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Dream: The life and legacy of Hakeem Olajuwon

Excerpted from the book Dream: The Life and Legacy of Hakeem Olajuwon by Mirin Fader . Copyright © 2024 by Mirin Fader. Reprinted by permission of Hachette Books an imprint of Hachette Book Group, Inc., New York, NY. All rights reserved. You can buy …

Excerpted from the book Dream: The Life and Legacy of Hakeem Olajuwon by Mirin Fader. Copyright © 2024 by Mirin Fader. Reprinted by permission of Hachette Books an imprint of Hachette Book Group, Inc., New York, NY. All rights reserved. You can buy the book HERE.

Nearly every day in the summer of 1981, after his first partial year at Houston, Olajuwon played at Fonde Recreation Center, the spot to play if you were a talented ballplayer in Houston. There were two no-frills courts separated by a blue plastic screen. There was often no air-conditioning. Players frequently played shirts versus skins. Everyone was out for blood. “If you wanted to find out what game you had, you’d come to Fonde,” says James Robinson, Fonde’s current recreation assistant. “If you ain’t got it, you gotta get out. Don’t come back.”

For months, Olajuwon had heard stories of the legendary court and the pros who graced its hardwood, including Rockets players Moses Malone, Robert Reid, Major Jones, John Lucas, Allen Leavell, Caldwell Jones, Joe “Jellybean” Bryant (Kobe Bryant’s father), and Bill Willoughby. The Rockets players, who had made it all the way to the NBA Finals in 1981 before falling to the Celtics, knew that many of the kids who showed up at Fonde couldn’t afford to attend Rockets games, so they’d bring autographed shoes and gear for them. “We welcomed them,” said Reid, who gave an interview for this book before he died in February 2024 at age sixty-eight. “They saw good, hardcore, where’s your mama ’cause I’m gonna put this in your face basketball.”

The first time Olajuwon walked into the gym, he knew he’d have to bring his best: he and his Cougars teammates were trying to prove they were on the Rockets’ level. Olajuwon’s teammates had battled the Rockets players many times before and knew the challenge that lay ahead. “Oh, they actually thought they could beat us,” Leavell says.

Everyone seemed to have the same mindset, regardless of age: You push me; I’ll push you. We’ll both get better. The Rockets players were, in some ways, big brothers to the Cougars players. Fonde was more competitive than Rowe Park in Lagos, Olajuwon quickly realized, but it had the same kind of prestige. If you proved yourself there, you could walk around with a certain amount of respect. Puff your chest out a little farther.

Then he spotted Malone, the center everyone had been telling him about. Big Mo. The NBA’s fiercest rebounder. The one his friend Yommy Sangodeyi had looked up to. Malone was the first player to play professionally directly after high school. He had been the number-one recruit in the country, and hundreds of college scouts hounded him. He was relentless on the glass, scoring at will. He was six feet ten but slender, with incredible quickness for a man of his size. He had unusually small hands, but every rebound was his. He once grabbed thirty-seven boards in a game. But what separated him, Olajuwon soon learned, was his intellect. And his timing. He didn’t wait to box out until the ball was halfway to the basket like most players. He fought for position earlier, as soon as he sensed a teammate was about to shoot. And even more impressive? “He would study the rims,” says Del Harris, Malone’s former Rockets coach, now eighty-seven. “Some rims were real tight. Back then, early on, they didn’t go around and check the rim tension.” Malone knew every detail about every rim and studied every detail about every opponent.

Malone was everything that Olajuwon aspired to be: dominant, hard-nosed, skilled. He had an unshakable confidence, a swagger, that Olajuwon needed, too. Cedric Maxwell, former Celtics star and now a broadcaster for the team, remembers a game in which Celtics big man Rick Robey was guarding Malone. Malone took it almost as an insult. “You guys have Rick Robey on me?” Malone said to Maxwell. “I’m gonna get a hunnit rebounds!”

“A hunnit?” Maxwell said. “You gonna get a hunnit?”

“Yeah. You keep him on me. A hunnit rebounds.”

Olajuwon didn’t yet have that kind of swagger. He looked uncertain, often hesitating on offense. “He was scared of the contact. He didn’t know what to do,” Malone later said. “I worked with him, told him not to be afraid.”

Olajuwon intrigued Malone and the Rockets players, although he was very much still learning. “He didn’t have any clue what he was doing,” says former Rockets guard Allen Leavell, “but his athleticism was off the charts. We knew he could be a great player if he learned the game.” Everyone respected how hard he competed. “He was just this young sponge that had so much courage, and so much desire,” says James Bailey, Rockets forward from 1982 to 1984. Malone began to mentor Olajuwon, teaching him the intricacies of the post: how to set up, how to get the ball, how to be aggressive. Rather than verbally give lessons, Malone taught him by showing him: guarding him daily, embodying the hunger he hoped his protégé would adopt. Malone simply overpowered him. When Olajuwon caught the ball? Smack! Tried to seal him? Smack! Took it strong to the cup? Smack! “[Olajuwon] was struggling,” Reid said. “Big Mo was hitting on him.” But Malone saw potential in Olajuwon. “When [Mo] saw something that could be great,” Reid said, “he pushed it.” And Olajuwon loved the challenge. “Dream never backed down,” Reid said.

In quiet moments between games, Malone would pull Olajuwon aside, offering morsels of wisdom. He took Olajuwon around in his Maserati, and the two would hang out at Frenchy’s Chicken in South Houston. Malone was generous with his protégé as well. He bought Olajuwon stylish clothes and gave him his mint-condition hand-me-downs, including a striking cream-colored sports jacket.

“The thing that the young people forget about today—and I know Moses was taught this, I was taught this, and I’d say 95 percent of athletes that came up in the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s [were taught this]— is you give back to the game,” says Michael Cooper, former Lakers guard and close friend of Malone. Malone died in 2015. “Whether it’s materialistic, whether it’s spiritual, whether it’s emotional, you always give back. For him to help Hakeem along the way, a young man that I’m pretty sure Moses saw in [him] what we couldn’t see: how great of a player he was going to be.”

Now that he was finally eligible to play, hype swirled around Olajuwon as the 1981–1982 college season began. Much of it was over the top for the newly minted member of the active roster who had yet to play a single minute in a game. “An awesome, sweeping sky hook is implied by his middle name [Abdul] . . . ,” one reporter wrote, referring to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. “Akeem Abdul Olajuwon has to live with those expectations.”

A sky hook? Olajuwon had yet to develop a consistent jump shot. Conference coaches were stoking the fire, too. One coach was ready to give his two cents, even if he didn’t know Olajuwon’s actual name: “If Abdul is what they say he is,” Texas coach Abe Lemons said, “it’s over for the rest of us.”

Lewis still wouldn’t let Olajuwon speak to the press, so he tried to quiet the chatter himself. “I know damn well the alumni expect too much out of him,” Lewis said. “They’re playing him up like a savior Akeem hasn’t even done anything yet.”

Lewis wasn’t even sure Olajuwon would play. He was brutally honest with Olajuwon, too, telling him privately that he didn’t know if he would ever score a point.

There was also a more pressing concern: Olajuwon was suffering from back spasms, unable to run without grimacing in pain. Sometimes he couldn’t even bend over to pick something up off the ground. His coaches wondered if he was experiencing growth spurts. Maybe he wasn’t used to weight training? Maybe his dorm bed wasn’t big enough and his feet dangled off the end?

Each day before practice, Olajuwon hooked himself onto a machine called the “Rack” that flipped his near-seven-feet frame upside down for ten minutes to stretch his back. He watched as his teammates took the floor, laughing and smiling, and there he was, upside down, looking silly, feeling uncertain of his future. “I had heard rumors that he was never going to play again,” says Ernie Garza, the student athletic trainer. Garza remembers Terry Kirkpatrick, an assistant coach to whom Olajuwon had grown close, telling him that Olajuwon was thinking about returning to Lagos. Garza wasn’t sure if the rumor was true, but he remembered Olajuwon’s pain. “It was debilitating,” Garza says.

The coaches tried to find him the right treatment. They also helped him find a local acupuncturist. Mercifully, after just one session, along with all the stretching and treatment he had been doing at the university, he began to feel relief. The spasms eventually stopped, but Olajuwon had a lot of catching up to do as nonconference play began. He struggled against Seton Hall, getting called for goaltending a couple of times. Otis Birdsong, former Cougars star and twelve-year NBA veteran, was in attendance, wondering how Lewis gave him a scholarship. “Hakeem was terrible,” Birdsong says, laughing. “He couldn’t walk and chew bubble gum.”

