Got to Give the People What They Want: True Stories and Flagrant Opinions from Center Court

by Jalen Rose

  Well, fairy tales are great, but they don’t come with a check at the end of the rainbow. We eventually got paid, and paid a lot, but at that time we were two guys still driving old beat-up cars and scraping together pizza money. Furthermore, we ran the risk of getting injured or something happening that would change our NBA chances. Frankly, we made a dangerous decision.

  We actually had a great season our junior year. We were ranked all season, as high as third, and second in the Big Ten, and we made another good run through the tournament. We came up one game short of a third Final Four, losing to the eventual national champions for the third straight year. This time it was Nolan Richardson’s Arkansas Razorbacks, cheered on by a crowd that included none other than the president of the United States, Bill Clinton.

  Despite all that success, the season was definitely less magical than the others. We were over being campus celebrities. We lived way off campus, and hung out at Eastern more than ever. (Our spot over there was the Spaghetti Bender.) Juwan and I were ready for the pro life, and we started prepping for the draft right after the season. The problem was, my third season hadn’t done me any favors as far as setting me up as an NBA prospect. With Chris gone, I had moved from point guard to playing on the wing, with Dugan Fife, who was a year behind us, running the offense. My scoring and rebounding numbers went up, but I also lost my unique role as a six-foot-eight point guard in the fashion of Magic Johnson and Steve Smith (as well as Penny Hardaway, who’d been drafted two spots after C-Webb, and then traded for him). My profile for scouts in the NBA became muddled. You’d think versatility would be good, but in my case, I think it actually made me a less distinctive prospect.

  While Juwan would probably tell you he should have left earlier, too, junior year only raised his profile. In particular, he was a total monster in the tournament, winning the most outstanding player in the region even though we didn’t win our bracket. He showed he could step right into Chris’s shoes and handle the load up front basically on his own. Juwan got drafted fifth, by Washington.

  I think a year earlier I would have gone in the top seven. In 1994, I slipped to thirteen, the end of the lottery, becoming the newest member of the Denver Nuggets.

  I still managed to make a splash at the draft. If you were watching that night in June 1994, I’m guessing you remember my red double-breasted, pique-lapel, custom-made pin-striped suit. It’s still in all the Top 10 lists of the most legendary—okay, maybe infamous—NBA Draft ensembles in history. I’m still proud of it. And I can answer a question you’ve had on your minds for a few decades now. “Why, Jalen? Why?” Because I thought I was going to be drafted seventh, by the Los Angeles Clippers, whose primary team color is red. I’d had a good workout for them, and they’d told me that there was a good chance they were going to pick me. Admit it—that suit would have looked even more fly with a red Clippers hat to top it off. Instead, I had to wear a white Nuggets hat with a navy-blue brim. It was not a total disaster but was not the perfect match I was going for. Either way, the suit distracted from the zit I had under my eye that night. And though Lamond Murray, the Clippers’ first pick, had a pretty good NBA career, there are no pictures of him on draft night living on as part of Internet lore.

  Grant Hill went third that year, to my hometown Pistons. Now a guy who I had long seen as a rival from the other side of the tracks was headed to my turf to start on his NBA path.

  I was headed to the Rocky Mountains, at long last fulfilling my destiny. Though for the record, the kid who thought he knew everything (me) knew nothing about what was in store.

  —

  I’VE BEEN in my fair share of fights in my lifetime. When I was a kid, practically one a week on almost every corner of west Detroit. By high school, and then college, the pace slowed to once in a while. I don’t know what would have happened to me if I grew up today, rather than a few decades ago, because now it seems like every brother on the street has a gun or access to a gun, and fights escalate a whole lot differently. It was also before social media, so nobody was taking pictures or videos of fights on phones, and tweeting them out or posting them. Back then, you’d rush someone, or get rushed, and then life would continue. Fights were a natural outgrowth of the trash-talk and the language of the hood. A lot of us were frustrated about a lot of things. Sometimes it got heated. And then it was over.

