“So you’re too good to play with us now.”
“Mister big-shit.”
“C’mom, hotshot. Lemme show you what real defense is like.”
“Yeah. No refs here to bail you out.”
I just ignored them and kept firing away at one of the side baskets.
However, with my mother stuffing me with her greasy home cooking, I was unable to continue the team-mandated intake of carbohydrates-to-protein in a 2:1 ratio. Coupled with the crowd of grunting, strutting he-men in the Y’s inadequate weight room, I was quickly losing my physical edge.
The worst part of my so-called vacation was the long hours when I couldn’t avoid spending time with my parents.
As I was compelled to watch my mother bake pies and cakes, she told me how our neighbors and relatives were doing. This one got married. That one got divorced. Another one’s son passed the bar exam.
“Really?”
If Father was happy with my grades, he also spent hours explaining the advantages of medieval over Elizabethan literature.
“In the fourteenth century, truth was arrived at by visions and revelations. Man was a spiritual creature, and the emphasis was on the next world. Be it heaven or hell. For the Elizabethans, man was a secular creature, and truth could only be proved and accepted through logic and rhetoric.”
“Really?”
All this, and more, much more, to hopefully convince me to become a true-blue medieval scholar/teacher.
“Really?”
It was no use informing him that I had no interest in devoting my life to dead words, and expected/hoped to make my living playing basketball.
No wonder I looked forward to a New Year’s Eve party at the home of one of my high school teammates, whose parents had fortuitously gone out to celebrate and were planning to stay overnight at a relative’s house in upstate Woodstock.
It was too late for me to come up with a date, but I was informed by Mark Smithson—a six-one small forward who could elevate and defend but couldn’t shoot himself in the foot—that there would be “a couple of stray chicks.”
Turned out that the two extra women were engaged to guys who were serving overseas in the army. Germany, I think, and maybe South Korea. In any case, they spent the entire evening by themselves chatting and drinking. Three more of my high school teammates were there and they, like Mark, had watched all of USA’s televised games—a total of seven on network TV as well as about a dozen more on cable. One guy was in college and wanted to become a junior high school Social Studies teacher. Another sold cars. The other guy worked in his father’s real estate business. Mark did something with computers.
Instead of hooping, they now played tennis, golf, or both.
They knew all of my statistics, down to the 3.2 fouls committed per game. And they ignored their dates to pester me with questions.
What was Coach Woody really like?
“A nice guy, a great coach, and an excellent motivator.”
Did I think we could win another NCAA championship?
“Of course.”
Would I get drafted?
“I don’t know, but I hope so.”
How good was LeVonn?
“Very good.”
Had I fucked any of the cheerleaders?
“I refuse to answer on the ground that it would incriminate me.”
So at least I left them laughing.
With all the nonstop drinking, the loud metal-band noise, and the enforced good time they all seemed to be having, the key word in the previous sentence would have to be “left.” That’s because I snuck out before the witching hour, drove my mother’s old Chevy back home, read Boswell’s Life of Samuel Johnson, and fell asleep before my parents returned home from a party at a neighbor’s house.
I managed to survive for the rest of the week, and was overjoyed to return to school.
Chapter Eleven
Classes had yet to resume when we all got back to the campus on Tuesday, so Coach Woody ran us through two practice sessions on Wednesday. One at ten a.m., which lasted for two and a half hours, then another two hours beginning at four p.m. This schedule was repeated on Thursday. On Friday we had an early practice followed by a strenuous stint in the weight room. On Saturday we just did weights.
Through it all, I was weak, weary, out of shape, and my smooth, soft jump shots had devolved into rim bangers.
From Sunday to Thursday, we reverted to our normal schedule: midafternoon practice followed by more work in the weight room.
Friday we flew to Los Angeles for a two-day tournament. I was simply atrocious, shooting a combined 10-of-31 and scoring a total of 29 points as we lost to UCLA to open the tournament, then to USC in the consolation game.
Even LeVonn stunk up the court. “Too much nonstop partying with my homies,” he told me.
CW went simply berserk during both halftime intermissions, both postgame meetings, and before the consolation game. He even went so far as to call us “motherfuckers,” something he had never done before.
As a result of our weekend debacle in LA, our ranking fell from number 2 to number 18.
However, something extraordinary happened to me during that time.
I was so distressed by my performance against UCLA that, the next morning, I breakfasted by myself. Still disgruntled, I was also alone in the elevator that would take me to my private room on the fifteenth floor. But just before the doors closed, somebody squeezed into the car.
He looked like a surfer dude with a deep tan, a flowery shirt sufficiently opened to reveal a hairy chest and a huge golden medallion of some sort around his neck. What else grabbed my immediate attention? Neat blue jeans, bare feet in flashy black loafers, thinning blond hair, shades, teeth so white they looked like they could glow in the dark, and a drooping Fu Manchu mustache.
One of the Beach Boys?
A ghost from Hippie Land?
“Hi, Elliot,” he said, offering five gold-ringed fingers for a hearty shake. “I’m Gordon Collison, perhaps you’ve heard of me?”
“No, I haven’t.”
