Life on the Run (14 page)

Now, when I think about my first four years with the Knicks I’m surprised how little joy there was in comparison with these later years. The tangible changes between the two periods were in Holzman’s manner and in the composition of the team. During Red’s early years, he was by design a super-authoritarian and I was often one of his targets for abuse. At the Garden all he had to do was walk into the locker room and say one word, or just use a certain tone of voice, and there was total silence. At practices he would yell at me until I was as tight as a guitar string. On the road I would be afraid to run into him in the hotel elevator because I was sure he would remind me that he was “the boss.” I would go for days without speaking to him and once, for a week, I didn’t even look at him. I felt he talked to me as if I was a punk kid and whatever he said often angered me. Once during the play-offs when I asked to miss a team flight so I could take examinations for graduate school he said, “You know, don’t you, that your contract gives me complete control over your body for nine months a year. Didn’t you know when the playoffs were?” I had never felt about anyone in my life the way I did about Red. As I wrote in my journal then, “Recently Red kills much potential joy for me. I don’t want to leave New York but if he trades me what choice do I have? If he wanted to keep me on the bench forever he could. It’s always the tyranny of the unspoken. I feel helpless before his power over my life.”

But, after the first championship in 1970, Red began to mellow. He had become general manager as well as coach and though he had more power he acted more gently. He retired his dictatorial manner and adopted a friendlier attitude toward the team, in part because it must be draining on a coach always to play the villain and in part because Red knew everyone well enough to get exactly what he needed from each at the proper time without much shouting. Still, the major breakthrough in my relations with Holzman came only when he traded Cazzie Russell to San Francisco for Jerry Lucas. Red had picked
me
. The effect was exhilarating. Before, when he had consulted me about strategy as he had with other players, I resented it, fearing it was some plot to cut my playing time. Formerly, when he came into the locker room and made some comment about me having gone to Princeton and him “only” to CCNY, I burned with anger. But, once Russell was gone, things changed. I began to laugh when he kidded me about Princeton or talked about going to CCNY with his greasy paper bag full of lunchmeat; he seemed to be laughing himself. Never was there a word spoken between us about such things, but the atmosphere became noticeably more congenial.

The addition of Monroe and Lucas brought to the team two players of exceptional abilities and unusual personalities. But, the departure of Cazzie was more important for my greater enjoyment of the game because we had spent three years as constant competitors for the same starting forward position.

Despite the rivalry between Cazzie and me, I liked him very much (and continue to). I’ve seen few athletes more dedicated to their sport. In that sense he was like Barnett and, to a lesser degree, me. But we shared other, more striking, similarities. We both came from strong religious backgrounds. We both had strong mothers, a stable family, and an acceptance of conscientious hard work as a virtue. In our college years, he at Ann Arbor, I at Princeton, we both gained respect from people for things we did beyond playing basketball. Both of us had big contracts to turn pro—Cazzie in 1966, I one year later—and experienced the concomitant jealousies of other players who had not yet benefited from a higher salary structure. Each of us spent his rookie year on the bench, coming to terms with failure for the first time in his life. Cazzie’s exuberance for the game, above all, made me fond of him. Critics called him a showboat, but I sensed that the raised fists, the shoulder shakes, and the prolonged follow-throughs that marked his style were signs of the same love I felt for basketball.

To the fans our competition highlighted our differences. He was flamboyant; I was not. He was black; I was white. He verbalized constantly; I was careful with words, preferring to listen. He was an explosive player who generated much excitement through his one-on-one skills; I was a methodical player who often needed a screen to get my shot and concentrated on floor play (play without the ball). Finally, we had a history of competition that dated back to 1964 when my Princeton team played Cazzie’s Michigan team twice. The game in Madison Square Garden on December 28, 1964, permanently etched our adversary roles in the minds of the basketball public. Princeton had a fourteen-point lead when I fouled out with four minutes remaining. Cazzie and Michigan caught and beat Princeton in the stretch, avoiding a loss which would have jolted them from their number one national ranking. Although I had outscored Cazzie, his team won.