  At Michigan, the handful of skirmishes and brawls I got in stayed under the radar, in part because my role in them was usually quick. Was I tough? Sure, but I was also lucky. I was left-handed, and no one ever expects that your first punch is going to come from the other side. It’s really pretty simple. You aim for one spot, right on the cheekbone. If you hit it with your middle finger, you’re gonna pop blood, and that usually ends things right there. Even for tough brothers, the sight of their own blood usually slows the argument down enough for clearer heads to prevail and for people to break it up.

  With that said, let me take you back to the summer of 1994, right after I got drafted. I’m back in Detroit, living large with my first six-figure paycheck in the works. Once a month, there was this party in town called “Soul Night” at the State Theatre. The guys and the girls would go to the beauty shop and the hair salon, get suited and booted, and head out to the theater. I remember I was driving a new car, a burgundy Suburban that I had tricked out with TVs in the back. This was before flat-screen monitors—I had actual TVs put in. I was Inspector Gadget. No idea was too much for my ride. I dubbed it “the Ice Box.”

  Anyway, a whole bunch of us went to Soul Night, and we ended up getting into an altercation with some other dudes. It was probably over some girls—I honestly don’t remember the cause. What I do remember is that the Suburban turned out to be a hell of a getaway car. To get out of there before the cops came and my name surfaced, I actually jumped I-75 to take us south of town. And we made it. Phew, no problem, right? Wrong. As soon as I woke up that next morning, I knew something was not right with my shoulder. I called the new mentor in my life, my agent, Norm Nixon, the former Lakers and Clippers great. I’d picked Norm to be my agent for a few reasons: one, I wanted a black agent and, two, I already had my eye on the entertainment space, and Norm was an L.A. guy who was married to the famous actress and dancer Debbie Allen. (Who I will forever be indebted to for giving me my first facial. Hundreds more have followed.) Anyway, that day on the phone, Norm was as smooth as ever. He said, “Get out here, we’ll get you looked at, no one will know anything.”

  This could never happen in today’s world. News of an NBA draft pick getting in a fight would be on Twitter within seconds. I’m sure someone would grab a video and put that up as well. Then the mainstream media would get wind of it, and it would blow up.

  But back in 1994, a week after the fight, I was quietly on a plane to L.A. I spent the rest of the summer quietly rehabbing this shoulder injury that no one, including the Nuggets, would ever find out about. Plus being out there was an opportunity to learn a bit about a town that had always intrigued me, with Magic Johnson and Showtime and everything surrounding that. I signed my six-year rookie contract shortly before training camp started, and reported to Denver 100 percent.

  No harm, no foul. Right?

  —

  AS WILD as everything around the Fab Five became, the basketball experience at Michigan was actually pretty similar to mine at Southwestern. I was on a great team, filled with stars who all knew their roles, who won a lot of games. I’d played in three straight championship games in high school, followed by two straight in college.

  Then I became a professional basketball player.

  The best 450 players in the world distributed across 30 teams (when I started, it was 27), playing 82 games every season. In every one of those games, there’s gonna be a winner, and there’s gonna be a loser. Which means that for a lot of players, the NBA is the first place in their entire basketball careers that they lose games on a regular basis. In my rookie season in Denver, we won 41 games and we lost 41 games. Actually, we los
t 44 if you include the three-game sweep in the opening round of the playoffs against David Robinson and the Spurs. Either way, that’s more games than I had lost in my high school, college, and AAU careers combined.

  On the one hand, I was one of the lucky rookies. Our team was competitive, I played in almost every game, and I started almost half of them at point guard. I still own the Nuggets rookie assist record.

  That said, taking the long view of things, it wasn’t so great. We had three coaches in one season. Dan Issel started, then he got burned out, had some issues, and quit. Gene Littles coached us for about a month as an interim. Then Bernie Bickerstaff, who was also the general manager, took over on the bench and led us to a strong finish and the playoffs. Each of those guys had their own views of every player on the roster, and their own ideas about the best way to play. As a rookie, I was basically like a high school freshman, paying my dues and proving myself every day. How can anyone do that effectively with a new boss almost every month?