I’m still always suspicious of anybody who wears sunglasses indoors. However, one detail softened my immediate disdain. I expected his fingernails to be expertly manicured, but instead they were bitten to the quick. So, underneath all the glitz was a nervous, insecure human being.
“No matter. I’m a certified agent and I have over two dozen clients who are currently playing in the NBA. Stephon Marbury. Tom Chambers. Dikembe Mutombo. Dennis Johnson. Need I say more?”
“Okay. I get it.”
“So here’s the thing. . . . I’ve talked to my sources around the NBA and the prediction is that you’ll either be drafted late in the first round or early in the second round. That is, if you eventually decide to declare eligibility for the draft.”
“Really?”
“Really. And here’s what that will mean. A low first-rounder can expect anywhere from a total of two and a half to three million for two guaranteed seasons. High second-rounders can get maybe slightly less than two million for a two-year guarantee. The money paid to first-rounders is regulated according to when they are picked. But there’s a lot more room to negotiate with second-rounders.”
“Interesting, but—”
“There’s no ‘but’ about it. You’re high on the charts of all the teams I spoke to. No question at all that you’ll be drafted.”
“Wow. But I had such a shitty game against UCLA last night.”
“Doesn’t matter. Being off your game is natural after such a long break. The scouts have seen you live several times, and also watched lots of game tapes. So they know what you can do. Besides, it won’t take you very long to get back into the groove again.”
We had to pause our conversation when an old man entered the car at the fifth floor and rode up to the eighth.<
br />
“Okay. It all sounds terrific. But why are you—?”
“No ‘buts,’ remember? So here’s what I’m offering. . . . I’d like to represent you when you are drafted. My fee is fifteen percent of everything. Contract. Sneaker deal, which I will arrange. Plus, I’ll do your taxes and suggest and arrange any investments that might be beneficial. Other agents will be coming to you before the draft, but because I believe in your talents, your work ethic, and your character, I wanted to approach you before the other guys jump on the bandwagon.”
“So—?”
“Ha! I also appreciate your intelligence. So here’s the deal I’m offering. I’ll give you fifteen thousand in cash as soon as you sign a contract that’s postdated to when you declare your draft eligibility right after your season ends. Hopefully with an NCAA championship, which would certainly jack up your standing. Also, the fifteen thousand is a bonus, and will not count against my percentage of your NBA contract.”
“Sounds good. But what’s the downside for me?”
“There is none, as long as our agreement is kept secret until you declare. Also, you have to be very careful about how you spend the bonus money so you don’t call attention to yourself. I mean, here’s my card. Take however long you need to think about it. As long as you don’t tell anybody.”
“Okay. Sounds doable. Give me a couple of days.”
“Call me any time any day. I don’t sleep much.”
“Fifteen. . . . Here’s my floor.”
“Good. I’m in one of the penthouse suites. Looking forward to working with you through what I know will be your long and successful NBA career.”
We shook hands and I just about danced to my room!
Still, I needed some advice. But from whom?
Chapter Twelve
Ihad a brief preregistration meeting with my adviser, a smiling, fleshy, middle-aged woman who had her reading glasses at the end of a brightly beaded necklace. Ms. Simone Cooper was her name, and she gently chastised me for not consulting her up until now.
The class schedule Lee had arranged for this semester would be a reprise of my first-semester schedule: English Comp, American History, English Lit, Health & Rec, Phys Ed. But even though I had not yet called him, my elevator ride with Collison had drastically altered my game plan. Since I would presumably be playing in the NBA next season, this would be my last semester at USA.
Ms. Cooper compared last semester’s transcript with my new schedule and was perplexed. “Health and Recreation? And Physical Education? Where did these courses come from?”
“Umm. The coaching staff thought I should take those courses because playing basketball takes up so much time and energy that it’s hard to concentrate on more academic classes.”
“Is that what you really want to do?”
“Yeah. I mean, if I can, I’d rather take American Literature than American History. But the truth is that I’m mostly here to play basketball, so . . .”
So with obvious reluctance Ms. Cooper allowed the substitution. And as she clicked away at her computer keyboard, she said that she hoped I knew what I was doing.
And I did.
My plan was to speak to Marty Taylor again and attend only my two literature classes.
Ms. Cooper turned out to be not so agreeable after all. Who knows what other substitutions and transcript alterations she was asked to make. Maybe she was just fed up with the whole shady business, because a few months later she told a reporter for a local newspaper about all the hanky-panky that the athletic department was engaged in to keep their so-called student-athletes eligible for varsity competition.
Her charges were vehemently denied both by the athletic director and the president of the school.
A week after the inflammatory article appeared, Ms. Cooper was fired, for reasons that were never made public.
I got up early on the first day of classes, ate a hearty breakfast, and went to both lit classes. English was taught again by Dr. Selma and I was looking forward to devouring his syllabus, which covered both the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Sir Thomas Browne. John Milton! John Dryden. John Donne. Francis Bacon. Steele and Addison. Swift. Pope. Dr. Johnson. Blake!
What a feast!
