball had to feel a certain way. My fingertips went right to the grooves and told me if it felt right. The key to the fingertips was keeping them clean. I would rub my right hand to my sweaty brow, then against my T-shirt at chest level, and then I would cradle the ball. By the end of shooting practice, the grime had made its way from the floor to the ball to my fingertips to my shirt. After thousands of shots, my shirts were permanently stained.
The gymnasium itself was a part of my solitary joy. I took in every nuance of the place. It was a state-of-the-art facility, with retractable fan-shaped glass backboards. The floor was polished and shining; when I moved, it glistened as if I were playing on a mirror. The only daylight streamed in from windows high along the sloping ceiling. The smell was not of locker room mildew but of pungent varnish and slightly oiled mops, the guarantors of floor quality throughout the years. The gym´s janitor insisted on one absolute rule: no street shoes allowed on the floor. It was sacred terrain, traversable only by the soft soles of Converse or Keds.
Then there were the sounds. Thwat, thwat! The ball hit the floor and the popping sound echoed from the steel beams of the ceiling and the collapsed wooden stands that stacked up twenty feet high. Thwat, thwat, squeak - the squeal of your sneakers against the floor, followed by the jump and then the shot. The swish of the ball through the net, a sound sweeter than the roar of the crowd. Swish. Thwat, thwat, squeak, swish!
I couldn´t get enough. If I hit ten in a row, I wanted fifteen. If I hit fifteen, I wanted twenty-five. Driven to excel by some deep, unsurveyed urge, I stayed out on that floor hour after hour, day after day, year after year. I played until my muscles stiffened and my arms ached. I persevered through blisters, contusions, and strained joints. When I got home I had to take a nap before I could muster the energy to eat the dinner that sat in the oven. After one Friday night high school game, which we lost to our arch rival, I was back in the gym at nine on Saturday morning, with the bleachers still deployed and the popcorn boxes scattered beneath them, soaking my defeat by shooting. Others had been in this place last night, I thought, but now I was here by myself, and I was home.
When I practiced alone, I often conjured up the wider world of basketball. Maybe I had just seen the Los Angeles Lakers play on TV the day before; I´d try to remember a particular move that Laker forward Elgin Baylor had made, then imitate it. I would simulate the whole game in my mind, including the spiel of the announcer. "Five seconds left, four seconds, three, Bradley dribbles right in heavy traffic, jumps, shoots - good at the buzzer!" I dreamed that someday I´d experience that moment for real, maybe even take the clutch shot in the state finals. In my dream, of course, I´d hit it and we´d be state champions.
The passion of solitary practice was matched by the joy of playing team ball. The constant kaleidoscope of team play was infinitely interesting to me. For every challenge thrown up by the defense, there was an offensive counter. Having the court sense to recognize this in the flow of the game produced a real high. The notion that someday I could be paid to play a game I loved never occurred to me.
When I practiced alone in high school, I would try to emulate the moves of the game´s great players. Elgin Baylor´s game provided early inspiration. The Lakers´ big-play man was the master of the rocker step and ingenious around the basket with either hand. In the 1960-61 season, he averaged nearly 35 points and 20 rebounds a game.
YOU COULD ALWAYS TELL that Magic Johnson loved to play. He smiled, grimaced, and pushed himself and his teammates. His gusto honored the game. Some players these days seem more angry than joyful, yet the great ones still have a zest. Grant Hill´s pleasure comes from his game´s completeness and his own unflappable composure. Hakeem Olajuwon exudes a delighted confidence when the ball goes into him at the low post. Clyde Drexler, like Dr. J in earlier years, conveys an effortless joy when he has the ball in open court and heads for the basket.
Even the controversial Dennis Rodman evinces a love of the game despite his antics. His game within the game is rebounding. He studies films to see which way a shooter´s shot usually bounces. He keeps his body in top shape. He uses his body only after he uses his brain and his eyes, and then he makes a second, third, and fourth effort. When he gets the ball, he smiles the smile of someone dedicated to something well beyond himself.
Chamique Holdsclaw of Tennessee (23), aka the female Michael Jordan, shows a similar level of intensity and enthusiasm for the game. That´s one reason her team has dominated college hoops. Women have brought a unique spirit to basketball, one I have enjoyed watching. It is marked by a deep commitment to one another and to the team game.
The women´s game in particular is full of a kind of beautiful enthusiasm. On many teams each player seems deeply involved in her teammates´ spirits as well as their play. I used to love to watch Kate Starbird spark her Stanford team with her tenacity, intensity, and 3-point-shooting skill, but the epitome, for me, is Chamique Holdsclaw of Tennessee, the female Michael Jordan. She has a winning combination of zeal and ability that allows her to generate excitement in the crowd, dedication among her teammates, and fear in the minds of her opponents. Her sheer love of the game becomes infectious.
Imagine what happens when you´ve got an entire team of players who are passionate about the game. In my Knicks days, there was no feeling comparable to the one I got when the team´s game came together - those nights when five guys moved as one. The moment was one of beautiful isolation, the result of the correct blending of human forces at the proper time and to the exact degree. With my team, before the crowd, against our opponents, it was almost as if this were my private world and no one else could sense the inexorable rightness of the moment.
The Knicks 1973 championship was more fun for me than the initial one in 1970. We weren´t under the pressure of trying achieve a first championship. The team itself was more congenial; the variety of plays was greater. I had a secure position as a starter. The obstacles that had once blocked my pure enjoyment of the game had all been removed. The only thing I had to do was allow the kid in me to feel the pure pleasure in just playing. In plenty of games, I played simply for the joy of it, shooting and passing without thinking about points. I forgot the score, and sometimes I would go through a whole quarter without looking at the scoreboard.
I felt about the court, the ball, the basket, the way people feel about friends, so playing for money seemed to me to be compromising enough. I never made any endorsements or commercials during my NBA career. To take money for hawking basketball shoes or shaving lotion would have demeaned my experience of the game, or so I felt. Besides, I sensed that the deals were being offered because I was a "white hope" and not because of my playing ability. More than the money, the travel, the lure of the championships, it was the game itself that rewarded me.
I´ve told the story a thousand times about the night in the 1970s at a postgame reception in Chicago when a man approached me and asked, "Do you really like to play basketball?"
"Yeah, more than anything else I could be doing now," I replied.
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