But every day, Olajuwon got a little better. His teammates gave him no choice, bumping him and bruising him to help him get stronger. His main foe was Larry Micheaux, nicknamed “Mr. Mean” (“Mean,” for short). One did not want to piss off Mean. Olajuwon battled, but Mean often got the best of him. “Punishing him,” says Michael Young, the forward. That was intentional. “I didn’t want to be easy on Hakeem,” Micheaux says. The two mutually benefited, though. “I had to figure out a way to stop him from blocking my shot,” Micheaux says. Olajuwon caught on quickly, too, and was able to hold his own.

Practices were often more intense than games. Fights sometimes broke out. During one practice Olajuwon caught a fingernail above his right eye and had to get stitches. But he wasn’t always on the receiving end of blows. Once, Micheaux remembers him trying to fight guard Reid Gettys. Micheaux had to tell Olajuwon to back down before he could land a punch. His teammates respected that he played hard and was a workhorse during drills. “Either you fit in, or you fit out,” Micheaux says, “and definitely he fit in.”

He also continued to stand out with his uncanny skills. In one instance, while on the road, coaches spotted Olajuwon kicking a soccer ball around with random students before shootaround. Olajuwon dribbled around imaginary defenders and then bounced the ball off his knees. Then his head. The students stopped, amazed someone so tall could be so agile.

Lewis was furious: “Go get Akeem!” he screamed to Barron Honea, a student assistant coach. Honea said a prayer. Please, Lord, don’t let Akeem sprain his ankle. Fortunately, he didn’t, but the kicking would continue. Another time, before practice, instead of shooting, he stepped on top of the basketball, balancing on one leg while sticking out his other leg. He looked ridiculous, teetering back and forth. One fall could have injured him or, worse, ended his career. He finally stepped off but kicked the ball up toward his shoulder in one motion. His teammates just stared. They had never seen anyone quite like him before.

Black Ball: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Spencer Haywood, and the generation that saved the soul of the NBA

Excerpted from Black Ball: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Spencer Haywood, and the Generation that Saved the Soul of the NBA by Theresa Runstedtler . Copyright © 2024. Available from Bold Type Books, an imprint of Hachette Book Group, Inc. You can buy the …

Excerpted from Black Ball: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Spencer Haywood, and the Generation that Saved the Soul of the NBA by Theresa Runstedtler. Copyright © 2024. Available from Bold Type Books, an imprint of Hachette Book Group, Inc. You can buy the book HERE.

Black Players Flood the Leagues People have a feeling that I’m a nasty n*****, you know. See, now I don’t mind that. . . . That, to me, is a compliment.

— Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, on Black Journal (WNET), 1972

“How it is for a 22-year-old rookie thrust into a pressure-cooker; how it is to be rich and talented and black and troubled.” That is how Roger Kahn of Sport magazine had summed up “Lew Alcindor’s Life as a Pro” back in February 1970. The Milwaukee Bucks’ seven-foot-two center seemed emblematic of the growing power of Black pro athletes, chafing against the rigid expectations of the white basketball establishment, the white sports media, and white fans. Kahn had interviewed Alcindor in a dingy room at the Quality Courts Motel in St. Louis on November 25, 1969. It was 4:00 p.m., just hours before the Bucks were to play a game against the Atlanta Hawks to benefit a local charity and honor some of the retired Hawks stars from the franchise’s days in St. Louis. Alcindor was lying under a brown blanket trying to clear his “hyperactive” mind of all the noise and clutter. The drapes were drawn, the only light emanating from a reading lamp on the night table.

It had been difficult for Kahn to get an appointment with the NBA’s newest superstar. Not wanting to antagonize its franchise player, the Milwaukee Bucks’ front office did little to help the writer connect with Alcindor. Kahn, not surprisingly, had come to the meeting chock-full of nerves and with very low expectations. Even before his difficulties in reaching the enigmatic Black center, he had already had a bad impression of Alcindor thanks to the sports pages. Alcindor was reportedly “mercenary, rude, possibly anti-white,” and “he had an unnerving recent record of aggressiveness toward opponents: one broken jaw, one knockout and one foiled attack in a few months.” As Kahn joked, “You go into this kind of interview carefully, preparing all the questions, gauging your subject, wondering about your own jaw.” Despite his fears, what he discovered instead in that dreary motel room was “a bright, sensitive, and esthetic young man.” It made Kahn wonder. What did this misunderstanding say about the status of Alcindor and other Black people in America? What did it say about US society— “the society that had made him both millionaire and n*****”?

Admittedly, it was hard for Kahn to describe Alcindor for readers. His was not a simple Reader’s Digest story: “The Alcindor phenomenon is a mix of rough edges, and incompleteness and immaturity and wisdom and misinterpretations and rages and regrets.” Yet, love him or hate him, there was no denying the big man’s talent. How white sportswriters and fans wrestled with Alcindor’s dominance on the court and surliness off the court was a microcosm of their reaction to the rising tide of Black professional ballplayers throughout the 1970s.

In the wake of the civil rights victories of the sixties and in the midst of surging Black Power activism and a deepening “urban crisis,” which disproportionately affected African Americans, the racial politics that greeted Alcindor and his generation of Black ballplayers were complicated. “How do you see your role in the black movement?” Kahn asked. Emotionless, Alcindor simply blinked.

Born on April 16, 1947, one day after Jackie Robinson officially desegregated Major League Baseball, Alcindor understood that what was expected of him as a Black athlete was much different than what had been expected of Robinson and other pioneering African American pros. All Robinson had to do was make base hits “because white people thought he wasn’t good enough to do it,” Alcindor noted. But that was not enough anymore. “It’s fragmented, man,” Alcindor said of the wider Black movement. “Some go to church. Some go to school. Some do nothing. Some want revolt.” Although some members of a budding Black middle class had begun to make strides, the Black poor and working class found themselves largely left behind in a changing economy. For the young Alcindor, figuring out where he fit into this complex picture was no easy task, especially because his own ideas about Black activism were still evolving. “Try to get change as quickly and painlessly as possibly,” Alcindor said of his political vision. “Try to stand for something positive. Be something positive.”

For many white sportswriters and fans, Alcindor seemed to be anything but positive. He and the new wave of Black players inundating the pro ranks appeared threatening, even violent. On Halloween night in 1969, the Bucks had played against the 76ers in Philadelphia. Alcindor was matched up against veteran white center Darrall Imhoff , who shoved and elbowed the rookie under the basket. Early in the second quarter, as they both scrambled for a loose ball, Alcindor’s frustration reached a boiling point. He swung his right elbow full force into the back of Imhoff ’s head. “Imhoff fell on all fours, the way fighters sometimes do, and stayed there on knees and elbows too dazed to move,” Kahn recalled. The Philly crowd hooted. Alcindor walked to mid-court and stood with his hands on his hips, watching calmly. When Imhoff came to, he took a run at Alcindor, but 76ers forward Jim Washington and one of the referees stopped him and ushered him off court. He was so out of it that he did not return until the second half. When Alcindor later fouled out, the fans booed him. Alcindor gave the peace sign, but the boos continued, so he clenched his fist and held it high in a Black Power salute. After the game, journalists swarmed him with questions, but he said, “I have no comment.”

There was no love lost between Alcindor and white sportswriters. He had antagonized Evans Kirby, a local reporter charged with interviewing him for a magazine feature in the Milwaukee Journal. To Kirby, the rookie was supposedly “aloof in speech and habit.” He was not only late but brusque, and at the end of the interview he left without even saying good-bye. Perhaps Alcindor’s abruptness stemmed, in part, from the fact that he had already sold the exclusive rights to his life story to Sports Illustrated for a reported $20,000. Nevertheless, he had managed to alienate the local media, for he often declined to answer questions or replied with grunts and one-word answers. Alcindor refused to play by the typical rules of etiquette that white reporters and fans alike expected of African American athletes: be humble, be grateful, be cheerful, be accessible, and, above all, be apolitical. Instead, the quiet, brooding rookie kept white sportswriters and fans off balance.

Shy and introverted, Alcindor desperately wanted to maintain his privacy, but this was proving hard in a small market like Milwaukee. A seven-foot-two Black man in a majority-white Midwestern city, Alcindor could not help but stand out. Bucks fans mobbed him, and reporters wanted a piece of him at all times.

“You better get used to it,” Kahn warned him.

Alcindor looked off into the distance.

“You’re going to play for a while, maybe 15 years,” Kahn continued. “Well, you better be ready for 15 years of interviewing. That’s part of what all the money is for.”

“I don’t have to give up my privacy,” Alcindor replied. “I’m not peddling that.”

