Can I Keep My Jersey?

by Paul Shirley

  But let’s be honest. John Paxson told me the same thing that every other GM in the process of releasing me said, and at this point there have been a few. He said, without saying it, that I am not good enough for the Bulls to pay me to play basketball. He glossed over it, but that’s what GMs do. They’re like CEOs—they make vanilla statements. They want to soften the blow. They are humans, and like every other human, they don’t want to be perceived as mean. So they say things like, “We really like the way you play—we just don’t have any roster spots available.” Which, again, is true, but it isn’t the whole story. The statement should read, “We really like the way you play—we just don’t have any roster spots available because we gave them to other players who we think are better than you.” The process is like that of a breakup. It is much easier to say, “This isn’t going to work out” instead of “This isn’t going to work out because there must be someone out there I like more than you.”

  September 22

  This fall, like every other since my college days came to an end, has been one filled with uncertainty regarding my basketball future. Each week has brought with it a new option or rumor; it has been exhausting. The people closest to me probably think I have been going about a deliberate misinformation campaign because my answer to the dreaded question “Well, Paul, where are you going to play this year?” changes on a nearly daily basis. Over the last two months, I have probably spoken to Keith Glass a hundred times. (And to think that a year and a half ago I believed I could get by without a cellular phone. Maybe by next year I’ll have multiple phones like some of my teammates.) Keith started in on my year’s basketball plans before I could even really play basketball again; he was throwing out possibilities even before I had been cleared to break into something more strenuous than a jog.

  The scrambling my thorax took certainly forced us to rethink my summer. (I use the word us instead of me a lot when referencing my choice of basketball destiny—I seem to think of my agent and me as an inexorably linked pair, especially if I am discussing decision making, as in “We don’t know what we’re going to do” or “The team wants us to decide before Tuesday.” It is a bit like having a multiple-personality disorder. In fact, maybe I do have one of those. That would explain the calls from the lady with the Jamaican accent looking for the goat heads I supposedly took.) (There I go again, making my parenthetical statements into parenthetical paragraphs. Attempting to read this must be like trying to read something in another language. I’ll start over.)

  If I hadn’t been injured, I would have played in the NBA’s summer league for young players and free agents with the Bulls. If that had gone well, the Bulls might have kept me on for the year. At any rate, other teams, both domestic and foreign, would have seen me play and, potentially, would have developed some interest. Since I had just graduated to brisk walking about the time of the summer league, however, our plan for basketball world domination was shot to hell. So Keith was forced to sell me without having a test-drivable floor model at his disposal. Fortunately, while I am by no means a household name in the basketball world, those in the know have a vague idea who I am and what I have done and, since I have not yet assaulted a teammate or blown up a coach’s house (although both would have been justified on an occasion or two), basketball teams do still want me to play for them.

  I used to think that Keith did a great job of not telling me about possible job opportunities until they actually turned into formal offers. In fact, his relative silence might have been more meaningful than I realized. It could be that those were the only things he had to discuss with me. It seems that he now tells me about all sorts of outlandish possibilities before they are even remotely viable. In a way that is nice; I have some time to wrap my mind around the concept of traveling to some faraway place to live for a year, as opposed to the more harried way, which usually involves the words decision and tomorrow. Two of this year’s early possibilities were a team in Spain and one in St. Petersburg, Russia. I think the Spanish team made an actual offer, but it was not in the price range befitting a basketball player of my ability and pedigree. (What an arrogant ass I can be. Mostly it was in a small town far from anywhere I would want to live.) However, I was intrigued by the idea of living in St. Petersburg. I have always wanted to play in Russia, which makes no sense, I realize. It is cold there and it has only been about fifteen years since they were hoisting flags bearing the letters CCCP. But I think it would be interesting. Keith met with the guy representing the team while the rep was observing the summer league in which I was supposed to be playing and said that he thought there was about a 60 percent chance the team would make an offer. They never did.

  There are probably several reasons for the discrepancies between what Keith and I believe might happen and what actually does happen. The most important is the telephone effect. Much like the game of Telephone that we all played back in our post-potty-training days, the actual meaning gets distorted along the way (and back then I doubt any of us was translating from Russian to English). My guess is that it goes something like this:

  Russian general manager to team official B (via the author attempting a bad Russian accent on the printed page): This Paul Shirley, he play for Chicago Bulls. He is good?

  Team official B to Russian agent: You find out if Paul Shirley good enough to play for our team.

  Russian agent to American pseudo-intermediary who happens to speak both languages: Team inquires about Paul Shirley for next season.

  Psudeo-intermediary to Keith: I think a team in St. Petersburg might be interested in Paul for next year. They probably have about Y number of dollars to spend.

  Keith to me: A team in St. Petersburg is interested. I think there is a 60 percent chance they will make you an offer for Y number of dollars in the next few days.

  And so I find St. Petersburg on the map and wonder whether it is tolerable in February. Meanwhile, the Russian GM forgot he ever mentioned my name in some vodka-induced haze and has moved on to worrying about where he will take his steam baths next year.

  So, let us get down to the sequence of events that has led to my next destination. (Believe it or not, there actually is a destination. Or at least I think so.)

