Character Driven

by Derek Fisher

  Getting to Mr. Worm’s was anything but a treat. If we walked or rode our bikes, we had to travel a few streets over from my house, down one steep hill and up a second, even steeper hill to get there. So as much as we were treating ourselves to a sugary snack, we earned it. We also earned the money we spent there.

  My parents weren’t fanatical about having us do household chores—I think my mother ran interference for us and kept my dad from assigning us more. I had to take the trash out and do some lawn-care tasks. As much as I liked being outside, I didn’t like having to mow the lawn. We lived on the corner, so our lot was bigger than our neighbors’, and it sloped down to the street level on one side. When I was really young, I wasn’t allowed to use the push lawn mower since that slope was dangerous, but I had to clean up after the lawn mower that my dad used. I’m sure that other people back then had lawn mowers with bags attached to catch the clippings, but I didn’t know that. Everybody I knew had a bagless mower. That was what children were for, I guess. I had to go out after my dad had mowed to rake up the grass.

  Worse was the fall. Raking leaves was fun the first time I had to do it for the season. I kind of liked the sounds they made when I kicked my way through them, and the smell of decaying leaves meant that basketball season was coming up. Messing around and throwing leaves at my friends or jumping in a big pile of them was fun also, but having to rake them up and stuff them in trash bags or in a big plastic garbage can was no fun at all. We also had a huge pine tree on our property, and while that didn’t shed leaves, it did send down a regular shower of pinecones and needles. As hard as it was to get all the grass and the leaves, having to rake up the debris from the pine tree was truly, truly painful. I would gladly have accepted a scholarship to Stanford University, as one of my Parkview teammates eventually did, but I know that having to look at that big old pine tree in the middle of the school’s logo would have been a considerable burden. But the yard work had to be done, and no matter what else was going on in my world, I was expected to be out in that patch of green and brown getting things done.

  I don’t know if my father knew how we all felt about the hills that led to Mr. Worm’s, but he devised his own use for them. When I was about twelve years old, he decided that I needed to get a bit more serious about my preparation for basketball. He knew that during the season I was a good player and seemed serious about the games and, just as important, the practices. But as I said, I think he suspected that the fire in my belly was lacking. In today’s game, when we talk about a player either lacking in intensity or one who is unwilling to go inside and bang hard on rebounds or when driving to the hoop, we say that they are “soft.” That’s a polite way of expressing it. In locker rooms or out on the court or in private discussions about opposing players (and sometimes teammates), we might use more cutting expressions, but they are all related to questioning someone’s manhood. No one likes to have those terms applied to him or to have his willingness to endure physical contact (and the resulting pain of that contact) questioned.

  My father, perhaps thinking I needed to be mentally or physically tougher, put me through some workouts that helped me to grow stronger in both areas. Like me, my father was a somewhat reserved man, and I never knew exactly what his life was like growing up in Louisiana. He didn’t share many stories of his experiences with his family—from what he did say, I think that his relationship with his own father was either brief or distant (and possibly both). I got the impression that he had to grow up hard and fast and saw the comparative luxury of my life as something that he was glad he could provide for me, but also something he worried might make it more difficult for me to succeed in the world. He knew that the strong survived, and the stronger thrived. He wanted to make sure that I didn’t just get by but really made the most of the opportunities I had.

  I guess an incident I had in fourth grade on the basketball court wasn’t enough to convince him of my toughness. Andrew Parker and I knew each other from the neighborhood and from Boys Club basketball. One day we were outside playing against each other during lunch. Andrew was much bigger than me. He wasn’t as thickly built as I was; he was much more rangy but still strong. He was one of the team’s better players, so he was guarding me. I would try to back him down, but he was putting his chest on me and bumping me and always trying to use his body to lever me out of the way. Some of it was good defensive positioning, but mostly he was just beating on me and thugging it up. I didn’t like that at all. I wasn’t intimidated by him, and his banging on me like that would have earned him a foul if this had been a real game.

