ONE
THE SECRET
I LEARNED THE secret of basketball while lounging at a topless pool in Las Vegas. As I learned the secret, someone’s bare breasts were staring at me from just eight feet away. The person explaining the secret was a Hall of Famer who once vowed to beat me up and changed his mind only because Gus Johnson vouched for me.
(Do I tell this story? Yes. I tell this story.)
Come back with me to July 2007. My buddy Hopper was pushing me to accompany him for an impromptu Vegas trip, knowing that I wouldn’t turn him down because of my Donaghy-level gambling problem. I needed permission from my pregnant wife, who was perpetually ornery from (a) carrying our second child during the hot weather months in California and (b) being knocked up because I pulled the goalie on her back in February.1 But here’s why I’m an evil genius: with the NBA Summer League happening at the same time, I somehow convinced her that ESPN The Magazine wanted a column about Friday’s quadruple-header featuring my favorite team (the Celtics), my favorite rookie (Kevin Durant), and the two Los Angeles teams (Clippers and Lakers). “I’ll be in and out in thirty-six hours,” I told her.
She signed off and directed her anger at the magazine for making me work on a weekend. (I told you, I’m shrewd.) I quickly called my editor and had the following exchange.
ME: I don’t have a column idea this week. I’m panicking.
NEIL (my editor): Crap. I don’t know what to tell you, it’s a dead month.
(A few seconds of silence ensues.)
ME: Hey, wait … isn’t the NBA Summer League in Vegas right now?
NEIL: Yeah, I think it is. What would you write about, though?
ME: Lemme see what the schedule is for Friday. [I spend the next 20 seconds pretending to log onto NBA.com and look this up.] Oh my God—Clippers at 3, Celtics at 5, Lakers at 6, Durant and the Sonics at 7! You have to let me go! I can get 1,250 words out of that! [Neil doesn’t respond.] Come on—Vegas? The Celtics and Durant? This column will write itself!
NEIL (after a long sigh): “Okay, fine, fine.”
Did I care that he sounded like I had just convinced him to donate me a kidney? Of course not! I flew down on Friday, devoured those four games and joined Hopper for drunken blackjack until the wee hours.2 The following morning, we woke up in time for a Vegas Breakfast (16-ounce coffee, bagel, large water), then headed down to the Wynn’s lavish outdoor blackjack setup, which includes:
Eight blackjack tables surrounding one of those square outdoor bars like the one where Brian Flanagan worked after he fled to Jamaica in Cocktail. Once you’ve gambled outdoors, your life is never quite the same. It’s like riding in a convertible for the first time.
Overhead mist machines blowing cool spray so nobody overheats, a crucial wrinkle during the scorching Vegas summer, when it’s frequently over 110 degrees outside and 170 degrees in every guy’s crotch.
A beautiful European pool tucked right behind the tables. Just so you know, “European” is a fancy way of saying, “It’s okay to go topless there.”3
If there’s a better male bonding experience, I can’t think of one. For our yearly guys’ trip one month earlier, we arrived right before the outdoor area opened (11:00 a.m.) and played through dinner. For the first three hours, none of the sunbathers was willing to pull a Jackie Robinson and break the topless barrier, so we decided the Wynn should hire six strippers to go topless every day at noon (just to break the ice) and have their DJ play techno songs with titles like “Take Your Tops Off,” “Come On, Nobody’s Looking,” “We’re All Friends Here,” “Unleash the Hounds,” and “What Do You Have to Lose? You’re Already Divorced.” By midafternoon, as soon as everyone had a few drinks in them, the ladies started flinging their tops off like Frisbees. Okay, not really. But two dozen women made the plunge over the next few hours, including one heavyset woman who nearly caused a riot by wading into the pool with her 75DDDDDDDDDDs. It was like being there when the Baby Ruth bar landed in the Bushwood pool; people were scurrying for their lives in every direction.4
So between seedy guys making runs at topless girls in the pool, horny blackjack dealers getting constantly distracted, aforementioned moments like the Baby Ruth /multi-D episode, the tropical feel of outdoors and the Mardi Gras/beads element of a Euro pool, ten weeks of entertainment and comedy were jam-packed into eight hours. Things peaked around 6:00 p.m. when an attractive blonde wearing a bikini joined our table, complained to the dealer, “I haven’t had a blackjack in three days,” then told us confidently, “If I get a blackjack, I’m going topless.” The pit boss declared that she couldn’t go topless, so they negotiated for a little bit, ultimately deciding that she could flash everyone instead. Yes, this conversation actually happened. Suddenly we were embroiled in the most exciting blackjack shoe of all time. Every time she got an ace or a 10 as her first card, the tension was more unbearable than the last five minutes of the final Sopranos episode. When she finally nailed her blackjack, our side of the blackjack section erupted like Fenway after the Roberts steal.5 She followed through with her vow, departed a few minutes later, and left us spending the rest of the night wondering how I could write about that entire sequence for ESPN The Magazine without coming off like a pig. Well, you know what? These are the things that happen in Vegas. I’m not condoning them, defending them, or judging them. Just understand that we don’t keep going because some bimbo might flash everyone at her blackjack table, we keep going for the twenty minutes afterward, when we’re rehashing the story and making every possible joke.6
Needless to say, wild horses couldn’t have dragged Hopper and me from the outdoor blackjack section during summer league. We treaded water for a few hours when I ran into an old acquaintance who handled PR from the Knicks, as well as Gus Johnson, the much-adored March Madness and Knicks announcer who loves me mainly because I love him. Gus and I successfully executed a bear hug and a five-step handshake, and just as I was ready to make Gus announce a few of my blackjack hands (“Here’s the double-down card … Ohhhhhhhh! it’s a ten!”), he implored me to come over and meet his buddy Isiah Thomas.
