by Ray Allen
He got on my case, get this, for smiling.
“Two guys drop 84 points on your ass,” George said, “and I’m thinking, ‘Where’s the pissed-off competitor?’ I look at Ray, he’s out there smiling. Tell me what that’s all about.”
I’ll tell you exactly what that was about. I smiled because I was able to do something I loved for a living, even when it didn’t go my way. Shannon was right when I poured my soul out to her on the pier the night of the draft: I was blessed.
George even got upset with me for smiling during practice. Once, after he caught Sam and me laughing, he quickly pulled me aside.
“I can’t have my best player messing around on the sideline,” he said. “We’re trying to be serious, and the other guys are following you.”
Frankly, I didn’t see anything wrong with playing the game with joy. I don’t believe smiling held Magic Johnson back. Besides, if you practice hard, what difference should it make whether you play with anger or not? Anger is not going to help you set a solid screen or throw an accurate pass or box out your man. If anything, anger will take you out of your rhythm.
George’s suggestion that I cared too much about being “cool” didn’t make sense to me either. Whenever I floated in the air and laid the ball in softly off the glass, people would tell me: “Man, that looked so smooth.”
That’s because it wasn’t an aggressive move, and it didn’t have to be. I never saw the upside in using more energy than you needed to. Make the other guy spend it. Come the fourth quarter, you’ll have the fresher legs.
He was also hard on me in front of my teammates. At least I knew it was coming.
“There are going to be times when I got to get on you to use you as an example so I can get on the other guys,” George said. “They’ll see that I am not playing favorites. You’re going to have to roll with it.”
Which I did, over and over. But getting on me in public, as he did in the Sports Illustrated interview, was entirely different. That I would not roll with.
Another warning sign was when I called Terry Stotts, one of our assistant coaches, in the summer of 2001 to see if he wanted to join me for a round of golf at the country club I belonged to. Terry and I teed it up as often as we could.
“George said I can’t play golf with you,” he said.
He told you what? How my playing golf with Terry had anything to do with the fortunes of the Milwaukee Bucks was beyond me.
Terry was doing what he was told. With George, you were either with him or against him, and the other coaches couldn’t afford to be against him.
So when did everything we built over three years begin to unravel? When we signed Anthony Mason.
I was excited when we picked up Anthony, a free agent, a week before the start of the 2001–02 season. The one ingredient we lacked was toughness, and Anthony would give us that, as he gave it to the Knicks as a power forward in the mid-1990s, when they almost won the championship, and to the Heat, where he was an All-Star in 2001. Plus, Anthony, may he rest in peace, was a good man and always kind to me.
That fall, with him averaging 7.5 rebounds, we took nine of our first 10.
But then we hit the road—and the skids. We lost five in a row, four by double digits. Although we seemed to turn things around in January, when we won eight straight, that run was misleading. Our chemistry was rotten under the surface, so it was no surprise when we dropped 27 of the next 40. You can’t hide your flaws for long. Not on a stage this big.
The problem was Anthony. Instead of searching for ways to fit in as the new guy, he expected everybody else to conform to him.
Bill Bradley, the former Knick, put it best in his book Life on the Run, where he describes the sacrifices required from every player to win a title: “A team championship exposes the limits of self-reliance, selfishness, and irresponsibility. One man alone can’t make it happen; in fact, the contrary is true: a single man can prevent it from happening.”
Bradley wrote that in 1976, and as much as basketball has changed, that’s one truth about the sport that hasn’t.
Anthony wanted the ball on almost every possession, and when we did not give it to him, he complained to no end and didn’t care who might notice. A lot of times, when I took a three in transition, he lowered his hands and headed down the court with the worst body language you could imagine, as if I had thrown the ball into Lake Michigan. Our style was playing fast and taking the first good shot we saw. But with him holding on to the ball in the post—for an eternity, it seemed—we went from shooting with 16 or 18 seconds left on the 24-second clock to shooting with three or four seconds. He disrupted our whole continuity.
The huddles were the worst. George would be giving instructions when Anthony would turn his chair to the side and look into the crowd. He didn’t listen to a word George said. I had never seen a player act like that, not even in junior high. He wasn’t just disrespecting the coach; he was disrespecting the game and his teammates. There were times Sam would go to the baseline to bring the ball up after a made basket, which was his job as point guard, and Anthony would rush down there to beat him to it. Good luck getting the ball out of his hands.
You had to assume George, with his need to always be in control, would make sure to keep Anthony in line. Oh, he tried, for a while, but Anthony would give it right back to him: “You fat motherfucker, shut the fuck up.”
Normally, when a player doesn’t respect the coach, he’s benched, and if that doesn’t set him straight, he’s fined. The last resort is to waive the guy, and it doesn’t matter how much money he is making or what holes it will create for the roster.
George didn’t take any of those steps. He was afraid of Anthony. He let him get away with anything.
My teammates and I had nothing to be proud of either. We didn’t try to confront Anthony, as individuals or as a unit. We tried to please him so he wouldn’t be angry with us. Perhaps we were also afraid of him.
