by Paul Shirley
Before practice sometime last week, I approached Coach Floyd to ask him if I could do anything better—if I was playing like I needed to be playing, et cetera. He said that I was doing great (but what’s he going to say?) but that, as we knew going in, I wasn’t going to make the team. In fact, he said, the general manager was going to cut me and another player the next day because the GM was worried about his financial responsibilities if we were to get injured. I was surprised; I had planned to be around for at least two or three weeks and had thought I would get to play in a couple of preseason games. (We hadn’t played any at that point.) I quickly came to terms with my lame-duck status; I am a lover neither of organized practices nor of hanging out in cities I don’t really like. And, since I had already proven to the Hornets that I have some basketball ability, I thought I could withstand the early rejection and prepare to move on. After practice, I asked if the next day was definitely going to be the day; Floyd told me he thought it would be Wednesday. Strangely enough, I was not particularly motivated for Tuesday’s practices, but managed my disgust and got through the day. After the final practice on Tuesday, Coach Floyd told me that my doomsday would be delayed, but that he didn’t know by how much. At that point, my mind was already halfway home and on to the next stop on the Career Tilt-a-Whirl. I didn’t need further confusion in my addled brain.
We played a preseason game Wednesday in Baton Rouge. We won, I didn’t play. We practiced back in New Orleans on Thursday and Friday. I walked around like a GI in a minefield wondering if, when I next saw the general manager, he was going to present me with a plane ticket. No news was forthcoming on either of those days, so I set off on a road trip with the team to Dallas (see action-packed description above), Houston, and my present location of Orlando. My guess is that I will be, er, fired sometime when we get back to Swamp City. (New Orleans. I have no idea how anyone thought building a city there was a good idea.)
October 19
I’m still a member of the Hornets, which I suppose is a good thing. I’m starting to wonder, though, why I put myself in these situations, because I usually just end up in my current state—frustrated and angry.
This state of limbo needs to end soon. Obviously, I knew coming into the Hornets’ training camp that I was going to be cut at some point. It is not news to me that I will soon have to find another basketball job. But I don’t particularly appreciate that I was told two weeks ago of my impending termination, only to have the guillotine suspended over my neck ever since. Consequently, I remain a little uptight around the team’s management. Pursuant to my earlier minefield analogy, every time the GM says hello, I wonder if it is going to be followed by “Well, Paul, it’s been great having you here, but…” or just the usual awkward silence. (The awkward silence occurs because he knows I’m not going to be around much longer, and I know I’m not going to be around much longer, so why should either of us engage in even the most inane small talk? It would simply be throwing away good material that could be better invested in a relationship with a future.)
But I soldier on. (Sorry. Official moratorium on wartime metaphors.)
I cannot see how I could ever be expected to speak to Tiny Archibald after what I heard him say. Archibald, a Hall of Famer with the Celtics in the sixties, seventies, or eighties (I don’t really know—I wasn’t alive for a good portion of his career) was in New Orleans to observe practice. He is an old friend of Coach Floyd’s and so spent a fair amount of time talking to Floyd and hanging out in the locker room, ignoring the likes of me. One time, as I stood there in some state of undress or another, a teammate of mine asked Tiny if he had worked for the NBA at all after his playing career ended. He shrugged and murmured a no, with his body language suggesting that he had been wronged by the league. He paused for a few seconds and then said, “I saw that billboard out there in the arena—the lottery jackpot is up to $140 million. I’m going to win that thing and then buy the whole NBA. And then I’m going to turn it into the, well, I guess it will still be the NBA, it’ll just stand for Negro Basketball Association.” I have a few queries regarding the preceding statement. Tiny Archibald is black, obviously, and must feel that he has somehow been slighted out of a management position. Maybe he has been. But how much do you want, Tiny? The player pool in the NBA is something like 80 percent black (I checked it out one time a couple of years ago, just to see what my chances were). When I last looked, there was an average of two white, American-born players on each NBA team. It seems to me that his NBA is much more a reality than some imagined WBA. So, can’t we have something? Are a few lonely management positions too much to ask? The denizens of the front office don’t even make that much.
