by Paul Shirley
After my initial examination by the team’s faith healer, I rested for a day and then saw a real doctor. He ordered an MRI to determine the exact nature of the problem in my ankle/foot. Because I have spent a relatively large portion of my life waiting on the results of X-rays, MRIs, and bone scans, I’ve had time over the years to reflect on my mood prior to learning about my frailties. It’s a strange set of feelings. In my experience, I never want to be badly hurt, but I usually want something to show up on whatever piece of film is being utilized. I suppose it is a silly, macho, sports-related mentality, but I never want to have begged out of a game or practice for no reason. No one wants to be the crazy old lady who hears things that others do not. While I analyzed my own neuroses, I waited at the doctor’s office, hoping that I wasn’t going to need a screw put in my foot, but also hoping that the doctor wouldn’t return to his waiting room to find an overly tall crazy person waiting for him.
As suspected, the injury to my foot was merely the aggravation of an old problem. The MRI showed a piece of bone that is capable of dislodging from time to time. When I came down on my foot strangely, it moved to a location that struck a nerve. (Literally, not figuratively. For a change.) But the piece of bone is able to naturally find its way back into the puzzle-like space it normally inhabits, and all is well. Getting out of bed at age sixty is going to be great.
December 25
Someone wearing a yarmulke just walked by. I wish I had one of those on my head right now. If I did, I wouldn’t mind that I am sitting in an airport on Christmas Day, waiting for the delayed connection that will take me to Seattle to meet back up with my team. My Christmas visit at home was great—I was so happy, it felt like I was on heroin for two days. I suppose the lows of the return trip are worth the highs of the time at home, but sometimes I wonder.
One would think that I would be better at leaving home after Christmas by now. I’ve only had to do it for the last seven years in a row—minus the two I was not at home for Christmas at all. Unfortunately, I am not good at it. This year, I thought I was in good shape as we left for the airport, but the fact that I was leaving hit me hard when I watched my mother and brother wave good-bye from behind the glass at the gate in Kansas City. Apparently, twenty-five-year-old males are not yet emotionally developed enough to leave home without sinking into a mild depression. Perhaps life in basketball has stunted my maturation. Then again, maybe I just don’t like going back to situations that are terrible. Seriously, it’s Christmas Day. I’m supposed to be lying by the fire right now, digesting my Christmas dinner. I’m not supposed to be waiting for a connecting flight to Seattle.
I knew when I signed up for this basketball gig that one of the hazards of the occupation is missed holidays. But I suppose one can never prepare fully for the feeling of leaving any situation in which one is comfortable, whether it is Christmas Day at home or a warm bed in the morning. (Well, I guess some people can prepare—they’re called “well-adjusted.”) I do know this: when my basketball career comes to an end, I will certainly make myself enjoy a little geographical steadiness and will keep myself away from airplanes, out of hotels, and home on Christmas.
December 29
By bus, the Dakotas look a lot like Poland. Flat. And barren. The Canadian army would not have a hard time conquering this part of the world—if Canada does, in fact, have an army. I’ve had plenty of time to observe the Dakotan, er, scenery during a recent trek from Bismarck to Sioux Falls and back again. We played in North Dakota on Friday, in South Dakota on Saturday, and then again in Bismarck the following Tuesday. Again, one would think that some CBA scheduling genius could have put the two Bismarck games together so we would have to make only one long ride across the plains. Obviously, geniuses are in short supply.
With a few tweaks, the CBA could be really good. Well, tolerable, at least. But it must lose all of its talent—both athletic and administrative—to the NBA. It makes sense. The best players are called up; I would guess that the same rules apply to administrators, secretaries, and trainers. Even the best floor sweepers probably don’t last long. By the nature of a society that rewards those who succeed, a minor league’s pinnacle is mediocrity.
Regardless, to the naked eye a good CBA game is not much different from an NBA game. The players are really tall and the action is just as fast-paced. Fans do miss the recognition of stars, but I contend that teams are just as marketable—especially in cities completely bereft of any entertainment options. I now know from experience that there is nothing better to do in Yakima than to go to a minor-league basketball game.
Sadly, the CBA suffers from a shaky reputation. It has long been a holding ground for minor-league lifers—players who will probably never play in the NBA and have enormous flaws in their games. But these same players know how to win at the minor-league level, so it is difficult for a particular team to turn them away. Those who don’t fit the stereotype of the long-term failure are likely to be transient participants; players move in and out every few weeks and fans struggle to relate to an ever-changing roster.
I contend that many of the league’s problems could be solved by a good, cheap marketing plan. If revenue increased, players’ salaries would follow, attracting better players who would, in turn, attract more fans. Unfortunately, I haven’t seen many ads promoting the Sun Kings around Yakima. I feel like a weekly trip to the schools to hand out tickets might not be a bad idea. Maybe even the occasional blood drive for publicity. Or semen drive.
