* * *
—
As the season wore on, we became a more cohesive unit on the floor and were able to put together a number of win streaks that made us feel as though we just might be able to do something special this year. Denver had never won a championship, nor had the team ever even been to the finals. I wasn’t foolish enough to think I was going to change that in one season, but it was clear that we were hooping at a nice level and I enjoyed that feeling. George Karl, the coach, was a man who knew basketball inside and out from an X’s and O’s perspective. While my relationship with him was not what you would call close, we had an understanding: we would help each other win because it was mutually beneficial for us to do so. Karl, I think, could see that I knew the game, could help keep guys on track mentally, and, if necessary, could be a leading or second-leading scorer. I could see that he knew how to scheme for teams and how to put us in the best position to win.
Karl was my sixth NBA coach, and I was beginning to understand something new about the breed. Many of them had egos just like many players did. I don’t know why this surprised me, but I suppose that on some level I, like everyone else, had bought into the inherent hierarchy of the league more than I realized. People like to think of coaches as somehow all-around more capable and better people than players. It is assumed that they know more about basketball, which is true. And it is assumed that they have increased life experience, which is also, in many cases, true. But underlying that are a set of unspoken assumptions about their actual worth as people. You hear about coaches having to “get their teams under control.” They are to be respected at all times no matter what they say or do. If you disparage a coach in the press, everyone talks about you as the locker room cancer. Rarely do you hear about a coach being a locker room cancer. But why is it more likely for a player to be a disruption than a coach with an oversize ego? In fact, can’t a coach do more damage because the structure allows him more power? Can’t a coach be wrong? Most people have to work much harder to see it that way. I got along perfectly fine with Coach Karl because our team played well and we needed something from each other. But I couldn’t help noticing that he was quick to take credit when things went well but slow to take blame when they didn’t.
Later, players began to speak out more honestly about their experiences with George Karl after he published a book with unflattering things to say about many of them, especially after he took a particularly nasty shot at Kenyon Martin for not growing up with a father in his life. It smacked of everything that was wrong with some coaches: narrow-mindedness, smugness, and a feeling of superiority. If you are a white man whose job is to boss black men around, this is not a great look for you. Karl’s legacy was particularly tarnished by what he said in that book, and I do feel that sometimes, in the end, people get what they deserve.
Just as my time in Denver was opening me up to new self-understanding, it was also opening me up to a deeper understanding of the business of basketball. Denver was a small-market team and the economics of that situation are entirely different from those of a team in New York or Los Angeles. Or even Philadelphia. The most obvious thing is that it’s entirely disadvantageous for a team like Denver to ever go over the salary cap. To enforce parity in the league, the NBA has determined that the collective salary of a team cannot go over a certain number. This is to prevent big-market teams, or teams with insanely rich owners, from simply buying up all the talent and winning every year. But there’s another level to it. A team is allowed to go over the cap, but if they do so, they must pay a penalty, called a luxury tax, that is redistributed to the rest of the teams. The problem is that a lot of teams are willing to pay that tax because, again, the barrier is still money. So it’s sort of like saying that if you’re rich, you can’t spend more money than the poor do, but if you want to spend more money, you just have to spend more money.
Bigger market teams can do this and still remain in the black because they have the fan base and broadcast deals to generate the revenue to cover it. But for a mid-market team like Denver, the luxury tax hits heavier. They weren’t even selling out playoff games. So if you’re the Nuggets franchise, it doesn’t make financial sense to break open the bank in order to win, even if you have wealthy ownership, which they did. In small markets, you can either put winning first or financial gain first, but rarely can you do both. What you hope happens is that you can catch lightning in a bottle by building through the draft and lucking out on a free agent or two. You hope to assemble a team of relatively low-salary players who somehow come together to make a dent.
I began to wonder if we had that. Denver had decided to bring me in on a contract year, which was smart on their part. Most players are a little more focused during a contract year. It’s only human, and normal—no different from how a student puts in extra hours when studying for a final. It’s exam time and grades are coming out. So even if you were already a good student, you’re going to go a little harder leading up to test week. Nonetheless, I made sure that I put in max effort all the time.
I was starting to have a pretty statistically solid year because of this, and by January 2013 we were beginning to put together some wins. I had thought that the chemistry might shift in a positive direction after Gallinari’s big game, and I was right. We had a nice home stand where we took six in a row in January, lost two, and then won another nine straight, including an overtime victory against Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook, and the Oklahoma City Thunder. Westbrook hit a twenty-seven-footer to tie that game and send it into overtime, but Andre Miller and the Manimal, Kenneth Faried, were balling big-time in the extra period, and we walked away with the win.
When we came back from the All-Star break, we were pumped. We picked up where we left off and ultimately went on a fifteen-game win streak in the last week of February and into March. My numbers were getting even better, as I had really found myself within the flow of Karl’s offense. There was a buzz around the league about us. Were we for real? We certainly thought so. We managed to lock down the number-three seed in the playoffs, and toward the end of that season we felt that we had peaked at the right time. We had been an entirely different team after All-Star break. We had gone 24-4 since coming back and we were en route to the single best season in franchise history. And as far as we were concerned, we were just getting started.