The preceding passage may seem a little inflammatory, but turn it around. Imagine a black person trying to break into a business in which whites are grossly overrepresented. His would then be consid ered a noble statement. Mine would probably be labeled as totally ignorant and insensitive.
I’m really glad I chose to pursue the one profession in which I am the distinct minority. (With the exception of lawn mowing, of course.)
On the lottery theme, the same jackpot billboard drew the attention of one of my teammates during our warm-up for practice the other day. He told me that he was going to stop at a gas station on the way home and buy $40 worth of tickets because, in his words, he would be “set for life if he won that thing.” Bear in mind, of course, that this teammate was a first-round draft pick who is now under contract with the Hornets for the next three years to the tune of a little more than $1 million a year. Guaranteed. Let’s do the math on that. Out of $3 million, he’ll take home about $1.4 million. He buys a house for $250,000 and a car for $50,000, leaving $1.1 million. Because he has neither a mortgage nor a car payment, he should be able to easily live on $30,000 per year for the next three years, leaving $1 million in the bank. (I realize that my simulation is for that of a rather modest lifestyle.) Invested at a rather shoddy 4 percent, he clears $40,000 a year. Forever. And that’s if he never plays basketball or works again—in his life. I am surrounded by imbeciles. I don’t know how I make it through the day without punching someone in the throat.
Now, on to what’s really angering me of late. I came to camp with the Hornets with the knowledge that I had no chance to make the team because fourteen players were already under guaranteed contract for the year, and the team was only going to keep fourteen around. I knew that I would be in camp with two other players in similar situations (unguaranteed and hopeless) as myself: a point guard who is four years out of college but who had never been to an NBA training camp, and the team’s second-round draft pick, name of James Lang. Lang’s story could be culled from the pages of the book called Straight to the NBA Out of High School: Oops, I Wasn’t Quite Good Enough and Slipped to the Second Round, So Now I Have Neither a Guaranteed NBA Contract nor the Opportunity to Return to College. (No, I don’t think that title will move many copies.) He’s big—really big, like six-ten, 290 pounds, but not particularly good. He can catch a basketball and moves relatively well, but he barely knows his ass from a hole in the ground and has no real chance to play in the NBA for a couple of years at least. However, I have recently heard rumblings that the Hornets are planning to keep this Lang fellow around for the year, and may have been planning to do so all along. I certainly have many faults, and may not be the totally modest, self-deprecating person I once was, but I think I do a pretty good job of analyzing when a player, especially one with whom I have been practicing for three weeks, is a better or worse basketball player than me. The individual in question definitely falls into the latter category. He may be better at age twenty-five than I am right now, but at present he is twenty and is not even close. (By the way, where does one go to high school that he graduates when he is nineteen years old?) My agent, Keith Glass, informed me that he was told that even though I might be a better player than Lang, the Hornets drafted him and don’t want to look stupid for doing so, so they would prefer to keep him around instead
of me. Self-fulfilling prophecy, anyone? Implied in this is the belief that since Lang is only twenty, he will, by default, improve as a basketball player over time. First, twenty isn’t all that young. If he hasn’t figured out some of it by now, it isn’t going to get figured. I learned some of the skills he lacks when I was twelve. And, second, as if I plan to get worse. I can even remember where I am supposed to be during particular set plays. Truly irksome is the fact that because the Hornets have dedicated so much time and energy to this kid, they are going to make damn sure that he turns out to be a serviceable basketball player. Imagine if I had access to those resources. I might turn out to be something more than some skinny cracker fighting for a spot at the end of the bench.