Gulp.
Of any sports figure that I could have possibly met at any time in my life, getting introduced to Isiah that summer would have been my number one draft pick for the Holy Shit, Is This Gonna Be Awkward draft. Isiah doubled as the beleaguered GM of the Knicks and a frequent column target, someone who once threatened “trouble” if we ever crossed paths.7 This particular moment seemed to qualify. After the PR guy and I explained to Gus why a Simmons-Isiah introduction would be a stupifyingly horrific idea, Gus confidently countered, “Hold on, I got this, I got this, I’ll fix this.” And he wandered off as our terrified PR buddy said, “I’m getting out of here—good luck!”8
I played a few hands of rattled blackjack while wondering how to defend myself if Isiah came charging at me with a pi?a colada. After all, I killed this guy in my column over the years. I killed him for some of the cheap shots he took as a player, for freezing out MJ in the ’85 All-Star Game, for leading the classless walkout at the tail end of the Bulls-Pistons sweep in ’91. I killed him for pushing Bird under the bus by backing up Rodman’s foolish “he’d be just another good player if he weren’t white” comments after the ’87 playoffs, then pretending like he was kidding afterward. (He wasn’t.) I killed him for bombing as a TV announcer, for sucking as Toronto’s GM, for running the CBA into the ground, and most of all, for his incomprehensibly ineffective performance running the Knicks. As I kept lobbing (totally justified) grenades at him, Isiah went on Stephen A. Smith’s radio show and threatened “trouble” if we ever met on the street. Like this was all my fault. Somewhere along the line, Isiah probably decided that I had a personal grudge against him, which simply wasn’t true—I had written many times that he was the best pure point guard I’d ever seen, as well as the most underappreciated star of his era. I even defended his draft record and praised him for standing up for his players right before the ugly Nuggets-Knicks brawl that featured Carmelo Anthony’s infamous bitch-slap/backpedal. It’s not like I was obsessed with ripping the guy. He just happened to be an easy target, a floundering NBA GM who didn’t understand the luxury tax, cap space, or how to plan ahead. For what I did for a living, Isiah jokes were easier than making fun of Flavor Flav at a celebrity roast. The degree of difficulty was a 0.0.
With that said, I would have rather been playing blackjack and drinking vodka lemonades then figuring out how to cajole a pissed-off NBA legend. When a somber Gus finally waved me over, I was relieved to get it over with. (By the way, there should be no scenario that includes the words “Gus Johnson” and “somber.” I feel like I failed America regardless of how this turned out.) Gus threw an arm around me and said something like, “Look, I straightened everything out, he’s willing to talk to you, just understand, he’s a sensitive guy, he takes this shit personally.”9 Understood. I followed him to a section of chairs near the topless pool, where Isiah was sipping a water and wearing a white Panama hat to shield himself from the blazing sun. As we approached, Gus slapped me on the back and gestured to a female friend who quickly fled the premises, like we were Mafia heads sitting down in the back of an Italian restaurant and Gus was shedding every waiter and busboy. Get out of here. You don’t want to be here for this. Meanwhile, Isiah rose from the chair with a big smile on his face—he’d make a helluva politician—saying simply, “Hi, I’m Isiah.”10
We shook hands and sat down. I explained the purpose of my column, how I write from the fan’s perspective and play up certain gimmicks—I like the Boston teams and dislike anyone who battles them, I pretend to be smarter than every GM, I think Christmas should be changed to Larry Bird’s birthday—which made Isiah a natural foil for me. He understood that. He thought we were both entertainers, for lack of a better word. We were both there to make basketball more fun to follow. He didn’t appreciate two things I had written: that he destroyed the CBA (which he claimed wasn’t true) and how I lumped him with other inept GMs in a widely read parody column called “The Atrocious GM Summit.”11 That led to us discussing each move and why he made them. He admitted two mistakes—the Jalen Rose trade (his fault) and the Steve Francis trade (not his fault because Larry Brown insisted on it, or so he claimed) and defended everything else. Strangely, inconceivably, each explanation made sense. For instance, he explained the recent Randolph trade by telling me (I’m paraphrasing), “Everyone’s trying to get smaller and faster. I want to go the other way. I want to get bigger. I want to pound people down low.” I found myself nodding like Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gormé in SNL’s “Sinatra Group” sketch. Great idea, Chairman! I love it! You’re a genius! Only later, after we parted ways and I thought about it more, did it dawn on me how doomed his strategy was—not the “getting bigger” part as much as the “getting bigger with two head-case fat asses who can’t defend anyone or protect the rim and are prohibitively expensive” part. You get bigger with McHale and Parish or Sampson and Olajuwon. You don’t get bigger with Eddy Curry and Zach Randolph.12
But that’s not why I’m telling you this story. After settling on an uneasy truce about his job performance, we started remembering those unforgettable Celtics-Pistons clashes from the eighties: how their mutual hatred was palpable, how that competitiveness has slowly eroded from the league because of rule changes, money, AAU camps and everything else. Today’s rivals hug each other after games and pull the “I love you, boy!” routine. They act like former summer camp chums who became successful CEOs, then ran into each other at Nobu for the first time in years. Great to see you! I’ll talk to you soon—let’s have lunch! When Isiah’s Pistons played Bird’s Celtics, the words “great to see you” were not on the agenda. They wanted to destroy each other. They did. There was an edge to those battles that the current ones don’t have. I missed that edge and so did Isiah. We both felt passionate about it, passionate enough that—gasp—we were legitimately enjoying the conversation.13
I was getting comfortable with him. Comfortable enough that I had to ask about The Secret.
