God and Starbucks

by Vin Baker

  Unfortunately, I hadn’t played much basketball since the end of my senior season. I was training lightly, staying in decent shape, but I wasn’t nearly as fit as I’d been a few months earlier. Truth is, we all greatly underestimated the possibility that some of these workouts would be extremely arduous. I figured they would be nothing more than a glorified physical examination and a shootaround. In some cases, that was true. In others . . . well, not so much.

  The Warriors brought me in for a workout and interview, but I knew ahead of time that they weren’t very serious about drafting me. Golden State had the third pick, and while we had heard rumors that I would go in the top ten, no one had speculated that I might go as high as the top three. Indeed, the interview was brief and perfunctory, and the workout—just me and one of the assistant coaches—was fairly low key. I did nothing to hurt or help my stock, and left that session knowing only that I wouldn’t be playing for Golden State and coach Don Nelson the next year.

  More intense, though, were my workouts with the Detroit Pistons, Denver Nuggets, and Milwaukee Bucks. These were teams that had expressed legitimate interest in me, and the workouts and interviews reflected the seriousness of their intent. Detroit was kind of a disaster—I was totally gassed within the first five to ten minutes. Same thing in Milwaukee, just brutal. Two hours of intense drills and cardio work with virtually no rest. Take two dribbles, dunk, do it again. Over and over, until your shoulders ache and your lungs are burning. Then a dozen or more suicides. Then shooting drills, agility tests, one-on-one competitions, all designed to measure and assess not just skill and athleticism, but also endurance, commitment, and desire.

  I nearly quit halfway through because I thought I was going to pass out or vomit. Not exactly the best way to impress the coach, Mike Dunleavy, especially when he was doing the workout right alongside me! Mike was a former NBA player, and he was still in great shape, as feisty and tough as ever, but let’s be honest: he was also nearly forty years old. I was twenty-two and supposedly a potential lottery pick; I couldn’t afford to get beaten up or outplayed by my future coach. Not a good look. So I choked back the nausea and pushed through the workout. Afterward, Coach Dunleavy told me I did well, but I wasn’t so sure.

  The Denver Nuggets actually put me through the most comprehensive screening: two days of interviews and workouts. Being an East Coast guy who had spent his entire life at sea level, I felt the altitude in Denver almost as soon as the plane touched down, and I worried that it was going to have an impact on my performance. By this time, though, I had worked out for a few teams and knew what to expect. I’d also been in the gym often enough to have regained a good measure of fitness. The Nuggets put me through a series of tests and workouts, all of which I handled pretty easily. I knew I was doing well. Then I met with the staff and answered their questions in exactly the right manner. I knew there was a script to the proceedings, and I followed it to the letter:

  Question: Son, what do you think you need to do in order to play in the NBA?

  Answer: I need to keep working hard, sir. I’m going to continue to train, and get stronger and improve every facet of my game.

  However, I was not prepared for the question that I was asked by coach and general manager Bernie Bickerstaff near the end of the interview.

  “Well, what are we going to do, Vin?”

  “Sir?”

  Bernie smiled. “What are we going to do about you?”

  Such a vague and open-ended query; it almost seemed like he was trying to trip me up.

  “I’m not sure I understand, Mr. Bickerstaff. Like I said, I’ll work hard and get ready for the draft, and . . .”

  He held up a hand, shook his head.

  “That’s not what I mean. I know you can play in the league, and I’d like you to play for the Nuggets. But how can we make that happen?”

  Suddenly I realized what was happening. Our conversation had moved from one of assessment to one of strategy.

  “Here’s what I’m talking about,” Bernie said. “We have to figure out a way to make sure you’re still around at number nine, when we pick.” He paused, looked around the room. Everyone was kind of smiling and nodding.

  “Okay,” I said, playing along.

  Bernie leaned forward in his chair, as if he were about to say something secretive.

  “Over the next couple days you may hear some things about yourself that you’re not going to like.”

  At first I was confused. Who would say anything bad about me?

