Can I Keep My Jersey?

by Paul Shirley

  The trip to Miami was my first. Neither of my prior partial-season stints took me to the city, so my opinion of the place was a blank canvas. After the trip to the beach, the frame was looking rather bright and colorful; by the end of the day, it was filled with grays and browns. Miami has the same problem as many cities famous for their nightlife—it is chock-full of people trying way too hard to have a good time. Like New Orleans and Las Vegas, it is place that is worth visiting once in a while, but I can’t imagine living there. I’m sure that some would disagree, but the place, at least near the beach, has a very false feel. Almost everyone I saw—be they muscle-bound douche bags with bad tattoos or bleached-out, implanted girls—looked as if his or her entire goal in life was to impress those watching. (As an aside, I will now declare the tattoo trend dead. Not just over—that happened a couple of years ago. Dead. Is there anything more passé than the arm or shoulder tattoo on the male of our species or the symmetrical lower-back tattoo on the female? On a further tangent, because this is how my brain works, Tom Gugliotta has the worst tattoo in the NBA. The barbed wire on the biceps is bad enough to put him in the running; the fact that he thought he could get away with not having it complete the circumference of his arm puts him over the top. It is like wearing a tie that is not only ugly but a clip-on to boot. Ugly is at least forgivable; the clip-on aspect makes it reprehensible.)

  We gave the beachside area a solid walk-through. My personal highlight was finding out that I was at one point walking a part of Route A1A, which for some reason brought some closure to my life. When I was eleven, as my younger brothers and I would jam to Vanilla Ice on my brother Dan’s tape player, I always wondered what “A1A” meant. Now I know that it is a highway that flows through Miami, slowing to become a choked street in South Beach. Hooray. Steve spent a good portion of his time being quite the ambassador for the NBA, stopping for pictures and handshakes with well-wishers. The rest of us watched the bizarre assortment of passersby, and I wondered what percentage of them were planning to snort cocaine at some point in the day. (That’s what they do in Miami, right?) Just before we all split up, Steve was assailed by a group of guys looking for photo opportunities. As we stood waiting for him, a youngish girl did a double take as she passed the scene and asked me, “Is that a famous person?” There it is: Miami, where one’s worth is measured not by one’s own recognition but by the recognition of others.

  Before we left Little Havana, I had some time to revisit one of my favorite subjects—my own stupidity.

  I can be an absentminded soul. Remembering facts such as where I parked my car, whether I picked my credit card out of the little plastic sleeve attached to the restaurant bill, and a girl’s last name is often a challenge. As I spend more and more time around basketball players, my brain power continues to diminish, which is not assisting my functionality within society. I’ve been on a slow burn since college. Back then, I was at least encouraged to spend half the day around semi-studious types, and my cognitive ability probably benefited. (In my case, über-studious types—the whole engineering thing.) After four years of professional basketball, my brain is a veritable mush. The only bits left are a few quotes from Tommy Boy and a dozen ways to cover a pick and roll.

  Case in point: I cannot remember my room number as we change from city to city. Granted, anyone would be challenged (autistics with a gift for numbers excepted) to recall one’s room number if he changed hotels night after night. However, the average person would learn from his mistakes and come up with a solution. Not me.

  One morning in Miami, I wandered down to breakfast bleary-eyed at 10:30. (That I rarely have to get up before 9:00 is still the most underrated thing about my “job.”) We were new to the city, so I hadn’t had much time to get my bearings. I have many times sauntered onto an elevator without knowing exactly which room was my target destination. Apparently, those encounters have taught me nothing. After an overpriced breakfast, I was faced with the bill. As I signed my name, I realized that the “Room Number” line was going to stump me. I managed to put together that my number ended in 22; a few moments later, I had a lightbulb-over-my-head moment and felt pretty confident, probably 70 percent or so, that I was on the twenty-fifth floor. I wrote down 2522 and went on my way. When I got to 2522, I noticed that its door handle was very bare of the Do Not Disturb sign I use to keep away groupies. (Ha. Actually, I leave it on at all times so the maids do not come in and mess up the finely crafted rumple I give my bed. With the slept-in look, I can at least pretend that I am at home.) I tried the key, to no avail. I wandered dejectedly back to the elevator, wondering if I was going to have to make the walk of shame to the front desk so that I could find out my room number. Luckily, I had a backup number in my mind, and 2322 turned out to, in fact, be my temporary home.

