Trouthe, Lies, and Basketball

by Charley Rosen

“Because you not being cooperative would make you a marked man and would probably discourage any other team from picking you up after you’re waived. I don’t think the extra two hundred forty thousand is worth getting a bad rap.”

  “Okay. You know more about it than I do.”

  Whatever happened, I’d have loads of money anyway.

  “I managed to get another twenty-five thousand. Once I sign the receipt for their check, they’ll waive you.”

  “And then?”

  “The team with the worst record this season—that’ll be Philadelphia—has the first crack at claiming you. Then the next-worst team, and so on. However, if a team does claim you within forty-eight hours, then they have to reimburse the Thunder for the buyout money, and pay you the remainder of your contract. That almost certainly won’t happen, because after the forty-eight hours, a team can sign you as a free agent and pay you the minimum. Which is about four fifty and which wouldn’t be guaranteed. Oh, and you’ll have to return the car, probably to a dealer somewhere near you.”

  After writing most of her introduction, she confessed that she needed another article (I told you so!), so I went by myself to the Forty-Second Street Library to copy it.

  When she resumed subbing, I went to the gym and, maybe once a week, joined runs at Kingsborough.

  But I played like shit because I was no longer in tip-top game shape, and my chops were way down.

  Plus . . . Fuck them. If they want the car, let them come and get it. If they can find me.

  “Bad news, Elliot. Nobody claimed you. That gives us two choices. I could probably get you maybe thirty thousand to play on somebody’s summer league team. Or maybe try to get a bite from a team in Europe, or South America, or the Philippines, or somewhere.”

  “No summer league.”

  “Okay. I’ll keep you posted.”

  Pissed, frustrated, but also glad to be done with the NBA’s lies and bullshit, I busied myself keeping track of and writing out her very complicated footnotes.

  “Here’s what’s available. Forty thousand plus housing and a car to play in Germany. The same deal to play in the Philippines. And thirty thousand with all the trimmings to play in Iceland.”

  “Iceland?”

  “Sorry, Elliot. That’s all there is.”

  “Let me think about it. I’ll get back to you.”

  Neither Monica nor I was crazy about these three options.

  In fact, I was devastated, broken. I never wanted to touch a basketball again. When I started to tear up while we were eating dinner, Monica came over and smothered me with a huge hug.

  “It’s okay, Elliot. It’s okay to be sad, to grieve, to mourn. I mean, it’s totally understandable. Don’t try to fight what you’re feeling. It’s real. Authentic. Truthful.”

  So I started to cry, sob, and slobber.

  “That’s good, Elliot. That’s the only way you can get past it and get on with your life. With our life.”

  “What life? Basketball has been my life. Until I met you.”

  “You, me . . . we have a chance to start a new life. We’re kind of free, you know? And when I get my degree, we’ll be totally free to go and live wherever, however we want. I mean, let’s count our blessings, right? We absolutely love each other, which is something rare and beautiful.”

  “Yeah. Yeah.”

  I wiped my eyes and blew my nose on the sleeve of an old Reagan H.S. T-shirt I was wearing.

  “Everything could easily be worse,” she said. “After all, it’s not like you don’t have lots of money. And, hey, maybe you can coach somewhere.”

  “Maybe.”

  And, of course, we wound up in bed exchanging vows of eternal love.

  Chapter Thirty

  Idid feel better, cleaner, to the point where I returned to the Kingsborough run with a burgeoning enthusiasm. And I played better than I had been playing since my return to New York.

  Afterward, I was approached by one of the players. A white guy with long, Beach Boy–blond hair, and bright blue eyes, he was also a sturdy six-six, a good shooter and rebounder, and played solid defense. I knew him only as Smitty, but I could tell by his footwork and his unselfishness that he’d once had some excellent coaching.

  “Hey, Elliot,” he said, extending his right fist to be bumped. “You played much better today.”

  “I guess so.”