Although he worked hard on the court, he felt in no way compelled to go out of his way to please or placate the NBA’s majority-white fan base. At a game against the Seattle SuperSonics in late November 1969, Alcindor fouled out in the final seconds of the fourth quarter after lunging at Black center Bob Rule. As the capacity crowd of 13,000 in the Seattle Center Coliseum jeered at him, Alcindor responded by spitting on the court. The game ended with a narrow 117‒115 victory for the Bucks. As the teams walked to the locker rooms, a white teenager ran toward Alcindor and yelled, “You big bum!” With one swing of his long arm, Alcindor knocked the teen to the floor. “It gets me,” he told Kahn, “the way people say now you’ve got the money, you’ve got contentment. The money makes for a stability, but there are pressures, man. Out there you’re a vector for all the hostility in the stands. It all comes and they’re shouting that I’m not hustling and that I stink and I’m a bum.”

Unlike some African American athletes from previous generations who sought crossover acceptance from white fans, Alcindor was unapologetically Black. His family background and his experiences growing up in New York City likely colored his approach to the game. Although his parents had met in North Carolina, when his father, Ferdinand L. Alcindor Sr., was stationed at Fort Bragg during World War II, they later settled in Harlem. His family took great pride in their Black diasporic roots. Alcindor’s paternal grandfather had migrated from Trinidad to New York and spoke the West African language of Yoruba.

“Around my house, there was no speaking shamefully about our ancestors,” Alcindor recalled.

When Alcindor’s father graduated from the prestigious Julliard School of Music in 1952, symphony orchestras were still racially segregated. With no prospects for a career in classical music, he held on to his job as a bill collector for a furniture company and then took a post in the Transit Authority Police Department. Part of a rising African American middle class, the Alcindors left Harlem, moving further north to the racially mixed Dyckman housing project in the neighborhood of Inwood. “He carries all that heritage within him, a sense of black aristocracy and black dignity and how the Moors were warriors and how his uprooted family was supposedly free in a society which condemned a Julliard man to work in subways,” Kahn observed. Alcindor carried a heavy chip on his shoulder, carved from generations of injustices.

Back in spring 1969, he had brought that sense of pride into his initial contract negotiations with the pros. Accompanied by his father and two UCLA alumni acting as his pro bono financial advisers, Alcindor had met with representatives from the NBA’s Bucks and the ABA’s Nets in his home city of New York. To avoid a nasty and protracted bidding war, his negotiating team had asked Milwaukee and New Jersey to submit their best and final offers. Alcindor had wanted to return to the New York area to play professionally, but the Bucks made the strongest offer. He and his advisers were shocked: they had expected the ABA to offer more money in place of stability and prestige. Despite Alcindor’s misgivings about moving to the Midwest, he signed with Milwaukee for around $1.4 million over five years, reportedly the highest contract ever paid to any athlete. “I had wanted to sign with the Nets,” he later explained, “but I was offended to be taken so lightly. If they hadn’t taken me seriously when I was calling the shots, how would they treat me once I was under contract?” From the very start, Alcindor wanted to exercise his power and gain control over his career.

Kahn’s time with the Bucks’ star rookie had revealed as much about the racial tenor of the times as it had about the man. “The pressure is enormous,” Kahn explained.

“He is potentially the black athlete of his era, as Jackie Robinson was the black athlete of another. His role is not more difficult than Robinson’s—after all, the Klan is not threatening to shoot Alcindor. . . . But it is more complex. The black movement has become more complex.”

Alcindor, in many respects, embodied the intricacy of African American politics in the post‒civil rights era. His favorite book was the Autobiography of Malcolm X. He listened to the jazz music of Miles Davis, converted to Islam, and studied African languages. Although he called out white racism, he was not a militant in the same vein as the Black Panthers or Kwame Ture. He simply endeavored to be his own man, to explore and define his evolving sense of Blackness on his own terms.

In June 1971 Alcindor stood in front of the US State Department, thanked by teammate Oscar Robertson and Coach Larry Costello, for a press conference announcing their upcoming government-sponsored tour of the African continent. The trio were to spend three weeks abroad, visiting Algeria, Senegal, Mali, Nigeria, Tanzania, and the Somali Republic. At each stop along the way they would conduct basketball clinics, give exhibitions, and meet with the respective national teams. Basketball and Black American athletes had long been tools of US soft power in the region, deployed to court the favor of African people and their politicians during the Cold War.19 For Alcindor, however, this was an opportunity to fulfill a lifelong dream. “For me this is a return to the fountainhead,” he told reporters. He had studied African history at UCLA and now looked forward to visiting the original home of his forebears.

Alcindor then introduced Habiba, his wife of just a few weeks, who would also accompany them on the trip. And he insisted that reporters call him by his new name, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. “I first used the name in 1969,” he said, “but now that I am going overseas to represent my country, I would appreciate that courtesy.” He explained that Kareem translated to “noble or generous,” Abdul meant “servant of Allah,” and Jabbar meant “powerful.” As his faith had deepened, it no longer felt authentic to keep it hidden from public view. “I had lived two lives too long,” he recalled. “I knew I was going to take some heat for it, but Muhammad Ali had established a precedent and borne some of the brunt of the attack.” To dispel any confusion between his religion and that of the controversial heavyweight boxer, however, Jabbar clarified that he was not a member of the Nation of Islam. He practiced Sunni Islam under the mentorship of Hamaas Abdul Khaalis, the leader of a Black American sect known as the Hanafi Muslims.

Stunned, reporters asked about the logistics of using his new name. Jabbar said that he did not expect the Bucks to immediately change his name in their programs or advertising because the fans knew him as Alcindor. But, he insisted, “I do expect people to use my Islamic name when they’re talking to me.” Anytime that reporters addressed him as “Lew” or “Mr. Alcindor,” he respectfully but resolutely replied “My name is Kareem” or “My name is Jabbar” before answering their questions. Later on, he signed autographs as “Kareem.”

Though exceptional in size and talent, Jabbar was by no means singular in his desire to push back against white Americans’ rigid expectations of Black athletes. As African American ballplayers gained strength in numbers and greater financial clout in the early 1970s, they were no longer content to abide by the rules and customs of the white basketball establishment, whether on or off the court. Some even refused to be bound by Black leaders’ ideas of what it meant to be respectable role models for Black youths. Diverse expressions of Black identity and Black Power from political and cultural currents outside sport seemed to be seeping into professional basketball.

Banned: How I squandered an All-Star NBA career before finding my redemption

Banned: Ho w I Squandered an All-Star NBA Career Before Finding My Redemption by Michael “Sugar” Ray Richardson and Jake Uitti. Copyright © 2024 Michael Ray Richardson. Excerpted with permission of Skyhorse Publishing Inc. Born in Lubbock, Texas, on …

Banned: How I Squandered an All-Star NBA Career Before Finding My Redemption by Michael “Sugar” Ray Richardson and Jake Uitti. Copyright © 2024 Michael Ray Richardson. Excerpted with permission of Skyhorse Publishing Inc.

Born in Lubbock, Texas, on April 11, 1955, Michael Ray Richardson grew up to be a star college basketball player at the University of Montana. From there, drafted by the New York Knicks’ Willis Reed in 1978 with the 4th overall pick, Richardson, known by many as “Sugar,” became a four-time NBA All-Star and one of the first players to lead the league in both steals and assists in a single season. Indeed, before Magic Johnson, Richardson was one of the first big point guards in the NBA.

Later in his life, he became a star in Europe, dominating Italian leagues and ushering in the era known as “Sugarmania.” But it was in between those times when things went south for the stalwart player. Famously, Richardson became the first player ever banned for life by the NBA and then-commissioner David Stern. But he is also the first player ever to be reinstated after such a punishment. For years, Richardson jeopardized his career due to a severe drug addiction. And all of that can be read in his new memoir, BANNED, which is out November 26.

Here below, check out an excerpt from that book.

CHAPTER 8: “SUGAR”

Ever since college, people have called me Sugar. It started at the University of Montana and the nickname just stuck. When I first got to school, in one of our early games, I played really well. And since it was common for guys with the middle name Ray to be called “Sugar Ray,” thanks to boxer Sugar Ray Robinson and later Sugar Ray Leonard, people started calling me Sugar, too. In Missoula, everybody thought I was a special athlete—sweet on and off the court —so the nickname became part of me. Today, friends call me Sugar without thinking twice. And I’ve lived up to it, even putting it on car license plates and gear shifts.

In later years, the name stuck because of my connection to drugs. The moniker was something of an ironic one, a commentary on my failures as much as my talent. It’s strange how the two can intertwine at the top. The peak is so close to the fall. People think if you get to the top, it’s easy to stay there. Hell, that’s what I thought! But the hard part is not so much getting there as it is staying. I’d made the league. I was an All-Star. So when I started to do drugs, I thought I could stop it at any time. If I wanted to do something, I simply did it. It would be the same with my recreational habit, right? But I’d finally run up against something that was stronger than even me.