And here’s where I won Isiah over—not just that I asked about The Secret, but that I remembered it in the first place. Detroit won the 1989 title after collapsing in consecutive springs against the ’87 Celtics and ’88 Lakers, two of the toughest exits in playoff history because of the nature of those defeats: a pair of “why did that have to happen?” moments in the Boston series (Bird’s famous steal in Game 5, then Vinnie Johnson and Adrian Dantley banging heads in Game 7), followed by another in the ’88 Finals (Isiah’s ankle sprain in Game 6). The ’89 Pistons regrouped for 62 wins and swept the Lakers for their first championship, vindicating a controversial in-season trade that shipped Dantley and a draft pick to Dallas for Mark Aguirre. That season lives on in Cameron Stauth’s superb book The Franchise, which details how GM Jack McCloskey built those particular Pistons teams. The crucial section happens during the ’89 Finals, with Isiah holding court with reporters and improbably offering up “the secret” of winning basketball. Here’s an edited-for-space version of what he tells them. The part that matters most is in boldface.
It’s not about physical skills. Goes far beyond that. When I first came here, McCloskey took a lot of heat for drafting a small guy. But he knew that the only way our team would rise to the top would be by mental skills, not size or talent. He knew the only way we could acquire those skills was by watching the Celtics and Lakers, because those were the teams winning year in and year out. I also looked at Seattle, who won one year, and Houston, who got to the Finals one year. They both self-destructed the next year. So how come? I read Pat Riley’s book Show Time and he talks about “the disease of more.”14 A team wins it one year and the next year every player wants more minutes, more money, more shots. And it kills them. Our team has been up at the Championship level four years now. We could have easily self-destructed. So I read what Riley was saying, and I learned. I didn’t want what happened to Seattle and Houston to happen to us. But it’s hard not to be selfish. The art of winning is complicated by statistics, which for us becomes money. Well, you gotta fight that, find a way around it. And I think we have. If we win this, we’ll be the first team in history to win it without a single player averaging 20 points. First team. Ever. We got 12 guys who are totally committed to winning. Every night we found a different person to win it for us. Talked to Larry Bird about this once. Couple years back, at the All-Star Game. We were sitting signing basketballs and I’m talking to him about Red Auerbach and the Boston franchise and just picking his brain. I don’t know if he knew I was picking his brain, but I think he knew. Because I asked one question and he just looked at me. Smiled. Didn’t answer.
Whoa.
A few pages later, with the Pistons on the cusp of sweeping the Lakers, Isiah rants about Detroit’s perceived lack of respect from the outside world:
Look at our team statistically. We’re one of the worst teams in the league. So now you have to find a new formula to judge basketball. There were a lot of times I had my doubts about this approach, because all of you kept telling me it could never be done this way. Statistically, it made me look horrible. But I kept looking at the won-loss record and how we kept improving and I kept saying to myself, Isiah, you’re doin’ the right thing, so be stubborn, and one day people will find a different way to judge a player. They won’t just pick up the newspaper and say, oh, this guy was 9 for 12 with 8 rebounds so he was the best player in the game. Lots of times, on our team, you can’t tell who the best player in the game was ’Cause everybody did something good. That’s what makes us so good. The other team has to worry about stopping eight or nine people instead of two or three. It’s the only way to win. The only way to win. That’s the way the game was invented. But there’s more to that. You also got to create an environment that won’t accept losing.
Forget for a second that, in two paragraphs of quotes, Isiah just described everything you would ever need to know about winning an NBA championship. I always wanted to know what The Secret was. If you noticed, he never f*cking said it. Even more frustrating, nobody ever asked him again.15 And I had been wondering about it since I was in college. Now we were sitting by a topless pool in Vegas and he seemed to be enjoying my company, so screw it. When was this scenario ever happening again? I set up the question and asked him about The Secret.
Isiah smiled. I could tell he was impressed. He took a dramatic pause. You could say he even milked the moment.
“The secret of basketball,” he told me, “is that it’s not about basketball.”
The secret of basketball is that it’s not about basketball.
That makes no sense, right? How can that possibly make sense?
For the next few minutes, Isiah explained it to me. After coming soooooooooo close for two straight postseasons, the chemistry for the ’89 team was off for reasons that had nothing to do with talent. Chuck Daly needed to give Dennis Rodman more playing time, only the Teacher (Dantley’s nickname, in an ironic twist) wasn’t willing to accommodate him. And that was a problem. Rodman could play any style and defend every type of player; he gave the Pistons a uniquely special flexibility, much like Havlicek’s ability to play guard or forward drove Russell’s last few Celtics teams. There was also a precedent in place from when John Salley and Joe Dumars came into their own in previous seasons; Isiah and Vinnie Johnson gave up minutes for Dumars, and Rick Mahorn gave up minutes for Salley. But when Rodman started stealing crunch-time minutes from Dantley, the Teacher started sulking and even complained to a local writer. You couldn’t call it a betrayal, but Dantley had undermined an altruistic dynamic—constructed carefully over the past four seasons, almost like a stack of Jenga blocks—that hinged on players forfeiting numbers for the overall good of the team. The Pistons couldn’t risk having Dantley knock that Jenga stack down. They quickly swapped him for the enigmatic Aguirre, an unconventional low-post scorer who caused similar mismatch problems but wouldn’t start trouble because Isiah (a childhood chum from Chicago) would never allow it. Maybe Dantley was a better player than Aguirre, but Aguirre was a better fit for the 1989 Pistons. If they didn’t make that deal, they wouldn’t have won the championship. It was a people trade, not a basketball trade.16
And that’s what Isiah learned while following those Lakers and Celtics teams around: it wasn’t about basketball.
