Can I Keep My Jersey?

by Paul Shirley

  April 13

  The best part of the hospital experience was getting out. The idea of spending nine straight days indoors is claustrophobic in and of itself; doing so without spending more than about half an hour out of a prone position is truly disgusting. When I was finally escorted out of the infirmary, I was amazed by the sights, sounds, and smells of the outside. The sky appears especially bright after staring at the product of fluorescent lighting for more than a week. The smells…oh, the smells. After nine days inside a totally antiseptic environment, one’s nose is absolutely assaulted with smells from the out-of-doors. I would not really be able to put a label on a particular scent; it was more an onslaught of all the aromas and odors that are a part of our lives on a regular basis without our knowledge. An earthy smell, maybe—just the way the world smells.

  That was the hokiest paragraph I’ve ever written.

  To say that I am getting a little stir-crazy would be something of an understatement. My room at the Residence Inn is starting to close in around me. Thankfully, I get to go home soon; then I can close the book on this fiasco.

  I neglected to mention that the Bulls did sign me through the end of this season. Prior to my kidney/spleen event, the general manager, John Paxson, told me that he was happy with how I had been playing and would extend my contract through the end of the year. When I found out the extent of my injury, some doubt crept into my brain regarding the team’s plan for me. It was apparent that I would not be able to play at any point this season, so the Bulls would have been well within their rights to conveniently forget their promise and not sign me for the remaining four weeks of the season. But Paxson honored his end of the deal. He bucks the NBA trend; he’s a stand-up guy and a man of his word. The contract was brought to the hospital, where I signed it as it sat next to my liquid breakfast of Jell-O and juice. Or, at least I think I did. At that point, I literally could not read a line of text; it all swam before my eyes, so for all I know it was an elaborate hoax. I will have to check my bank account frequently to find out if my drug-addled memory is correct.

  Along those same lines, I had several visitors during my time in the hospital. I remember none of them. As I mentioned, my mother was around most of the time. She was able to remind me later who had been in my room and what they had said. One of the assistant coaches, Ron Adams, made at least one appearance, and Fred Tedeschi and Eric Waters were constant visitors/caretakers. I really appreciated when the entire team showed…ha. No one from the team made a visit, which is not shocking because (1) I had only played with the Bulls for around three weeks and (2) most basketball players are completely out of tune with the customs/behaviors shared by the rest of mankind. I did receive a phone call from Antonio Davis, who is easily one of the classier pros with whom I have spent any time. I, of course, cannot remember what was said, but it is doubtful that he told me to die.

  My release from the hospital set in motion a very predictable routine. Because of my depleted state during those first few days back in the world, I was usually only able to muster enough energy for a walk from my hotel room to my car, at which point my mother would take me for a drive through the über-wealthy northern suburbs of Chicago. I was of less use than the family dog—at least it looks cute from time to time.

  When I first got “home” from the hospital, I was faced with quite an obstacle. My room at the Residence Inn is on the second floor, so I needed to navigate some stairs in order to get to a bed so that I could take a nap. It should be remembered that, to that point, a walk of about a hundred paces was enough to necessitate bed rest for the next two hours. I, of course, made it up the set of twelve stairs, but I was struck with the fact that not two weeks earlier I had been playing in an NBA game but now nearly needed an oxygen tank in order to successfully conquer a set of stairs on my own.

  I finally made it to a Bulls game—my first since the incident, and our last of the home schedule. It was strikingly boring, just like any NBA game I have ever witnessed from the standpoint of a non-participant. I cannot believe that people are willing to pay, and pay handsomely, to watch such inanity. I really think the only reason some people make the trip is to root for a particular bagel in the animated race on the scoreboard screen. That event seems to bring the loudest cheers. I must admit that it was fun to have total access and complete freedom. I sat behind the bench, so I was not expected to actively participate in the up and down of team huddles and other assorted activities. When I got bored in the third quarter, it was well within my prerogative to go back into the locker room to rest and see what the trainers were doing. It was like being invisible. My attendance was by far the most strenuous activity in which I have participated in the last few weeks, and my body let me know it the next morning. I literally felt as if I had played the night before. This lack of energy is going to seriously hinder any advances I had hoped to make on the home improvement front when I get back to Kansas City.

  My doctors convened with me today for a roundtable regarding my progress. It seems that my body is responding as well as could be hoped, with more knowledge to be gained after tomorrow’s CT scan. I did have an odd encounter with the main team doctor, Jeff Weinberg, after everyone else had left. He asked me how anxious I was to return to the court. To this point, my return to basketball has been a very ephemeral concept; I thought of it only in the abstract terms of “Well, when I regain the ability to climb a flight of stairs without feeling the need to lie down for half an hour, I will then begin to consider my basketball future.” Unfortunately, I have not yet conquered that very impressive feat, so I had not really thought about when I would be able to play again. My only prediction has been, “Sometime this summer.” I think this apathy toward a return to the court is born of some degree of disgust for the game—my last experience with basketball resulted in a tremendous amount of pain and the longest stay in the hospital of my young life. In fact, truth be told, at this very moment I have absolutely no need to play basketball ever again. I think I will soon regain the desire; I just do not have it currently.

  There is some chance, however small, that I will not play professional basketball again. I would repeat that such is probably not the case, but there is always that chance. With each passing year (and each new freakish injury), the chance that I will quit becomes higher. Last year, it was probably 4 percent. This year, it might be 7 percent. At some point, the odds will be such that I will not play the following year. As far as I can tell, I am still below that 50 percent marker, but I guess I won’t know for sure until it actually happens.

  So when I told the doctor that I really was not all that juiced about the idea of playing basketball anytime soon, he reacted incredulously: “Well, that surprises me. I thought you would be raring to get back on the court.” Hold on there, Chico, let’s review my last ten months. Last June, I got back from Spain and took all of ten days off so that I could begin rehabilitating the atrophied right side of my upper body. I finally did a push-up in July and had to work hard just to get back to a level of strength of which I would have previously been completely ashamed in order to go to training camp. At that point, I got cut from an NBA team, headed off on an exhibition tour to have my face permanently rearranged, and returned home only to have to try out for my local minor-league basketball team, with which I traveled all over the desert Southwest in, shall we say, less-than-stellar conditions in order to play games in rec centers and high school gyms. I seriously considered an offer to head back to the scene of my nearly catastrophic nerve injury before deciding to stick it out in the ABA, pinning my hopes on my coach’s ability to find me a job in the NBA. Sure, I had a couple weeks of glory. I did get called up and when I did, more than held my own in what were, for the second-worst team in the league, some relatively meaningful minutes—all before being knocked back down to size by a knee to the flank, reducing my activity level to that of a stroke victim. So no, I am not all that excited about getting back on the court. Right now, I want to get out of the goddamn Residence Inn, g
o home, enjoy the fact that I have two kidneys and one spleen, and relax for a little bit. If that’s too much to ask, I’ll find another profession.

  My return to the court is an issue to the Bulls because the contract I signed while in a hospital bed contains a team option for next year. In my case, Chicago must decide by August 20 of this year whether they will guarantee my salary for next season. This sounds better than it really is. It does allow me to work out with the team for the summer, the benefits of which are slightly negated by the fact that I will be expected to, well, work out with the team for the summer. Again, I should probably be happy about this opportunity, but at this point my tolerance for people telling me what to do is—as was probably evident in the preceding paragraph—severely limited. One of the main reasons the Bulls wanted to sign me to this “deal” is that they will have more trading flexibility. This does not mean that someone would trade for me; I am certainly not that hot a commodity. But if the salaries of a possible trade did not match, I and therefore my salary could be thrown in as filler so that the accounting would work. Under normal circumstances, after working out with the team, I would play in the six-game NBA summer league in Utah, and then wait for a decision on my future in Chicago. The circumstances in which I currently exist are obviously not normal. I have no idea what will happen. But I have to assume that some of it will be terrible and that some of it will be great, with very little in between.

  YEAR 3

  August 20

  After much hope to the contrary, it would appear that I will be staying in Kansas for a while. The Chicago Bulls recently made it very clear that they will not need my basketball prowess in the coming season. Since I’m not sure if my period of employment ended when the season did or if it ends when the team declines to exercise the option on my contract, I don’t know whether I am soon to be newly unemployed or if I have been for several months now.

  I returned to Chicago for two reasons. First, it was time for what was hoped would be the final CT scan and subsequent doctors’ appointments regarding my innards. Second, the magical date on which the Bulls were forced, by the terms of the contract I signed last spring, to decide my fate was rapidly approaching. To paraphrase my contract: if, by August 20, the Chicago Bulls do not waive the under-signed (that’s me), the player will be entitled to a guaranteed contract for the 2004–2005 season in the amount of the minimum salary for a player of his experience. To paraphrase further: if I could convince the Bulls to keep me on the payroll, or if I could kidnap GM John Paxson for a few weeks, I would be paid something in the neighborhood of $740,000, guaranteed, for the upcoming season. So obviously, it has been a day I have been anticipating for some time. If I owned a calendar, I might even have circled it…and maybe put a cute star next to it.

  When I left Chicago in April, I thought there was a good chance that I would be ready for some level of activity by June 1. It was an erroneous assumption. I’m not sure why I was so optimistic—it’s not my usual game. Perhaps the living of my life’s dream has softened me. When the NBA season ended for the Bulls on April 18 and I flew home to Kansas City in a drug-induced stupor, I could barely do a load of laundry. I’m not sure why I thought I would be running around on tracks and basketball courts a mere six weeks later. (Example #459 supporting the theory that I am not, in fact, a doctor.)

  On my original target date, June 1, a CT showed that my kidney and spleen were healed nicely (good news). It also showed that the hematoma, or in layman’s terms the mass of blood surrounded by a squishy capsule, that had resulted from my kidney’s encounter with Austin Croshere’s knee was still about the size of my fist. (Not such good news.) Of course, my fist is not really all that big. However, the process of natural selection in humans did not result in enough extra space within our body cavities for an object the size of my fist to simply hang out somewhere near my left kidney. The extra material I was carrying around prevented other pieces of matter from occupying their normal environs, leaving them vulnerable to injury by way of the jarring and jostling that an oversized person such as myself would undergo during strenuous exercise.

  I was allowed to start riding a stationary bike. Splendid.

  A mid-July CT showed that the hematoma had shrunk to the size of an egg. The doctor in Kansas City recommended that I continue life without running but was overruled by the Bulls’ team doctor, who said, “What the hell, let’s give it a shot.” Which, really, is exactly the level of confidence one wants to hear from the doctor to whom one has entrusted the care of one’s basketball career. But run I did. The first day was a little rough—I survived six hundred yards on the track before retreating to my bedroom to consider the feasibility of a career in farm implement sales.

  Some good has come out of this otherwise wasted summer. (Wasted from a basketball perspective. I did get a pretty nice tan. For me. I’m more a dark white than anything.) Scott Wedman has done wonders for my shooting. Since I couldn’t do much more than lift a basketball over my head early in the summer, I hit upon the idea of using the ample time for good instead of evil. Because I had enjoyed our time together with the Kansas City Knights, I called Coach Wedman to ask if he would be interested in completely revamping my shot. For whatever reason, he was actually enthusiastic about the idea, and so for as long as I wanted on almost any day I chose, I had my very own Mr. Miyagi to help me create the perfect basketball shooting form. We deconstructed my entire routine. I started with hours of form shooting, wherein I would do little more than stand three feet from the basket and concentrate on the simplest parts of a basketball shot.

  It should not be lost that my teacher was arguably one of the best shooters in the NBA in the late seventies and early eighties. Consequently, I was willing to listen. I’m glad I did. Not only is my shooting form about 247 percent better, my general attitude toward basketball has improved. Wedman is a calm soul, a far cry from some of the coaches of questionable sanity I have had over the years. His ease with life meshed nicely with my own neurosis. As much as I hate to admit it, his New Age, relax-at-all-costs philosophy has rubbed off on me. I have an entirely new approach to the game of basketball.

  We’re still working on my approach to life.

  Now that we are all caught up, we can examine the situation at hand.

  I have known for about two weeks, via my agent’s suspicions, that my release from the Bulls was imminent. When I called the secretaries in Chicago to have them reserve a flight for my trip back to the Windy City for my doctors’ appointments, I got further confirmation. I could tell by the woman’s voice that she was not too sure she was supposed to do such things for a lame-duck basketball player. I was forced to wait a day so that she could confirm with the GM that it was acceptable for them to pay for my flight. (I was, after all, following up with their team doctor on an injury that had occurred while I was playing for the team. I wasn’t going back because I missed Chicago’s unique combination of gridlocked traffic and horrid weather.) Among the people I called upon my arrival in Chicago was the assistant trainer for the Bulls. In our conversation, I made a remark about my impending joblessness and he replied, “Oh, so you know, then.” I knew, yes, but was not aware that everyone else around the organization was privy to the information. There’s nothing like existing as a joke.

  On the morning of my CT in Chicago, I dutifully got up early and drank the barium cocktail of which I have grown so fond. (I swear the taste gets worse with each successive scan. As these things always go, someone in the manufacturing process was probably charged with improving the flavor, but only succeeded in making it so sickly sweet that it is likely worse than the original.) Whereas in Kansas City it would have taken a week to learn my results, here in Chicago, with the impetus of the Bulls behind me, my results were given to me in minutes. The good news was that my friend the hematoma has shrunk to the size of a Ping-Pong ball. The doctor on hand, one of the original battery of physicians assigned to my case, pronounced me fit for any activity except bungee jumping with the cord ti
ed directly around my kidneys.

  After my morning o’ fun, I headed back to the Bulls’ training facility, where I met with the general manager of the Bulls, John Paxson. He was very cordial, as general managers always are, and informed me politely that the team would be releasing me. He said that “guaranteeing me” would limit their roster space too much and so I had to go. He mentioned that he would love to see me in the Bulls’ training camp but that he did not know exactly what the roster situation would be when that time came around. I told him that I was not sure I would be able to come to training camp for free because my previous attempts at such (Los Angeles, Atlanta, et al.) had not worked out particularly well. He said that he would see how the salary situation played out and let me know.

  After my formal esteem-bashing, I was invited to the house of one of the Bulls’ assistant coaches for dinner. We had become friends while I played for the team in the spring. Over some fine food with his family, we discussed my future plans. He encouraged me to stay in Chicago in order to utilize the facilities available, with the intent of attending training camp and competing for a roster spot. I told him that I could not really imagine making that decision after being, in essence, fired by the team that very day. He said I should not be so prideful, that I am young and it is too early in my life to be bitter.