***

Human beings consume around 180 million metric tons of sugar a year. The US is the biggest consumer of sugar on the planet, as we take in 11 million metric tons per year. That’s ten times what we should. America is a country of addicts and people looking to get high. As kids, we’re taught candy is our friend. As young adults, we sneak into our parents’ liquor cabinets. Caffeine is another one—the US consumes 146 billion cups of coffee per year! Later in life, we get high on other white powders or consume drugs that make us hungry and want, yes, more sugar. It’s an epidemic. The stuff is everywhere.
Sugar comes from plants. Sugar cane needs warm climates to grow. So, a lot of it comes from places in South America. Historically, that’s also where a lot of the United States’ cocaine comes from, too. Even the world’s most popular soda, Coca-Cola, used to have cocaine in it. Today, an average American consumes around 450 servings of Coca-Cola products per year.

***

Everything bad began when I decided to move from New Jersey to the Chelsea neighborhood of New York City during the middle of my third season. When I say things like, Our stories are already written for us, it’s because of things like what happened next. The mover who took my stuff from Jersey into the city was cousins with one of the biggest dope dealers on the East Coast, a guy named Muhammad. And where exactly did Muhammad live? While he came from the West Indies, he now lived on the fourth floor of the building in Chelsea that I was about to move into. I would be a floor below him.

I’d decided to move into Manhattan because I’d gotten sick of the commuting and the city traffic. I wanted to be closer to where I worked, to MSG. Today, I shake my head. What the heck did I do that for! Muhammad’s cousin introduced us. At the time, I didn’t think much of it. I met new people everyday thanks to my profession, and Muhammad was a nice guy, someone who I thought was a friend. “Stop by anytime,” he told me. Some nights, once I got settled in, I’d go up there and play cards or dominos and shoot the breeze. Just passing the time. But the devil had a plan for me.

Then, instead of just playing games, Muhammad started passing cocaine around. That’s when I sniffed it for the very first time. I’d just gotten back from a team road trip and decided to give coke a try just to be social with him and his friends. Like I said, when I first snorted the white powder, it didn’t work on me. I didn’t get high. So I tried it again, not thinking much of it. At Muhammad’s place, he’d have other people over, even other NBA players sometimes. Coke was social, like alcohol. Shit, it was like coffee. But when I tried the stuff for a second and third time a few days later, I got hooked. My brain exploded. Then, a few weeks later, Muhammad brought out the pipe.

In a matter of about a month, I went from sniffing coke to smoking it, which is so much worse. When you smoke cocaine, it’s called freebasing, and it’s more potent. It’s like cocaine on steroids, if you can believe that. But to do it was a process. You had to go out and buy this kit with the right pipe, a lighter, and other accouterments. When he brought it out, Muhammad said, “I want you guys to try something.” In Mike Carey‘s book “Bad News” about former pro basketball player Marvin “Bad News” Barnes, there are a lot of seedy characters mentioned. Well, Muhammad was one of those in my life. He loved to be around NBA players, and he got us hooked on him.

Muhammad was a big Knicks fan, too. So he knew who I was, and he liked me hanging around. But unlike Bad News, who was a hell of a player in his years in the ABA, I was never involved in any of the criminal activity, other than sniffing and smoking. I never hosted parties, sold drugs, or drove it anywhere. My problem was just using it—which is enough of a problem to have! While I wish Muhammad had never passed me the stuff and that his cousin had never introduced us, and while I wish I didn’t move into that building in Chelsea or hire that specific moving company, at the end of the day I take full responsibility for my all of my actions. They were mine, and mine alone.

Since those days, I haven’t seen Muhammad. I don’t even know what I’d say to him if I did today. I’d probably let out a worn-down sigh—if he’s even still alive. I still remember his voice, the look on his face, warm and generous, but flickering. “Just try it,” he said. “It’s not bad. Just try it.” Me, being curious, I did. I liked it. I wanted more and I was naive. But even in those days, in my third year and into my fourth season, I wasn’t yet dependent on the stuff. It wasn’t the most important thing in my life… yet. It was just something fun to do, dipping and dabbing, first on off-days then at home in Denver. Next thing I knew, though, I was in it. Bad.

Deep down, I know that I have a good heart. Even though I got into some rough spots, I’m not a bad guy. You get blinders when you’re an addict. You’re there, looking through your eyes… but at the same time, you’re not all there. Because of that, when I would get high, I wouldn’t want to go out in public. I didn’t want to be in Studio 54, the Cotton Club on 125th, or anywhere in the city when I was using. I already knew I’d be paranoid, so I didn’t need to be around people. On top of that, I didn’t want anyone seeing me all fucked up. Addicts mostly want to be alone.

Later in my career, when I used drugs, I would either go to a hotel by myself, with a girlfriend or with maybe one more person who was using with me. If it wasn’t a hotel, I would just do it in my apartment. In New York, I wasn’t yet a full-blown drug addict. But soon, I would go off a cliff. When you get like that, you lose all sense of yourself. You become a zombie. Your only thoughts are when you’ll be getting high next and for how long. It’s a parasite and you don’t care about anything but pacifying it. That’s what happens when the devil has you.

Pipeline to the Pros: How D3, small-college nobodies rose to rule the NBA

Excerpt from Pipeline to the Pros by Ben Kaplan and Danny Parkins. Reprinted with the permission of Triumph Books. You can buy the book HERE On March 10, 2020, Mike Budenholzer and the Bucks needed a break. They were back in Milwaukee, recuperating …

Excerpt from Pipeline to the Pros by Ben Kaplan and Danny Parkins. Reprinted with the permission of Triumph Books. You can buy the book HERE

On March 10, 2020, Mike Budenholzer and the Bucks needed a break. They were back in Milwaukee, recuperating after a disastrous road trip. The three-game jaunt was a homecoming of sorts for Budenholzer, the Bucks’ head coach. The first game—a loss to Frank Vogel’s Lakers—was played just 40 miles due west of Pomona College, Budenholzer’s alma mater. Then the second loss—this one at the hands of the inferior Phoenix Suns—brought Budenholzer back to Arizona, the state where he grew up in the shadow of six older siblings, a politician mother, and a high school basketball coach father.

Fortunately, the schedule gods had the Bucks’ collective back: two days off, followed by a four-game homestand tipping off on March 12. There were rumors that, due to the new virus, they’d have to start playing games without fans. Oh well, Budenholzer figured. I played Division II. I’m used to empty stands.

Blood on the Horns: The long strange ride of Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls

Blood on the Horns: The Long Strange Ride of Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls by Roland Lazenby © Copyright 2014 Diversion Book. THE REAL LAST DANCE Looking back 25 years after Jordan’s final Championship In 2020, my wife digitized the many cassette …

THE REAL LAST DANCE

Looking back 25 years after Jordan’s final Championship

In 2020, my wife digitized the many cassette tapes of my interviews from 35 years of writing about pro basketball. In there was a gem I had never listened to, from an April 1991 game between the Washington Bullets and the Lakers. Jerry Krause, the Bulls GM at the time, had worked for both organizations as a scout and now some years later had come to the game in Washington in a moment of immense pride, to quietly show off a bit and perhaps even gloat.

His Bulls were playing very well that spring and seemed on the brink doing great things.

A short, odd little fat guy—Michael Jordan had famously nicknamed him ‘Crumbs’ for the evidence of his snacks often found on his shirts—Krause had spent years suffering ridicule while knocking around as a scout in pro basketball, a business of very large men.

In the 1970s, Krause had finally reached what seemed like the pinnacle when he was named GM of the Bulls, only to be fired after a few weeks on the job.

Like that, he had gone from a crowning achievement to immense public ridicule. If it seemed everybody in his hometown Chicago was laughing at him, that’s only because they were.

Yet by 1985, the Bulls were something of a laughingstock themselves, and financial whiz Jerry Reinsdorf was able to buy them for a pittance, about $14 million.

Reinsdorf promptly stunned fans by hiring Krause to be his GM, and the short, little fat guy set about rebuilding the team.

This time Krause had a vision, albeit an odd one. He wanted to hire a retired college coach, Tex Winter, who had long been the proponent of a quirky offense, the triangle, or triple-post.

More important, Krause wanted to hire a young goofball named Phil Jackson as his head coach with the idea that Winter would mentor him to greatness.

It would take a while to get Jackson in place, in part because he had written a memoir about playing for the Knicks in which he talked about taking LSD on the beach in California after New York defeated the Lakers for the 1973 NBA title.

Nobody wanted to hire a coach who took LSD, but Krause paid the matter no mind. He had known Jackson for a decade and saw his odd genius.

Krause would also become excited about several players including a relatively obscure prospect out of Central Arkansas named Scottie Pippen.

The Bulls struggled for some time to overcome the Bad Boy Pistons, but in that late April 1991 Chicago finally seemed on the way to doing that.