Those teams were loaded with talented players, yes, but that’s not the only reason they won. They won because they liked each other, knew their roles, ignored statistics, and valued winning over everything else. They won because their best players sacrificed to make everyone else happy. They won as long as everyone remained on the same page. By that same token, they lost if any of those three factors weren’t in place. The ’75 Warriors self-combusted a year later because of Barry’s grating personality and two young stars (Wilkes and Gus Williams) needing better numbers to boost their free agent stock. The ’77 Blazers fell apart because of Bill Walton’s feet, but also because Lionel Hollins and Maurice Lucas brooded about being underpaid. The ’79 Sonics fell apart when their talented backcourt (Dennis Johnson and Gus Williams) became embroiled in a petty battle over salaries and crunch-time shots. The ’81 Lakers were bounced because Magic Johnson’s teammates believed he was getting too much attention, most notably fellow point guard Norm Nixon, who resented having to share the basketball with him. The ’83 Celtics got swept by Milwaukee for a peculiar reason: they had too many good players and everyone wanted to play. The ’86 Lakers lost to Houston because Kareem wasn’t an alpha dog anymore, only Magic wasn’t confident enough to supplant him yet. The ’87 Rockets imploded because of drug suspensions and contract bitterness. Year after year, at least one contender fell short for reasons that had little or nothing to do with basketball. And year after year, the championship team prevailed because it got along and everyone committed themselves to their roles. That’s what Detroit needed to do, and that’s why Dantley had to go.17
“So that’s the secret,” Isiah said. “It’s not about basketball.”
The secret of basketball is that it’s not about basketball.
These are the things you learn in Vegas.
When I was talking to Isiah that day, his affection for those Pistons teams stood out almost as vividly as the pair of exposed nipples eight feet away. This didn’t surprise me. I remembered his appearance on NBA’s Greatest Games,18 when he watched Game 6 of the ’88 Finals with ESPN’s Dan Patrick. The ’88 Lakers couldn’t handle point guards who created shots off the dribble, as we witnessed during Sleepy Floyd’s legendary thirty-three points in one quarter in the first round.19 If someone like Sleepy gave them fits, you can only imagine how they struggled against Isiah Lord Thomas III when he needed one more victory for his first title. Smelling blood in the third quarter at the Forum, he dropped fourteen straight points with a ridiculous array of shots, doing his best impression of Robby Benson at the end of One on One… right until he stepped on Michael Cooper’s foot and crumbled to a heap. Poor Isiah kept trying to stand, only his leg wouldn’t support him and he kept falling to the ground. At the time, it was like watching those uncomfortable few seconds after a racehorse suffers a leg injury, when it can’t stop moving but can’t support itself, either. Anyone who ever played basketball knows how an ankle sprain feels at the moment of impact: like Leatherface churning his chain saw against the bottom of your leg. You don’t come back from a badly sprained ankle. Hell, you can’t even walk off the court most times. Isiah didn’t stand for ninety seconds before getting helped to his bench. You could practically see Detroit’s title hopes vanishing into thin air.
Except Isiah wouldn’t let the injury derail him. He chewed on his bottom lip like a wad of tobacco and transferred the pain. When the Lakers extended their lead to eight, Isiah hobbled back into the game, fueled on adrenaline, desperately trying to save Detroit’s title before his ankle swelled. He made a one-legged floater. He made an off-balance banker over Cooper, drawing the foul and nearly careening into the first row of fans. He drained a long three. He filled the lane for a fast-break layup. With the final seconds of the quarter ticking away, he buried a turnaround 22-footer from the corner—an absolutely outrageous shot—giving him a Finals record 25 for the quarter and reclaiming the lead for Detroit. This was Pantheon-level stuff, win or lose. CBS headed to commercial and showed a slow-motion replay of that aforementioned layup: Isiah unable to stop his momentum on that ravaged ankle, crashing into the photographers under the basket, then gamely speed-hopping back downcourt as his teammates cheered from the bench. On the Goosebump Scale, it’s about a 9.8. We always hear about Willis Reed’s Game 7 cameo against the Lakers, or Gibson taking Eckersley deep in the ’88 World Series. Somehow, Isiah’s 25-point quarter gets lost in the shuffle because the Pistons ended up losing the game (and the series).20 Seems a little unfair. Nobody was more of a warrior than Isiah Thomas. In retrospect, that was his biggest problem: maybe he cared a little too much. If that’s possible. Actually, that’s definitely possible. Because when ESPN finished rerunning that third quarter, they returned to the studio and Isiah Thomas was crying. He had never seen the tape before. He couldn’t handle it.
What followed was breathtaking. Just know that I watch all these shows. I watch every SportsCentury, every Beyond the Glory, every HBO documentary, everything. I eat this stuff up. And with the possible exception of the Cooz breaking down during Bill Russell’s SportsCentury, no moment ever matched what transpires after Patrick asks a simple question about Game 6: “Why does it bother you?”
The words hang in the air. Isiah can’t speak. He dabs his eyes, finally breaking into a self-conscious smile. The memories come flooding back, some good, some bad. He’s overwhelmed. Finally, he describes how it feels to play for a championship team. To a tee. And he does it off the top of his head.
“I just … I … I never watched this,” Isiah mumbles, dabbing his eyes with a handkerchief. “You just … you wouldn’t understand.”
Patrick doesn’t say anything. Wisely.
Isiah takes a second to collect himself, then he keeps going: “That type of emotion, that type of feeling, when you’re playing like that, and you know, you’re really going for it … you’re going for it. You put your heart, your soul, you put everything into it, and …”
He chokes up again. Takes another moment to compose himself.
“It’s like, to look back on that, to know that all we went through as a team, and the people, and the friendships and everything … you just wouldn’t understand.”
He smiles again. It’s a weird moment. In any other setting, he would come off as condescending. But he’s right: somebody like Patrick, or me, or you … none of us could understand. Not totally, anyway.
Isiah keeps going. Now he wants Patrick to understand.
