“I want him to be everything, do everything,” says D’Antoni. “I want him to be stronger. I want him to get dunks, run the floor, guard his guy.”
“We don’t want him to just guard his guy,” says Dan, “we want him to keep his guy from scoring. We don’t always ask that of our other players.”
“We’ve been through a lot of saying, ‘Shawn this’ and ‘Shawn that,’ ” says D’Antoni. “But you know what? We’ve come a helluva long way. There’s a helluva lot of ways you could screw it up by looking elsewhere for another player.”
“I’ll tell you what we take for granted,” says Gentry. “Some of the rebounds he gets for us.”
“And we did dodge a bullet with the personnel changes we had this year,” says Iavaroni. “Whoever we want to give the credit to—and Shawn has to be part of that—you couldn’t have expected to do any better than we did.”
“We’re two wins away from doing exactly what we did last year,” says D’Antoni, meaning that they are two wins from a conference final.
On the practice court, Nash is trying to pump up Diaw. The young Frenchman has by no means played horribly, but Game 5 had been his worst of the postseason—he had only eight points and three rebounds and was on the court for only thirty-one minutes of a fifty-eight-minute game. He is tiring of the endless physical battles with Brand and Kaman, and, moreover, is afraid that he is letting down his team.
“Why the long face?” Nash says. “You know, every time you frown instead of smile it takes a month off your career. Hey, if anyone should be frowning it’s me.” Diaw forces a smile.
Actually, Nash is doing a lot of frowning behind the scenes. How many times over the last weeks has he heard the questions What’s the matter? Are you injured? He truly doesn’t know how to answer because he’s not sure what’s wrong. He just feels tired and sore, sometimes more tired than sore, sometimes more sore than tired. He speaks of “cumulative fatigue” that built up during a long and enervating regular season, and tomorrow night he will be playing his twelfth playoff game in twenty-three days. He knows there’s something wrong physically, but he can’t put his finger on it. Or, more to the point, he would need ten fingers to put his finger on it. Sometimes his congenitally damaged back hurts, sometimes it’s his legs, sometimes it’s his hamstrings, sometimes it’s his ankles. “I’m going to feel better one of these days,” Nash says. But he does allow that what he calls a general feeling of exhaustion is hurting the mechanics on his midrange and long-distance shots. Should the series go seven games, he would have three days to rest before Game 7.
Plus, Nash is fretting about his own team and its tendency to let down after a victory. “If we can come out and have a real maturity, and be extremely focused and professional, it would be a great opportunity for us,” Nash says, talking about Game 6. Notice Nash’s choice of words—maturity, focused, professional. All the things the Suns were not in Games 2 and 4, and, going back to the Laker series, Games 2 and 3.
May 18
LOS ANGELES
Noel Gillespie has unearthed a clip of Sarver exhorting the home crowd by pumping his arms like a madman. He looks like a signalman on an aircraft carrier revved up on amphetamines. Gillespie had put it on for the coaches that morning, and after it had run a few times, accompanied by the background music to “I Believe I Can Fly,” everyone was convulsed in laughter. “That man,” says Iavaroni, “is getting his four hundred million worth.”
One of the things the Suns are hoping for from the Clippers is the emergence of a certain coming-apart-at-the-seams factor, which is what the Lakers experienced when adversity hit them in Games 5, 6, and 7. Suns’ players and coaches had heard Mobley yelling at Cassell’s shot selection during the game and reliable reports had them screaming at each other in the locker room after the Game 5 disaster in Phoenix. I rarely express my opinion to the coaches about anything—why would they possibly want to hear it?—but I had ventured the theory before the game that Dunleavy will tether Corey Maggette to the bench, so inconsistent had his play been.