Thus, Krause stood alone outside the Bullets locker room that night, seemingly waiting for reporters to notice him and interview him. I recall almost feeling sorry for him standing there and recorded about five minutes with him that night as Krause spoke grandly of his own work in assembling a team around the young superstar Jordan.

It was a conversation I had frankly forgotten until a quarter century later when it literally leapt out from that newly digitized archive.

Sure enough, Krause’s instincts had been spot on. It had all fallen in place for Jordan, Pippen, Jackson, Winter and their Bulls. They would win the ’91 championship, then five more over the next seven seasons.

Listening to that tape of Krause at the brink of their greatness and knowing how it would all go from that early moment of his eager pride to a bad end, how all the happy days would evaporate in 1998 in a very public and dramatic ugliness, I was struck with an overwhelming sadness.

I later did an extensive interview with Krause on the tenth anniversary in 2008 when he told me he had videotape of every game played in the championship years.

He had not viewed them even once, he told me with great bitterness.

THAT LAST DANCE

By that 1998 season, after so much success, the Bulls were caught in the throes of a non-sensical struggle for control of the team, with Jackson, Jordan and Pippen pitted against Krause, who announced before the season began that Jackson would not be allowed to return as coach in the fall of 1998.

“This is it,” Krause had said. “Phil and I know it. We all know it.”

In announcing his move, Krause did not identify exactly what had led to Jackson’s scheduled departure, but the relationship between the coach and GM had obviously turned from love and respect to hatred.

The son of two fundamentalist preachers, Phil Jackson had been heavily influenced by the “rapture” or the idea of the end times. Thus, he always seemed to think in terms of the “last” this or that. He had dubbed the showdown with Krause “the Last Dance.” Later, as coach of the Lakers he would write a book about his battles with Kobe Bryant and call it the “Last Season.”

It was a good name for the events in Chicago in 1998.

No matter where he played, the buildings virtually sparkled for Jordan that season. Each game, as he stepped onto the floor for introductions, he was greeted by the flashes of a thousand small cameras. The phenomenon was most brilliant at the United Center in Chicago, where the introductions would build to a crescendo of noise and light until Jordan’s name was called as the fifth starter, and the arena became a pulsating strobe. Later, at the opening tip, these same lights would again flicker furiously. But they were most maddening during free throws, when Jordan went to the line, and the rows of fans behind the basket would break into a dizzying twinkle, bringing to mind a mirror ball at a junior prom.

In one of our several one-on-one interviews that season, I asked Jordan how he could possibly shoot free throws under the conditions, he smiled and replied, “I got used to that a long time ago.”

He had always been a superstar who understood and accommodated his fans. That was particularly true that spring, as indications grew that it could well be his last. The camera lights were by far the warmest measure of his popularity. Each time he made a spectacular play, Michael Jordan’s world glittered, a twinkling firmament of adulation that served as a backdrop for his every move.

Despite all the trappings of the moment, my numerous conversations with Krause revealed that the GM was eager to end the Jordan era so that he could prove that he could rebuild the team without Jordan. I thought he was crazy.

I in turn went to Jordan to ask why they all couldn’t just sit down and talk out their differences. He replied that wouldn’t be possible because Krause had gotten in the way of winning too often.

I realized then that Jordan was confident he would defeat Krause just as he had overcome the entire NBA.

Jordan was wrong, of course. He did not understand just how badly Jackson wanted to get away from Krause, that the coach would “ride off into the sunset” at the end of the season.

Jordan also couldn’t fathom that Jerry Reinsdorf—who had realized hundreds of millions in wealth with the growth of the Bulls by then—didn’t want to give Pippen a large contract, even though the forward had been underpaid for years and had been a magnificent player for the team.

As it sadly unfolded, Jackson would leave, Pippen would be traded, Jordan would retire, and Krause would fail miserably in his attempts to rebuild the team and eventually be fired.

It would indeed prove to be the Last Dance for both Krause and Jordan.

I interviewed Krause extensively again in 2012. By then he had grown to accept everything that had come to pass.

“It’s past history,” he said. “It’s done. Phil is a great coach. For a long time, he was very easy to work with. Then he was not so easy. That’s life. Things change. Phil is Phil. I’m proud I hired him.”

Magic: The Life of Earvin ‘Magic’ Johnson

Magic: The Life of Earvin ‘Magic’ Johnson by Roland Lazenby © Copyright 2023 Full Court Press, Inc. By March 1990, Jerry West had had a good long look at Magic Johnson, had witnessed it all up close, first the transformation Johnson had brought to …

By March 1990, Jerry West had had a good long look at Magic Johnson, had witnessed it all up close, first the transformation Johnson had brought to the Los Angeles Lakers a decade earlier, and then all that followed: the championships, the MVP seasons and performances, the virtual onslaught of victory and success, the building-pumping celebrations at timeouts after every fast-break run, the high fives and hugs and general glee that shook both Los Angeles and the National Basketball Association out of the deep slumber and ennui that had settled over the American pro game like a blanket in the late 1970s.

All that Jerry West had witnessed unfolded in sharp contrast to his own Hall of Fame career that saw West and his Lakers teammates suffer through the agony of seven losses in the league’s championship series between 1962 and 1970 only to finally succeed on the eighth attempt, a seemingly joyless victory in 1972 that had been met by numbness and confusion and conflict in the locker room afterward.

With all the winning in the 1980s, Johnson had helped a bit to shoo away the pesky ghosts and demons that for far too long occupied the belfry of Jerry West’s personal torment. Johnson and West had quietly formed a partnership over the years, the executive’s agony balanced by Johnson’s great joy and success.

That contrast, in part, was the reason this writer had traveled that March of 1990 to interview West over two days in a hotel room in Dallas, where West had gone to scout college basketball talent in search of the next good player for the team.

By that time, West, the self-appointed guardian of the Lakers, was on his way to becoming what many considered the game’s top front office figure. West “could spot talent through the window of a moving train,” L.A. Times columnist Jim Murray would declare during the era.

West, indeed, was a manic genius and a nearly impossible perfectionist.

He could see so many things in the furious action on the court and was known as an “active” general manager, the kind who never hesitated to address problems he saw with Lakers players. Just how “active” was West? One former Lakers head coach, Del Harris, explained in a 2004 interview that the team was never really his, but Jerry’s.

Earvin ‘Magic’ Johnson drives to the basket to make a layup shot over Blair Rassmussen of the Denver Nuggets during their NBA Pacific Division basketball game on 21st November 1990 at The Forum arena in Inglewood. The Lakers won the game 141 – 121. (Photo by Stephen Dunn/Allsport/Getty Images)

During the Showtime era, West the GM was both vigilant and instructive with so many players, but he revealed over that weekend in 1990 that over the years he had hardly ever said a word to Johnson about his play and even then only if he thought Johnson was becoming “predictable.”

The great Magic predictable? You might just as well have accused Marilyn Monroe of lacking her steamy charm.

At that moment in 1990, Magic Johnson was perhaps the sporting world’s most widely admired and successful star. Over the years, it seemed that just about everybody had come to love Magic. And that had included a high school junior in Wilmington, North Carolina, way back in 1980, by the name of Mike Jordan.

Yes, as a teen, the once and future king of basketball had had one true idol—Magic Johnson. Even then, Jordan’s competitive nature rendered him absolutely unsparing in his disdain for rivals and other players. Yet Jordan tried to mimic so many things he saw in Johnson’s play that for a time he even fancied himself a point guard, attempting in high school practice each day the no-look passes and brilliant fast-break play of his idol.

How great was the infatuation? Jordan gave himself the nickname “Magic Mike” and by his senior year in high school had a vanity plate by that same title for his very first car. Jordan drove all over his hometown proudly telling the world that he was Magic Mike. Yet when Jordan got to the University of North Carolina as a freshman the next fall, coach Dean Smith promptly advised him to lose the nickname.

There was only one Magic, Smith supposedly explained.

Jordan, of course, went on from there to become what fans worldwide would call “the God of basketball.”

At times over his career, Johnson himself had occupied a similar roost in the hierarchy of the sport. In fact, his accomplishments and infectious style of play defined the great Showtime era of Lakers basketball with a team that so often seemed to play beyond the reach of everybody else. As such, Johnson came to occupy a status as the game’s last great analog star, one who finished his playing career in the early 1990s only to watch the digital world rapidly overtake the game as well as its messaging and marketing, just in time to lift up that kid from Wilmington who once considered himself Magic Mike. These circumstances help explain a belief among many serious students of the game as well as among many, many fans, that Magic Johnson, along with Jordan and others, should be in the conversation as perhaps the greatest basketball player of all time.

“I never quite understood why he’s never been involved in the conversations for the greatest player ever, what he brought to the game,” remarked longtime NBA coach Alvin Gentry, a comment echoed many times over by numerous veteran observers of American pro basketball.