  A rather serious offer from Greece came my way about three weeks ago. A team called Aris, which is in Thessaloniki, which doesn’t really matter, offered a three-year contract that would be contingent upon the team securing me a European passport—a Polish one. Taken at face value, that sentence would seem to be one that would come out of a crazy person’s mouth, but from a basketball standpoint it makes sense. Receiving a European passport would be a very positive development in my basketball career. Each European team is allowed only two Americans, so being “European” increases one’s versatility from a personnel standpoint, and thus usually increases one’s salary. I was not thrilled with the prospect of a return to Greece, but in the long term a passport would be a very big deal. The financial terms were a bit worrisome, considering the raping I took the first time I was in Greece. The contract was backloaded: I would have made $120,000 the first year, $180,000 the second, and $240,000 the third, which implied that they wanted to see how I did before they actually shelled out any money. (Read: if things didn’t go well the first year, a mysterious loophole voiding the contract would be found.) The contract would have allowed for an NBA buyout after each year, so if a team in the States wanted to retain my services, they could, for a steep fee. We kicked the idea around for a while and Keith renegotiated the first two years of the deal to an average of $160,000, but I was put off by the long-term commitment and turned it down. Since the longest relationship of my life to date lasted a whopping five months, it would appear that committing myself to three years of anything goes against my philosophy. I’m not even sure I’ll want to play basketball in three years. I could decide that supporting a rampant heroin habit would be easier to do on a regular paycheck and give up this rat race.

  At the same time as the Aris deal, another offer
came in from Greece. (I must have done something right while I was there. Or they know a sucker when they see one.) This was a no-brainer. Decent team, bad town, money at about $150,000, no passport. No thanks. After the orgy of Greek interest, the planning of my future, at least for this year, cooled for a week or so—which meant that I spoke to Keith once daily instead of once hourly. Then all hell broke loose. A team from Poland supposedly had interest, enough that Keith thought it would soon be an option. They did not make a formal offer, but wondered whether I would accept a one-year deal worth about $200,000. Often teams will ask whether I will sign for a certain amount without actually making an offer. It is a way to save face. It is comparable to asking a girl, “If I were to ask you out, would you say yes?”—that is, a little childish. I don’t know what they have to lose by making an actual offer. Maybe ridicule at the hands of their fellow team officials. “Ooh, Paul Shirley turned you down, huh? You guys must really be in trouble. Maybe you should consider plastic surgery and some breast implants.”

  Keith was not all that excited about Poland, but I was verily intrigued, mainly because I am odd. The team in question plays in the Euroleague, which is the top international competition in Europe. By comparison, both teams for which I have played in Europe, in addition to their domestic competitions, played in a league just below the Euroleague. A team’s Euroleague participation makes a roster spot very attractive to a player—it adds instant credibility to one’s resume.

  While we were kicking around the idea of going to Poland, a friend of mine from Greece called. He now works for Olympiacos, one of the top two teams in the country. We have stayed in touch since my time in Athens, so I was not surprised to hear from him. But when we spoke, he asked if I had any interest in playing for Olympiacos. The team’s management was starting to make decisions for the year, and my name had been thrown around. I told him I would be very interested in playing for the team (another Euroleague team, only in a city I know I can tolerate). He said they would not be making any decisions anytime soon, so he would get back to me in a few days. He called back in five minutes with the authority to offer a contract worth $200,000 for one year. I told him I would have to talk to Keith and think it over for a while. He replied that there was not much time, that they probably needed a decision in a few days. Ah, the Greeks…Keith called his Polish contact and told him that I would sign for $300,000. The contact reported back that the team was going to ask the sponsors for the money and would know the next day by 2 P.M. Coincidentally, the Greeks said that they were going to need to know at almost exactly the same time, which I immediately discounted, since that is the sort of thing Greeks always say.

  When our vague 2 P.M. deadline rolled around, Keith had not heard from his Polish contact. By comparison, Olympiacos had called him six times that day. In their final call, the Greeks got impatient. They said they needed to know within thirty minutes or they would have to move on and find another player. Keith in turn asked them to confirm that my contract would have a clause guaranteeing my payment, with language to the effect that if the team was late with payment by thirty days, my obligation to the club would cease, with them owing me the balance of my contract. They would not agree to this clause, causing the following thought to streak through my brain: That’s strange. They know I’m leery of a return to Greece. They say they’ll pay me but are afraid to put it in writing.

  I told them no. Keith was on board for the rejection and told the Greeks. He called me back within ten minutes to say that the team had relented and would put the clause guaranteeing my payment in the contract. Sounded reliable to me.

  When I turned down the job in Greece, I thought that the Polish deal was still a possibility. Not so. Keith’s contact in Poland never heard of any further progress; last he knew they were hoping to drum up $280,000, which would have been plenty to get me on a plane to Gdansk, but that was the last we heard from that outpost.