How am I supposed to justify all of this information in my mind? If being the better basketball player is not the most important criterion upon which placement on a team is based, how am I to motivate myself? It seems that the idea would be to get the best available basketball players on your team at one time (with the exception, of course, of the really good ones who can’t stop snorting cocaine and beating women). If that is not the case, what more can I do?
I don’t know how the Hornets’ personnel moves will transpire. But if what is supposed to happen actually does, I may soon be hard at work on my alibi so when the firebomb goes off in New Orleans, I can prove I was elsewhere.
November 2
I decided to take the high road. I engineered my release from the Hornets (read: they cut me). I thought the world would be better served if I let them keep the $660,000 they would have owed me for the year. And I felt it was time to move on to the next stage of my career—I mean, I had been there for nearly five weeks. Any more time than that and I would have been accused of having some stability in my life. The team brass didn’t show much regret when I left them, but I did not react to their apathy. Instead of violent retaliation, I chose passive suppression and stored my vengeful feelings for use in a vitriolic rant at a later date.
The death knell for my hopes with the Hornets came on the plane ride home from a game in San Antonio. I was basking in the glow of another DNP-CD (Did Not Play—Coach’s Decision) when the assistant to the general manager—or the Grim Reaper, as I now call him—tapped me on the shoulder. He informed me that I needed to stay on board after everyone else deplaned. I then launched into a rant that went something like the following:
“Okay, Allan, here’s the deal. I’m not leaving. You are going to have to unbolt this unbelievably comfortable chair and use it to carry me off the plane. Look around—this is a 737 outfitted for thirty-five people. I could put a family of chimps between each of our seats. I can’t leave this. Do you see that stewardess over there? If I asked, she would bring me an entire meal like the one I just ate, including the fresh-baked chocolate chip cookie, all over again, just because I wanted her to.” At this point, I was gripping his shoulders and staring pleadingly into his eyes. “What if I beg? Would it help if I got on my knees right in the middle of this aisle right here, the one that is big enough for Tractor Traylor’s Hummer, and begged?” I was then holding on to the cuff of his pants as he turned his heel and departed for the smorgasbord in the back of the plane. “Don’t make me grovel, Allan….” Then he kicked me in the head with one of his jackboots. Next thing I knew I was back in Kansas.
Strangely, none of that actually happened. Instead, upon our arrival back in the Big Easy at 1 A.M., I was given the usual “Thanks for playing, better luck next time” speech and told that a ticket for my flight home at 10:30 that morning would be waiting outside. (The nine hours they gave me to gather my things is what shows they cared.)
In retrospect, I suppose my time in New Orleans was well spent. I left home knowing I was not going to be on the team come November 1, so I shouldn’t have had my hopes up. But hope is tricky like that. It sneaks up on a person from time to time. I find consolation because I played as well as I could have, and even got to hear the following quotes from a particular, not-to-be-named-here assistant coach: “If this were about winning and not about money, you’d be on this team” and “In our meeting the other day, I asked Coach Floyd if I could take a box cutter to [an also not-to-be-named player]’s Achilles so that you could have his spot.”
So I have one fan, which is nice. (And no, I’m not making these statements up just to make myself look good.) Plus, I was fortunate enough to get to see a player—Baron Davis—participate in an NBA practice wearing sweatpants six sizes too big for him and shoes that were not even close to tied. Everyone should be so lucky.
After I arrived home from New Orleans, I spent a good portion of the next few days sleeping. I’m always amazed at how exhausting these little experiences are. Physically, they are somewhat difficult, but mostly they are a mental mountain climb. Trying to wend one’s way through the ups and downs of training camp is a little hard on the psyche. Especially when the conversations are so taxing on one’s brain: So, what do you guys want to talk about tonight? Ah, sports, huh? Well, that should be stimulating. It has been at least half an hour since we last opined on how we think LeBron James will change the NBA. When I spend any sustained time around basketball players, I find new respect for the people who are willing to tolerate my presence. We athletes are boring. I also remember why I almost always hang around with the trainers and other support staff. If one can ignore the thousand-yard stare they affect some of the time—brought on by the observation of way too much absurdity over the years—they are easily the most normal folks around.