Then April 4, 2013, happened.
In the seventy-sixth game of an eighty-two-game season, a game that meant almost nothing, Danilo Gallinari tore his ACL in a freak play. I couldn’t believe it. None of us could. He was driving to the basket, the defender stepped out to make him change direction—no contact—and somehow Danilo just landed wrong on his left foot and went down. You could tell right away that it was serious. The mood in the locker room that game was like nothing I’ve ever experienced. We were a good team, we had overachieved and played our hearts out, and here, for no comprehensible reason, we had lost one of our most valuable players.
We faced Golden State in the first round. They were the number-six seed that year, a team that was still up-and-coming under Mark Jackson. They were not where they would ultimately be, of course, but they had Steph and Klay as a rapidly developing nucleus. And their coach knew it. That was the year Mark Jackson caught flak for saying, “In my opinion they’re the greatest shooting backcourt in the history of the game.” Reporters scoffed, fans laughed, and Jackson was roundly ridiculed. But as players, we took note of that. Jackson knew his NBA history, and that’s not something a guy like him just says without careful consideration. But more than that, it spoke to how much Mark stood behind his guys. The fact that he was willing to make such a bold statement, to potentially take such heat for his players—there were not a lot of other coaches I could think of who seemed that devoted to the men on their team.
We competed. We really did, but it was Steph Curry’s coming-out party. He was shooting at a very high level, and without Gallinari, we simply did not have the firepow
er to answer their scoring. It was like no matter what we did, they could do it better. We scored 108, they scored 110. We got 111, they got 115. Game 2 was an absolute shoot-out—we gave them 117 points and were balling on all cylinders. They scored 131 that night. And Steph and Klay went the whole game without shooting one free throw. We were outgunned. We lost that series 4–2. We never stood a chance.
That was the unfortunate end of something that could have been much bigger. We had won fifty-seven regular season games, the most for a Nuggets team since they joined the NBA in 1976. We may have been the best squad in the team’s fifty-one seasons, and that meant something to me. And I had put up some of the best playoff numbers of my whole career: 18 points per game, 8 rebounds, 5.3 assists, and 2 steals. But going into the off-season, which, for me, meant unrestricted free agency, I had to look at the situation. I was twenty-nine years old and about to start my tenth NBA season. And I hadn’t even sniffed an NBA Finals appearance. I liked playing in Denver, but I was not bullish on our prospects for the long term. I had learned to look at the bigger picture for the franchise. I knew everyone’s salary, and I knew that I had put up good numbers, and I felt, after having hung around there for a year, that I had a good sense of the team’s financial limitations. If they were to somehow re-sign me on a new contract, who else would they be able to bring in? Who else were they going to be able to keep? It was a good team, but where were we going to go from here? Especially in the West with the Spurs still dominating, Oklahoma looking strong despite having lost James Harden, and Golden State clearly on the come-up? Let’s not forget that in 2013, the Memphis Grizzlies, with Marc Gasol and Zach Randolph, were still factored heavily into every postseason conversation.
I was going to have to test the market to see what I could get elsewhere. There were teams that wanted me, I was sure of it, and there were teams I wanted.
I found myself, toward the end of that year, thinking more and more about that season opener against Philadelphia. I had noticed something about myself, about that game that night, but I hadn’t put my finger on exactly what it was. What had happened? I had been knocked off my game by something inside me. Was it because I wasn’t playing within the flow of the game? I was trying to win, to prove a point. The Philly fans, Doug Collins, the unfairness of it all had gotten in my head somehow. I thought back to my earlier lessons, the times I stepped on the court at a high school tournament, banging around with guys I was convinced were better than me. I remembered how I had tried to prove myself, how I had been unsure, and how that had made my game stagnant and slow. But I also remembered games where I had just hooped. The scrimmage at Arizona. The game me and Rich McBride played against the Illinois squad when we were in high school. I had experienced a kind of freedom in those games. A simplicity. I had just hooped.
There is a difference between playing basketball and hooping. Hooping is free and simple. The work that goes into it is complicated and intense, but in the actual moments of play, there is some kind of, I didn’t know the word for it yet, but there was something there. A lightness. An elevation. Steve Hess had shown me that this was possible. Wilson Chandler had shown me that there was a spirituality to be pursued in all aspects of my life. My last few years in Philadelphia had been, at times, a nightmare of self-consciousness and self-doubt. In Denver I had tiny little moments of awakening, but as a team we were not good enough to play deep into the postseason, which I felt I needed to do. I had a very strong sense that the next contract I signed was going to be my last contract. I already had ten years in this league, and even that achievement was against all odds. I was playing with house money at this point, and I didn’t want my next experience to be darkened by all the things I had learned could be unpleasant about the game. I wanted to win, sure, but I wanted more than that. I wanted to hoop. Once again, it was time to search elsewhere for what I needed.