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Bickerstaff. I don’t understand.”

  He smiled. “Well, you might hear that your workout didn’t go so well. But don’t pay any attention to it, okay? It’s just talk.”

  Finally, the lightbulb went on. The Nuggets were prepared to float rumors about my performance—or, rather, my supposed subpar performance—in an effort to reduce interest in me on draft day. I was naive enough to be surprised by this sort of tactic. Did teams really lie about a prospect’s performance? Apparently they did. Or maybe “lie” is too strong a word. It was more a matter of underselling to keep competing bidders away. Just business, I guess.

  Except it didn’t work.

  Looking back on it, the most awesome part of my draft experience was the mystery of it all. I was so inexperienced and utterly lacking in guile that I was perfectly content to simply be there. I’m pretty sure that everyone who was drafted ahead of me knew exactly when their name would be called, and who would do the calling. I honestly did not know. So I sat there with my little entourage—my mother and father, and three of my Hartford teammates, Mike Bond, Marlon Toon, and Paul Spence—and soaked it all in. It wasn’t so much that I was nervous; I was just excited to be there, and to be a part of it. I watched the parade of major college players drafted ahead of me—guys from Michigan and Duke, from UNLV and Kentucky—and I still found it almost incomprehensible that I was sitting there in the same room with them. But I was, and the fact that I belonged there was driven home when NBA commissioner David Stern walked to the podium and announced my name.

  “With the eighth pick in the 1993 NBA draft, the Milwaukee Bucks select . . . Vin Baker from the University of Hartford!”

  Despite knowing that this moment was coming at some point in the evening, I was still shocked. I didn’t even stand up right way. It actually took a few seconds for the words to penetrate my brain.

  Oh . . . hey . . . that’s me!

  I felt like a little kid on Christmas morning, thrilled at the wonder of it all, at the sheer magic of the moment. I tried to maintain my composure, but I was so pumped up. It was all I could do to keep from sprinting to the stage and hugging Mr. Stern. But I kept it under control. I kissed my mom, embraced my dad, thanked my friends, and slowly made my way to the front of the room, smiling so hard that I thought I might cry.

  And I remember thinking, How can life ever get any better than this?

  3

  The Rookie

  My rookie year was a bit of a roller-coaster ride. I was so nervous and concerned about my fitness that on the first day of training camp I went for a jog around the city. I got about five blocks from the hotel before realizing how foolish I must have looked.

  Go back to your room, you idiot. This isn’t going to help.

  Milwaukee is a small market and I was a comparatively unknown commodity, so I had to kind of grow into my stardom there. It wasn’t given to me as it was to some of the other guys in the draft. A few of my teammates, and not a small percentage of fans, had hoped that the Bucks would have drafted a more recognizable name who would immediately bring some attention to the franchise and sell tickets. I wasn’t that guy, so my assimilation was a bit funky. Nothing was handed to me. As was the case at Hartford, the coaching staff and front office viewed me as a project that would take time to develop. But I was competitive and set goals for myself.

  The first three months, I came off the bench. Mike Dunleavy was a generally patient coach and a good teacher, but I bristled un
der the restraint. When I looked around the league, I noticed that every other player who had been drafted in the top ten was either starting or getting big minutes. But not me. Mike brought me along slowly on a team that frankly wasn’t very good, and I did not handle the process well. I’d get into the game, play six or seven minutes, get pulled out, and as I walked to the end of the bench, I’d feel the emotion rising in my throat.

  “Why the fuck did you pick me if you don’t think I can play?” I’d grumble to Mike. More often than not, he would just ignore me. And then, after the game, we’d talk. I know I was wrong in how I handled things. As humble as I was, I still wanted to play, and I couldn’t control my emotions. They were paying me a lot of money and I thought I could do things to help the team. But Mike couldn’t see it in me.