  Finally, after one flagrant push in the back, I’d had enough. I raised my left hand up and spun around, punching Andrew flush on the cheek and temple. He staggered back, and a teacher rushed in to separate the two of us. No more game for either of us that day. The incident did not go unpunished or unnoticed. My parents were called into school, and they were upset. The right thing to do was for me to go to Andrew’s parents’ house and explain to them what I’d done. Andrew turned out to be pretty cool about it, as were his parents. Andrew admitted that he was pushing me pretty good and I wasn’t just going after him for no reason. We shook hands, a weak clasping that lasted about a millisecond, and that seemed to settle things.

  My mom and dad were naturally upset with me, but I think my dad liked that I didn’t let someone bully me on the court. Of course, I got a pretty good talking to, and I was on punishment for a week or two after that, but I believe I saw a bit of a gleam in my dad’s eye. I think it was a few weeks after that when I began some of my workouts with my dad.

  One morning, I was lying in bed on Saturday. Weak light was filtering through the thin fabric of my bedroom curtains. The wind was rattling the panes of the windows. I was half-asleep and drowsing in my warm bed. I sensed a presence in the room. I opened one eye, and there was my dad silhouetted in the doorway. He was standing in profile, and his head was partially tilted up as if he were looking at something far away.

  “C’mon. Let’s go.” He inclined his head away from me, indicating the front door. “Got some work to do. Get your sweats and your shoes.”

  I shut my eyes and thought of asking for a few more minutes. I felt warm and comfortable, and based on what I’d heard and seen, this early-fall day was stormy and uninviting. Something told me not to wait too long before getting a move on, so I rolled out of bed and put on a pair of sweatpants, an old T-shirt, and a hoodie. I tugged on a pair of athletic socks, ignoring the slight tear in the toe seam, then worked my way into a pair of basketball shoes. My dad was standing in the driveway, dressed much as I was. His hands were thrust deep in the pockets of his sweatshirt. He raised his hand and formed a mound with the loose fabric. “This way.”

  Only when we started walking toward Parkwood Drive did I see that he had something slung over one shoulder, an old military flak jacket. Heavily padded, it had multiple pockets. It reminded me of a heavy-duty vest I’d seen photographers or hunters on television wear. It began to slip from his shoulder and he shrugged it back into place. We headed down Dorchester toward Twenty-fourth Street, and I knew both what was up and what I’d soon be going up—Boyle Park Road and the hills. When we got to Twenty-fourth Street and Dorchester, we turned onto Boyle Park. I looked up and saw the winding incline I knew that I would soon be climbing. The wind was whipping the bare trees that lined the road that encircled the park. I don’t know how long that loop was, but I said a silent prayer that we’d only be doing that loop, a kind of loose knot, in the longer length of Boyle Park Road.

  “Loosen up a bit,” my dad said.

  I did a couple of stretches, jogged in place for a bit.

  “You ready for this?”

  I nodded.

  I was wrong. I was prepared for a long, loping jog around the park. Instead, my dad had me sprint up the entry road to the park. It was probably only four hundred yards or so, but it seemed to be pitched at a forty-five-degree angle. I’d sprint up, then jog back down. First, he h
ad me run frontward up the incline, later he mixed in some backward running as well.

  “I’m taking it a bit easier on you today. Weather’s cool.”

  He may have been right about the temperature, but I was still sweating artillery shells. My chest heaved and my thighs and calves felt as if taut piano wires were running through them. On the last of the sprints, my dad went up with me. He gave me a second to catch my breath, then we walked into the park and onto one of the courts. That’s when the flak jacket came into play. When he helped me into it, I felt as if someone had put a suit of armor on me. We hadn’t brought a ball, but my dad put me through a set of drills that had my tongue wagging and my head spinning. We did variations of the line drill—running from the end line to the near free throw line and back, then immediately out to half-court and back, then the far free throw line and back, end line, etc. We did defensive shuttle drills with his constantly reminding me to move my feet as I went from one sideline to the other over and over.

