Values of the Game (8 page)

Amy Cook is the daughter of a friend of mine. Her father was a high school track coach, whose teams had won six state championships. His greatest satisfaction, however, came from seeing his daughter grow up to be a great 100-meter high hurdler. In her sophomore year in high school, she had the fastest recorded time in the state of Missouri and won second place in the state championship. Then, in the winter of her junior year, she tore her anterior cruciate ligament during the district basketball finals. She had surgery and reconstruction of the knee joint. The doctors said that it was uncertain if she would ever run again. The cast stayed on for eight weeks and then she began the rehabilitation—the weight clinic, the stretches, the jogging—hoping to get ready for her senior year season. Her parents accompanied her every morning to her 6:30 workouts. She returned to competition in March of her senior year, but she didn’t do well. Sometimes she couldn’t even finish a race because of the pain. She barely qualified for the state championships—and as she and her father drove to Jefferson City for the state meet, they knew they had both done everything they possibly could to prepare her for the event. When the runners took their mark, Amy’s father was close to tears, afraid that his daughter would be crushed by a poor performance. The gun went off and Amy jumped out ahead, holding the lead to the finish.

Amy Cook was the state champion. She had reached deep into herself and found the confidence and drive that enabled her to win. It was partly physical—she had done everything she could to get ready. It was partly mental—she had prepared herself to risk everything in order to win. But it was her resilience that put her over the top.

A part of being resilient is understanding that there are some things in life that can never be gotten over, no matter how many games are under your belt. I felt sad on many levels on November 7, 1991, when Magic Johnson reported to the world that he was infected with HIV. I mourned the loss to the game. Yet Magic’s terrible misfortune reminds us that each of us harbors self-destructive impulses and urges, along with all the qualities we’re proudest of. By standing up in public and telling young people, “Don’t make the mistakes I made,” Magic shed some light on a part of our human nature that is too often hidden. For that gift from him, we must be grateful.

It may be that by accepting the limits to resilience we can celebrate it, using it when we can and cherishing it while it lasts. I’ve made it through more than a few tough moments in my life by drawing on the resources of my basketball years. Resilience is what allows us to struggle hard and long with tragedy or loss or misfortune or change and still manage to dig deep and find our second wind. It is a kind of toughness. Each life blow no longer shatters us like a hammer hitting brick; rather, it makes us stronger. It tempers us, like a hammer hitting metal. Imagine the comfort in knowing that by never giving up, by accepting the bad breaks and going on, you will have lived life to the fullest, and maybe will have lived it a little longer. Such peace of mind is often reward enough.

The innovators in basketball came upon their ideas through trial and error, by playing the game. Hank Luisetti of Stanford was the first player to shoot with one hand; before that, all basketball shots except the layup and the hook were two-handed. Joe Fulks of the Philadelphia Warriors concluded that he could get the edge on his opponent if he jumped and shot the ball from the top of his leap, and the jump shot was born. In the 1950s, Bob Cousy began passing the ball behind his back. He was considered a hot dog by traditionalists, but like most innovators he persisted because he believed in his idea—besides, the crowds loved it. Gradually, coaches saw that the efficiency and deceptiveness of the move paid off in easier baskets for teammates. About that time, Elgin Baylor entered the pro ranks. Baylor’s tremendous leaping ability allowed him to combine the jump shot and layup; he was the first player who seemed to hang in air, defying gravity. Julius Erving and Michael Jordan are his direct descendants. Even kids with no leaping ability (myself included—the joke on the Knicks was that my peak leap equaled the thickness of a Sunday
New York Times
) tried to imitate Elgin as he moved around the basket, altering his shot by changing the ball from hand to hand and using the rim on layups to block his defender’s attempt to reach the ball.

Innovation took place mainly on offense until Bill Russell and K. C. Jones arrived on the scene in the mid-fifties. As teammates on consecutive national championship teams at the University of San Francisco, and then on the Celtics championship teams, they changed the meaning of defense in basketball. Before them, it was like counterpunching in boxing: The offense would make a move and the defense would respond to it. Russell and Jones forced the offense to react. “K. C. thought differently,” Russell wrote in his book,
Second Wind:

“He was always figuring ways he could make the opponent take the shot he wanted him to take when he wanted him to take it, from the place he wanted the man to shoot. Often during games, he would pretend to stumble into my man while letting the player he was guarding have a free drive to the basket with the ball, knowing that I could block the shot and take the ball away. Or, he’d let a man have an outside shot from just beyond the perimeter of his effectiveness and, instead of harassing the player, would take off down the court, figuring that I’d get the rebound and throw him a long pass for an easy basket.”