My release from the Hornets meant that my basketball career was, once again, left to twist in the wind. But not for long, as it turned out. I had not been home a week when I received a call from an old coach. He inquired about my interest in playing with the EA Sports touring team—one of a few corporate-sponsored squads that plays exhibition games against college basketball teams. After a few days of cajoling by him, I relented. It may have been one of my worst decisions ever.
When initially approached with the idea, I gave an unequivocal no. But when I woke up last Monday morning and was faced with the prospect of going to the track and forcing myself to run, I realized that it might be easier to get paid to stay in shape while deciding what to do for the rest of the year. Plus, the folks at EA Sports (they make video games) were willing to make me the highest-paid player in the short history of their sponsorship of exhibition tours. They would send my way a whopping $4,000 for two weeks of basketball. It wasn’t $660,000, but it beat the unemployment line.
Before I even got around to joining the exhibition team, I was given one last cruel hope. My agent called one night just after I had agreed to the exhibition tour. He told me that I needed to buy a ticket for a flight to Houston the next morning. It was a strange way to begin a conversation, to be sure, but I listened on, hoping for more details. Keith told me that the Houston Rockets had some doubts about some of the players on their roster and wanted to fly me down for a workout. I had absorbed a few days of rest and felt I was recovered and recharged sufficiently to absorb another rejection, so I bought a plane ticket for the next day and readied myself for the trip. (I write “read-ied myself” as if I did something profound to prepare—maybe mixed up a good-luck potion or sacrificed a virgin…goat. The truth is much less glamorous. I think it involved some quick roster research and then some lying around while I worried about whether I would be able to play well under scrutiny.)
Going into the excursion, I was blessed with some very sparse information. I was under the impression that I would go down on Tuesday morning, work out for the team, and come home that night, unless the coach decided that I was absolutely the cat’s meow (or something similarly positive and less gay), in which case the team could theoretically sign me. At the time, only two days remained before NBA teams had to submit final rosters the requisite forty-eight hours prior to the season’s first game. My workout was part of a last-ditch effort by the Rockets to find better players just ahead of the deadline. At least, that’s what I th
ought. Still, when an NBA team calls on the eve of the regular season, one gets a little excited. I didn’t sleep a lot that night.
The next morning, I donned a sports coat and slacks (it’s not every day that an NBA franchise calls with cryptic instructions for odd workouts) and rode down to Texas while trying to suppress fanciful visions of NBA contracts. I arrived at the arena at about two-thirty in the afternoon. The coach who met me outside the arena was appropriately impressed by my attire. I immediately realized my error. I could tell that my choice had painted me further into the nice white guy corner. I should have gone with the leather pants/eyepatch combo I had laid out. Dammit.
I was on the court an hour and a half later. Sans warm-up or even a trial jump shot, I was told to begin firing at the basket. It was rough going. My body, like everyone’s, I think, does not do well after sitting on an airplane all day. I felt like the tin man during an oil shortage. The joints moved, just not very well. To make matters worse, the workout was hard. My partner in crime for the ordeal, Jason Hart, a guard from Syracuse, agreed wholeheartedly with my assessment through gasps for breath in our one water break. I spent an hour and a half running up and down, shooting, rebounding, and trying to guard not only Hart but also one Patrick Ewing, now an assistant coach for the Rockets. While big Pat has probably lost a step or two, he’s definitely still a few ahead of me.
I left the court disheartened, thinking I had just junked any opportunity with the Rockets. My mood only worsened. After the workout, the Rockets’ head coach, Jeff Van Gundy, informed Hart and me that the team had no open roster spots; that this was just a chance for him to “get to know us as players.” (I love a good cliché.) It’s a good thing I didn’t get my hopes up or anything.