The Knicks drafted both of us. I went to Oxford for two years, then broke in as a guard. Cazzie made his way as a starting forward. When Cazzie broke his ankle, in January 1969, I took his spot. The switch from guard to forward placed me in a position I had played in college and, more important, the team began to win consistently. After Cazzie’s ankle healed our competition began in earnest.

We divided the basketball fans in New York into warring camps. The press and public emphasized our dissimilarities. Cab drivers would tell me Cazzie should start. Cab drivers would tell me I should start. People at courtside would do the same. If Cazzie or I missed several shots during warm-ups, someone would invariably yell that the other one of us should be starting. Both of us had a hard time accepting anything less.

I came to view our competition as a sad but necessary aspect of professional basketball. Playing time is like food for a player; without it, he cannot survive. However much Cazzie and I respected each other, since neither of us was prepared to accept twenty minutes of playing time as sufficient, every game and every practice became a battle to show Holzman that one of us was better than the other. Our head-to-head competition drained me of much emotional energy, for I was never sure that I would win. I thought about how best to defense him before every practice. Since he was such a great clutch shooter I could never give him room to maneuver. Above all, I could never relax. I felt the tension the moment I stepped onto the court. When Cazzie was on an opposite team in the practice shooting game, we were really shooting against each other. During scrimmages, every rebound and shot was contested fiercely. Each of us looked for any kind of edge, so much so that often we remained shooting after practice until the court closed, both determined not to be the first to leave. The constant rivalry might have made us better players, but it did not make life enjoyable. Even off the court, the anger and aggressive drive spilled over and prevented closeness.

The tension between us never became bitter or hostile, though, for two reasons. First, I think we understood each other and possessed a mutual respect more basic than words could convey. It was as if a fragile, arbitrary frame of competition with its own set of distinctive rules and requirements had been placed on a foundation of solid and natural understanding. Second, each of us directed much of our hostility toward Holzman, for it was he who controlled our supply of playing time, our food. I finally realized that Cazzie and I were pawns in a larger game, like corporate executives apparently competing for promotion but most directly benefiting the corporation that established the arena for competition. So we were competing between ourselves and against the team’s opponent. There was vertical and horizontal competition, just as in any good capitalist organization. Many fans saw the familiar signs of their own work situations in our competition; their interest in part derived from the anxieties generated in their own lives and projected onto us.

Holzman stood at the top of the hierarchy. He controlled our destiny. The players under him might try to please him, impress him, or help him, but they could never be sure that they had security as long as even his smiles, his glares, and his unexplained actions perpetuated the competition. I developed elaborate explanations (however erroneous they were in fact) of how Holzman was intentionally sabotaging my game. In retrospect I realize that Red, as coach, had to view the dictates of the game as a whole, which brought him into a necessary clash with the players who often viewed only their own needs for self-fulfillment as important. The predicament that Cazzie and I found ourselves in was as much a product of our own paranoias and egos as it was of Holzman’s design.

But with Cazzie’s departure everything changed. I was no longer pouting about playing time and the bitter competition for the starting position had ended. Holzman’s already mellowed manner became downright paternal and kind. Playing basketball became more fun than I had ever envisioned.

After practice, I cut the tape from my ankles. I put my foot on an ice bag for fifteen minutes to decrease the pain in an inflamed arch. Finally, I shower—long after the other players have finished, dressed, and left. Danny Whelan and I are the last to leave Pace College. I give him a ride to the Garden. We are free until the game against Boston the next night.

From the middle of September until May there is usually no longer than one day at a time without basketball. There are no long weekends or national holidays for players. It is impossible to take a trip to the mountains or fly to Florida even for two days. We are a part of show business, providing public entertainment. We work on Christmas night and New Year’s Eve. A player remains on call by his team. Occasionally decisions about practice, films, and trips are made day to day so it is difficult to make any firm plans during the season. If a coach wants to demand a player’s presence every day of the working year, he can get it.

