Character Driven

by Derek Fisher

  I’d been around complainers and whiners enough to know who had a legitimate gripe and who didn’t. The statistical evidence was overwhelming. Given how we later decided to all take action, every one of us from the starting five to the last man off the bench felt that Coach Platt crossed the line between trying to motivate us to trying to beat us down as players and as men. That’s a strong statement, but it was true. By roughly midseason of my sophomore year, we had all reached a breaking point. We’d had some minor flareups with our coach when we’d tried to get him to understand our point of view, but that had just made things worse. Finally, at an informal meeting, we unanimously decided that we had to do something. We could not let this go on. I had worked so hard and put up with so much to get to that point, then I had to deal with this.

  The next day, instead of going to practice, we all went to the local mall together. By not showing up, we hoped that we’d send the message that we’d been trying to send in person. We didn’t want to stay in our apartments because that was the first place someone from the team or the athletic department would check for us. We didn’t want to just do our own thing in case one of us was discovered and had to take the heat or explain for all of us.

  I can still remember feeling as if I were sneaking out of my parents’ house at night and that when I came back home or even before that, I was going to get busted. I had that giddy kind-of-scared, kind-of-angry feeling. Of course, we’re walking through the mall and who do we bump into? Mrs. Platt and her daughters out shopping. We all just tried to be cool and stroll on past them, but we saw that she saw us, and her face said it all: “Shouldn’t you guys be at practice?”

  Well, ma’am, we should, but because of your husband’s behavior, we thought it necessary to take this step. Things went awry even further when the local news heard about our informal boycott of practice and broadcast the story that night. That’s when things got really uncomfortable for everyone. Even though I was only a sophomore, as the point guard and the guy who ran the team out on the floor, the role of team spokesman fell on me. Even though I hadn’t spearheaded this campaign, my teammates selected me to talk this out with the coaches. As uncomfortable as I was with being disrespectful to a coach, I believed wholeheartedly that we needed to do something. Today, I’m not sure I would have handled it that way, but I do have to admire some of our strategic thinking. We had a huge game with in-state rival Arkansas State in a few days, and we didn’t think that anyone would want to see that game forfeited or attention taken away from it by our walkout.

  We were right. That same night, Coach White came to my apartment to talk to me. We’d always had a good rapport, and he had actively recruited me and spoken on my behalf to Coach Platt, so we were able to be completely honest with each other. He heard me out, then excused himself to make a phone call. A little while later, I got a knock on the door and the athletic director was standing there with Coach White. I ushered them both in and repeated what I had told Coach White. The athletic director, Coach White, and I agreed that we would all hold a team meeting the next day with all the players and staff except Coach Platt. They wanted to hear from all the guys so that they could get a fuller picture of what our grievances were.

  At that meeting when we were asked if anyone had anything to say, all eyes fell on me. I briefly reiterated what I had said the night before. I scanned the room looking for backup, and a couple of guys added a few things to what I’d said. I was no John Grisham hero lawyer, but I knew that we weren’t presenting a strong case, so I picked up the loose ball and ran with it. I told them what we had all discussed. If Coach Platt wasn’t immediately replaced, we weren’t going to play that next game against Arkansas State. We weren’t bluffing with that demand, but the athletic director said that they couldn’t fire him like that. He explained some things about wrongful termination, etc. He did however agree to investigate our grievances. He said that he would attend our practices to see just how Coach Platt treated us. That didn’t sit too well with me because Coach Platt would know what was going on and probably wouldn’t unload on us in front of his boss the way he normally did. The athletic director did add that he would put Coach Platt on a kind of probation and promised to evaluate the situation at the end of the season.

  We agreed to take that under advisement, and we met without any of the coaches or administration present. After talking it out, we decided to go back to playing. We’d been heard, and that was all we really wanted in the first place. Coach Platt didn’t have a warm and welcoming open-door policy, but in retrospect we could have more formally approached him. Failing that, we could have gone to Coach Finley or Coach White or talked to someone else in the athletic department about our concerns. We’d all risked our scholarships or at least our standing on the team by doing what we did, and that, if nothing else, is proof of how bad the situation was. This wasn’t just a bunch of unhappy guys saying if you don’t stop picking on us, we’re going to tell our mom on you. And it wasn’t as if we were a terrible team. At that point we were around a .500 club.

  When we reported back to practice, Coach Platt did clean up his act for a bit. Of course, it was hard to play with all that going on. I don’t think he trusted us anymore, and we didn’t trust him. We lost our next four games in a row, and at the end of that two-week stretch, Coach Platt was gone. The assistants ran the team the rest of the year, and we finished up about how we’d started, but it was as if a giant block of cement dangling from a chain around our neck was gone.