The argument goes that if Michael Jordan is indeed the so-called God of Basketball, at the very least, Johnson is the Other God, one who accomplished so much in addition to presiding over what many consider to be the greatest era in the history of the game, the 1980s.

For others, such lofty status seems an odd place for a player who, by his own admission, never jumped all that high; who was considered to have a suspect jump shot; who by far prized winning over scoring or acrobatics, who came into the NBA with what many experts considered a weak left hand, a serious limitation for anyone attempting to survive as a point guard in the league, especially a tall person with an impossibly high dribble ripe for the plucking.

“I still had doubts about myself,” Johnson himself would confess, looking back on his early days as a rookie in 1979. “I wasn’t sure I could make it in this league.”

Which, in turn, helps explain why that March of 1990, long after he had seen it all, Jerry West revealed that he wasn’t convinced in 1979 that the Lakers should have taken Magic Johnson as the number one overall pick in the NBA draft.

Speaking for recorded interviews, West said Johnson’s great run of leadership and success would remind him of a conclusion about scouting talent: You could see what players could do on the floor, their physical capabilities, but you couldn’t always read their hearts.

“I thought he would be a very good player,” West admitted. “I had no idea he would get to the level that he did. No idea. But, see, you don’t know what’s inside of people. Physically, you can see what they can do on the court. The things you could see you loved. But you wondered where he was going to play in the NBA, how he would be able to do it.”

That comment then pretty much summed it up: Earvin “Magic” Johnson was defined as that unseen quality, that great mystery of human performance that made the business of talent scouting seem so uncertain.

West paused a moment in the interview, searching for an answer to his own question about Johnson’s greatness, then added, “Through hard work, he just willed himself to take his game to another level. I don’t think anyone knew he had that kind of greatness in him. The athletic ability is the easiest thing to see, but it does not constitute what a great basketball player is.”

Asked to expound on greatness, West observed that while there were a number of very good players at any given time in pro basketball, truly great players could be counted on one hand.

Looking back on the 1980s, West said, “Obviously Magic Johnson is one of them. Larry Bird. “Obviously Michael Jordan,” West added, then let the thought trail off from there.

The tremendous challenge to being a truly great player is hard for the public to understand or even see, West finally offered. “It is a burden.”

As for the nature of Johnson’s particular greatness, West said, “It’s like a macho thing. Magic Johnson had a macho-ness that came out in him, a desire that ‘No one is gonna beat me.’ ”

Johnson would display that quality night after night over many seasons, that vast intangible factor, prima facie evidence that he possessed perhaps the biggest heart in the history of a game of very big hearts.

Earl the Twirl: My life in basketball

From Earl the Twirl: My Life in Basketball © 2024 Earl Cureton and Jake Uitti by permission of McFarland . Earl Cureton: “I don’t remember the exact time I made it into Houston, maybe around 3:30 or 4 in the afternoon Texas time. But I was ready. A …

Earl Cureton: “I don’t remember the exact time I made it into Houston, maybe around 3:30 or 4 in the afternoon Texas time. But I was ready. A team assistant coach, Larry Smith, picked me up. His nickname was “Mr. Mean,” but he was great to me. After we shook hands, I told him I had to go to baggage claim to get my stuff. He said, “Earl, there’s no time to wait for the bags. We have to go now.” All I had was my carry-on in my hand. He said, “We’ll get someone to get your stuff later. Let’s go!” So, I jumped in a car with him, and we went straight to the arena. By the time I made it to the locker room in Houston, the rest of the team was already on the court warming up. The team had my jersey all ready, name printed on the back and everything, hanging in a locker. I jumped into the uniform, number 35, warmups and all, and I got a quick physical examination from the doctors right there in the locker room.

I was cleared to play, so I made my way out to the court. I went directly to the bench, watching the players as the early minutes of the game ticked away. When the first time-out was called and the Houston players came toward the bench, I came out and high-fived them. They all looked at me like, “Who is the heck this guy?” I hadn’t even been introduced to anyone yet and I was already trying to bring the positive energy. The team brought me my contract while I was on the bench and I turned around and signed it as slyly as I could, trying to avoid any possible TV cameras. It was April 21, 1994, and I was officially back in the NBA.

The team’s coach Rudy Tomjanovich asked me if I could give them a few minutes that first night and I said, “Sure can!” After all that, I knew I could give them a few, even if it made me puke in the locker room later.

As it turned out, the Rockets didn’t need me in that game. The team flew out to Dallas for the next game that night after the one we played. But I still didn’t have any clothes! So, waking up the next morning and before the next game, I called a lady friend I knew out there in Dallas and asked for some help. She picked me up at 9 in the morning to go shopping so I could get something to wear.

When she picked me up, though, Rudy saw me get into her car and he shook his head as if I was on my way to a booty call or something. I told him, “Coach! I didn’t get my luggage! I don’t have any clothes, no underwear or anything!” I’d later tell him I was spoken for, with Judith at home.

Rudy had a good laugh about it all. He is from Michigan, used to play at St. Cecilia, so we had a bond even beyond the Rockets. With my lady friend I went and got what I needed from the store. And that night in the game, Coach T subbed me in and I got my first run with the Rockets. I played 11 minutes in that game against Dallas, grabbing three rebounds. And even though we lost, playing with the team felt right. In a strange way, it felt like I’d been playing with these guys my whole life. Like the Hornets a few years before, it felt like family.

I knew how to come off the bench, knew how to stick to my role. That’s a major way to succeed in the league, especially if you’re not a star, and I’d been doing it most of my career, especially in the more recent years. I knew how to box out, stick my elbows into guys, and create space. It was what the team needed when Dream [Hakeem Olajuwon] was on the bench. For the last game of the regular season, we played in Denver, and I got in the game to play 19 minutes.

I grabbed nine rebounds (four offensive) and scored four points, too. Not bad for a guy who was playing in the YMCA like a week before!

Then the playoffs began. In the first round, I didn’t play very much—heck, I was still learning the playbook. The team didn’t much need me, anyway. We were the West’s No. 2 seed, and we played Portland in the first round. We beat the Trailblazers 3–1. The West’s No. 1 seed, the Seattle SuperSonics, didn’t have it so good. They ended up losing in the first round, which took out one of our top competitors. Basketball fans will remember Denver’s Dikembe Mutombo holding the basketball under the basket at the end of that series, lying on his back, in a joyous, emotional celebration. Mutombo’s Denver squad was the first No. 8 seed to beat a No. 1 seed in NBA history. They did it in five games while, simultaneously, making our route to the Finals that much easier.

Denver later lost to Utah in the next round, their joy ultimately short-lived. In our next round series, we played Phoenix. In that one, my teammate Carl Herrera went down with an injury, dislocating his shoulder, which meant I had to step up and play much bigger minutes. Carl was a talented power forward. He was 6’9″ and while his numbers were never huge, he knew how to do a lot of things well that helped a team win. Strangely, we went down 0–2 to Charles Barkley and Phoenix, losing the second game in overtime. But we won the next three, to take a 3–2 series lead. We lost to them in game six and then we won in game 7. To be thrown into a playoff series with only two regular-season games to get my legs and learn the offense is quite a challenge. Thankfully, Dream did so much for us that most of the guys didn’t have to worry too much on the offensive end.

Our plays pretty much involved throwing the ball to Dream and letting him go to work. He was too good and would score nearly every time if the opposing team didn’t double-team him. And if they did, we had shooters like veteran Kenny Smith, rookie Sam Cassell, bench leader Mario Elie, NBA icon Robert “Big Shot Bob” Horry, the fiery Vernon Maxwell and more who could shoot the long ball with the best of ’em. We also had Otis Thorpe, the big fella, who would roll to the rim for an easy dunk if he had the space. Even our backup point guard Scott Brooks could put it in the basket if need be.

Sam Cassell in particular was crucial for us that series. He was a tough guy from Baltimore. I remember before one game in the playoffs that season, he came on the bus in just his sweats. No suit. He was a rookie, but a cocky one. He had a pillowcase with all his gear in it. When he got on the bus, he said to the whole team, all of us dressed in some of our finest threads, “I don’t know where the fuck y’all going, but I’m going to play. I ain’t going to party.”

Sure enough we won that game, Sam hitting huge shot after huge shot. But even with all his work, it was Hakeem who carried us for the lion’s share of the series.

With Dream that dominant, all we had to do was make good decisions with the ball and where we cut without it, and he’d do the rest. Dream was so good that he didn’t need another all-star on the team to succeed. That season, he won the regular season MVP, Defensive Player of the Year and, later, in the Finals, he would win the coveted Finals MVP. That’s an impossibly good season. Maybe the best for a player ever.