07
Find the Flow
No one likes it when you say that unrestricted free agency is like the shackles being off, but that’s always the image that comes to mind for me. No team owns you anymore. In restricted free agency, you can still talk to other teams, but your team has the right of first refusal. They can retain you if they feel like it by simply matching the offer any other team makes to you. But in unrestricted free agency, you can go anywhere you want.
Every time I think of free agency I have to think about Curt Flood, the black baseball player and two-time All-Star who sacrificed his entire career so that players like me could have some say over where we played. At the time he played, Major League Baseball had what was called a reserve clause, which meant that a team that drafted a player owned him for his entire career, even after his contract had expired, and could therefore dictate trades at whim with no input from the player. Flood was traded from St. Louis to Philadelphia in 1963 but refused to go because he felt that (a) the team sucked, and (b) the fans were racist. He wrote a letter to the commissioner of baseball challenging the fact that he could be traded to whomever, whenever, even though he was no longer under contract.
“After twelve years in the major leagues, I do not feel I am a piece of property to be bought and sold irrespective of my wishes,” Flood said in a 1969 letter. “I believe that any system which produces that result violates my basic rights as a citizen and is inconsistent with the laws of the United States and of the several States.” He went on to suggest, shockingly, that he believed that he had a right to consider offers from other teams before making a decision, an idea that was nearly unheard of at the time.
Flood sued Major League Baseball, arguing that the reserve clause was essentially indentured servitude and violated antitrust laws, and the case went all the way to the Supreme Court in 1972. His side lost 5–3 (one justice had to recuse himself because he had an ownership stake in Anheuser-Busch, which owned the Cardinals), and Flood was essentially blackballed from the sport. His teammates said that he received four or five death threats a day from fans who accused him of trying to destroy the game. He played only thirteen more games in his career after refusing to report to Philadelphia, but his argument had made an impact. In 1975, MLB contract arbitrator Peter Seitz ruled that two pitchers who had played a year without a contract should actually be allowed to become free agents, essentially setting the precedent for nullification of the reserve clause and starting widespread free agency.
Because of Curt Flood and his sacrifices, it is now commonly accepted that players should have a say in their own place of employment. And I feel like that’s something none of us should ever forget.
The year my free agency hit, 2012, was a bizarre year in that regard. In any off-season you typically have the first-tier guys, the most sought after, whose decisions will impact the way the rest of the period shakes out. That year, Dwight Howard was the big name. So I really couldn’t make a decision until he did, because it would be a domino effect. Meanwhile, July 1 came, which was the official opening of the free-agency period, and I had back-to-back meetings scheduled at my agent’s office in LA with Dallas, New Orleans, Denver, Detroit, and Golden State that morning. My first meeting was with Sacramento, which made an offer in the first five minutes. They didn’t want to waste time and they didn’t want me meeting with anyone else. They made it abundantly clear that they wanted me badly. It felt nice, but they were asking me to commit to them five minutes after free agency started, which was simply not possible. “I appreciate your excitement,” I told them, “but I have to explore my options.” They reluctantly gave me until midnight that night to make the call, but that, too, didn’t sit well with me. I knew that with so many moving parts around the league, things could take much longer than that to reveal themselves. I told them thanks but no thanks. It was the biggest offer I’d had in free agency up until that point in my career, but I simply couldn’t commit to it without knowing what other situations were realistically on the table.
When the Warriors came in, they had Mark Jackson, General Manager Bob Myer
s, owner Joe Lacob and his son Kirk Lacob, and a few other suits. I didn’t think it was necessary to waste time with a lot of glad-handing and smoke blowing. This was my first-choice team, and there was no real advantage to playing coy about that. I wasn’t trying to get the most money; I was trying to land in the best situation for me as a player. “You guys don’t have to give me a whole spiel,” I said. “I already know what it is. Let’s see if we can figure out a way to get this done. If we can’t, I still respect you and the organization. But I’m interested in the culture, and I’m interested in playing for Coach Jackson, in the way he coaches the game.”
I had seen something really important in that series against Golden State. His players were playing with confidence, and that’s a lot rarer than you would think. I’ve had coaches in the past who would let every player go, and the result was a disaster. I’ve had others who would suffocate you, hang on your every play, and tell you that you were doing everything wrong with such regularity that you could no longer stay in the flow of the game when the ball was in your hands. But when I watched Coach Jackson, I could tell that he had the perfect balance. He would encourage players to find whatever was naturally occurring within their game and then he would let them loose to do it as much as they wanted. Which meant that, playing under him, everyone looked as good as they possibly could. He got guys paid. One of his favorite sayings was “If I don’t get you paid here, I’m going to get you paid somewhere.” On the one hand, it was about the money—I mean, who doesn’t want to hear that? But on the other hand, it was something deeper. There was a psychological benefit to a coach who saw you as an adult professional and who prioritized helping you along with your career above all else. It was respect. Respect as a human, respect as an adult, respect as a professional. Mark Jackson had that and it made you not only play better but feel better.
The Sixth Man Page 15