“You know, like you said, to see Dennis, the way Dennis was, to see Vinnie, to see Joe, to see Bill, to see Chuck, and to know what we all went through and what we were fighting for … I mean, we weren’t the Lakers, we weren’t the Celtics, we were just, we were nobody. We were the Detroit Pistons, trying to make our way through the league, trying to fight and earn some turf, you know, and make people realize that we were a good team. We just weren’t the thing that they had made us.”
Patrick steps in: “You weren’t Show Time, you weren’t the Celts, you were the team that nobody gave credit to.”
“Yeah,” Isiah says, nodding. Now he knows. He knows what to say. “And seeing that, and feeling that, and going through all that emotion, I mean, as a player, that’s what you play for. That’s the feeling you want to have. When twelve men come together like that, you know, it’s … it’s …”
He struggles for the right words. He can’t find them. And then, finally:
“You wouldn’t understand.”
He’s right. We wouldn’t understand. And as it turned out, even Isiah didn’t totally understand. He took over the Knicks in 2003, failed to heed the lessons of those Pistons teams, and got replaced five years later.21 Of all the unbelievable things that transpired during the “Thomas error”—no playoff wins, a sexual harassment suit, two lost lottery picks, four straight years with a payroll over $90 million, fans protesting inside and outside MSG in his final season—what couldn’t be explained was Thomas’ willingness to overlook precisely what worked for his Detroit teams. How could such a savvy player become such a futile executive? How could someone win twice because of chemistry and unselfishness, then disregard those same traits while rebuilding the Knicks? Once upon a time, Detroit couldn’t find a prototypical back-to-the-basket big man to help Thomas offensively, so GM Jack McCloskey smartly surrounded him with unconventional low-post threats, effective role players and streak shooters. When McCloskey realized they still couldn’t outscore the Celtics or Lakers, he shifted the other way and built the toughest, most athletic, most flexible roster possible. By the ’87 Playoffs, the Pistons went nine deep and had an answer for everyone. On paper, it’s the weakest of the superb teams in that 1983–93 stretch. But that’s the thing about basketball: you don’t play games on paper. Detroit captured two titles and came agonizingly close to winning two more.
Again, Isiah was there. He watched McCloskey build that unique team. He knew there was more to basketball than stats and money, that you couldn’t win and keep winning unless your players sacrificed numbers for the greater good. So why place his franchise’s fate in the hands of Stephon Marbury, one of the most selfish stars in the league? Why give away two potential lottery picks for Curry (an immature player and a liability as a rebounder and shot blocker) and compound the mistake by overpaying him? Why keep adding big contracts like he was running a high-priced fantasy team? What made him believe that Randolph and Curry could play together, or Steve Francis and Marbury, or even Marbury and Jamal Crawford? Why ignore the salary cap ramifications of every move? It made no sense. He had become Bizarro McCloskey. Every time I watched Isiah sitting glumly on the Knicks bench for that final season with a steely “There’s no way I’m qutting, I’m not walking away from that money, they’re gonna have to fire me” mask on his face, I remembered him sitting at the Wynn’s outdoor pool utterly convinced that a Curry-Randolph tandem would work. How could someone learn The Secret for that long and still screw up?
I have been obsessed with that question ever since. Year after year, 90 percent of NBA decision makers ignore The Secret or talk themselves into it not mattering that much. Fans overlook The Secret completely, as evidenced by the fact that, you know, it’s a secret. (That’s why we live in a world where nine out of ten basketball fans probably think Shaquille O’Neal had a better career than Tim Duncan.) Nobody writes about The Secret because of a general lack of sophistication about basketball; even the latest “revolution” of basketball statistics centers more around evaluating players against one another over capturing their effect on a team. When, in February 2009, Michael Lewis wrote a Moneyball-like feature for the New York Times Magazine about Shane Battier’s undeniable value, he listed a bunch of different anecdotes and subtle ploys, as well as decent statistical evidence that explained Battier’s effect defensively and on the Rockets as a whole, but again, it was nothing tangible. (Although Lewis unknowingly came up with two corollaries to The Secret: one, that your teammates are people you shouldn’t automatically trust because it’s in each player’s selfish interest to screw his teammates out of shots or rebounds; and two, that basketball is the sport where this is most true.) You couldn’t quantify Battier’s impact except with victories, opponent’s field goal positions, plus-minus variables, statistics that hadn’t been created yet,22 and his high ranking on the unofficial list of Role Players That Every Peer Would Want on Their Team. And that’s what I love about basketball most. You don’t need to watch a single baseball game to have an opinion on baseball; you could be stuck on a desert island like Chuck Noland,23 have the 2010 Baseball Prospectus randomly wash up on the shore, devour every page of that thing, and eventually have an accurate feel for which players matter. In basketball? Numbers help, but only to a certain degree. You still have to watch the games. Check out Amar’e Stoudemire, who scores 22 to 25 points a night for Phoenix, grabs two rebounds a quarter, screws up defensively over and over again, botches every defensive switch, doesn’t make anyone else better, doesn’t create shots for anyone else and doesn’t feel any responsibility to carry his franchise even as Phoenix pays him as its franchise player. Did Amar’e get voted by fans into the West’s starting lineup for the 2009 All-Star Game with the Nash era imploding and the Suns shopping him more vigorously than Spencer and Heidi shopped their fake wedding pictures?24 Of course he did.