I came to these groundbreaking conclusions during my latest bus ride across the tundra. I would have rather been sleeping, but bus-bound rest is a near impossibility. Buses are most definitely not built with six-foot-ten-inch people in mind. Someone my size can’t sit facing forward without his knees grazing his Adam’s apple. But the seats are too lumpy to lie comfortably across. The walls of the bus are in-variably equipped with protrusions of the sort that make it impossible to rest one’s back against them, and the pairs of seats across from one another are never lined up correctly. When one tries to sleep by stretching out across the bus, his legs have to shift one direction or the other, making cramps and spasms a way of life for the duration of the attempt at slumber. The aisle, meanwhile, is just wide enough to provide a chasm into which one’s ass will forever slip. All in all, the ergonomics of the bus make trying to sleep in one like trying to sleep on a staircase.
Temperature control is often a problem as well. It is always too hot on a long bus ride. Always. I think this is due to an overcompensation for the frigid weather outside; I haven’t spent a lot of time on buses in the South—trips across Alabama notwithstanding—but I suspect that I might be onto something. Another constant is the spilled drink that makes its presence felt from the front of the bus to the back. The drink in question is always soda. Anything less sticky is simply unacceptable.
One nearly ubiquitous facet of the bus ride has actually been challenged on our trips of late: the bad movie. Generally, the people who pick bus movies think that since tastes are varied among the prospective viewers, the movie should be aimed at the lowest common denominator—no taste at all. As I said, however, we at the Yakima Sun Kings have rebelled of late. Our assistant coach, inexplicably, has decent theatrical taste—we’ve actually watched the odd good movie now and then. The phenomenon has opened up entertainment options I didn’t know existed on buses.
When I leapt into this minor league experience, I expected to hate my teammates. (I am such the optimist.) With a few exceptions, my fears have not been realized. I’ve been shocked at how well I get along with most of my compatriots. I assumed that I would be riding around on buses with sullen ex-cons. Of course, I can out-sullen nearly anyone, so perhaps that was the wrong adjective to use to describe people I wouldn’t like. At any rate, I really do like most of my teammates. How very bizarre.
Now, I cannot advance the theory that these colleagues pay much attention to the world around them. I barged into our locker room prior to a recent game to find some
of my teammates embroiled in a heated debate. They could not come to a consensus regarding the number of states in our country. (That would be the United States, in case of reader confusion.) Two thought there were fifty, while the others contended that fifty-two was a more likely answer. But neither party could win the support of the other. When I arrived on the scene, the group appealed to my vast knowledge of third-grade social studies for a final answer. After an initial reaction of incredulity and, actually, indignation, I set them straight and then decided to press the issue a bit. (I am such an ass, thinking I know so much about facts that could be taught to a baboon.) So I asked whether anyone knew how many stripes are on the flag. (This, after I clued in those present to the tidbit that is the correlation between states in the Union and stars on the American flag—a shocking revelation to some. I wish I were joking.) The first response to the stripes question was thirty-three. But that hypothesis wasn’t voiced very convincingly. There were no other guesses. As we move through the season, I think I’ll keep the conversations away from history and the social sciences.
We added a player named Alex Jensen to our team recently. He is my roommate on the road now; we get along famously. It is striking how similar we are, even though he belongs to the cult that is the Mormon Church. He is like the teammates I thought I would find in college. (But didn’t.) He is just as baffled by the whole minor-league experience as I am, which is to say very baffled. Oddly, we don’t complain about our lots in life at all. That last sentence was a lie.
Alex and I spend a lot of time together. As such, I was surprised when I returned to our hotel room in Bismarck and found my nose to be immediately assailed by the pungent aroma of marijuana smoke. After a brief bout with confusion, I realized that Alex had not fired up a joint—he’s more of a Quaaludes guy. (Slander prevention: I’m joking, of course.) Two of our illustrious teammates were next door producing enough smoke to filter under the adjoining door, thoroughly devastating the air quality of our room. Skill of theirs that needs work: discreetness.
While I do have to battle the occasional contact high, my life could be worse. For most of the season, the Sioux Falls SkyForce—one of the other seven teams in the CBA—has employed a player named Korleone Young. He was recently released by the team. I took note because Korleone was a nemesis of mine in high school. He went to a much bigger high school than I did, so our meetings came only in summer AAU tournaments. Korleone and his high-profile teammates regularly thrashed my team of small-school white kids in gyms across the Midwest. Young was touted as a surefire pro; I was touted as a surefire college intramural player. (Perhaps nemesis was the wrong term earlier. “Destructive force to my basketball self-esteem” may have been more appropriate.) He went on to be a second-round NBA draft pick directly from high school. But for Korleone, the high school days and the fame they brought were the highlight of his career. Since then his stock has fallen dramatically. Meanwhile, I have gone from his whipping boy to—currently, anyway—having a much better chance at a successful professional career than he. Strange how these things work out. Despite my efforts to the contrary, I remain a vengeful bastard. As such, I take no small amount of pride in our role reversal.
I will never forget the disdain I saw in the faces of Young and his teammates back in our younger days. They were not exactly respectful to my AAU team. (Polite understatement. They rarely acknowledged our existence.) And while I joke about our skill level, we weren’t bad at all. But we were all white and none of us had scholarships waiting for us when we were sixteen. To be honest, Young and his teammates were the bullies of our AAU world. Back then, I exacted my revenge by being clever and figuring out ways to score that didn’t involve direct athletic confrontation. Now, I find satisfaction in knowing that my way worked. I kept getting better while he floundered, happy with what he had accomplished. It does pain me to admit that I take some pleasure from our changed fortunes—it’s not the most enlightened view. Then again, maybe he should have been nicer.