Thankfully, I was able to come in and fit in and help where I was needed. The team leaned on me especially when Carl went down. I played well against Phoenix, and, against Utah in the Western Conference Finals, I banged bodies with Karl Malone, making him work hard for his shots. We beat the Jazz 4–1. When Dream hit the clinching shot against Utah, I ran to him from the bench and embraced the man of the hour.

I’d played with Moses Malone and other greats. But, to me, in that moment, Dream was the best big man ever to do it. Sports Illustrated quoted me after the game when I said, “All Dream’s energy was gone, but he knew we needed him to take that shot. And when he made it, I came out to get him, because I knew it had come straight from his heart.”

When we got to the NBA Finals, Carl came back from his injury and I was more than happy, for the sake of team chemistry, to let him take back his role in the rotation. When he came back, he told me, “I’m worried about my job.” I said, “You don’t have to worry, Carl. I want to win this ring.” I didn’t play much in the Finals against our opponents, the New York Knicks, but I knew I helped the team get there in important ways. In fact, Dream said as much. In a press conference, he told reporters that the team benefited from my presence big time. He gave me a lot of props, which felt incredible to be seen in that way. I was proud, knowing I did all I could to help the Rockets, bringing championship experience and a willingness to contribute. Heck, going into the Finals, I was the only one on the team with a ring.

In the Finals, my old friend Doug Collins announced the series. It’s funny how life can come that way. Doug, who let me go in Chicago, was now out of a job, himself, and here he was talking about me in the Finals, talking about how I was one of the oldest players in the league, still doing it. I couldn’t help but smile at that one. But beyond anything with basketball that series, one of the biggest things people remember is the infamous white Ford Bronco.

During the fifth game in the Finals, on June 17, famed football star OJ Simpson fled down a southern California highway in that white Ford Bronco, making international news. As much as we didn’t want it to affect us for the rest of the series, it was a distraction. Nobody knew what was happening. We lost that game and in the locker-room, we tried to figure out what everyone was buzzing about in the stands. As it turned out, there’d been two murders and Simpson was a suspect. Today, everyone knows now how that all played out.

To that point, Hakeem had enjoyed a long career in the NBA, drafted in the same year as Michael Jordan. He was picked first overall in 1984. He finished his career a 12-time all-star, averaging well over 20 points in his first 13 seasons. But he’d never made it over the hump in the Finals.

After getting out of the Western Conference, we met the Knicks. They even went up 3–2 in the series against us. And all the while I was writing a column for the Houston newspaper called “Earl’s Pearls,” rattling off my thoughts. When the series started, we won the first game 85–78. New York won the second 91–83. We won the third 93–89. Then New York won the next two 91–82 and 91–84. But we won game six by two points, 86–84. In that one, New York’s John Starks, one of his team’s best players and a former grocery bagger, had one of his best games, scoring 27 points on 9 of 18 shooting.

Spike Lee, the Knicks’ legendary fan and movie director, yelled at us the entire series from the sidelines. I’d met Spike years before, introduced to him by the great Knick, Bernard King. We’d met at a restaurant in New York, Jazzabell’s Soul Food. At the time he was an up-and-comer. Now, in ’94, he was a film giant. But he couldn’t do much for the Knicks, except shout from the sidelines behind his big-rimmed glasses. Spike had recognized me during the series, yelling, “Earl the Twirl!” Dr. J was around those Finals too, doing some television. I made sure to say hello to him. It turned out, for one broadcast, he’d forgotten his dress shoes. Knowing we wore the same size, 15, he asked if I had an extra pair. I obliged.

Back to the Finals: in the series-deciding Game 7, everything was close, but then, just one game removed from his highlight game six heroics, Starks, the former CBA player, the star shooting guard for the team, had maybe his worst game ever, going just 2 for 18 and 0 for 11 from three-point range. He just kept shooting and missing. I felt bad for him, but his failure was, in the end, our triumph. We took the deciding game, 90–84, in Houston, in front of our 16,611 fans. When the final buzzer sounded, I looked for Judith.

Dream, who I’d backed up in the playoffs for about 10 minutes per game, had outdueled the Knicks’ star, center Patrick Ewing. Due to his play, we’d won. I’d won my second ring. The first ring came in a sweep, now the second had come in seven hard-fought games. Rollercoasters.

In our celebration, the champagne flowed like water. It was special for me because I knew I’d contributed to a Finals win at a time when I could have easily been out of the league. I hadn’t just sat my butt on the bench. I was helpful, especially against Phoenix and Utah, with Carl out.

You need players like me to win big. It may not have worked out with the Clippers, Bulls or Hornets, but all those teams weren’t ready to win, anyway.

With Philly, I was a necessary piece. In Detroit, I helped the team figure out their identity. Now, in Houston, I was the final piece to a championship-winning puzzle. I’d even gotten a call from Magic during the Finals to head out on his touring team but I’d had to decline. History awaited. And for Dream to later say he doesn’t know what the team would have done without me made it that much sweeter.

For all those who doubted me, how about that one? Now I had the distinction of being a two-time NBA champion, with rings earned nearly a dozen years apart. Now, I was 36 years old and feeling like a kid again.

When we got our rings, they read, “Clutch City.” That’s right.”

https://www.jakeuitti.com

Mark Termini: Words to Negotiate By

Excerpted from the new book Words to Negotiate By (Copyright © MTA Publishing, 2023). Words to Negotiate By is the first publication from multibillion-dollar sports attorney and agent Mark Termini. Over the course of his career, Mark Termini has …

Words to Negotiate By is the first publication from multibillion-dollar sports attorney and agent Mark Termini. Over the course of his career, Mark Termini has negotiated more than $2 billion in professional sports contracts. From Ron Harper, Jim Jackson, Rod Strickland, Kevin Edwards, Earl Boykins, Calvin Booth, Damon Jones, and Kosta Koufos to Eric Bledsoe, Tristan Thompson, LeBron James, Ben Simmons, J.R. Smith, John Wall, and Draymond Green, Mark Termini has personally devised and negotiated some of the most impactful contracts (and holdouts) in NBA history.

You can find more information about Words to Negotiate By at marktermini.com and on Amazon, where individual copies are available for purchase.

Preferred pricing is available for volume orders of Words to Negotiate By. To place a volume order, please call (440) 717-1517 or email wtnb@mta-books.com.

Pages: 1234567891011

Game Changer: An insider’s story of the Sonics’ resurgence, the Trail Blazers’ turnaround…

Excerpted from Game Changer An Insider’s Story of the Sonics’ Resurgence, the Trail Blazers’ Turnaround, and the Deal that Saved the Seahawks, published on October 10, 2023 by Flash Point. Though I don’t believe that Dunleavy had “the toughest job …

Excerpted from Game Changer An Insider’s Story of the Sonics’ Resurgence, the Trail Blazers’ Turnaround, and the Deal that Saved the Seahawks, published on October 10, 2023 by Flash Point.

Though I don’t believe that Dunleavy had “the toughest job in the NBA,” I will concede that he had some hot heads on his team, and hot heads are hard to coach. Rasheed Wallace, for example, set a league record in 1999-2000 by getting 38 technical fouls. The next year, he broke his own single-season record by getting 41 technicals in 80 games. Rasheed had a notoriously quick temper, and once you get a reputation for technical fouls, refs are quicker to call them.

I’ll never forget the time Rasheed got a technical for looking at NBA official Ron Garretson the wrong way – literally. Another time, he tossed the ball toward a ref after the official made a questionable call. Sheed claimed he was just giving the ball to the ref. Another official on the floor saw it differently, came running from the other end of the court, called Sheed for a “tech,” then ejected him for mouthing off about it. After the game, Rasheed spotted the ref who threw him out of the game, Tim Donaghy, and got in one more dig. The ensuing altercation made a bad situation worse for Rasheed. The NBA suspended him for seven games and fined him about $1.3 million. (Years later, Tim Donaghy served 15 months in prison time after pleading guilty to federal charges in a gambling scandal, admitting to taking thousands of dollars from a professional gambler for inside tips on games and other misdeeds.)

Rasheed’s wealth of technical fouls led to a rule change that virtually assures his record will never be broken. Since 2006, NBA players automatically get suspended for one game without pay after receiving 16 technical fouls. After that point, players receive the same suspension for each additional technical foul. Rasheed eased up later on in his career, but by the time he retired, he ranked third in NBA history with 317 technicals, behind Charles Barkley (329) and Karl Malone (332). Though it’s not a statistic players brag about, the list of the league’s 10 most prolific technical foulers includes some of the best ballers of all time: Gary Payton ranks fourth (250), Dennis Rodman fifth (212), Russell Westbrook sixth (173), Kevin Garnett seventh (172), Kobe Bryant eighth (166), Shaquille O’Neal ninth (150), and Jermaine O’Neal 10^th (146).