  I sensed from that experience that my guys were looking at me as a leader. I didn’t like what Coach Platt was doing, but I wouldn’t have spoken so strongly except for the responsibility that I felt to my teammates. They were looking to me to speak for us all, and that’s what I did. I felt bad for Coach Platt and his family. I didn’t keep track of him after that. I believe that everybody deserves a second shot, a chance to rebound, and I hope that he took from the experience some lessons just as I did. For a guy who was as shy and reserved as I was to take a stand and speak out was huge. That was especially true because, on my own, I would probably have just kept putting up with that kind of verbal abuse. I believed that the boss was the boss and he set the rules and the tone. Of course, if he had crossed the line in other ways, I would immediately have responded.

  I’ve heard people say that one of the things about college is that you learn as much outside the classroom as you do inside. Another benefit is that you get exposed to all different kinds of people, and you learn a lot about relationships and personal interactions. That was certainly true for me those first two years at UALR. I was also learning that you can’t paint with too broad of a brush. Despite this painful experience, I didn’t let it color my perceptions of everyone and everything at the school. I didn’t regret the decision to accept the scholarship offer, and when that season and that semester were over, I went right back to work. I had to get strong because I was certain there’d be more obstacles and more challenges. I also decided that it was best to really enjoy those up times, to take in the view from there and to use that as a vision for what I wanted the rest of my time to be like.

  I also realized that the old line “this too shall pass” is true. Going through all that drama, it felt as if this were the worst thing in the world. My values and beliefs were tested in that situation. What was most difficult was staying true to myself. I relied on the solid base of values and beliefs that I had. I wasn’t going to disrespect myself, and most of the guys felt that way. Whether our approach was right or wrong, I firmly believed then and now that we brought about a change that was necessary and right. Our coach was supposed to be on our side, was supposed to help lift us up and not bring us down. By staying true to our belief in ourselves and by demanding that he respect us in return for how we’d respected him and tolerated his lack of respect, in the long run we came out ahead.

  My parents taught me that it is best to do something, to take action, and when the time came and I had the team’s best interests and in
tents behind me, I helped bring about a positive change for all of us. Believe me, I wish that the circumstances had been different, but in the end we wound up in a better place than where we started. That’s the thing about rebounding and being resilient—the effort may not seem worth it at the time, but when the final score is on the board, you know that your efforts contributed to the victory.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Staying in Bounds:

  Understanding the Rules of the Game and of Life

  In mid-November of 2008, I came home from a Lakers practice on a Sunday afternoon to kids napping as usual. Feeling that I needed to wind down a bit, I did what millions of Americans do on fall weekends—I sat down to watch an NFL game. I flipped around the channels for a while, hoping to find a game of interest. Week eleven in the NFL had a few close games and its share of blowouts—a traditional-rivalry game between the Chicago Bears and the Green Bay Packers was one of the latter, with the Pack handing the Bears a spanking. With Green Bay up 24–3 at the end of the third quarter, I figured I’d move on. I tuned in to a game without the same kind of intense rivalry—the Philadelphia Eagles and the Cincinnati Bengals. Heading into the last few minutes of the fourth quarter, the teams were tied 13–13.

  Figuring on overtime at the worst, and a last-second decision at best, I settled in to watch the conclusion of the game. I’m a fan of Donovan McNabb, the veteran Eagle’s quarterback. I knew that he was a pretty fair basketball player as a high schooler in the Chicago area before he went to Syracuse University on a football scholarship. He’s a stud athlete, and I admire his courage, especially as he was attempting to come back from a serious knee injury that wiped out his 2007 season. Unfortunately for the Bengals, most of what I knew about them was not good. Their players had had a series of run-ins with the law in the previous seasons, and you seldom read or heard anything positive about their program. Whatever the cause of the breakdown in discipline, I felt bad for the team and for the city and for the sport. I never like to hear about athletes in any sport discrediting the profession. I am not one to pass judgment, but the Bengals had either a stretch of bad luck or immaturity that led them to be regarded as representing everything that critics find wrong with pro sports generally and pro athletes specifically.

  I figured that Cincinnati had to be the underdog, and their 1-8 record had me rooting for them. I like to see anyone overcome adversity and succeed, and from what I knew, the guys out of Cincy were dealing with adversity with a capital A on and off the field. What I saw in those last few minutes of the game made me think that something was up with both clubs. Neither of them could move the ball, and the game slipped into overtime. Deciding that my little rest was over, I shut down the television and joined my kids and my wife in the family room.

  The next day, driving to practice, I had the radio on. I wanted to find the news to see if President-elect Barack Obama had made any announcements of cabinet nominations or about the economic bail-out so many were counting on to revitalize the country’s financial markets. I hit the scan button on the radio, waiting for it to pick up KABC 790 AM. Before that all-news station came in, I heard a mention of Donovan McNabb when the radio paused on a different channel. Remembering the previous day’s overtime game, I hit the scan button again. After hearing the distinctive sound of ESPN radio’s theme, one of their morning-show hosts started ripping into Donovan McNabb for something he’d said in a postgame interview. Normally I don’t listen to sports/talk radio, but when they played a bit of his interview, I decided to stick with it. Apparently, neither the Eagles nor the Bengals had scored in that overtime and the game ended in a tie. Worse, McNabb had admitted that he didn’t know that NFL rules allowed for a game to end in a tie. He stated that when their last possession in the overtime ended, he assumed that he was going to get another shot at a victory in the next overtime.