The fans don’t get it. Actually, it goes deeper than that—I’m not sure who gets it. We measure players by numbers, only the playoffs roll around and teams that play together, kill themselves defensively, sacrifice personal success and ignore statistics invariably win the title. The 2008 Lakers were 3-to-1 favorites over Boston and lost the Finals; to this day, Lakers fans treat the defeat like it was some sort of aberration, like a mistake was made and never corrected. We have trouble processing the “teamwork over talent” thing. San Antonio was the most successful post-Jordan franchise and nobody understands why. Duncan was the best post-Jordan superstar and nobody understands why. But here’s the thing: We have the answers! We know why! Look at how McCloskey built those Pistons teams. Look at how Gregg Popovich and R. C. Buford handled the Duncan era. Look at how Red Auerbach handled the Russell era. Look at why so many fans (myself included) still remember the ’70 Knicks25 and ’77 Blazers. Here’s what we know for sure:
You build potential champions around one great player. He doesn’t have to be a super-duper star or someone who can score at will, just someone who leads by example, kills himself on a daily basis, raises the competitive nature of his teammates, and lifts them to a better place. The list of Best Players on an NBA Champ Since Bird and Magic Joined the League looks like this: Kareem (younger version), Bird, Moses, Magic, Isiah, Jordan, Hakeem, Duncan, Shaq (younger version), Billups, Wade, Garnett. It’s a list that looks exactly how you’d think it should look with the exception of Billups.26
You surround that superstar with one or two elite sidekicks who understand their place in the team’s hierarchy, don’t obsess over stats, and fill in every blank they can. The list of Best Championship Sidekicks Since 1980: Magic, Parish/McHale, Kareem (older version), Worthy, Doc/Toney, DJ, Dumars, Pippen/Grant, Drexler, Pippen/Rodman, Robinson, Kobe (younger version), Parker/Ginobili, Shaq (older version), Pierce/Allen. You would have wanted to play with everyone on that list … even Younger Kobe. Most of the time.
From that framework, you complete your nucleus with top-notch role players and/or character guys (too many to count, but think Robert Horry/Derek Fisher types) who know their place, don’t make mistakes, and won’t threaten that unselfish culture, as well as a coaching staff dedicated to keeping those team-ahead-of-individual values in place.
You need to stay healthy in the playoffs and maybe catch one or two breaks.27
That’s how you win an NBA championship. Duncan’s Spurs push the formula one step further, pursuing only high-character guys as role players and winning just once with a squeaky wheel (Stephen Jackson in 2003, and he was jettisoned that summer). Popovich explained their philosophy to Sports Illustrated in 2009: “We get guys who want to do their job and go home and aren’t impressed with the hoopla. One of the keys is to bring in guys who have gotten over themselves. They either want to prove that they can play in this league—or they want to prove nothing. They fill their role and have a pecking order. We have three guys who are the best players, and everyone else fits around them.” In a related story, Duncan’s teams have won 70 percent of their games for his entire career. This can’t be an accident. But how do you keep stats for “best chemistry” and “most unselfishness” or even “most tangible and consistent effect on a group of teammates”? It’s impossible. That’s why we struggle to comprehend professional basketball. You can only play five players at a time. Those players can only play a total of 240 minutes. How those players coexist, how they make each other better, how they accept their portion of that 240-minute pie, how they trust and believe in one another, how they create shots for one another, how that talent/salary/alpha-dog hierarchy falls into place … that’s basketball. It’s like falling in love. When it’s working, you know it. When it’s failing, you know it. Bill Russell (in Second Wind) and Bill Bradley (in Life on the Run) played for famously magnanimous teams and described their inner workings better than anyone:
Russell: “By design and by talent the Celtics were a team of specialists, and like a team of specialists in any field, our performance depended on individual excellence and how well we worked together. None of us had to strain to understand that we had to complement each other’s specialties it was simply a fact, and we all tried to figure out ways to make our combination more effective … the Celtics played together because we knew it was the best way to win.”
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.”28
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.”29
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.30 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,31 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.32
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.33
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 boards34 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.35 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”36—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;37 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.38
Bill Russell would never play another professional basketball game. He had milked The Secret for everything it was worth, capturing eleven rings and retiring as the greatest winner in sports history. He clung to that secret until the bitter end. When his journey was complete, he rubbed his eyes, fought off tears and searched for words that never came. By saying nothing, he said everything.
Nearly three decades later, a crew from NBA Entertainment interviewed Wilt Chamberlain about his career. The subject of the 1969 Finals came up.
“No way we should we have lost to Boston,” the Big Dipper muttered in disbelief. “Just no way. I mean … I still don’t know how we lost to Boston.”
He laughed self-consciously, finally adding, “It’s a mystery to me.”
Of course it was.
1. The term “pulling the goalie” means “eschewing birth control and letting the chips fall where they may.” Usually couples discuss pulling the goalie before it happens … unless it’s Bridget Moynahan. In my case, I made the executive decision to speed up plans for kid number two. This did not go over well. I think I’m the first person who ever had a positive home pregnancy test whipped at them at 95 mph. In my defense, I’m getting old and wanted to have a second kid before I wouldn’t be able to have a catch with them anymore. I have no regrets. Plus, we had a son. In the words of Joel Goodson, sometimes you gotta say, “What the f*ck?”
2. This is a bold-faced lie—we both got crushed at $50 tables at the Wynn and were in bed by 1:00 a.m. I didn’t want to ruin the story.
3. It’s never a bad thing when “European” is involved—that word always seems to involve nudity or debauchery. Even in porn (which is centered around those two things, anyway), you throw in the word “European” in the title and the movie suddenly seems ten times more appealing. Um, not that I buy porn or anything.
4. The thing about European-style pools is that most of the uninhibited women who go topless are usually people you’d never want to see topless … like this lady, who looked like one of the Wild Samoans from the WWWF, only with 75DDDDDDDDDDs. Those breasts are burned in my brain forever. And not by my choice.
5. This was such a great moment that I had to go with back-to-back Hall of Fame pop culture and sports analogies. I mean, those were two of the biggies. I’m talking about the analogies.