  “I know this ain’t the NBA comp that you’re used to, so it must be hard to bring your A-game.”

  I just shrugged.

  “Anyway, could I ask you for a major favor?”

  “Ask away.”

  “My sister lives up in Kingston and she and her husband, Jimmy, have this twelve-year-old boy, Stevie, who’s got cerebral palsy. I mean, it breaks my heart.”

  “Wow. That’s fucked up. Sorry to hear it.”

  “Yeah. Thanks. Anyway, there’s this benefit event gonna be held up there this Saturday afternoon. It’s kind of a doubleheader. Because I started playing college ball when I was at Ulster County Community College—that’s right in the neighborhood—the people running the event asked me to come up there to play and to bring somebody with me. The deal is that the first game is the team that won Kingston’s recreation-league league championship. . . . They’ll be pretty good, because that’s a pretty good league. So they’ll play an All-Star team made up of me and a couple of my high school buddies from when I used to live there. Most of them are really out of shape, and they weren’t all that good back then anyway. I was hoping you could come and play.”

  “Sounds doable.”

  “Great. See, the winner of the first game gets to play a team made up from a semipro football team that plays out of Kingston, the Kingston Tigers, who are always pretty good.”

  “Okay. I’m in.”

  “All the money goes to a local fund that pays for wheelchairs and braces for the kids around there who have cerebral palsy. Oh, and Kingston’s about ninety miles north of here. . . . So, if it’s okay with you, we could meet here at, say, noon on Saturday? I’ll drive, of course.”

  On the ride upstate, Smitty engaged in a one-man talkathon. His father owned a Honda dealership in Kingston. His mother was a housewife. He had two brothers and one sister, four uncles, two aunts, six nephews . . . zzzzzzzzz.

  Finally he got around to asking me what a certain NBA player was like. And that one? And another one?

  “All nice guys.”

  What was it like playing in the NBA?

  “Hard. But I didn’t play much.”

  Oh, he forgot to tell me about his cousins . . .

  The stands at Kingston High School’s gym were filled with dozens of young CP victims, their relatives, and their friends. And they were somewhat downhearted when the All-Star ringers easily defeated their hometown favorites. My high school team could have beaten those guys.

  But the fans managed to cheer in garbled voices when I hit maybe ten or eleven straight 3-pointers from behind the short high school bonus-point arc.

  Everybody on hand was eagerly looking forward to the second game—us versus the rough-tough football players.

  Well, not really everybody.

  Between the games, the two referees—crew-cut bozos with slight paunches and stone-colored eyes—demanded a bonus for officiating the second game. The promoters were outraged. But they were also stumped. No refs meant no game, and an early and disappointing end to the children’s celebration. The promoters pleaded, but the refs were adamant.

  That’s when I came up with a great idea. What if we played the game without the greedy refs? I’ve always felt that refs were only a necessary evil anyway. If all the players were agreeable, we’d just call our own fouls.

  Everybody seconded the motion, and the subsequent contest turned out to be the most enjoyable basketball game I’ve ever played.

  The footb
all players were uniformly powerful, athletic, and eager for chest-to-chest combat, but the big men (tackles, defensive ends, centers, and guards) lacked the instinctive footwork necessary to work effectively beyond the line of scrimmage. We respected their part-time professional status, and they respected our superiority in performing the requisite dance steps.

  As the game unfolded, a wonderful camaraderie developed. Even though we all played hard, we played clean. And we talked to each other constantly, complimenting good plays on both sides and apologizing for any undue contact that fell short of being foul-worthy. There were no arguments and not a trace of ill will.

  As a result of my experience in the summer league and the Thunder’s training camp, it was easy to avoid the eager, lunging-lurching enthusiasms of the body-seeking football players. A simple crossover move created open shots whenever I wanted to shoot. Which wasn’t very often, since I mostly opted to generate shots for my teammates.