  There were other forces at work, as well. Midway through the season—a really bad season for the Bucks, I might add—we traveled to New Jersey for a game against the Nets. Since it was an East Coast game, not too far from my hometown, a lot of my friends and relatives and former teammates were in attendance. And I did not play one second. Sat on the bench the entire game. I was healthy, fit, and certainly capable of contributing . . . something. But there it was in the box score: “DNP (coach’s decision).” I wasn’t the best player in the league, or even the best rookie, but I sure as hell was good enough to get a few minutes for a struggling Milwaukee Bucks team, especially when you consider that I was a first-round draft pick who was supposed to be part of the team’s foundation for the future. But as the game went on, and I continued to sit on the bench, growing angrier by the minute, I began to suspect that maybe I was sitting precisely for that reason: because I could help us win.

  And we weren’t trying to win.

  This is a dirty secret in the NBA (although not such a secret anymore). As the season drags on and the playoffs spin out of reach, teams do not always give their best effort. At that point, positioning for the upcoming draft becomes more important than positioning in the current standings. And the worse your record, the more likely you are to have a high draft pick the following year. I’m not suggesting that players go in the tank. Sure, it becomes tough to stay motivated late in the year when you’re losing a lot and you don’t have a shot at the playoffs. But most guys in the NBA are ferociously competitive; they hate to lose, and so they give their best effort every night. Injuries, travel, fatigue—all of these can affect a player’s performance and a game’s outcome. Of even greater impact, though, are the decisions made by coaches and front office personnel. The moves can be obvious—trade or release a player who might actually be capable of helping you win, bench a guy who should be on the floor—or subtle, such as simply neglecting to make roster changes that would improve your chances of winning. Either way, the outcome is the same: more losses, fewer victories.

  As I sat that night in New Jersey, my butt glued to the bench, I became convinced that we were not doing everything we could to win the game, or most games, in fact. My playing time was a casualty of that strategy. By the time the game ended, I was furious. We walked into the locker room and immediately I confronted Coach Dunleavy. Probably not the smartest thing for a rookie to do.

  “Mike, that’s bullshit that you didn’t play me tonight, and you know it.”

  He was a few feet ahead of me as I yelled, and he instantly turned to face me.

  “You’re out of line, Vin.” Before I could say another word, one of my teammates jumped in between us and basically tackled me—a completely unnecessary act, since I had no intention of getting into a physical altercation with my coach. I just wanted to let him know that I was angry, and that I knew something was up. But the intervention only escalated matters. It turned a verbal dispute into something that appeared to be much more serious. I tried to steady myself, and as I regained my footing, Mike shouted out across the locker room.

  “Let him go! Let that motherfucker go!”

  This was the interesting thing about Mike. He knew basketball. The guy was a good player and a good coach. He also was something of a chameleon—slick businessman one moment, thoughtful mentor the next moment, and hard-ass New Yorker the next. Right now, in the locker room? This was New York Mike. He wasn’t going to get called out by a player, especially a rookie. Didn’t matter that he was eight inches shorter than me, sixty pounds lighter, and almost two decades older. I had challenged his integrity, his leadership, his manhood. Can’t say I really blame him for getting upset. I just think he overreacted a little. But stuff happens in the locker room. It comes with the territory.

  Mike knew which buttons to push with me, and he tried just about all of them. I remember a game in Seattle shortly after the All-Star Break. I was starting to play a little more, but I had a tendency to overthink things. I would analyze and question and envision scenarios that would or would not work. Again, this was a product of the anxiety that had been an issue for me since I was a little kid. I was afraid of making mistakes, screwing up, and getting called out by the coaches and publicly humiliated. I figured the better prepared I was, the less likely that was to happen. But basketball, like most athletic endeavors, is as much about improvisation as it is preparation. You spend too much time in your head, and you’re bound to screw up.

  At halftime I asked Mike a question. I don’t even remember the nature of the question, but it clearly caused him to bristle. Seattle’s top rookie that year was Ervin Johnson, a six-foot-eleven center out of the University of New Orleans. Johnson was the twenty-third pick in the draft, so he barely made it into the first round, a point Coach Dunleavy decided to drive home at precisely that moment. I had barely finished my question when Mike began shaking his head, as a look that can best be described as disgust came across his face.

