“Got it.”
“Also, you can fire me at any time. However, even if you do, I’ll still get my percentage of any deal I’ve arranged.”
“That’s fair.”
“Again, I’ll be responsible for doing your taxes. These are extremely complicated because you have to pay state and sometimes city taxes on the per diem breakdown of the money you proportionally earn on road games.”
“Wow. That’s crazy.”
“Uncle Sam loves the NBA.”
I casually opened the envelope and extracted the contract. When I did, a thousand-dollar bill fluttered to the floor.
“That’s just to show my appreciation for your interest and your time. And it doesn’t count toward the fifteen thousand that you’ll get once you sign the contract.”
“Wow. Thanks.”
The envelope also contained another official-looking form. “It’s what the NBA requires when you declare draft eligibility.”
“Okay.”
“When the time comes, Elliot, we’ll discuss whether or not you should attend the predraft camp in Chicago, and also the advisability of you working out for any team that wants you to. But that’ll be later, after the season is over.” Then he stood up, saying, “Speaking of which, the better you play the more money you’ll get. So . . . read the contract. No, study the contract. Both documents are dated May twentieth. Your final exams should be over by then.”
“That’s right.”
“If you have any questions, I’ll be in my room next door for another hour or so. Big-time party tonight. And you can call me whenever. . . . So, any questions?”
“Yeah. Do you have any idea when LeVonn Mitchell might be drafted?”
“Probably sixth, seventh, around there. I mean, he’s talented, but very raw. He’s definitely a project.”
“How about Marwane Wright?”
“With that pin in his ankle? Maybe somebody will take a flier on him in the middle of the second round.”
“One more . . . Paul Granderson, our point guard.”
“Very low in the second round, if at all. I’d say the best he can do is get maybe fifty thousand playing in Germany or Belgium. Someplace like that.”
We shook hands.
“Okay, E. Take your time with the contract. There’s no rush.”
Of course, the minute he left, I scoured the thing and it all looked consistent with what he had said. So I signed it.
FUCK ME! Now there was no way I could continue to fool myself. Or blame somebody else. . . . I was not a virgin anymore.
Then I opened my connecting door, and knocked on his.
He had a big squinting grin that nearly hid his eyes.
“I’ve signed them both,” I said as I handed him the envelope.
“Somehow I knew you would,” he said. Then he handed me a bulging manila envelope.
“Got to hurry,” he said. “Looking forward to us having a mutually beneficial relationship.”
The envelope contained one hundred and fifty $100 bills.
Chapter Fourteen
My confidence was sky-high and I was ballin’ like never before. Rare missed shots were due to external forces—maybe there was a draft in the arena, or the rim was slightly vibrating because the fans were stomping their feet, or my elbow was brushed by a defender. I experienced the same disbelief whenever one of my passes went awry—the potential receiver zigged when he should have zagged, or he had bad hands, or he blinked at the wrong time. My mis-dribblings were caused by a lopsided ball.
For the rest of the regular season, I averaged 30.1 points, 9.3 assists, and shot 57 percent, including 45 percent from downtown.
LeVonn was also killin’.
Which is why, including ref-aided road losses to Utah State and Rice, we entered the conference playoffs with a gaudy record of 27–5 and the top seed. Plus, we were back up to number 4 in the national rankings.
The playoffs were held in Dallas, and it was assumed that we would cruise through the next three games and enter the Big Dance as the number-one seed in the Southwest. Then, if form held true, it would be us, Duke, Kentucky, and North Carolina in the Final Four.
And my sterling play would move me up to the top five on the NBA draft board.
Then disaster hit late in the opening game against the worst team in the conference playoffs, the eighth-seeded Tulsa Hurricanes.
How could I ever forget the particulars?
We were up by 26 points with 4:36 left in the game, and CW still had all the starters on the floor. LeVonn set a sturdy screen for me a few steps from the three-point line in just about the middle of the court. At first, everything went according to plan. As soon as I emerged on the nether side of his screen, LeVonn rolled quickly to the hoop. I made one quick lateral dribble to get an optimal passing angle, then targeted a hard pass at his right hip, where he could make an easy catch-and-dunk without having to put the ball on the floor.
But just as I released the ball, LeVonn stumbled. The game tape didn’t reveal whether he had tripped over a defender’s foot or even his own feet. Neither was it clear if he had been slightly bumped. And he couldn’t remember exactly what had happened to throw him off stride.
No matter, he was leaning too far forward, and on the verge of falling, when he reached behind him in a desperate attempt to catch the pass. With his right arm extended and his fingers splayed, the hot pass hit his thumb instead of where his hip was supposed to be.
Crack! Snap! And pop!
His season was over. Although I scored 36 the next day in the conference quarterfinals, we were bombed 91–79.
Coach Woody was furious after the accident, but he didn’t know whom to blame. Me? LeVonn? Basketball Jones?
He just thrashed around in the postgame locker room indiscriminately spewing curses at the walls, the ceiling, an unfortunate garbage can that he kicked across the room, and at us, individually and as a team.