January 5
When we are in Yakima, a minibus takes us from the motel to practice and games. The shuttle is driven by a bearded older fellow named Paul who seems to have quite a lot of time on his hands. He is an unbelievably nice guy but is something of a hillbilly. Like many of his ilk, he has an easily stereotyped berm house surrounded by fourteen weed-covered cars in various states of disrepair. When Alex and I found out about Paul’s automobile menagerie, we asked if he might be able to find us some transportation; the man obviously has connections within the very-used-car market of Yakima, Washington. We were hoping to find a car that personified the CBA experience. Paul came through nicely. He pulled a beauty from his own domain—a 1980 Chevrolet Malibu. In maroon. Cost to us: $50. The Malibu came to Alex and me fully loaded with a blue left front fender option along with a standard child-protection lock on the driver’s-side door (i.e., it cannot be opened from the inside). It has a fully cracked windshield. I think the dealer threw in the matted dog hair on the seats for no additional charge. It suits our needs perfectly. We now have a car that seems custom-designed for the CBA.
On a recent sojourn, we noticed that our trusty maroon steed was in need of nourishment, so we pulled into a local Amoco. After some head scratching and several furrowed brows, we discovered that the gas intake was on neither the left nor the right, but in the rear under the license plate. (What a great era for car design. No engineer could have been expected to foresee that a rear-end collision might turn the vehicle into a fireball.) After locating the car’s receptacle, Alex and I began fueling the car as we watched passersby ogle our chariot. Then another engineering flaw came to light. In the rear-tank setup, the spring-loaded license plate is held away from the entry valve only by the nozzle that is doing the fueling. That night, the force of the spring was greater than the hold the nozzle had on the gas entry valve and, voilà, the nozzle popped out, spewing gasoline all over the ground…and my pants. Alex and I looked at each other, gave thanks that we were not tap-dancing on nails at the time of the incident, shrugged, and resumed the gassing process, taking care to hold the pesky license plate at bay.
January 12
I’m at a loss for words.
I usually fail when I try to express the emotions surrounding positive events in my life. For whatever reason, I am more effective when the chips are down. With that in mind, I will now attempt to describe the achievement of the one goal I have ever had.
I am now in the NBA. The Atlanta Hawks signed me to a ten-day contract.
I wish I could write that I will probably make too much out of this. In fact, I probably won’t make enough of it.
As a child, I wanted nothing more than to one day play in the NBA. I don’t know why, but being among the best basketball players in the world captured my imagination. Of course, I wanted a few other things along the way. From age six to sixteen, I expressed a desire to be a construction worker, an aeronautical engineer, and a cardiologist. Those desires never stuck. The goal to play in the NBA did.
It was a stupid goal. Kids who grow up in rural Kansas don’t ever play in the NBA. But I thought I might as well give it a try. So when my eighth-grade basketball coach sent me home with a list of drills and then asked me how long I had practiced each night, I could say, with pride, that I had been dribbling and shooting from the concrete slab underneath our deck for an hour, or an hour and a half, or two hours. My brothers and I played out the NCAA brackets in games of one-on-two. (They’re younger, and so made up the two.) I created little games to test my shooting—a shot from the short corner, a side three-pointer, a jump shot from the elbow, a three from the top of the key, and a free throw.
Of course, lost in all of this self-congratulatory bullshit is the help I had along the way. My parents never let on that my goals were idiotic ones, and my coaches never allowed me to settle for anything less than greatness. (Or at least, really-goodness.) And, along the way, I grew.
I probably wouldn’t be writing this if I were six-two. It’s possi
ble—just not as likely. I theorize that each additional inch of height increases one’s chance to play in the NBA by an order of magnitude. Incremental changes in height are to the NBA what the Richter scale is to brick-and-mortar houses in Kazakhstan.
I should write it again: I am in the NBA. Not a tryout, or a summer league, or training camp. I am a full-fledged member of the Atlanta Hawks during the regular season. Of course, the Hawks are a sinking ship—a team adrift and without the head coach who favored cutting me at the beginning of the season. Leo Kruger was fired at Christmas-time after it became apparent that the playoff guarantee the team delivered to its season-ticket holders was not going to come to fruition. I can’t say that I was disappointed by Kruger’s departure. (I need to work on this ever-present need for vengeance.) And the Hawks could be the worst team in league history for all I care. I’m just glad they are going to let me have a uniform.
Forgive me if I seem awed, breathless, and swept away. I am. I can’t help it. I’m as happy as I have ever been. I have wanted nothing in my life more than this.
My call-up came as a complete surprise. I did know that the period when NBA teams are allowed to sign players to ten-day contracts was approaching, but I had lost track of the actual date. The NBA seemed a world away from the long bus rides of the CBA. I was in endurance mode; my goal had shrunk to lesser ones like “Get out of bed” and “Don’t kill self.”