  “Vin, can I just tell you something right now?”

  “Sure, Coach.”

  “All that shit means nothing. All these questions, all the stuff you’re worried about and thinking about—it’s absolutely meaningless.”

  “But, Coach, I was just wondering—”

  He raised a hand, moved closer to my face. “Stop. Please. Just stop! Right now Ervin Johnson is in that locker room, and he knows he kicked your ass in the first half. You know what he’s saying to himself?”

  Actually, I hadn’t even thought about it, so Mike enlightened me.

  “He’s saying, ‘How in the hell was that motherfucker the eighth pick, and I was only the twenty-third?’ That’s what he’s saying about you right now. And you’re asking me stupid questions? Just play ball.”

  Then he walked away. Never did answer my question. But you know what? The tactic worked. I played better in the second half of that game, and throughout the second half of the season. In a way, Mike took a blueprint from Jack Phelan. He wasn’t going to coddle me or try to make me feel good when I wasn’t playing up to my potential, and he wasn’t going to back down when I behaved petulantly. Instead, he constantly challenged me to play harder and more aggressively, and if I didn’t, he would let me know it. After a while I found a way to channel the anger that resulted from these sparring sessions. Instead of feeling like I wanted to grab Mike by the throat, I would take out my frustration on my opponent. This, of course, was exactly what Coach Dunleavy wanted to see. It was like he was trying to unleash the Incredible Hulk that was hiding somewhere in my massive but timid frame.

  “You know what people in the league say about you?” Mike said to me one day after practice?”

  “What’s that, Coach?”

  “That you’re a nice guy. You’re a good guy. And that’s fine, Vin—most of the time. But they know that when you’re pissed off, you’ll bring it. So you know what their attitude is? ‘Let’s just not say anything to him, and let’s just keep him nice.’ That’s why you don’t hear much trash-talking. It’s not because they like you, although they probably do. It’s because they don’t want to make you mad; they want you soft and happy. You’re easy to beat that way.”

  I didn’t know what to think. T
he notion of being a nice, friendly, polite person had always appealed to me. It was my nature. I didn’t like confrontation. I didn’t like the loss of control that came with angry outbursts. That’s why I’d cry when I got yelled at: because I was swallowing all the hurt and anger.

  “So here’s what we’ve gotta do,” Mike continued. “We have to find a way to bring that out in you.” He paused. “How do we do that, Vin? How do we get you pissed off every single game?”

  The answer came in the form of a steady torrent of disappointment and disrespect. That year the NBA held its first rookie game during All-Star weekend in Minneapolis. A Midwestern venue not far from my NBA home, and I wasn’t even a part of it. The top twenty players, subjectively speaking, were invited to participate in the rookie game. I had been the eighth pick in the draft, and I was not invited. That was an embarrassment; it also was appropriate given my modest output. Granted, some of this was beyond my control: you need playing time to show what you’e capable of doing. But that’s a tricky thing in any sport. Once you are in the doghouse, it can be nearly impossible to find an exit. You have to make the most of every minute, prove yourself worthy in both games and practice, and somehow maintain a positive and professional attitude. To varying degrees, I failed at all these things in the first half of my rookie year.

  Eventually I stopped whining and did exactly what Coach Dunleavy had suggested. Instead of choking back the disappointment and anger—instead of feeling sorry for myself—I used it to fuel my performance on the basketball court. And it worked! My minutes slowly increased after the All-Star Break. Pretty soon I was in the starting lineup. At the end of the 1993–94 season I was named to the NBA All-Rookie first team. Averaged 13.5 points and 7.6 rebounds—very respectable numbers for a rookie, particularly one who wasn’t playing all that much early in the year. In just a few months I went from not even being among the top twenty rookies—damn near a bust—to being in the top five. I felt vindicated. I felt . . . happy.