  I’ve thought a lot about what might have happened if I had gone out a year earlier, and ended up on another team that wasn’t so in flux. I don’t know if it would have been any better; but I do know it taught me a lesson about the role of luck and fate in an NBA career. Get put in the right situation, with the right coaching and support around you, and it can do unspoken wonders for your career.

  Remember this: Right now, far away from the cameras and the reporters, there are NBA players that you barely pay any attention to who are working on their games with the help of great coaches and organizations. Then there are other players languishing on teams in transition, teams with assistant coaches who spend their time worrying about what they’re going to do at the end of the season when their boss is fired. As a young player, being part of a good system can change your career. These days, how many guys that you have never heard of have gone to the Spurs and become productive players for a great team? Almost too many to count.

  Unfortunately, as a rookie back then, I was a few years away from the good things that come with being in a great system.

  —

  TO BE fair, my timing wasn’t all bad. I got into the NBA the last year before they imposed a tighter rookie salary cap, meaning I got a huge deal right off the bat: six years, $10 million guaranteed. That was a hell of a lot of money, but remember (and too many NBA players—past, present, and future—forget this) that almost half of that goes to taxes, and another big chunk goes to your agent. It’s really $5 million. Again, a ton of cash, but half of what it sounds like.

  One of the first things I did was buy a house in Englewood, Colorado, a suburb of Denver. From the start, I wanted to put my money into things I could understand. Not just stocks and bonds and mumbo jumbo that I didn’t know anything about. A house. Everyone wants to buy their mom a house, too. Mine didn’t want one. She wanted to stay in Detroit. Eventually I was able to convince her to let me get her a condo in the suburbs and, years later, the suburban house she lives in today. That took care of Mom.

  Then there were the other people I was going to help out. All twenty of them. Well, at least twenty. It’s not a stretch to say that at some point, everyone I knew from Detroit got at least a little love out of that contract.

  Why so many? Because in my view, they all deserved it as much as me. A village of people—uncles, aunts, neighbors, teachers, mentors, friends—had been a part of making sure I didn’t take the wrong path and that my talents weren’t wasted. They’d each been a brick in my success. Now, I’d hit the lottery for everyone, not just for myself. So there was help with people’s mortgages, their car leases, their loans, their tuitions. For younger folks, my philosophy was that I’d rather teach them how to fish than simply buy them fish. If you brought me into it, I had a stake in it. I wanted to know: What are we going to do to use this leg up, the money you get, to give you the next leg up?

  That’s the philosophy I used with my closest friends from Detroit, who came to Denver with me. Yes, I had a so-called entourage. For some reason, in sports, that term only gets used with black athletes. For white athletes, the term is just “staff.” In both cases, it’s friends and family who’ve come out to support you on this crazy journey that began the moment you were drafted. The moment you basically became your own multimillion-dollar company. And like any CEO, you need support.

  The key with an entourage is to keep it close. Make sure it’s populated only by people who’ve known you since the very beginning, not people who showed up when you had already started making waves as a pro prospect. That’s the best way to guarantee trust, and to prevent your entourage from getting its own entourage, which is no good. You also don’t want it to be too big. Keep it manageable. Most important, make sure that everyone actually has something to do.

  For me it was about helping my friends make something of their own lives. For example, Rizz, who was into cooking, was my chef. And while I was playing ball, he was attending culinary school, with the goal that someday he could have his own catering business. Today, he does. Rizz grew up six or seven houses down the street from Uncle Paramore, and I’ve known him since we were kids. Then there was K-Nine, who had gone to Southwestern with me. His thing was staying in shape, so he was the trainer, working out alongside me, pushing me. My other boy Montez, or ’Tez, also went to Southwestern, and was my assistant. He was the guy making sure the gardener got let in and out, the contractor got what he needed, and was the person I could trust with business stuff when I wasn’t around. He also hooked up the social end of things, making sure in this new city I wasn’t going to be the guy standing in the middle of the club not knowing anybody. That stuff counted, too.