We should have seen it coming. Others around the league did. After a game against the Heat, one of their guys stopped by to visit us in the locker room.
“Why didn’t you call me?” said the player, who had been Anthony’s teammate for several years and was familiar with his antics. “I would have told you.”
“Thanks a lot,” I said. “Now you tell me.”
Actually, this player wasn’t the first. One day in training camp, before we signed Anthony, Ervin Johnson, our center, gave me a call:
“Ray, be careful what you wish for,” Ervin said. “He wants that ball, and he can destroy everything that’s going on.”
I went to our general manager, Ernie Grunfeld, to see if he could solve the problem. Ernie reached out to a few teams, but nobody wanted Anthony.
“You have to assume this is what we’re going to have for the rest of the year,” he told me.
We would also have George, who didn’t know how to avoid controversy. I’m no psychologist, but it was almost as if he went looking for it.
Take the comments he made in an interview with Esquire, which hit the newsstands in March of that season. The reporter asked about Doc Rivers, who was coaching the Orlando Magic. Easy enough. Just say a few kind words, and go on to the next question.
Except nothing was easy for George. He indicated that Doc, who went directly from the TV booth to the Orlando job, hadn’t paid his dues as an assistant coach in the NBA, that he had been “anointed,” and that it would result in “four or five more anointments of the young Afro-American coach.”
What George said was racist, and there was no getting around it. What about Larry Bird? He had not been an assistant coach either, before he was hired by the Pacers in 1997. George didn’t bring his name up. By the way, Doc played in the league for 13 years. Don’t tell me that’s not paying your dues.
My teammates and I didn’t confront George, as we didn’t confront Anthony. We talked to the media when we should have talked to him.
Between Anthony and George, you can see how distracted we
were, and, ultimately, why the losses piled up.
Still, heading into the final game of the regular season, a win over the Pistons in Detroit would put us in the playoffs and then, who knows? We certainly had the talent to make a nice run.
Some players embraced the challenge, like Darvin Ham, who entered the locker room wearing his military fatigues.
Some didn’t, including me. I told Shannon I didn’t want to make the playoffs. It sounds awful, I know, but let me explain. Making the playoffs, in my opinion, would’ve made everything that went wrong that season okay, and it was anything but okay. It was despicable, and I was sure the same squabbles would sabotage us again, this time before a national audience. I wanted no part of that.
There was nothing to worry about. The Pistons led by 20 at the half and didn’t look back. The final: 123 to 89. I scored six points in 23 minutes.
From nearly reaching the Finals to being in the draft lottery with the other losers, ladies and gentlemen, these are your Milwaukee Bucks. And that’s life in the NBA—no guarantees from one year to the next.
Now what? If no one wanted Anthony, who would go? Somebody had to. You don’t fall apart as fast as we did and stand pat. Not if you’re George or Ernie and you hope to keep your own job.
In August, we got the answer: Glenn Robinson. The Bucks sent Glenn to the Hawks for Toni Kukoc, Leon Smith, and a first-round draft choice in 2003.
Good move, I thought. Tim Thomas could definitely fill his place. I actually felt he had the potential to be the best player in the league. Besides being a tremendous shooter, Tim could handle the ball and was extremely athletic. He was six-foot-ten and could play every position on the floor, including point guard.
If only I had kept my opinions to myself. Instead, at camp that fall, I criticized Glenn for how he dealt with an ankle injury, and when he found out, he left me a nasty message through a friend of mine. I didn’t blame him. Glenn and I won a lot of games together, and he was one of the best I ever played with. That’s what I should have told the reporters. Later on, when I experienced my own ankle problems, I felt even worse. I understood pain in a way I never had before.
Glenn was not the only one to go. George also fired a few of the assistant coaches, including Terry Stotts, who had been with him for many years.
No way did Terry deserve it, and we suspected it was only because George was afraid the senator would ask him to take over if the team continued to struggle. Terry did a good job on the occasions he filled in for George. He was composed on the sidelines—imagine that—which helped us compete with a looseness you didn’t see otherwise.
But parting with Glenn and the coaches didn’t turn things around. We won a few, then lost a few, never showing signs of the team that made it to the Eastern Conference finals only two seasons before. By the end of January, we were barely over .500, and as you might guess, my relationship with George became more tenuous than ever. He was now questioning how tough I was.
When our trainer told me not to practice one day because of the tendonitis in my knee, George saw his opening.
“George isn’t happy with you,” the reporters said.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I replied.
Soon enough, I found out. George, without saying a word to me first—nothing unusual there—had gotten on my case for not practicing, with no mention of what the trainer advised. You can find fault with me, but not with my willingness to practice or to play in pain. When I got to the NBA my goal was to be like Cal Ripken Jr., the Hall of Fame infielder for the Baltimore Orioles, who didn’t miss a game for more than 16 years. I wasn’t sure how good I’d become, but I’d show up every day.
Fortunately, I was able to avoid serious injuries and do just that. Not until my sixth season, after appearing in 400 straight games, did I miss my first.
I was sitting on the training table before our game against the Houston Rockets in December 2001 when tendonitis flared up. I jumped up and down. I practically sprinted in the hallway. I tried everything I could think of to get loose, to no avail; my leg was too sore. I felt awful for the people who had come to see me for the first time.