  I was glad we’d started out before eight in the morning, but that early-morning chill had been replaced by sunshine and humidity. As the temperature rose, I felt every degree of it. Every break when I got to go to the water fountain was an enormous relief. I greedily gulped down the water and stuck my face into the stream. We’d started out in isolation, but by the time we were heavily into the drills, a group of kids were shooting around at one end, laughing and messing with one another. A lazy game of horse developed, and I watched as one kid went off the court behind the basket to fire up a shot over the backboard. When it swished through, his buddies all yelled and screamed, gave him high fives. I looked at my dad and felt this connection with him. He’d seen the kid pull off the trick shot, just as he’d seen another player bounce in a free throw, and I saw on his face a reflection of my own sour expression.

  When would you ever need that shot in a real basketball game? How much time and effort had those guys put into developing a shot that would win them a game of horse but they would never use in a real game of basketball? I was hot and sweaty, I hadn’t eaten a thing yet and my stomach was pleading with me, but I finished my drink and walked over to where my father was standing. I got in a good spread-legged defensive position, put my palms to the asphalt. I looked up at him and asked, “Again?” He nodded, and off I went, backpedaling and turning from side to side, keeping my feet moving as quickly as I could, ignoring the pain of the flak jacket’s collar digging into my neck each time I moved my chest to keep square to my father as he advanced down the court.

  I wonder now if my dad knew that those other kids were going to be there on that first day he put me through my paces with his workout. I never suspected that my father was trying to be mean by working me out that way. He didn’t say a whole lot about why he was doing that, but later when I saw the movie Hoop Dreams, I understood that what he wasn’t saying was probably even more important. My dad never talked about my getting a college scholarship or playing in the NBA when I was doing those workouts with him. He wasn’t looking at me as a meal ticket or filling my head with dreams of a life in basketball. He never talked about what opportunities he might have missed out on by leaving school and ending his ball career early. I didn’t think much about it back then, but I’m grateful to him today for teaching me that the hard work I was doing was good for its own sake. It was a means to an end other than an NBA career.

  Hard work and discipline applied to every aspect of my life and not just athletics. So, whether it was in the classroom, in the music room (I participated in the school choir and in the school band), or out on the court, knowing that it took practice and dedication to achieve any goal was an important lesson. And developing my other hand by being involved in other activities such as music made me realize that a whole other world existed outside the gym that I could participate in and enjoy. Those other activities could take me places that I might not have been able to go and expose me to ideas and people that I might not ever have encountered. Basketball eventually proved to be the key to my leaving Little Rock and experiencing things that I couldn’t even have dreamed of back then, but developing my other hand—trying to improve myself and explore avenues outside of sports—is something that I’m extremely grateful my parents insisted on and aided me in.

  I enjoyed playing music a lot. Again, I can see a pattern here. Most kids like listening to music, but that wasn’t enough for my family and me. Why not make music instead of just passively listening to what someone else had produced? I began playing the trumpet in seventh grade and continued to be in bands until my junior year in high school. My forays into playing music and singing in the choir were a part of my learning to let my guard down a bit. I was anxious about performing in front of people initially, but I liked that slightly jittery butterflies-in-my-stomach feeling. I eventually earned my share of solos or featured sections in the choir and the band, and I enjoyed being out in front of a group of people and bringing pleasure to them and receiving pleasure in the form of applause. Standing up and taking a bow after a concert band or choir performance was almost as gratifying as hearing a crowd cheering at a basketball game.

  Eventually those early lessons about the need to develop all sides of my personality and also to develop skills that could help off the court took root. I majored in communications in college, and all the study of and practice of various kinds of social interactions and speaking paid off for me. When I finally really blossomed on the court at the University of Arkansas, Little Rock, and later with the Lakers, a part of my job was being interviewed by newspaper and television reporters as well as doing public appearances. I always felt comfortable in front of the cameras or with microphones being placed in front of me.