  Unfortunately, I don’t think my fifteen-minute detour is going to prove to be sufficient negative reinforcement. When we checked out of the hotel, I examined my bill and found that only one of the two breakfasts I had eaten had actually been charged to my room. Since I was not that thrilled that I had paid $13 for a bare stack of truly awful pancakes anyway—not to mention the $6 orange juice—I didn’t call the mistake to anyone’s attention and chalked up the experience as research for my post-basketball days. When my brain has completely failed me and I need to eat, they won’t be at all suspicious of the bearded, six-foot-ten forty-year-old wearing a faded Suns jersey at the Four Seasons. Especially when he’s able to so quickly come up with random room numbers to write on his bill.

  Before our game against the Heat, I had a wave of something melodramatic and hokey wash over me. It happened during our warm-up, immediately prior to the game. We had finished our half-assed layup line and I was sitting at half-court, stretching while the players who would actually be participating in the game took jump shots. I looked around at all of the beautiful people streaming toward their seats. I saw the ESPN guys preparing for their broadcast of the game. I looked down and saw my own warm-ups. Then I panicked a little. I wondered if everyone around me was going to realize the fraud that I was. It does not seem all that long ago that my father was teaching me how to play the game on our gravel driveway or that I was playing high school basketball in a town of seven hundred in Kansas. I wondered to myself, What am I doing? Who am I kidding? I could be about to play in this game between arguably the two best basketball teams in the world. I don’t belong here. And then it passed. I got up, marched over to the basket, grabbed a bouncing ball, took a shot, and melted right back in with my team. Identity crisis over.

  March 27

  In the four years since my college career ended, I have played for no fewer than eleven professional basketball teams. Of those, I left on my terms in four cases, was either released or not asked back in six, and will know more this summer regarding the last. There are prostitutes who have had fewer jobs over the same span. On one hand, the fact that I have been so nomadic has been priceless. I have traveled to amazing places and met some very cool people. On the other, the transient lifestyle I lead has been less fun than some would imagine.

  Our very long road trip ended with a win in Orlando. After the game, everyone was relatively happy in the locker room. We had put together a solid road trip and were excited to go home. (I feel like I had a stellar set of games. Min: 0, TP: 0, FG%: Undefined. Bravo.) I shared in the jubilation. Because of my job description, I do a fair amount of traveling. Consequently, I hate it. I like the idea of seeing new places; it’s the execution of the theory that is the hassle. So I, like everyone in the locker room, was anxious to get back to Phoenix. The hotels in which we stay are absurdly nice, but that does not change the fact that the beds have been used by countless other humans.

  The flight home was lengthy, which gave us time for a battle royal over the poker table. I did relatively well, making $89 on the night, but felt like I had squandered some opportunities when it was over. When I finally made it back to my apartment at about 2:15 A.M., I was more than happy to pass out in
my bed. I went to sleep content in the knowledge that I had an off day awaiting me in the morning.

  I awoke to find my rental apartment, with its rented furnishings, entirely bereft of the raw materials I needed to fix breakfast. (Read: the milk in the refrigerator was spoiled, making cereal a difficult proposition.) I considered my options quickly, not wanting to go from hungry and disoriented to hungry and mad at the world. I settled on a trip to IHOP; since it was already nearing noon, I thought I could eat one big meal that would take the place of both lunch and dinner. (Not a new concept for me. Most of my collegiate Sunday mornings were spent weighing the benefits of either getting out of bed relatively early so I could eat both breakfast and lunch or simply sleeping until noon and combining the two. Needless to say, I usually ate only two meals on Sunday.) I had a relatively pleasant breakfast while watching several post-church families stroll into the restaurant wearing their Sunday best. And then I went on my way, looking forward to a day consisting of very little that could be considered constructive.