At the end of the first half, the Clippers lead 62–50 and Maggette has ten points off the bench. Further, the Clippers are cohesive and upbeat. They appear to be the kind of team that thrives under a kind of chaotic discontent, which isn’t surprising since their leader is Cassell, a guy who hollers at you, then hugs you. Nothing the Suns try works very well. Brand is still manhandling them inside with fifteen points and four rebounds. Quinton Ross is suddenly shooting like the second coming of Steve Kerr (he has made eight of his ten shots). Kaman, the big center, is again turning Diaw (four points) into a nullity. James Jones keeps trying to make plays when all anyone wants him to do is catch and shoot or catch and pass. Tim Thomas has zero points and is playing like he’s caddying for Brand, handing him the clubs that Brand will use to beat him over the head. The twelve-point deficit would’ve been even larger had Barbosa not scored eleven points in ninety-five seconds, which extrapolates to something like an eighty-three-point quarter.
The final is 118–106. Marion finishes with the quietest thirty-four points imaginable—Brand had thirty but was much more of a factor in the game. Thomas sleepwalked his way to a whole three points. That is what you get from Thomas—a season-saving show one week, a face-on-the-milk-carton game the next.
Diaw managed fourteen points but looks discouraged. Nash and Bell combined for thirty points but missed seventeen of their twenty-five shots. Bell’s three-point accuracy came to an end—he missed five of his six shots beyond the arc. Without Marion and Barbosa (twenty-five points), the Suns would’ve lost by thirty.
“All right guys, real quick,” D’Antoni says after the game. “We didn’t have that extra pop tonight. The way we have to play—and we’ll talk about it on Saturday—we gotta run, we gotta hit quick, we gotta spread the floor, and we gotta go. We can double on pick-and-rolls, we can shut their ass down as we did toward the end of the game [he is reaching for a positive here], but we didn’t get it done on the offensive end.
“We worked all year to get homecourt advantage, and that’s what we have until the conference finals. That’s pretty damn good. Let’s get your minds straight and get it done.”
Maggette, by the way, finishes with twenty-five points; any future theories I will keep to myself.
The players drift slowly out of the locker room and down the tunnel. Whatever happens in Game 7, this will be the last flight out of L.A. for the season—there have been four round trips since the Laker series. D’Antoni sees a morose Diaw. Earlier in the season Raja Bell, who knows something about mood swings, joked about how irritating it is that Diaw never seems to be down. Well, Diaw seems down now, and D’Antoni motions him to the front of the bus for a conversation.
“Boris, keep your head up, man,” says D’Antoni. “You’re not the only one struggling. You’ve been doing fine. We’re gonna get ’em in Game 7. We’re gonna take care of business at home.”
“These games,” says Diaw, “have not been fun for me.”
Growing up in France, Diaw tried all kinds of sports, including fencing, judo, and rugby, before finally deciding on basketball. “I want to grow to be six-feet-eight and play point guard,” Diaw told his mother.
“You cannot be six-eight and be a point guard,” she told him. “At that height you must be a center.”
“What about Magic Johnson?” Boris told his mother.
Diaw reached his desired height, but, now that he has made it as an NBA player, he finds himself battling beasts like Kaman under the boards. It’s not how he envisions the game. He is a smart player and understands, at some level, that his success has come largely because D’Antoni has put him in a position where he can out-quick most of his opponents. But in a protracted series, where tempo inevitably slows down, that advantage in quickness is being mitigated. And he just hates physical play.
During a 136–121 win over Charlotte on February 25 in Phoenix, things turned chippy in the fourth quarter and Diaw took an elbow from the Bobc
ats’ combative point guard, Brevin Knight. As elbows go, it wasn’t anything extraordinary, but Diaw looked over at the bench in shock and said, “He elbowed me.” Everyone just kind of shrugged, but Diaw couldn’t believe it. “He elbowed me. Why would he elbow me? He had no reason to elbow me. Why would he do that?”
Boris, sometimes there’s just no good answer. An elbow is an elbow is an elbow.
D’Antoni tries to find an answer for Diaw now. “Boris,” he says, “every series is different. It’s not always going to be like this. And one thing you gotta understand is how much you figure in our plans. We want you here. You’re our guy.”
With another Game 7 on the horizon, D’Antoni will likely need all his guys.
Chapter Eighteen
[The Second Season]
Phoenix, May 21……………….
SERIES TIED 3–3
“That’s officially the end of the Barkley Room.”
At practice, the talk is not of the Los Angeles Clippers, but of pro wrestling, the arena being host to a sold-out WWE event that night. Boris Diaw mentions that he might attend. “Maybe I will learn something I can use against the big guys,” says Diaw. Tim Thomas walks down the stairs and strikes a Hulk Hogan pose, having spotted some of the wrestlers in the hallway. Brian Grant arrives and announces that he just introduced himself to the Undertaker. He said it in the same awed tone of voice that one might’ve said, “I just met the ambassador to China.” But no one is more excited than Eddie House, a major pro wrestling fan who plans to be in attendance that evening.
“I’m telling you, they really hit each other with the hard part of the chair,” House is insisting to anyone who will listen.
“And I’m telling you, this shit ain’t real,” says Gentry. “I know these guys. I’ve seen it up close. They came to L.A. and I met Bret ‘Hitman’ Hart. He’s tough, but how in the hell are you gonna get hit with the damn hard part of the chair and not get a broken skull? They hit each other with the cushion.”
“I’m not saying all the shit is real,” insists House, “but I’ve seen these guys get hit with the damn hard part of the chair. Maybe they miss accidentally or something.”
“No,” says Gentry. “It’s like when they hit each other in the face and stomp on the ground, so it sounds like they’re hitting each other in the head.” He gets up and demonstrates.
“I know that ain’t real,” says House. “But where does the blood come from when they get hit with the chair? Tell me that.”
“What are you, Eddie, with this WWE stuff,” says Nash, “honorary white trash?”
Nash has already been through a one-hour workout with his physiotherapist, Rick Celebrini, who had arrived last night from Vancouver. Celebrini, who once played pro soccer in Canada with Nash’s brother, Martin, was supposed to be on a weekend trip with his wife but, when Nash called, off he went to Phoenix. It was just the two of them at the far end of the practice gym, Nash shirtless and sweating, just like in one of their summer workouts in a deserted gym. Nobody likes to say much to Nash when he’s working with Celebrini, and Nash doesn’t like to say much either. When Celebrini breaks down what they work on, talking about things like “body mechanics” and “core movements,” Nash knows it sounds like mumbo jumbo, and he is uncomfortable, and perhaps a little superstitious, about sharing it with the general public.
“Are you the shot doctor, too?” I ask Celebrini.
“It’s all connected,” says Celebrini.
About all Nash will say about it is: “My [shooting] mechanics can’t survive some of the physical stuff I’m going through.” Plus, just having Celebrini around is mentally restorative—Nash believes that he didn’t become a real player until he started working with Celebrini six years ago.
Over the last week, D’Antoni has fielded more what’s-the-matter-with-Steve? questions than he did all of last season when, to be honest, there was almost never anything wrong with Steve. The questions anger D’Antoni—if he started losing confidence in Nash, his offensive engineer, he might as well pack up and head back to Italy—but they are legitimate questions. Down deep, even D’Antoni realizes that, as do the assistants. They can’t obsess about Nash’s subpar play and, really, there isn’t much they can do about it, but they know it’s a reality. “If you would’ve told me after the Laker series that Steve could be playing the way he’s playing, and we’d be here, in a seventh game,” says Gentry, “nobody would’ve believed it.” The prevailing theory—at least, the hopeful theory—is that Celebrini’s visit, combined with the three-day rest and the homecourt advantage, will be just the palliative the MVP needs.
After practice, Nash is submerged in his daily training room ice bath when I wander past, my eyes on a Krispy Kreme. “Way to work, Jack,” he says. Just to make me feel guilty, Nash makes that comment every once in a while after I’ve finished up a grueling practice session that involved sitting on my butt and scribbling in a tablet.
Later, with Nash not around, I find Celebrini. We’re just about to start discussing what he found about Nash’s mechanics—“His right hip was dropping so his shot naturally is…”—when Nash materializes.
“Let’s go,” he says to Celibrini, flashing me a gotcha grin.
May 22
The atmosphere in the upstairs coaches office is tense. They began playoff preparation on Thursday, April 20, one day after the regular season ended, three days before they played the Lakers in Game 1. The coaches have not had a day off, not one single day when they haven’t sat around a room, tossing around ideas, their theories bouncing around like molecules under heat. They have spent far less time with their wives (or, in Weber’s case, girlfriends) and children than they have with each other.
There are ten men on a basketball court at one time and only one ball. And, in the case of their own offense, they don’t call many different plays. What else could they possibly have to talk about?
At this stage, the coaches are all like mad scientists, drawing up plays on scraps of paper and showing them to D’Antoni or dashing over to the blackboard to see what they look like in chalk. They’re not looking to change the offense, but, rather, for one little wrinkle, one little something, that could make the difference between winning and losing a Game 7. Gentry even retreats into his cubicle and digs out an old playbook from his days as an assistant with the New Orleans Hornets.
“If we use a Hornet play,” says D’Antoni, “we can be damn sure nobody’s ever seen it.”
Understandably, tensions are high; emotions are ragged.
“I don’t like that matchup,” Dan D’Antoni says after the coaches watch Nash score against the much taller Radmanovic.
“Well, we scored on him every time,” says his brother. “Any particular reason you don’t like it?”
“I just don’t like it.”
“So you’d prefer we score another way?” asks Mike.
“Can’t I just not like it?” says Dan.
“Well, shit, Danny, you can just not like it,” says Mike, “but specifics would be nice.”
“Brothers,” says Iavaroni, shaking his head.
Dan also insists that the Suns’ main advantage is that they play harder than the Clippers. Gentry and Dan are frequently on the same page, but not this time.
“Elton Brand will play like a bitch from start to finish,” says Gentry. “And no one in the league will play harder than Corey Maggette.”
“But sometimes he doesn’t play smart,” says Dan. “I don’t think you can play hard and play dumb.”
“My point is, on the nights when Corey is going good, he’ll have twenty points and fifteen rebounds,” says Gentry. “So you better hope things don’t go good for him.”
“I’m just saying that we can play—we don’t always do it but we can play—at between fifty-five miles an hour and seventy miles an hour,” says Dan. “They have a governor that stops them at fifty-five.”
“I strongly, strongly disagree,” says Gentry. “I think they play hard as shit. Th
ey play every bit as hard as we do. If we’re depending on us playing harder to beat them we’re depending on the wrong thing. I think if we win, we win for one reason: We make shots.”
“How about Game 3 when we won but only shot thirty-eight percent?” says Weber.
“That was an aberration,” says Gentry, “and you guys know it.”
“Well, just to borrow the old cliché,” says Iavaroni, “we can throw out all the statistics for one day. And I’m Mister Numbers.”
“How long until tip-off?” asks Mike.
Still seven hours to go.
Marion comes into the locker room two hours before the game, looking calm, wearing what Weber calls a “schmedium” T-shirt, i.e., tight-fitting, somewhere between a “small” and a “medium.” He is finishing up a good-luck call from Joe Johnson, the former Sun who was traded to Atlanta and whose season has now been over for a month. Dave Griffin looks worried when he hears “T-shirt” because this is a TV game and the Hammurabis behind the NBA dress code will be watching. That’s pretty much how the league office monitors violations: A camera shows a player entering the locker room in gold chains, cap on sideways, and a long retro jersey, and someone in the league office, watching the telecast, writes him up for not complying with the “business casual” edict. It’s a little Big Brother. But Marion should be okay because the T-shirt has a collar. A few weeks ago, Nash had been caught wearing a sweatshirt to a game, though Griffin, by sketching out an extremely liberal definition of “sweater,” was able to convince the league it really wasn’t a sweatshirt.
However the NBA chooses to describe its dress code, which was put into effect before this season, it is about one thing: Making a concession to the red states, where the NBA does not play well. The league can argue that it is color-blind, because it theoretically targets Steve Nash the same way it targets, say, Allen Iverson. But believe this: It is more about Iverson than Nash. (What the red states should see is Nash’s T-shirt that says GOOD BUSH above a sketch of a woman’s lower abdomen and BAD BUSH above a photo of George W.) If the code is not inherently racist, it is certainly racial.
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