In any case, I allowed George to get to me, and that was my fault, not his. From then on, whenever I twisted my ankle in a game or in practice, I forced myself back on the court regardless of how severely it was hurting. I refused to let anyone think for one second that George was right about me.
Yet, no matter what I did, he found a way to make me wrong. Back in 2000, I was with several executives at the Nike Factory Store in Portland one day, checking out the latest sneakers, when we bumped into him.
“Hey, how’s it going, George?” they said.
There was no hello or warm response of any kind.
“Why you hanging around with this guy?” he said. “You should have seen the high school play he made last night.”
George walked away and did not say another word. Keep in mind, I had scored 35 that same evening against the Clippers, on 14 of 19 from the field, in a game we won, 104–85. George didn’t bring that up, no. Instead, he felt the need to put me down in front of others.
He never displayed the slightest emotion whenever we went on a big run and the other team had to call a time-out. Other coaches clap or pump their fist whenever that happens. Not him. The joint would be going nuts, and he would stand there as if we were down 20 points instead of up 20.
Later in my career, with Nate McMillan or Bob Hill or Doc Rivers, I found it odd to be with coaches who cheered us on. I hadn’t seen that kind of passion on the bench since Coach Calhoun.
George once told me: “Sometimes, Ray, you just need to be a dumb basketball player.”
Translation: do what I tell you to do, and stop asking so many damn questions!
I could never figure out why George would say something like that. I would think that, if anything, a coach would want to seek out smart players who ask a lot of questions. Asking questions, it stands to reason, would make you more prepared for any surprises on the court.
Years later, I heard from players in Denver what George supposedly told Carmelo Anthony, whom he also had problems with:
“Carmelo, you’re a dumb basketball player.”
I know Carmelo, and that couldn’t be further from the truth.
I have no idea why George disliked me so much. It wasn’t that way in the beginning. He lived down the street, and we used to play volleyball in the backyard and have meals together. He invited me to a golf tournament he organized in Boise.
Maybe he was envious of the relationship I had with the senator or maybe he felt I had more power than he did. Another theory is that he wasn’t fond of stars. Except for Gary Payton, whom he coached in Seattle and, later, Milwaukee, I can’t recall a high-profile player on one of George’s teams he did get along with.
George once complained to me about his teammate from the 1970s, George Gervin, aka “The Iceman.”
Gervin, one of the most explosive scorers the game has ever seen, would take the shot even if he was doubled and the other George was wide open. And with good reason. In his career, mostly with the Spurs, the Iceman shot over 50 percent. George, though, never forgave Gervin for not passing the ball to him, and I really believe he took his resentment out on other stars.
The less regarded players, on the other hand, he’d rave about, such as Mark Pope, our seldom-used forward. That was because George had been one of them.
“He’s our best player in practice,” he’d tell us. “All you guys need to be like Mark.”
If George was so in love with Mark, the rest of us wondered, why the hell wasn’t he starting him every night?
Whatever it was that pitted him against me, I didn’t realize how dire the situation truly was until I spoke to Sam Mitchell, an assistant coach who joined the Bucks in 2002. I was working out on the first floor at the practice facility when Sam, whose office was on the second floor, saw me and came down.
“Don’t trust none of those m
otherfuckers up there,” Sam told me. “I was in a meeting, and every one of them was ripping you. They sat there and tried to convince me you’re a problem. ‘Problem?’ I told them. ‘I don’t see how he’s a problem. He’s here every day working on his game.’”
If Sam could see how dedicated I was, I have to believe the other coaches could see it as well. And if they did, how come they did not tell George he was wrong about me? Again, you’re either with him or against him.
I received a similar warning from one of my teammates.
“I need to talk to you,” he told me one day when I walked into the locker room. “There are a lot of cats in here saying you’re not doing this or you’re not doing that. I want you to know I see the work you put in.”
The locker room is like high school sometimes, with the cliques that form and the gossip, much of it untrue, that somebody spreads. I appreciated that my teammate had the courage to tell me what he’d heard.
Running out of patience, I went to see the senator. If anybody could resolve the issues between George and myself, it was him.
His advice was simple: talk to the man. My response was also simple: too late. Every time I did, George tried to convince me I was angry with Sam or Anthony or Tim, anybody but him.
Senator Kohl, in any case, was not about to tell George what to do. Most owners hand over power to the coaches . . . until the day they let ’em go. I felt I had no choice but to tell the senator that perhaps it would be best for everyone if I were to move on. I wasn’t, after all, the type of person to issue an ultimatum. Not that it would have made any difference.
If I could do it over again, I would have reached out to George one final time. My job is to help you win, I would have said, and if you have complaints, come to me instead of the media. I don’t appreciate the attacks on my character, and neither does my family.
Why didn’t I? Because, growing up with a father in the armed forces, I learned you don’t talk back to authority figures. You follow orders. Only years later did I realize that authority figures make terrible choices like the rest of us, and when they do, you need to resist, and hope the people above them listen to what you have to say.