  I knew that if I was going to fit into Los Angeles and take advantage of all the opportunities that come with working in a major media market, and one as intensely media-centered as Los Angeles, my reserved nature wasn’t going to get me far. I didn’t know back in college that I’d play in the NBA or be living in Los Angeles, but I knew that no matter what career path I followed, many of my basketball lessons and skills would translate to success anywhere. Quiet confidence is a good thing, but being able to show that other side of yourself—that you can come out of your protective shell, that you can do things that people don’t really expect of you—is important. For me, developing my off hand meant trying things and testing myself off the court in some ways people back home were really surprised to see.

  In 1998, an agent contacted me. She knew that some of the urban television shows presented possible opportunities for me to explore. One of those was an appearance on L. L. Cool J’s television show In the House. Kobe Bryant and I did cameo appearances along with our coach, Del Harris. According to the script, I was dating the character played by Kim Wayans. I had a lot of fun, prepared myself well for the taping, and took pride in being able to do my scenes in one take. The show’s producers were so happy with how I did, they invited me back to wrap up the bit about my dating Kim—the script stated that I was getting too distracted so Coach Harris had to intervene. Later on, I did some acting on Jamie Foxx’s show and then on Moesha, with the singer Brandy. I was serious enough about it that I took some acting classes as well. Unfortunately, I learned that as an NBA player, time is precious, and trying to do too much can mean that you don’t do anything as well as you’d like. I had to stop taking those classes when it became clear just how much time I had to devote to training and rehab in the summer.

  Those acting gigs gave me a chance to step out of my usual reality, to be silly, and to have some fun. Don’t get me wrong, basketball was fun, but the longer I played and the higher up I advanced, the more intense the pressure became, and eventually I would come to think of it as my career, and my playing the game as the work I did. I still needed creative outlets, and I still needed to prove to other people and myself that I didn’t live and breathe basketball 24-7. When I first started dating Candace, I would invite her onto the set so that she could see these other
sides of me. I wanted to reassure her that I wasn’t what she might have believed a stereotypical professional athlete was like. As you’ll learn more later on, I was a pretty low-key, unassuming guy when it came to dating and romance, and I wanted to impress her with all of my skills. I didn’t show off my typing ability, but she was convinced that there was far more to me than a strong left-hand dribble drive or a pull-up jumper.

  Eventually I could confidently walk onto the set of a TV show and perform, and I have Parkview’s programs and its emphasis on sports, academics, and the arts to thank for that. I know that some people perceive that high school athletes, particularly those who excel and go on to pro careers, are “too cool for school,” as the expression goes. That wasn’t the case with me. The school I attended had a wellrounded focus. Parkview has a longer name, Parkview Arts Science Magnet High School, and the school was one of Little Rock’s finest. As a magnet school, it drew students from around the city, allowing high-achieving and motivated students to cross elementary- and middle-school boundary lines to attend. It remains the state’s first and only full magnet school and has a statewide reputation for excellence in all areas from academics to athletics to the arts. The faculty and staff there made certain that we developed both hands, so to speak.

  I was enrolled in the arts program, which was why I was in the choir and the band, but that didn’t mean that I focused exclusively on those things. I also had to take the usual required academic courses. I was a hardworking student, earning a B average or just above. I took a couple of advanced-placement classes, but I wasn’t on the fast track with the really smart kids. I felt comfortable at school and could be myself there. I think sometimes that my being left-handed played a part in that. Being a part of a small group and standing out gave me a sense of identity apart from what everyone else, the majority, was doing. Sports were a huge part of the life of the school and the community at large. I can’t say that I made a conscious decision to be different, but I do know that I pursued my interests regardless of what it may have looked like to other people.