  On one drive hoopward I was bumped off stride and missed the ensuing layup. When my defender—a six-six, 260-pound tight end—offered to penalize himself for the illegal contact, I surprised myself by saying, “Nah, that’s all right. I should’ve made the shot anyway.”

  During the brief halftime intermission, the players mingled near the scorer’s table, identifying themselves and exchanging personal information—even though we knew we’d never see each other again when the game was over.

  “I’m from Bear country,” the tight end said, referring to the legendary University of Alabama football coach, Bear Bryant. “And you?”

  “New York.”

  “Well, you’re a damn good player. You should be a pro.”

  “Yeah. I should.”

  Meanwhile, the kids lined up for autographs in their wheelchairs or hobbling along on their crutches. And we remembered where we were, why we were there, and how fortunate we were to be able to run up and down the court. So we returned our full attention to the kids. The beautiful, tragic, cheerful, courageous children.

  “Hey, buddy,” we’d gently enquire, trying in vain to match the innocence of their joy and their forgetfulness. “What’s your favorite team? Who’s your favorite player?”

  Smitty introduced me to his sister and to Stevie, his nephew. The red-haired youngster said, “I n-n-n-know who y-y-y-y-y-ou are. Y-y-y-y-you w-w-wear n-n-numba ay-ay-ayteen w-w-w-with the Th-Thunda.”

  “Shhh,” I said. “Don’t tell anyone else. It’s a secret, okay?”

  Shaking his hand was like gently cradling a small, fragile bird.

  And, too soon, the game resumed.

  As before, the body contact was aggressive and intense, yet within acceptable limits. Each play, each move and countermove, was executed with a sense of joy that transcended any consideration of shots made and missed, of botched passes and mis-dribblings. We were all riding the crest of the same unexpectedly delightful experience.

  “Nice shot, man.”

  “How’d you get that pass through all that traffic?”

  The final buzzer came as a rude shock. Only then did we bother to look up at the scoreboard—and it didn’t matter who had won and who had lost.

  Instead of Us versus Them, instead of five against five, we were ten players playing one ball game.

  This was the game I had been seeking. THE GAME in all its purity and honesty.

  I felt like I had been baptized, cleansed of all my known and unknown sins. I had returned to innocence, forgiven of whatever lies I might have told, whatever lies that had benefited me or that I had been complicit in.

  And somewhere/someplace/somehow I became totally, absolutely, one-hundred-percent motivated to nurture and spread the hoop-time Trouthe I had finally found.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Ishould have kept my mouth shut, because she was working on her dissertation with her usual monomaniacal intensity.

  But I had just come back from a run at Kingsborough and, for the first time, I noticed how dark, gross, and dangerous her/our neighborhood was. Broken beer bottles littered the sidewalk. Overflowing garbage cans spilled rotten food onto the sidewalk, providing a feast for fearless armies of rats and feral cats. Clots of sullen teenagers, grouped according to skin color, lounged in alleyways.

  And the apartment, situated two pissy-stink flights above a pawnshop, had stains on the walls and ceilings, wallpaper hanging loose like strips of dead skin, and posses of cockroaches swarming the floors hunting for fugitive crumbs and pieces of dropped food.

  Why did she (we) live in such conditions? Especially since I was almost a millionaire?

  Which is why I said my piece at the worst possible time.

  “Monica. Let’s move. There’s no reason we have to live in a slum.”

  She finished typing a sentence before she looked up, clearly annoyed at being interrupted. “There’s nothing wrong with where I live.”

  I got the emphasis, but I kept going. “I’m worried about you walking alone at night. About how filthy and—”

  Her eyes tightened with sudden anger.

  “I’ve lived here for two years without—”

  “But, Monica, honey. Why can’t we live someplace that’s clean and sunny? Someplace that’s safe? Someplace where you don’t have to flick the lights on and off when you come into a room so the roaches will scatter? I’ve got the money to—”

  “Fuck your money! I don’t need my parents’ money and I don’t need yours. All I need is to finish this fucking dissertation.”