Nonetheless, there is ample time to pursue interests outside of basketball. After all, a normal workday for us in New York consists of only four hours. Dick Barnett uses his free time to go back to school for a Master’s degree in Urban Affairs from New York University. Willis Reed likes to run small businesses. Although he always manages to find time for fishing and hunting on his 300-acre farm in Pennsylvania, he must be on top of his affairs. A contract with Uniroyal requires one appearance a month. Various other endorsements take time, and his liquor store, his restaurant, his summer camp, and his apartment building require the rest of his attention.

DeBusschere, more than the others, depends primarily on basketball and his family. He once was a stockbroker but found he disliked the responsibility of handling other people’s money. Much of his off-time is spent with his family at home. He loves to cook and play with his kids. Occasionally, he will make a TV commercial for clothes or hairspray or candy or cars. He studies investments and makes his decisions on them with little counsel. He has many friends in the corporate world, and he likes New York restaurants, considering himself a bit of a gourmet.

Activities outside basketball, for all of us, are largely dependent on winning. When things go poorly, commercial offers decrease precipitously. Fewer people want to become acquaintances. Daily encounters with the public become painful. Walking down the street as a winner invites hellos and congratulations. Walking that same street after losing produces criticism and derision. That is the way of our world, and that is why, when we are losing, I do a lot of reading.

T
UESDAY EVENING IS THE NIGHT OF A CRUCIAL GAME AGAINST
Boston. If we are to have a chance for first place, we must win tonight. Inside the Employees’ Entrance I mug at Frankie and say hello to Slick, the elevator man—“Hey, what’s happenin’, Brother Bill?”

“You got it, Slick.”

“Go get ’em tonight.”

I get out of the elevator on the fifth floor, the arena level.

“Hi, Emil, Joe—floor down yet?”

“Naw, the circus was late today.”

During two months every year the circus lives at Madison Square Garden. For me the circus was a traveling show that came to a small Midwestern town in the spring. The horse-drawn cages filled with tigers and the bright colored wagons wound their way through the cobblestone streets. Enthusiastic crowds applauded the procession. Outside the town limits, tents covered what two days before had been a baseball field. Roustabouts raised the big top for its three-night stand. Two-headed cows. Fire-eaters. Sword swallowers. Giants. Other assorted country Houdinis. I would watch enthralled as a barker stood before a burlesque tent describing the sexual excitement that awaited a customer just inside the tent flaps. At center ring, the trapeze never seemed as high as the ones in the movies. The women were never as beautiful and the lion tamer never as brave. The tents smelled of oil and mold. Under the flaps of the mess kitchen you could glimpse dwarfs and fortune tellers, clowns and roustabouts sitting at a table arguing with the men in business suits as they ate their evening meal after the main show. Those days of the circus were in outrageous contrast to the daily life of a small Midwestern town.

Many summers there were other tent shows—religious revivals to which my mother would take me. The preachers frightened me. I couldn’t carry a tune. The tents were dry and the wooden folding chairs pinched my behind. During the excessively long prayers, I kept thinking of baseballs, basketballs, and tigers in cages. At the collection, when I turned to observe just what the people behind us were contributing to the Lord, I was jabbed in the ribs and told to concentrate on my shortcomings. There was no way for the revival to replace the circus for me. I was twelve years old.

Circus people fill the hallways of Madison Square Garden. Changing areas are established with curtains that look like thick bedsheets. Trunks crowd the corridors. Doors have circus names on them: Gunther Gebel-Williams, RBBB, The Flying Oleos, Petite Phillipe. Other doors belong to the Knicks, the Rangers. Women in tights with heavy muscular legs and rugged faces talk in Rumanian. A man carefully studies his face in a small mirror attached to a stilt pole. A beautiful young girl covered with circus make-up, wearing long eyelashes and a see-through robe, sits crying on the lap of an acrobat. A clown stands next to the Garden electrician’s room carefully removing his red and white greasepaint. Gunther Gebel-Williams, the lion tamer, strides from his private dressing room with his long golden locks combed as carefully as the hair of any
Vogue
model. Across the arena floor lions and tigers rest in makeshift cages while hump-backed camels and wrinkled elephants stand impassively, their feet in chains. The smell of urine and hay saturates the recycled Garden air. I feel a kinship with these people. Our skills are different, our lives alike.