6. And also because some bimbo might flash everyone at our blackjack table.
7. This encounter took place about six weeks before the kooky trial for Anucha Browne Sanders’ sexual harassment lawsuit against Isiah and Madison Square Garden became a national story, effectively murdering Isiah’s tenure with the Knicks and leading to a sad episode in October ’08 when Isiah apparently overdosed on prescription meds. It’s never been clear if the overdose was intentional or not. Can you tell my editors told me, “Write this footnote carefully”?
8. Maybe my favorite part of this story: you know things were bad with me and Isiah when the Knicks PR guy decided, “Instead of sticking around to help thwart a PR holocaust, I’m going to flee the premises like O.J. and A.C. taking off for Mexico.” I don’t blame him.
9. After seeing him in action, I’m totally convinced that Gus Johnson can resolve any feud, controversy, or territorial matter within 25 minutes: Bloods-Crips, Richards-Locklear, Shiites-Sunnis, TO-McNabb, the Gaza Strip, Vick-PETA, you name it. He’s like a cross between Obama, Jay-Z, and Cyrus from The Warriors.
10. Totally underrated part of the story: “Hi, I’m Isiah.” As if there potentially could have been some confusion.
11. I gathered all the inept 2006 GMs for a fake conference panel where they gave tips on how to completely suck at their job. Isiah ended up stealing the fake show.
12. His funniest-in-retrospect explanation was for the hideous Jerome James signing. As Isiah spun it, he signed James to be his center, then had a chance to land Curry a few weeks later and went for it. A bummed-out James felt betrayed and never dedicated himself, but hey, Isiah had a chance to get a young low-post stud like Curry and it was worth the risk. I swear, this made sense as he was saying it. He swayed me enough that I never had the urge to sarcastically quip, “Hey, anytime you can lock up Eddy Curry and Jerome James for $90 million and lose two lottery picks, you have to do it.”
13. Proving yet again that I can get along with anyone on the planet as long as they like basketball. You could dress me in red, drop me into a Crips neighborhood, tell me that I have 12 minutes to start a high-caliber NBA conversation before somebody puts a cap in my ass … and I would live.
14. The “Disease of More” ranks right up there with The Tipping Point and the Ewing Theory as one of the three greatest theories of the last 35 years. No sports theory gets vindicated more on a yearly basis. The complete list of “Disease of More” NBA champs: ’67 Sixers, ’71 Bucks, ’75 Warriors, ’77 Blazers, ’79 Sonics, ’80 Lakers, ’92 Bulls, ’00 Lakers, ’04 Pistons. And let’s throw in the following NBA Finalists: ’67 Warriors, ’81 Rockets, ’86 Rockets, ’93 Suns, ’95 Magic, ’96 Sonics, ’99 Knicks, ’03 Nets.
15. Although this wasn’t surprising. The lack of ingenuity with questions from sports reporters has never been anything less than appalling. None of these dolts followed up on The Secret, but I bet they asked questions like “Isiah, how excited would you be to win a title?” in 40 different forms. Then they went back to the press room and fought over the last four bags of Cheetos.
16. In the ’88 Playoffs, Dantley played 33.9 MPG and Rodman 20.6 MPG. When the Pistons cruised to the ’89 title, Aguirre averaged 27.1 MPG and Rodman 24.1 MPG. Dantley/Rodman averaged a combined 26.5 PPG and 11.6 RPG in ’88, followed by 18.4 PPG plus 14.4 RPG from Aguirre/Rodman the following spring. So they sacrificed eight points per game for better defense, rebounding and chemistry. And it worked.
17. The Teacher was blindsided by the trade. When he finally played Detroit later that season, he sought out Isiah before the opening tip, leaned into him and said something that rattled Isiah. To this day, nobody knows what he said: it was the NBA’s version of “I know it was you, Fredo.” He would never win an NBA ring. But Teacher, you have to understand—it wasn’t about basketball!
18. This show ran on ESPN2 in the mid-’90s: Patrick watching classic games with one of its participants. The show’s biggest mistake was being only 30 minutes, which made it feel like a 10-minute version of Inside the Actors Studio.
19. Their other weakness: Kareem stopped rebounding somewhere during the ’84 season. Plus, he was starting to look like a bona fide alien with goggles, a shaved head and that gangly body. All Lakers games in ’88 and ’89 should have kicked off with Kareem climbing out of a UFO. But that’s irrelevant here.
20. That Game 6 defeat ranks among the most brutal ever. Even with Isiah barely able to move by game’s end, Detroit led by three with 60 seconds to play. Time-out, L.A. Byron Scott hit a jumper in traffic (102–101, 52 secs left). Isiah ran the shot clock down and missed a one-legged fall-away (27 secs left, time-out L.A.). Kareem got bailed out by a dubious call (Laimbeer’s “bump” on a sky hook), then drained two clutch FT’s with 14 secs left. Then Dumars badly missed a runner coming out of the time-out. Ballgame. If healthy, Isiah swings that final minute of Game 6. I am positive. But that’s basketball—you need to be good and lucky.
21. After getting waxed by Boston in the ’85 Playoffs, McCloskey realized he had three keepers (Isiah, Vinnie, and Laimbeer) and nobody else with the right mix of athleticism and toughness to hang with Boston. He selected Dumars with the 17th pick, traded Kelly Tripucka and Kent Benson for Dantley, and turned Dan Roundfield into Mahorn (a physical forward who could protect Laimbeer). In the ’86 draft, he picked Salley 11th and Rodman 32nd, hoping Detroit could wear down Bird with young legs off the bench. That same summer, he stole backup center James Edwards from Phoenix. It’s the most creative 12-month stretch ever submitted by an NBA GM. McCloskey built a future champion around Isiah without making a single top-10 pick or trading anything of real consequence.