In truth, he should have cursed himself for needlessly keeping the starters on the floor in what should have been garbage time for the subs.
We were now the eighth seed in the Southwest regional, and we had three days to prepare to face Texas A&M, our first partner in the Dance. During those ensuing practice sessions, CW sat quietly on the sideline while Coach Lee put in a few more plays for me, and adjusted our defense to hopefully have a chance to beat the high-flying Aggies.
This was a doomed undertaking for several reasons. The Aggies were known to play a box-and-one zone defense against opponents’ high-scorers. And also because LeVonn’s replacement was DeShawn Jackson, a muscular, lily-white, six-eleven sophomore from a corn farm in Kansas.
DeShawn was a really nice kid, who could rebound, set monstrous screens, and execute rim-rattling dunks. However, his shooting range was limited to the shadow of the basket, and his hands were so bad that he’d fumble any pass that wasn’t above his tits.
His nickname was “Clang,” for his iron hands.
Why was he LeVonn’s only backup?
Only because another supertalented, seven-foot freshman recruit from Detroit was shot in the hip in some kind of gang-related skirmish in late August.
So the Aggies covered me like a blanket, and I could only get off 12 shots—making 5 and scoring 13 points. Paul picked up some of the slack—scoring 21—but we were clobbered 87–63.
CW never came into the postgame/postseason locker room, but Coach Lee gave us the routine good-season-good-effort-nothing-to-be-ashamed-of spiel.
And that was that.
***
I continued attending both of my lit classes, but didn’t take the final exams. And I went on a six-week fuckathon. BMOC that I was, I was at the campus rathskeller every night and had my pick of beautiful girls, who were eager to spend the night in my room.
On May 25, Collison leaked the news of my draft elig
ibility and my signing with him to represent me. Once the news was on the wire—even ESPN-TV announced the move—media hounds began trying to reach me. All three of the Tucson TV networks sent crews to the campus, but I packed all my stuff and, registering as O. Leo Leahy, I checked in to a cheapo motel a few miles away.
I ordered all of my meals to be delivered, spoke to nobody, said good-bye to nobody, and didn’t even call my parents.
After a few days of anonymous seclusion, I bought a five-year-old Subaru Forester that had 57,000 miles of road experience, from a dealer across the street from the motel. The salesman was a big hoops fan and instantly recognized me. In return for agreeing to pose for a photo with him, and for promising to give him some free tickets to see whatever team drafted me to play the Suns in Phoenix, he sold me the car for $10,000 in cash. Which, he swore, was about $5,000 under the Blue Book value and would reduce his own commission to $500.
I also forked over another two grand to cover my insurance and the bribe he’d pay to a buddy in the local Department of Motor Vehicles to get me a quickie license. He even took what turned out to be my official head shot.
Everything would be ready to go in forty-eight hours, and he swore that my whereabouts would be kept secret.
Three days later, I was on the long road back to New York. All the while dreading having to face my father.
Chapter Fifteen
Ihadn’t told my parents that I was coming home, so when I pulled into the driveway, my mother pushed open the front door and was understandably alarmed.
Wiping her hands on her apron, her gray hair shorter than I remembered, her face more lined, her faded blue eyes more watery . . . She looked to be ten years older since I last saw her just five months before. I guess the older you get, the faster you get old.
“Who are you?” she shouted in a shrill voice I had never heard from her before. “What do you want?”
It’s a wonder she didn’t have a rolling pin or a cleaver in her hand.
But when I extricated myself from the car, she melted. “Elliot! It’s you!”
Rushing forward, she gripped me in a mother-bear hug and slathered my face with kisses. “Oh, what a surprise! It’s you!”
Then she pulled herself away.
“For the last week, there’s been TV cameras and reporters ringing the doorbell, clustering on the lawn, ruining my rose bed, and asking about where are you. Elliot, you can tell me the truth. I’m your mother and I love you no matter whatever you did.”
“It’s nothing, Mama. Just that I made a decision to quit school and become a professional basketball player.”
With her hand on my elbow, she led me into the house.
“I don’t understand, Elliot. You quit school? And they said you were going to get drafted? Into some part of the army called the MBA? Your father, he wouldn’t explain to me what happened, and those reporters, they all talk so fast.”
“Don’t worry, Ma. It’s all good. I’ll explain it all to both of you.”
He was waiting for us as we entered the living room.
“Well, well,” he sneered. “If it isn’t the prodigal son returning with the posse at his heels.”
My mother scurried off into the kitchen “to make some tea that will calm everybody down.”
He plopped into his favorite chair and I sat down at the near end of the couch.
“So,” he said. “You’re abandoning a life of the mind to run around in shorts, playing silly games in the company of schvarztes. And in public?”
“You don’t understand. It’s—”
“No, no. It’s you who doesn’t understand. There’s no excuse for quitting school. None.”
My mother returned, placing a large silver tray containing a teapot, three cups, small saucers and spoons, as well as sugar and cream, plus three neatly folded linen napkins on the long, mahogany coffee table that was within easy reach of him and me. But neither my father nor I reached out, to the tea or to each other.