  At the same time that we were dealing with potential European destinations, Keith told me that interest from NBA teams was rising. Of course, it wasn’t monetary interest as much as it was volunteer-work interest, but it was interest all the same. He had received calls from Portland, Phoenix, and San Antonio. (I have glossed over our dealings with Chicago at this point. Suffice it to say that my hunch was correct. The team would have allowed me to come to training camp, but the fact that they have eighteen guys under guaranteed contract for fifteen spots and that they are completely apathetic toward my abilities would imply that they have very little interest in paying me to play basketball anytime this year. And I held them in such high regard at one time. So sad.) Keith then told me that I would probably go to Phoenix to work out sometime the next week.

  Phoenix quickly lost interest, saying that they already had a player like me in my alma mater’s Jackson Vroman. We never really heard back from San Antonio. Portland invited me to training camp while having fifteen players under contract, but I was assured that their master plan called for them to trade two players soon, conceivably opening a spot for a player like me. Cleveland entered the mix—one of the people who had liked me back when I was annually playing summer league with the Cavaliers had ascended to a level of some power—and they invited me to training camp. Their situation looked good, as they had only twelve players on guaranteed deals, but their interest in me seemed lukewarm at best.

  So it briefly appeared that I would go to training camp with either the Portland Trail Blazers or the Cleveland Cavaliers. I spoke to both teams myself and got a better reaction from Portland. I told Keith about my conversations. He said, “Okay, let’s go to Portland.” (See, the multiple-personality thing works both ways.) He told me he would call the GM and get it done. Again—this is becoming a theme—he called back within ten minutes. “I don’t like it,” he said. “He gave me only 20 percent odds that they would actually make a trade that would help you. You’re not going to Portland.”

  The most recent events, as reported to me by Keith: Cleveland called to disinvite me to training camp, at which point Keith panicked and called Olympiacos in Greece to see if that team remained interested (they had upped their offer to a two-year deal worth about $470,000 total, with a Czech passport thrown in). He considered backsliding to Portland but instead called Chicago to see if I could find a home there, if only as a way station. While he was on the phone, Coach Scott Skiles happened to mention that a different player in whom the Bulls had been interested had mentioned that he was going to receive guaranteed money (a token amount to show commitment to a player) to go to training camp with Phoenix because the aforementioned Jackson Vroman had recently broken his hand. In a tizzy, Keith called Phoenix to ask why they hadn’t called him. They apologized and said that they were again interested in me but had just not gotten around to calling about my services. They then said they assumed he would want some guaranteed money for me in order to get me to go to training camp there. Keith said, “Of course we do”—even though I actually had zero training camp invites on the board. The Suns offered $15,000. Keith asked for $25,000, but they called back and said their final offer was the same—$15,000, which we were going to accept all along.

  And so as of right now, this instant, I will go to training camp with the Phoenix Suns with my first-ever NBA-guaranteed money. It is not much, but it’s a start. And it could change by tomorrow.

  October 3

  By now, the reader may have gleaned that I get illogically uptight when I am about to embark upon another of my basketball adventures. Because I cannot seem to endear myself to one particular team enough that they would want to keep me around for any significant period of time, I am faced with new frontiers entirely too often. After some thought, I have come to the conclusion that my anxiety about each new situation has less to do with the basketball aspect of the thing and more to do with some sort of fear of relocation.

  I made my trip to Phoenix several days ago so I could begin to acclimate the team to my basketball stylings. The trip itself was relatively unevent
ful, except for some luggage issues in Kansas City. It turned out that my enormous bag was eleven pounds over America West regulations. I had only one bag, so the nice homo (I write that not as an insult but as a descriptive noun, as he was quite gay) at the ticket counter suggested that I find a gift shop and pick out one of the bags they had on sale—spending $15 for a crappy satchel would be cheaper than paying the $50 overage for my obese piece of luggage. I have learned to do all I can to avoid raising my own blood pressure at airports, so instead of debating with my new friend the logic of the fact that my bags’ combined weight would continue to be sixty-one pounds, and unless America West Airlines is that concerned about the health of its employees’ spines that it is actually trying to minimize the weight of each individual bag to save on herniated disks, changing the distribution of my clothes would still result in me contributing the same weight to the payload of the plane, I marched over to the gift shop. He was right—bags were half off, and while it hurt my pride a bit to see “Ladies’ Hnbg—$14.99” go across the display on the cash register, my savings of $35 helped salve the wound. And I got a kick-ass African-themed tan-and-brown bag out of the deal.

  I spent my first two days in Phoenix working out under the guidance of the assistant coaches and played in a few hours’ worth of pickup games with the team. My workouts went well. After the second day, I had an odd encounter with one of my teammates in the shower. (Always a good way to start a story, eh?) He asked about my basketball past, and we made general professional basketball player small talk. I asked about his history, even though I already knew the answers. (He is a bit more well known than I, but there was no reason to give him the satisfaction.) About the time I was gathering up the courage to ask him about his gigantic penis, he noted that when he had first seen me walking into the locker room, he had not thought I was a basketball player. “I just thought you were some dude.” (Which makes sense; six-foot-ten guys who are not basketball players wander into NBA locker rooms all the time.) He added, “But you can play, man, so now I know.” All a part of my grassroots campaign. Earning respect, one gigantic black guy at a time. And barely avoiding embarrassing genitalia questions along the way.