American Lit was taught by Dr. Thomas Bolden, a young, bespectacled man trembling with enthusiasm. We would be studying the likes of Ben Franklin, Thomas Paine, James Fenimore Cooper (ugh, ugh, and ugh). But Poe, Melville, Whitman, Hawthorne, and Emerson were much more appealing.
Anyway, I still had an hour before practice, so I went over to the dining hall for some coffee to help get me jacked. Imagine my surprise when I saw LeVonn digging into a huge bowl of some kind of meat stew, gnawing on a large piece of bread, and guzzling an oversized glass of soda.
Ever since he had become a star, and even with my own emergence, our friendship had deteriorated and our conversation had become limited to on-court communications.
“Screen on your left!”
“By yourself!”
“Here, LeVonn! Here!”
“No, no! Go there!”
We exchanged nods as I sat down opposite him.
“Hey, man.”
“Whazzup?”
“LeVonn. How can you eat so much right before practice?”
“Ain’t no thing, E,” he said without looking up. “I just got outa bed and I’m hungry is all. Lee also told me that ’cause we got Oklahoma State over there the day after tomorrow, it’s gonna be a easy one.”
He chomped and I sipped for a while, then I said, “Any chance you know a guy name of Collison? Gordon Collison?”
There was gravy dripping down his chin that he wiped with his hand, then licked his fingers before he answered. “Nah. Don’t know him. Who’s he?”
“An agent I met the other day.”
With that, he put down his fork and looked at me. “A agent?”
“Yeah. He had a lot to say.”
“Like what?”
So I told him about the possibility of getting drafted but said nothing about the money.
“Uh-huh,” he said. “One a them spoke to me also.” He broke into a glorious grin. “He swore up and down that I was probably gonna be a lottery pick. Man! Can you believe that? Shit! He said I would be in line for like three years guaranteed for like about twelve million! Twelve million dollars, E! That’s enough fucking money to take care of my family and live like a king for the rest of my whole life!”
“Wow! That’s great.”
“No fucking lie. It also means I can drop outa school after the season. Get me outa this fucking outdoor furnace and go back home and do some running with my boys to stay in shape. Know what I’m saying?”
“Yeah. Yeah. But let me ask you this, LeVonn. Did that agent promise you or give you any money?”
Now his look sharpened with suspicion.
“What you mean?”
“C’mon, man. Fess up. I mean, Collison? That agent? He told me he’d give me fifteen grand if I signed a contract that he’d date after the season. So what about you?”
Now he flashed a sly grin. “Fifty K, man. What I already got!”
“No shit! So all this is the real deal?”
“I got fifty Grover Clevelands hidden somewhere where I ain’t gonna say.”
We laughed and bumped fists.
“You can’t tell nobody, E. Right?”
“Well, I’m going to tell Collison to bring it on, so we both got to stay zipped.”
“Amen to that, bro.”
“All right, big man! Now we just got to stay cool. That Collison? He said to be careful about getting too flashy about spending too much money out in the open until we’re drafted. You know?”
“Fuck that, E. Soon’s the season’s over, I’m gonna buy me a big-ass ride.”
We both laughe
d and high-fived each other.
“Gordon Collison?”
“Who’s this, please?”
“Elliot Hersch.”
“Just a moment. I’ll see if he’s available.”
Just a moment later he was on the phone to say, “Elliot! How are you?”
“Good. Let’s do it. What you said the other day.”
“Great. It’s the right decision. I mean, why get chumped by the system? You’re in Stillwater to play Oklahoma State on Saturday night. I know where the team always stays there. I also know that Coach Lee does the bed check at around ten thirty, either by phone or in person. Just be in your room at nine and I’ll get in touch.”
“Sounds terrific. Thank you so much, Mr. Collison.”
“Don’t thank me, Elliot. It’s your terrific talent that’s the reason why all this is happening and why even better things are in store. Okay, got another call. See you then.”
The phone clicked and buzzed before I could say, “Goodbye.”
Okay. Assuming we’d be invited to the Big Dance, we had anywhere from sixteen to maybe twenty games left during which I had to accomplish two things:
Play my ass off.
And, above all, not get hurt.
Chapter Thirteen
Shady business as usual when we checked into the hotel in Stillwater. LeVonn and I had single rooms while the other twelve guys were jammed into four rooms. Just part of the job perks for Coach Lee.
At nine sharp there was a knock on the other side of what I thought was a closet. But, no, it was one of two doors that connected my room to an adjoining one.
It was Gordon Collison, looking sharp in a snazzy suit made out of some almost shiny material. Blue it was, with a darker blue shirt, white tie with baby blue stripes, blue alligator-skin shoes, and no shades. His eyes were traced with red highway lines, and bulging like they were on the verge of exploding.
We sat on the couch and he handed me an envelope.
“It’s the contract,” he said. “Take your time reading it, but here’s what it proposes. . . . I’ll be representing you for the next three years, which should also cover the negotiations for your second NBA contract. As I said before, I’ll get fifteen percent of your contract payments, plus a like percentage of any sneaker deals or other endorsements that I can arrange. And, of course, you have veto power on any financial dealings.”
Trouthe, Lies, and Basketball Page 7