  In the NFL, regular-season games can end in a tie when neither team scores in the single overtime they play. Wow. I felt bad for McNabb for the flak he was getting. He was doing the right thing by standing up and admitting his mistake. “I never even knew that was in the rule book,” McNabb said. “It’s part of the rules and we have to go with it. I was looking forward to the next opportunity to get out there and try to win the game.”

  He wasn’t alone in his misunderstanding. His coach, Andy Reid, admitted that he didn’t know how a tied game would count in the standings. Ties are rare in the NFL, the last one prior to this being in 2002, but I kept thinking, “Fellas, as professionals you need to know the rules of your own game.” The same is true at every level of sports and in every walk of life.

  I immediately remembered watching the 1993 NCAA men’s basketball final between the University of Michigan’s Fab Five and the University of North Carolina. Chris Webber rebounded a missed free throw with nineteen seconds left and his team down by 2. He dribbled past the center line and signaled for a time-out. Unfortunately for Webber and the Wolverines, they’d burned all their time-outs already. The ball went back to North Carolina and so did the game. Webber was a freshman that night, and it was an easy mistake to make, but it’s almost impossible even today to think of Webber without thinking of that non-time-out. I’m sometimes amazed how people can forget about all that you’ve contributed and be unable to forget your “crimes.” Breaking the rules or not knowing what they are can have long-term effects on your reputation—and sometimes in this world all people will have to judge you on is your reputation.

  As the week went on, McNabb and his coach came under more fire for not fully understanding the rules of the game. Philly fans are among the most passionate out there; they are so tough that legend has it they booed Santa Claus when he made an appearance at an Eagles game. I could understand people being upset about the outcome, and I hoped that the lesson McNabb learned stuck with him. I followed the story for a while and heard other NFL players say that they didn’t know the details of the NFL’s policies on overtime games. I had a feeling that in team meeting rooms across the country, regardless of the sport and the level at which it was played, coaches were telling their players to study their rule books.

  I have to admit that I don’t know every nuance of the sixty-one pages of the NBA rule book, but I think I’ve got a pretty good grasp of things. I decided to check it out just to get a better sense of what it covers. Every year during the preseason, we go over any rule changes, but contrary to popular belief, I don’t sleep with the rule book under my pillow at home or when on the road. I recently logged on to NBA.com, where you can easily view the rule book in its entirety.

  I just happened to scroll down to page thirty-seven of the document. There, all the rules for a traveling violation were spelled out. Section XIII sets up two possible scenarios: receiving the ball while standing still or while moving. The first is relatively simple to explain, and it only takes two single-sentence subpoints to cover all the possible ways a player can travel when receiving the ball while standing still. The second scenario is far more complicated and the explanation goes on for paragraph after paragraph and subpoint after subpoint. I’ll spare you all the details, but here’s a small sample: “A player who jumps off one foot on the count of one may land with both feet simultaneously for count two. In this situation, the player may not pivot with either foot and if one or both feet leave the floor the ball must be released before either returns to the floor.”

  Got it? I doubt it. Taken out of context its difficult to figure out the one count and two count, but you’d know this violation when you saw it during the course of a game.

  This is just one of the many nuances to traveling in the rule book, so you can imagine the details for all the fouls and all the rules of play. The truth is that the rule book wouldn’t be under my pillow but right there alongside me because by the time I would get to subpoint d in the traveling section, I’d be out like a light.

  When Dr. James Naismith set out the rules of the game in 1891, he could have handed them out on a single sheet of paper, unlike the sixty
-one we have today. Here are his thirteen rules:

  1. The ball may be thrown in any direction with one or both hands.

  2. The ball may be batted in any direction with one or both hands, but never with the fist.

  3. A player cannot run with the ball. The player must throw it from the spot on which he catches it, allowance to be made for a man running at good speed.

  4. The ball must be held in or between the hands. The arms or body must not be used for holding it.

  5. No shouldering, holding, pushing, striking or tripping in any way of an opponent. The first infringement of this rule by any person shall count as a foul; the second shall disqualify him until the next goal is made or, if there was evident intent to injure the person, for the whole of the game. No substitution shall be allowed.

  6. A foul is striking at the ball with the fist, violations of Rules 3 and 4 and such as described in Rule 5.

  7. If either side makes three consecutive fouls it shall count as a goal for the opponents (consecutive means without the opponents in the meantime making a foul).