22. We created one just for him: nitty-gritties. Someone like Battier transcends stats. I thought it was fascinating that, in the same week that Lewis’ complimentary piece was released, (a) John Hollinger’s “player efficiency rating” on ESPN.com ranked Battier as the 53rd best small forward and 272nd overall out of 322 players, and (b) Houston was shopping Battier.
23. Cast Away is on my Mount Rushmore for Most Rewatchable Cable Movie of the 2000s along with Anchorman, Almost Famous and The Departed. They should make Cast Away 2 as a thriller where Chuck Noland loses his mind and makes hookers wear volley-balls over their heads when he has sex with them, eventually starts killing them, then escapes police by living outdoors and using his survival skills from the first movie. Like a combination of First Blood and Silence of the Lambs. You would have paid to see this in the theater. Don’t lie.
24. For everyone after 2025: Spencer and Heidi were a reality TV couple who disappeared shortly after this book was published when Satan decided, “Even I can’t take it anymore,” and dragged them into the bowels of hell.
25. My editor (known as Grumpy Old Editor from now on) adds, “I was watching an MSG special on Clyde and he mentioned being pissed about Willis winning ’70 Finals MVP because Frazier thought he deserved it, which was certainly true if you based it on the numbers. But then he said that as he thought about it he realized he would have never done what he did in Game 7 if Willis hadn’t inspired him. The Secret, again.”
26. Billups led the ’04 Pistons during a discombobulated season when the rules swung too far in favor of elite defensive teams who made threes and limited possessions. Plus, the Shaq/Kobe era completely imploded that season, with half the team embroiled in “I’m not talking to that mothaf*cka anymore” fights … and yet they still could have won the title if Karl Malone hadn’t gotten hurt.
27. Every fan of the Suns from 2004 to 2007 just rammed this book against their heads.
28. That same dynamic doubles for any military unit or dorm hall of college freshmen: the human closeness cannot be reconstructed on a larger scale.
29. That section finished like this: “Rarely will you see an athlete who hasn’t put on 10 or 15 pounds over a full career, but even rarer are the ones who don’t put on the same amount of mental fat. That’s the biggest killer of aging champions, because it works on your concentration and your mental toughness, which are the margin of victory; it prevents you from using your mind to compensate for your diminished physical skills.” I like the concept of “mental fat.” Does this mean a thirty-five-year-old Eddy Curry would have real fat and mental fat? What’s that gonna look like?
30. Kudos to Doc Rivers for smartly banning all mobile devices on the trip. Although I think the players were still allowed to order porn in their hotel rooms.
31. Even if you could describe Posey’s man hugs as corny, homoerotic or genuinely uncomfortable (especially if you were sitting in the first few rows), they symbolized the closeness of that team. After the Hornets imported Posey for $25 million that summer, I watched Posey dole out man hugs for Chris Paul and David West; for the first time, I can say that I watched other men hug and felt wistful about it. It was like getting three fantastic dances from a stripper, feeling like you had a connection with her, then seeing her 45 minutes later grinding on the lap of some seedy 300- pound dude. The NBA: where questioning your sexuality happens!
32. This is from The Game, Dryden’s excellent account of his final season with the Montreal Canadiens, a team that played in something called the National Hockey League.
33. I felt the same way as I was frantically trying to finish this book with a deadline hanging over my head. Do you think Russell used cigarettes, booze, coffee, Pilates, and a $2,000 Relax the Back chair to repeatedly come through under stress en route to 11 titles? Or was that just me? It took me so long to finish this book that I actually started smoking again (just two or three per day when I was writing, for the nicotine rush) and quit smoking again, and the two events seemed like they happened 10 years apart.
34. Weird stats from that game: MJ/Pippen shot 15 for 43; Chicago missed 17 of 41 FTs; Rodman did nothing (22 minutes, 6 boards); and Indy shot 48% (Bulls: 38%). So how did the Bulls do it? They had 22 offensive rebounds, and 26 second-chance points, and they controlled the ball like a hockey team down the stretch—from the 7:13 mark to the 0:31 mark (when they clinched the game), they held the ball for 270 of a possible 402 seconds. And that includes 20–25 seconds of dead time when the clock kept running after they made baskets. Incredible game to rewatch.
35. Weird parallel: The best wrestlers are also held to this standard within their ranks. For instance, Ric Flair and Shawn Michaels are considered to be the best of their respective generations. Why? Because they sold the shit of their opponents. They could have a great match against anybody, even if it was someone with four moves like Hulk Hogan or Undertaker. Only three sports work this way: basketball, hockey and wrestling. That’s right, I just called pro wrestling a sport. You have a problem with that? Huh?
36. This should be a riveting sell on the talk-show and talk-radio circuit. I think I’m going to lie and pretend that there’s a chapter in here that definitively answers the questions “Did Jordan get suspended for gambling?” “Was the 1985 lottery fixed?” “Was Tim Donaghy acting alone?” “Did Kobe really do it?” and “Was Wilt Chamberlain’s 20,000 figure an elaborate way of covering up the fact that he was gay?” When they ask for more info, I’ll just say, “Look, you’ll have to read the book.” Then I’ll kill the rest of the time talking about how Barry wore a wig during the 1976 Playoffs. There’s no way in hell that Stephen Colbert won’t be riveted by that.
37. Kobe alert! Kobe alert!
38. Just like Isiah, he tried to pass The Secret on after his playing days and failed in Seattle and Sacramento. It’s never been explained why the same legends who embraced The Secret or at least understood it (Russell, MJ, Bird, Magic, Cousy, Baylor and McHale, to name seven) couldn’t apply that same secret to teams they were running. It’s like the opposite of VD—you can’t pass it along.