Then she sat down beside me on the couch, smiled tightly, and rested a hand lightly on my knee.
“It’s a great opportunity,” I said. “I’ll be competing with the best athletes in the world and getting paid more than a million dollars a year.”
“Ha. Thirty pieces of silver or a million dollars. The situation is the same. Betraying something transcendent for something dross. Turning your back on all the beauty and wisdom that civilization has produced.”
“Can’t we talk this out? Have a rational conversation?”
“There’s nothing to talk about. One can’t have a rational conversation with someone who’s totally irrational. You’ve always been a mindless boob.”
“Jonathan! You—”
“Silence from you, Sarah!”
“This is ridiculous,” I said.
“To badly paraphrase Alexander Pope, all is ridiculous to the ridiculous eye.”
“You’re impossible to deal with,” I said with all the calm dignity I could muster. “You oversimplify everything to suit what you believe. What you want to believe. You’re trapped, imprisoned, in your ivory tower. Being a teacher is the perfect job for you. It lets you pontificate to a captive audience who copy down everything you say, then regurgitate it all back to you on exams.”
“You’re only proving my point. It’s your arrogance and egotism that have prevented you from learning and appreciating ideas and principles that are beyond your own limited understanding. The world of the knower and those who aspire to knowledge is a sacred one.”
“Maybe so, but there are other worlds out there, Father. Worlds just as real as the one you live in. I want to live in my world, not yours. Or at least find a world that—”
“Stuff and nonsense. You don’t know what’s real and what’s just a glittering counterfeit of reality. You don’t know what the truth really is.”
“Just because you don’t understand something, doesn’t mean—”
“Oh, I understand more than you think I do. I understand that you’re a mental and moral weakling.”
“Jonathan, don’t—”
“Be quiet,” he said. “This doesn’t concern you.”
“What happens to my son, my only child, doesn’t concern me? Jonathan, what are you saying?”
He leaned forward and slammed his hand on the edge of the table. “Sha!” he shouted. For a moment, the only other sound was the rattling of the cups, saucers, and spoons. And we watched dumbly as the cream spilled onto the tray.
Then I stood up and said this: “You’re nothing but a bully, and that’s what you’ve always been. You can bully her and bully your students, but I won’t let you bully me anymore.”
He, too, climbed to his feet. “So, this is what we’ve come to, eh? The foolish boy has grown to be a foolish man-child… So, go, Elliot. Be on your way. Go find your foolish world. Go. I hereby disown you. You are no longer my son. And I never want to see hide nor hair of you forever more.”
With that, he stalked into his office. Before he could slam the door shut, she followed him in.
While she loudly cried and pleaded, I took a large black garbage bag from beneath the kitchen sink, went up to what used to be my room, and stuffed all my clothes, shoes, and sneakers into the bag.
Then I left, once again without saying good-bye.
Chapter Sixteen
Imoved into a small residential hotel on Twenty-Third Street near Park Avenue, paying $2,000 in advance for two months. Long enough for the NBA draft to be concluded and the big bucks to start arriving after I signed a contract with whichever team picked me.
Collison signed off on this, and even sent me the $2k to cover the rent. Adding that this amount would be deducted above and beyond his fifteen percent cut. Which was fine with me.
He also hipped me to the best runs in the city.
At St. John’s in Queens where
onetime Redmen who were current and recent NBAers scrimmaged on Monday and Wednesday evenings. Chris Mullin, Billy Paultz, Mark Jackson, Walter Berry, George Johnson, Felipe Lopez, Kevin Williams, and Ron Artest. It surely was a highly competitive run, but the problem was that, because I hadn’t played for St. John’s, I was seldom given a chance to participate.
When I was finally allowed to play, Mullin and Williams ate my lunch. That’s why I only went there once.
I also played at a night center in a slum section of the Bronx that was run by Floyd Layne, a great player at CCNY who, along with several teammates, had been in league with gamblers to shave points in the late 1940s and early 1950s.
Here the players were ex-college stars, a few Globetrotters, and some Rucker League standouts. Most of them had nicknames so I never knew their specific backgrounds. Junior, Durango, Coast-to-Coast, Helicopter, All-World, The Surgeon, the Duke of Dunks, the Jet, the Candy Man . . .
They all could hoop to the max, but there were problems here too.
The runs didn’t begin until midnight on Mondays through Thursdays, and because I was warned not to park my car in the streets, I had to take two subways and a bus to get there—which often took as much as ninety minutes each way. Indeed, the streets were littered with wheelless cars, and cars with broken windows.
I should add that the cars driven by the other players could be safely double-parked, ignored by any cruising cops and local thieves.
Despite playing so late on school nights, the bleachers were filled with shouting, yelping kids—all of them black. In fact, I was the only white person in the gym. So every time I missed a shot or was abused on defense, the jury jeered with delight.
I went there twice before I found another one of Collison’s suggestions that was much more satisfactory.
Trouthe, Lies, and Basketball Page 8