  “But, Monica . . .”

  “If you don’t like this place, then—”

  “Then what?”

  “Then whatever.”

  She waved me off and dropped her attention back to the keyboard.

  All right. If that’s the way she felt.

  So I quickly threw my meager belongings into my gym bag and left, not neglecting to slam the door behind me.

  What the fuck had just happened? Where had her sudden burst of anger come from?

  Was this just our first lovers’ quarrel? Her essay anxiety making her temporarily insane? Or was it the end? Were our mutual declarations of undying love just wishful thinking?

  My timing was certainly off, but I hadn’t said anything that didn’t need to be said.

  Right?

  So I drove out to Manhattan Beach, and checked into a decent motel—and stubbornly worked to maintain a fuming righteousness.

  I was manic for the next seven days. Hooping at Kingsborough every morning. Lifting at the Y every other day. Running countless miles on either Coney Island or Manhattan Beach every day. Doing a daily routine of a hundred sit-ups. Tearing through books whose subjects and titles I forgot the moment I read the last word. Eating too much take-out Chinese food. Staring blankly at old, instantly forgettable movies on TV.

  Even so, I sorely missed her. Her smile. Her intelligence . . . everything about her. Yes, I really, really did love her. It wasn’t just our glorious lovemaking, and I wasn’t merely in love with love.

  Right?

  Still, I could easily convince myself that, except for my stupid timing, I was a hundred percent right and she was a hundred percent wrong.

  At the same time, I must admit that experiencing the sweet, dark pain of being a virtually innocent martyr was appealing and even somewhat nourishing.

  I don’t know how often I dialed her number but clicked off before the first ring.

  Finally at nine o’clock, on the evening of the seventh day, I surrendered, calling and letting the phone ring, determined to speak to her, to hear her voice, to admit at least a modicum of blame. But she either wasn’t there or chose to ignore me and let her voice mail put me off. I tried again at eleven and then at midnight with the same result. Nobody fails to answer a midnight call.

  Where was she? Certainly not at home working on her dissertation. Maybe, probably, most
likely, positively spending the night in another man’s bed.

  Weeping, screaming curses, hitting my head with my fists, I now convinced myself that I’d never see her again. And that’s when I decided it had been all my fault.

  FUCK ME!!!!

  The next morning I almost broke several body parts dashing from the shower to answer my phone.

  It had to be her!!!

  “Hi . . . Elliot? It’s Carlton Lee. Remember me?”

  Um. Um. It took me a several seconds to come up with the proper responses. “Yeah, um, hi, Coach. Um. I’m sorry to hear about Coach Woody, you know?”

  “Yes, that was sudden and very tragic.”

  “And, um, congratulations on getting the job. The head coach.”

  “Yes, thanks. I only wish I could have gotten it in better circumstances.”

  “Yeah. Yeah.”

  Okay. So what the fuck did he want?

  “I saw several of your games, and it was crazy that you never got enough PT to even work up a sweat.”

  “Yeah. What can I say?”

  “I also saw that you got cut, but I didn’t read where anybody claimed you on waivers.”

  “Nope.”

  “So what are your plans, Elliot? Play overseas? Play in the D-League?”

  “Nope. Nothing like that. I’m thinking maybe of taking some classes and eventually getting my degree.”

  This was, pure and simple, a lie. Until the words were out of my mouth, I had never entertained such an outrageous option. I’d already had all the classroom education that I could stand. And what would I do with, say, a literature degree? Teach? No fucking way.

  “Well, then, Elliot, I think I have a proposition that just might appeal to you.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “Come back down to USA and be my top assistant.”

  “Really? Why me? I mean, I don’t know anything about coaching.”

  “No, but you’ve had some very unique and high-level experiences. Plus, you know the game, you’re a quick learner, you’re an excellent communicator, and you’re also a get-along type of guy. Plus you also still have that NBA glow.”