  I have been asked many times over the years if my life is a lonely one. It is most often a question asked by girls; males tend to think, “Dude, you have the coolest life ever.” Which, for the most part, is true. I usually answer the loneliness question with a no because I can rarely say that I feel alone in my travels. It is not that difficult to form friendships in these places I go; most of the time there are souls in the same situation as I, and they too need someone to talk to. However, most of the time my relationships lack depth.

  I now have friends scattered all over the world. I will probably never see some of them again. That is not to say I don’t want to see them; any of these people, had we grown up together or gone to college together, might be my absolute best friend in the world. But it’s hard to reunite with them when they live in places like Melbourne, Singapore, or Izmir. The same holds true for girls I have dated. Had the circumstances of our time together been slightly different, there is no telling what the future could have held. (Most likely their growing quite tired of my cynical, judgmental, and sarcastic view of things and telling me to go to hell.) It should be noted that I have met three girls I later dated on airplanes, and a fourth on a Greyhound bus. Probably not the best plan with regard to the future.

  So where is the problem? I am twenty-seven, I have no children, no wife, and no serious girlfriend, and while I’m no male model, I’m not going to make anyone’s All-Ugly Team anytime soon. (Incidentally, my version of this year’s team has two members from Minnesota, one from the Milwaukee Bucks, one from the Warriors, and one from the Portland Trail Blazers. In the interest of not getting lynched, should I actually play in a game against one of these teams, I will keep the exact identities to myself.) While I am somewhat hard to be around at times, I can be moderately interesting, and have been known to relate an amusing tale once in a great while, so it is not that I doubt my ability to meet people if need be. The only problem is that I do miss these people I already know. It is hard to return “home” and then realize that my real home is scattered all over the world. It would be difficult, even, to call the place where I own a house—Kansas City—a home in the true sense of the word. I have lived there for two years but usually am only in residence for a few months before leaving again. Even there, I feel like a stranger.

  People often ask me how long I will play basketball professionally. (It’s a very curious crowd, the one I hang around.) I never know what to say because there are so many variables. I could blow out a knee, fall in love with some girl who refuses to leave her native South Africa, or simply lose interest. Really, though, I think I will quit when I have too many days like today, where I feel like a rootless Bedouin. That time is certainly not now—I would not trade my life for anyone’s—and it is probably not a year or even two years from now. But it will happen someday.

  April 25

  The playoffs have begun. I’m generally unfazed by most anything concerning a particular sporting event—I’ve seen way too many basketball games in my life. But I was a little more excited than usual by the prospect of my trip to the arena for Game 2 of our first-round series with the Memphis Grizzlies.

  I am constantly amazed by the ability of others to care about sporting events. I understand being a fan—I grew up living and dying by the nightly fate of the Kansas City Royals. I do not, however, grasp the existence of the über-fan. This is a touchy subject, though, as fans pay my salary. I would reiterate that I understand the idea of rooting for a team. We all need something we can get behind. But enthusiasm seems to be easily overdone; I can’t help wondering what makes the crazies tick.

  During warm-ups before the game, I noticed a couple of fans directly behind our bench. (This time, neither was female.) One had painted a basketball on his nearly shaven pate; the other had dyed his longish hair orange. They were in their seats approximately four hours before the game, so I had plenty of time to analyze their behavior while assistant coach Phil Weber and I played our traditional pregame match of Horse. (At some point in the year, Phil and I grew tired of drills and began playing Horse at the conclusion of my pregame workout. Strangely enough, our little game is quite an effective indicator for my team’s fate. When he wins, the Suns win. When I win, we lose. Our regular-season record was 62–20, which should indicate that I am a fantastic Horse competitor.) The two gentlemen with the creative head coloring kept calm throughout our match—perhaps they were that enthralled by the thrashing Phil gave me. Little did they know how important our game was. (Nor how accurate a prediction it would provide.) When the actual game began the two diehards stood up and unfurled their trump card, a handwritten sign that said something along the lines of:

  Hair dye: $8

  Tickets: $500

  Missing my first day of work to watch the Suns in the playoffs: priceless

  Their placard inspired a few thoughts. First, who is the bigger jackass, the guy who is three years behind the times and said, “Hey, this joke will be funny,” or the guy who, back at the apartment, said, “You’re right, dude, that is funny. You totally have to take that to the game”?