Russell in particular was a master of invention. Having concluded that horizontal lines defined the game better than vertical ones (notwithstanding the fact that more and more players were jumping higher), he was always conscious of the angle at which he did anything on the court. If he had to block a shot from behind on a man streaking for a breakaway layup, he would take a step to the left so that he could come from behind at an angle that would allow his left arm to block the shot and his body to land to the shooter’s right, thereby avoiding the collision that would have earned him a foul. If he was attempting to block a jump shot, he tried to do it during the first foot of the ball’s arc, which meant that his body had to be close to the shooter’s body in the air; and he used a vertical leap with outstretched arms because that created fewer fouls than a leap forward, which would have carried his body into the shooter. He also knew that while a blocked shot pleases the crowd, it is only half the story; the other half is giving your team control of the ball. So when he blocked a shot, his aim was to bat the ball not into the crowd or against the backboard but to a teammate so that the fast break could begin.

Russell also pointed out that over 60 percent of rebounds occur below the rim, which means that positioning is more important than leaping ability. Knowing where a particular player’s shot usually bounces allows you to anticipate where to be. Boxing out far enough from the basket increases the area you can reach whenever the ball caroms off the rim. Starting under the basket and backing (or assing) your opponent out toward the foul line can surprise him and create a similar space to gather in a rebound. More than any other player then or since, Russell mastered the game’s mental aspects, but other great rebounders—Paul Silas, Dave DeBusschere, Moses Malone, Dennis Rodman, Jayson Williams—also understand the subtlety of the art.

The most dramatic sports innovation I can recall was introduced by the high jumper Dick Fosbury in 1968, when he turned on his back going over the bar instead of going over stomach down, which was the conventional approach. “I was told over and over again that I would never be successful, that I was not going to be competitive and the technique was simply not going to work,” he said to a reporter after winning the gold medal at the Mexico City Olympics. “All I could do was shrug and say, ‘We’ll just have to see.’” The artist, the scientist in the lab, the technologist with a hunch develop ideas that change the world forever. These sports innovators remind us anew that one person can make a difference—and has, time and time again.

Some players demonstrate a creative imagination in maximizing their modest skills. One of my teammates once said to me half jokingly, “You know, Bill, you’re the best player in the NBA—from your wrist to the tip of your fingers.” He meant that I had good hands, hands that got to a lot of places quickly. Often you can block an opponent’s shot by sticking your hand into the area where he brings the ball up from a dribble for the shot, a move called “stripping him.” When the Knicks played a team with a big center, I would often drop off my man and double team the center when he got the ball. More than a few times, while I was still facing the man I was guarding, I would reach back with my swatting hand and knock the ball loose from the center’s grip. At a minimum I clogged up the area so that the center had less room to make his move.

Having good hands on offense means that you can catch a pass, make a pass, catch and flick a pass at will. In shooting, good hands help to produce a quick release—the speed with which you move the ball from where you received it to shooting position. Beyond good hands, really great passers have a kind of sixth sense that is spatial and rooted in superb eye-hand coordination and unusual peripheral and depth vision. And really great shooters plant their feet so that they have balance when they receive the ball. Imagination flows into your game when you devise your own ways of combining quick hands, good eyes, and good feet.

Sometimes rule changes force innovations in the way the game is played. The 3-point rule is an example. By giving an extra point for a successful shot 23 feet 9 inches or more from the basket, the rule turned the game upside down. Before the 1979–80 season, the objective was to get the easiest shot, as close as possible to the basket. There was a maximum of player movement, with a premium on finesse and team coordination. Now you’re more likely to see a screen-and-roll on one side of the floor, with six players standing far from the basket on the opposite side of the floor. If you don’t get a clear jump shot or a layup off the screen-and-roll, you drive with the ball. If you get nowhere because of a double team, you simply kick it out to a teammate waiting for the ball behind the 3-point line. Too often, strategies are devised to get an open twenty-five-foot shot as much as to get a layup.

The 3-point rule created a whole new market for good spot shooters—players of average overall skills who could hit the open, standing twenty-five-footer with great regularity: Dell Curry of Charlotte, Steve Kerr of the Chicago Bulls, and Dale Ellis of the Seattle SuperSonics are examples. Since many of my shots as a pro were near that range, people have asked me if I wish I had played when the rule was in effect. My answer is no. What you give up in team movement and finesse is not worth what you get from a few extra points beyond the 3-point line.

Imagination can also stretch the rules, for basketball is a game of subtle felonies. Referees have a wide latitude in determining whether or not an infraction has taken place. Sometimes they will ignore the rules. For example, you have to dribble the ball with your hand on top or on the side of the ball; if you put your hand under the ball to initiate or continue the dribble, you should be charged with palming or carrying the ball. Now, increasingly in the pros, referees don’t call it. They allow players to palm the ball, particularly on the crossover dribble. That change has allowed players with great quickness, such as Stephon Marbury of the Minnesota Timberwolves and Allen Iverson of the Philadelphia 76ers, to use the crossover move with great effectiveness.

Players can use their creativity to shape the referee’s interpretation or even to avoid his detection. I can remember the excitement I felt when I was exposed to this game within the game. Jerry West told me how to hook my left hand around an opponent’s leg to get leverage when I whirled around him. Ed Macauley showed me how to place my foot to the side of my man before I received a pass, so that when I got the ball I would have already beaten him by half a step. Macauley also showed me how to maintain awareness of where my man was on defense when I wasn’t looking at him directly: keeping my hands in constant touch with him as if I were reading Braille. I learned by watching Cliff Hagan and Elgin Baylor how to fend off an opponent’s attempt to block your shot by using your free hand to protect the ball from his reach.

The writer Frank Deford once noted in an article on Boston Celtics swing man Frank Ramsey that about 20 percent of a team’s points in the average game come from free throws. The more you can sucker your opponent into committing fouls, the more points you can add to your team total. Ramsey was full of tricks. He could draw an offensive foul by placing his hand behind his opponent’s back (the hand away from the referee) and pulling him forward so that it would appear that the opponent had intentionally run into him. On defensive rebounds, if his opponent had nudged him under the basket so that he couldn’t get to the ball, he would simply fling up his arms and fail forward, looking for all the world like a man who had been pushed. Often the referee agreed. He also perfected the art of getting an opponent to jump to block an anticipated shot and then leaning into him while he’s suspended helpless in the air so that he grazes you on his way down and your way up for the shot. That way he doesn’t disturb your shot and the referee is likely to call a foul on him. (This was a technique I used to great advantage throughout my college years; in the pros, fewer calls came my way, so I abandoned it.) You see moves like this every day in the college and NBA season—they involve creative deception and challenge the referee’s skills as aggressively as those of the opponent. (Michael Jordan’s heroic last-second shot in the 1998 NBA finals was aided by the clever use of his left hand to nudge Bryon Russell off balance just before Jordan pulled up and hit the shot.)

Much attention has focused on trash talk in recent years, particularly its ugly and hostile varieties, but using talk to disturb your opponent’s concentration has been around a long time. As a high school player, I used to play a foul-shooting game in which it was permissible to do anything to the shooter except touch him or obstruct his vision. The purpose of shouting at him, making jokes at his expense, and insulting him was to get him to break his concentration, and it was good preparation for the pressures of the game itself. The distinction worth drawing is between flagrant talk for show, which the crowd sees, and subtle talk for results, which it doesn’t see. Talk for results takes many forms, but it usually means trying to rattle your opponent. It could be Sam Jones of the Celtics saying to Wilt Chamberlain, after Wilt failed to block a shot, “Too late, baby!” Or it could be Bill Russell looking at me during a foul shot and then at Satch Sanders, who was guarding me, and saying exasperatedly, “Come on, Satch, don’t let
him
score!” It could be Michael Jordan saying to a rookie on the opposing team before closing his eyes and making the free throw, “Hey, rook, I bet you can’t do this.” It could be Larry Bird telling his opponent before the game, in the hallway leading to the court, “I think I’m really feeling good tonight. I think I might go for about fifty.” Or Bird, when Michael Jordan in his early years guarded him on a switch, saying, “I got a little one—give me the ball!” Or Bird during one holiday game, scoring on his man and then wishing him a Merry Christmas. Sportswriter Peter DeJonge has written, “What made Bird untouchable was the seamless connection between his dribbling and babbling, as if his tongue were one more incredibly coordinated limb. As he backed his defender down, Bird would matter-of-factly tell him where they were going and what was going to happen when they got there, going on to explain that his being able to do exactly what he wanted, and the defender being helpless to do anything but watch, was the reason for the huge discrepancy in their salaries. In the middle of this combination radio play-by-play and TV color commentary, without any telltale grunt, the ball would be flying toward the basket with the concluding remarks: ‘Don’t even turn around. It’s all net.’”