Technical fouls aren’t necessarily a bad thing. They can motivate individual players and ignite the whole team. The other team might make one free-throw, but that extra point often pales in comparison to the jolt of energy that fires up a team rallying around the teammate who got the technical. That said, there was no justification for Rasheed getting a “T” every other game.

There was a lot more to Rasheed than his hot temper. He was a smart guy and fiercely loyal to his teammates. Because he was one of our best players, the media always wanted to talk to him after games. But he didn’t want to talk to them. He didn’t like how they rarely asked him about basketball, and how they typecast him and most of his teammates as “Jail Blazers.” Over and over, the NBA fined him for refusing to talk to the media.

One time, I called him into my office and said, “Sheed, this is a lose-lose. You just got fined another $30,000. We just got fined $30,000, and the league is threatening to suspend you.” Then I offered him some advice. “Look, just because you’re being interviewed at a post-game press conference, you don’t have to answer every single question. You certainly don’t have to answer it the way they’re hoping you will. You can control the narrative. If they ask you a question you don’t like, you can say, ‘I don’t know about that, but I can tell you this …’ Or you can talk up how well one of your teammates played. You can just answer in a positive way.’”

He looked puzzled, and asked, “What do you mean?”

“Well,” I said, “they might say, ‘Hey, Rasheed, we heard one of your teammates was smoking dope last week’ right after we won a playoff game. And you can say, ‘Hey, I’d like to talk about the game. It was amazing. Both teams played hard. It was really well-fought.’”

So, he went into the press conference and answered every single question, 10 or 20 of them, the exact same way: “Hey, man. Both teams played hard.”

“Rasheed, what was that play designed in the last couple minutes?”

“Hey, man … both teams played hard.”

“Rasheed, what were you thinking when so- and- so blocked that shot?”

“Hey, my man, both teams played hard.”

It became national news. Rasheed got fined for it. And so did the Blazers.

To this day, every now and then, a professional athlete who’s dodging a question will wink and say, “Hey, my man, both teams played hard.”

Another Rasheed Wallace quote became the stuff of NBA legend. Every time an opponent he fouled missed a free throw, he’d shout “Ball don’t lie!” Depending on the referee, he might get a technical for that — or thrown out of the game entirely.

I loved Rasheed. His teammates did, too, though some grew tired of all the negative attention his tantrums generated.

Life in the G: Minor league basketball and the relentless pursuit of the NBA

Zeroing in on the G League’s Birmingham Squadron and four of its players – Jared Harper, Joe Young, Zylan Cheatham, and Malcolm Hill – during the historic 2021-22 season, Life in the G: Minor League Basketball and the Relentless Pursuit of the NBA …

Zeroing in on the G League’s Birmingham Squadron and four of its players – Jared Harper, Joe Young, Zylan Cheatham, and Malcolm Hill – during the historic 2021-22 season, Life in the G: Minor League Basketball and the Relentless Pursuit of the NBA details the relentless pursuit of the NBA dream. This excerpt focuses on the assignment of NBA players to the G League.

“You can’t play where you want to go if you’re not perceived as somebody who just plays hard as shit,” head coach Ryan Pannone said.

Once again, the Squadron had lost. And once again, Pannone found himself stressing the same message in the ensuing film session. An embarrassing clip played on the screen – after an ugly turnover, no one on the team had hustled back on defense.

“Look at the guys who have made it from here to the NBA,” Pannone continued. “Alex Caruso… I’m sure everybody saw the quote he had.”

Player-development coach Andrew Warren pulled it up on his phone and read it aloud. “The stuff I do is not always glamorous,” Caruso, the Chicago Bulls guard and former G Leaguer, had told reporters. “It’s stuff that wins basketball games. That’s what I love doing – winning.”

At 2-5, clearly Squadron players weren’t doing the winning stuff, like hustling back on defense after an ugly turnover. “It’s the little things that win games that truly fucking matter,” Pannone said. “You can go down the line of the guys who have made it.”

Pannone was right. If you performed such an exercise, you would find a lot of guys just like Caruso – gritty, tough, reliable, blue-collar players: Gary Payton II, Robert Covington, Danny Green, Fred VanVleet, Jonathon Simmons.

Before film ended and practice began, Pannone announced that the Pelicans would be assigning three players for the team’s next game (also against the Mexico City Capitanes): third-year center Jaxson Hayes, rookie forward Trey Murphy III, and undrafted two-way guard Jose Alvarado. “This is the G League,” Pannone said. In other words, this is what you should expect. “I understand how that impacts some of you individually.” Rotations would change. Minutes would decrease for certain players. Hayes and Murphy would be inserted into the starting lineup, replacing Malcolm Hill and James Banks. Alvarado would get extended run off the bench, cutting into Joe Young’s playing time.

Some frustration was to be expected in these situations. Assignments often brought tension to G League locker rooms—even more so in the D-League days, when there were fewer one-to-one affiliations and teams were shared among multiple NBA franchises. Back then, D-League coaches had to earn the trust of various NBA front offices.

“As a D-League team, you had to develop relationships—you may have had two or three NBA teams that worked with you,” said Jay Humphries, who coached the Reno Bighorns from 2008 to 2010. “But you had to develop a relationship with the management of the NBA team to make them comfortable. And typically during that time, when a player was brought down to your team, he would play a majority of the minutes, plays were going to be really focused on him and [based on] the conversations that you’ve had with the coaches, management, general manager of the team that’s sending him down about working on the things that he needs to get back.”

Even as the D-League evolved into the G League, the expectation remained that assignment players, or two-way players, would receive ample opportunity to shine, regardless of how that impacted others on the roster. It created a strange dynamic. An awkward dynamic. “I had a really positive experience in Sioux Falls. To be honest with you, I think part of that was the fact that I was on a two-way,” Miami Heat guard Duncan Robinson, who played thirty-three games with the Sioux Falls Skyforce in 2018–19, said. “I think it’s a little bit different. Not that I got preferential treatment, but I was kind of in and out, especially toward the second half of the year, and when I was in Sioux Falls and playing with the team, I was featured a lot on offense, plays were run for me, and all that sort of stuff. I’m very aware that I was in a privileged position relative to some of my peers out there.”

In some cases, assignment players did receive forms of preferential treatment, even when it wasn’t requested. “I remember on normal planes, as an NBA player, I would get first class, but the other guys, they would be in eco,” said former Houston Rockets center Clint Capela, who was assigned to the Rio Grande Valley Vipers during the 2014–15 season. “Sometimes I felt kind of weird. For some players in the U.S., when they’re like top players or whatever, it’s normal for them to have special favors. But for me, where I’m from in Europe, usually if we’re on the same team, everybody is treated equally. I felt kind of weird to be the only one in first class, the only one with my own [hotel] room, and I remember my per diem was more than everybody else’s too.”

Capela tried to support his teammates however he could, paying for dinners and passing on insights about the NBA. His mindset on the court, though, was to dominate everyone. “I felt that I had a duty to prove myself, to prove that I deserve to have that kind of sticker on my back that I’m an NBA player, even though I was younger,” he said. “I always went hard at practice, made sure to dominate every single time, and to also let the Houston Rockets know that every time I go out there and play, they have to pay attention also. I also felt that I had that duty to be dominant all the time.”

That was a mentality shared by most assignment players. Coming from the NBA, those players were supposed to be better than everybody else. “I do think that when you’re sent down from your NBA team, that is the attitude that you have to have in order to not stay there,” Humphries said. “I don’t belong here with these guys.” Of course, if it leaned more toward cocky than confident and inspired a selfish approach on the floor, that attitude had the potential to spark conflict. Squeaky Johnson even recalled one player who was sent down to the Austin Toros getting into an argument with a coach and shouting, “I make more money than you!” Which, to be fair, was definitely true.

Mix some or all of these aspects together – the mindset of assignment players, the minutes they took from everyday G Leaguers, the preferential treatment they sometimes received – and the results could be… interesting. Or, as longtime G Leaguer Scotty Hopson put it with a laugh, “That’s a recipe for a disaster.” Hopson had experienced both sides of the arrangement; he had been the G Leaguer whose minutes were reduced due to the transfer of an assignment player, and the assignment player who took minutes from a G Leaguer.

“Now when I see somebody not handling it the way I would, I go say something,” Hopson explained, referencing the situation from the perspective of a G Leaguer, “because I’ve been there before and I don’t want them to suffer from a lack of humility, you know what I mean? Because it’s not that deep – it’s not about you right now. I would hate to see somebody fail from that as opposed to their performance.”

Excerpted from Life in the G: Minor League Basketball and the Relentless Pursuit of the NBA, published on October 1, 2023, by University of Nebraska Press.