  On the periphery were the businesspeople I was spending money with, the agents and the brokers and the deal makers, but they were an outer layer. In my house in Englewood, it was me and my three boys. We had made it big, together. A lot of the money went to the three C’s—clothes, clubs, and cars. Some of it was spent a little recklessly (okay, completely recklessly), like on the bracelet I called “the Mansion,” because it was so expensive, and a few years later, when cell phones came out, on a Vertu phone. Those were probably the dumbest things I ever bought. Wearing the bracelet was basically an invitation for someone to rob me, and have you ever seen a Vertu phone? Still, I can’t look back and say I regret buying those items. I was just me letting the world know—and proving to myself—that I wasn’t poor anymore. If I wanted something that only rich people could have, I was rich now and I could have it. People who aren’t from the hood might roll their eyes at the huge diamond earrings that were in my ears, but for me, they represented something priceless.

  One expenditure from those early days I’ll definitely never regret is getting veneers. Look at that photo of me at the draft, with the red suit. It’s the last time anyone would ever be able to call me “rock teeth,” because a few weeks later, I got them fixed.

  Smile for the camera. The NBA was calling.

  —

  ON THE one hand, it’s one of the most elite clubs in the world. Four hundred and fifty guys, almost all of them making over $1 million a year to play basketball for a living. Private planes, catered meals, anything and everything you need to be the best athlete you can be.

  On the other hand, the NBA is just like any other club, or community, or job. With traditions, hierarchies, pecking orders, and certain ways of doing things that, as a player, you have to figure out for yourself. In the gym and the locker room, there are no agents or entourages to protect you, and they wouldn’t impress anybody anyway. There’s only the dozen-plus guys on the team. They are the only ones who get to wear the uniform, who get the seats on the bench, whose names get called to go into the games.

  The group I was a part of was an interesting mix. There were a few other lottery picks just ahead of me. LaPhonso Ellis, who had been the star at Notre Dame when I was a freshman, was hurt all year my rookie season. Rodney Rogers had been drafted by the team the year before me. Both of those guys looked out
for me. And they were also happy to see me take over the rookie duties. like carrying the bags off the plane, bringing doughnuts to morning practice, and so forth. Then there were the less glamorous duties, like getting ready to chill in my hotel room, having my phone ring, and hearing the unmistakable African accent on the other end of the line.

  “HEY ROOKIE! GOT TO MAKE A RUN FOR ME!”

  Yes, Dikembe Mutombo may be more than seven feet tall, he may have built hospitals in the Congo, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t need protection like any other brother trying to stay warm on some cold nights on the road. So I’d be the one who had to go outside and find a CVS pharmacy, buy a box of Magnums, and bring them up to his room.

  Rookie life.

  The most interesting guy on that Nuggets team was Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf, the point guard who a few years before had converted to Islam and changed his name from Chris Jackson. I liked being around him because I learned so much, not so much from what he had to say, but from what he had to do. He had Tourette syndrome and OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder) issues, and for him to function and feel comfortable, everything around him had to be immaculate. He’d lay his shoes and socks down just so, his clothes down just so. Nothing could be folded or wrinkled at all. It was a fascinating thing to watch this guy deal with this disorder up close.

  When I was there, he caused a big controversy by refusing to stand for the national anthem because doing so was at odds with his religious beliefs. We had a lot of conversations about it. I felt like a lot of what he and I were discussing in our hotel room or on team flights was more informed than any of the junk flying around about the situation in the press. The press didn’t even notice he was doing it for weeks, let alone make a big deal out of it, until we played the Bulls, the best team in the league. I’d always been skeptical of the press, and their cluelessness didn’t impress me in this case at all.