  Next, if one of our heroes was starting a job that would have theoretically had him working on a Sunday night at 7:30, was $500 for tickets to a basketball game a wise fiscal maneuver? I understand that it is the playoffs and all, but was the abandoning of any potential cash flow worth the sacrifice? Maybe for the Finals, but even then I would be willing to bet that the Texaco has a TV behind the counter.

  Last, is missing said crappy job really worth the “priceless” tag? I’m thinking that should be reserved for “bailing on the birth of my firstborn to watch the Suns in the playoffs,” or perhaps for “breaking out of the county jail to watch the Suns in the playoffs.” Let’s keep things in perspective.

  Fortunately for my own self-respect, I am missing whatever gene is required to do things like paint my head orange for a basketball game. I think the same set of DNA is responsible for those people who at Pearl Jam concerts scream out totally inappropriate nonsense like “Eddie, you kick ass!” (In other news, I hate exclamation points, and only used the preceding one because it was absolutely necessary. I would like to see others adopt my rule concerning this form of punctuation.)

  I recently attended a concert by a band called Local H. The band played one of their crowd favorites at some point—a song called “High-Fiving Motherfucker.” The tune is basically a fast-paced romp aimed at skewering the jockish types who think nothing of raising their respective hands and expecting a slap on the palm in return in reaction to some meaningless event. There is nothing wrong with a five—high or low—if it is given in response to a well-performed athletic feat on the part of one of the participants in the five. It is not, however, appropriate if neither party was remotely involved in the sporting contest. The enjoyable part of the song, for me, is that because it is a jaunty number, some of the audience invariably begin moshing. (For those out of the loop, moshing is the random running into fellow concertgoers tha
t often occurs directly in front of the stage.) These idiots, of course, are exactly the personality types the band is making fun of. The irony there is very decent.

  I feel like Local H at times. I want the crowd to thrill to the action and enjoy our games, but I don’t want them to make fools of themselves. I like to see some dignity, and I don’t think I’m alone. I ask not for a moratorium on signs or enthusiasm; I ask only for the signs to be humorous (because, again, my personal enjoyment is the main goal here) and for the high-fiving on the part of crowd members to be reserved only for circumstances of the utmost basketball intensity, with notable exceptions given in cases of extreme drunkenness. I really don’t think it is much to ask.

  May 2

  I have not played a meaningful minute since I rejoined the Suns in January. My role on this team during games is to cheer at the end of the bench, give encouragement to my teammates as they leave the floor during one of the seventy-four time-outs in an NBA game, and stay prepared enough to play should catastrophe or blowout befall my team. I do not, however, play when it counts. I am still trying to wrap my brain around the concept.

  A reporter recently asked me if wins were as sweet and losses as sorrowful because of my stunted participation (his question, actually, was nowhere near so poetic—it’s easier to make things sound good when a backspace key is available). I was impressed by the direct nature of his question. I don’t think he was trying to stir up controversy; he seemed truly curious. Of course, that is his job. I might have dodged a bullet when I chose a more thoughtful answer over Man, this is some [bovine excrement]. I can’t believe I ain’t playin’. I mean, what is Coach thinkin’, man? All’s I need is a chance.

  With my limited role comes a somewhat detached relationship to my teammates. I don’t want to exaggerate too much—I am a part of the team and do behave as such—but I don’t have the same claim to the results as does Steve Nash. It would be folly for me to intimate that he and I are experiencing the same emotions now that we have closed out the Memphis Grizzlies and moved on to the second round of the playoffs. Such is simply not the case. To me, it goes something like this: if x is the magnitude of the emotional result of one game (either negative or positive), the following are some of the multipliers that would result in an aggregate emotional impact for people with different investments in a particular game: