Shoot-around this morning is at 10:00 a.m. in the practice facility at the Marriott Hotel in downtown Oakland. I set my alarm for 7:50, planning to throw on some clothes and get to the facility at about 8:30. But I wake up and realize I’m far too tired to get up yet. I had a long day yesterday and didn’t stop until about 12:45 a.m. I was with my son. I brought him to practice with me. We worked out together, made pizza in the backyard, shot some hoops, played golf, tossed these beanbags around. It was wonderful and also exhausting. By the time I got into bed, I was beat, and sleep fell over me like death. So this morning, I reset my alarm for 8:25, thinking I’d get to the weight room a little late but still with plenty of time to get some work in. When I next wake up, I can tell that something is wrong by the amount of light in the room. It is 9:00 a.m. Damn. I literally never sleep in for anything. That should have been my first sign that it’s going to be one of those days.
I think about climbing out of bed, but it immediately feels like my whole body is made of cement. I stare at the ceiling and think about the fact that the human body was simply not meant to run up and down a court for eighty-two games. We have ways of making it work. Grit, science, training. Blood centrifuges. More science. But in the end, we’re simply asking our muscles, bones, and joints to do something they have no business doing. I can feel it in my knees—both of them are as creaky as a cellar door. My hips, especially on the left side, dully throb. My back feels like there’s about six pounds of gravel weighing down the base of my spine. And yet, it’s not over. This insanely long season is not yet over. There’s a game tonight. And another and another. Then we get to the playoffs. And that’s when it gets serious.
I lie there for a moment, doing a slow inventory of every ache and pain, scanning my body for points of fatigue and discomfort. I’m already late, but this is not time wasted. At this point in my career, fourteen years in, my body is an entirely new thing. I’m learning on this day, as I do every day, how to go about my job, where I can push, and where I have to be careful. I can already see that I need to take it extra easy in shoot-around. Every joint is screaming to be heard. If I don’t listen well enough, I won’t make it through the night. I can see that my left knee is going to have a mind of its own today. I can see that I’ll have to spend extra time icing it, and definitely get a nap in after practice.
In the car I’m listening to a book called Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by a historian named Yuval Noah Harari. It’s less a history of humans and more a history of thought, of consciousness, an exploration of how it came to be that humans developed complete societies with millions of members, when even the most social of animals have only a couple hundred members in their groups. He talks about shared imagined realities like money and religion. Things that we just decide are important even though, in the most absolute sense, they are nothing. Like an NBA championship. Like thirty thousand people in a room screaming while you chase a round, bouncing ball up and down a wooden floor.
Walking into the facility, I feel a thousand years old. I’ve done this literally over a thousand times. Every game day since the beginning of my career—I’ve lost track. The sky is overcast, as it often is on Oakland mornings. I am parked on the facility roof. I can see gray clouds blanketing the town like wool. I am walking gingerly. Each step is a compromise.
I am an hour later to the facility than I usually am. On pretty much every game-day morning other than this one, I try to get in by 8:30 for a 10:00 a.m. practice. This gives me a chance to work out properly before stepping onto the floor. This morning, however, I kind of have to rush it, which I hate doing. The older you get in this game, the more time you need to do things properly. There are young guys on our team who can stroll in at 9:30, polishing off potato chips, a couple of waffles, and a chocolate milk, then run up to the weights, lift like crazy for half an hour, jog out to the floor, and run a practice at damn near full speed. Those days are long gone for me. I’ve had to learn how to take what I need from each moment slowly but surely. At my stage of the game, each minute is a precious resource.
I get some fruit and water and head into the training room to get the kinks rolled out. The trainer works on my knees, back, and hips. I have one hip that rises higher than the other, and over the years my body has compensated by putting extra pressure on my opposite knee and ankle, creating still more problems. I lie there letting the trainer handle me, massaging the ligaments and tendons, relieving the stress, addressing the swelling. I’ve had tendonitis in both my knees since I was in high school. Most times I don’t even notice it. But today is different. Today I can feel every single bit of it.
I make my way into the weight room and lie down at the bench for my first sets. Before I start, I close my eyes. And breathe. I can feel every part of my body. My back against the cool fabric of the bench, my feet on the floor, chest rising and falling. I put my hands around the bar and let myself feel how cold it is, how the grooves are rough to the touch. I let my breathing slow down to near-death levels, and for a moment I’m not anywhere. I’m just here. I have to do this. Each rep has to be exactly right, clear and complete. I have to feel the weights, connect with them. I need to literally be present for each repetition, from beginning to end, feeling every muscle. I need to breathe correctly through each one of them, otherwise it’s wasted energy. And I don’t have energy to waste.
I finish, feeling just the tiniest bit more alive. I realize that I’m going to actually make it through this day.
At 10:00 a.m. exactly, the buzzer sounds, signaling that it’s time for practice to begin. It is always unbelievably loud, but today it feels louder than usual. We file in and take seats in the chairs at the end of the court. It takes a while to settle down. Nick Young and Draymond are joking about a whether Dray can make a one-handed shot from where we are sitting. He tries and it bounces off the front of the rim. Everyone reacts while Dray yells that he’s ready to go double or nothing. The coaches are setting up the screens for film study of our team for tonight, the Milwaukee Bucks.
Once the film session starts, the vibe changes. We’re focused and quiet, looking at how to defend against them. Our coaches have a plan. Four outs, deuce and kicks and building walls. Draymond is on “the Greek Freak,” Giannis Antetokounmpo, the six-foot-seven phenom who has been a staple of highlight reels all year. We’re breaking down how each player on the team works. Khris Middleton likes to come off the push dribble. Jabari Parker likes to do his work in iso. Their second unit runs a lot of wheel.
I don’t say a lot, but I’m taking it all in. Draymond, meanwhile, is like the A student of our defensive lessons. He’s focused, taking notes. When the coaches come up with a scheme, they don’t tell him; they ask him if he sees it the same way. This is one of my favorite parts of the job, that point when we’re all focused watching each moment. This is the part where we get to be students. I love it.
We break up and go into groups to run things over. There are ten baskets in the gym, making up four courts with two baskets on the far ends. The music starts, “Birthday Song” by 2 Chainz featuring Kanye, and it is suddenly organized chaos. Shaun Livingston is talking with an assistant, working on offensive drills. Draymond is doing post moves with an assistant. Steph, still recovering from an ACL injury, is recording an assistant coach shooting threes with his phone. Zaza Pachulia is practicing mid-range jumpers.
Klay and I are doing mid-range catch-and-shoots. He has a brace on the thumb of his shooting hand, but that’s not stopping him from knocking them down. I like shooting alongside him because he’s so smooth with it that it kind of infects me. Next we practice doing a few dribbles and then getting to a spot. It’s precision. Rock a little, dribble behind the back, two steps either left or right, step back, and shoot. Repetition. Precision. Next we do the same thing but with a fake crossover instead of a real one. Little shimmy, two steps right. Shoot. Next behind the back from just inside the three-point line. Next pure catch-and-shoots. “Green O
nions” by Booker T & the MG’s is playing. Now baseline jumpers. Now free throws. I’ve got a good sweat going.
Next we do what we call a five-one-oh drill, a kind of full-court game with just a few guys where we switch between playing offense and defense. A man guards you, then cuts, then you pass, then he runs the offensive set. I am going as slowly as I can until it’s time for me to cut, which I do at full speed. It’s the only thing I do at full speed. It’s not that I need to do the drills for myself—I know this stuff inside and out. It’s more that I need to do it to show the younger guys how to do it. We’ve got a young guy who always cuts at the wrong time. Just a second too early. So I make sure he sees me do it correctly. Every half second matters. You cut too soon and you jam up the lane. You cut too late and you don’t lose your defender in time. If football is a game of inches, basketball is a game of instants. Everything is a read, and your job is to keep a space. If somebody leaves a spot, that means it should be taken. It must run with perfection, like the whole thing is a Swiss watch. Gears fitting into gears fitting into gears. “Sweetest Girl” by Trae featuring Lil Wayne is playing.
Now I’m back for more free throws. I’ve got a good lather going now, a good sweat. For a second I can remember what it’s like to not be limited by the creaks, aches, and pains of a body that has crashed on hardwood for thirteen years straight. I know the feeling won’t last, but it’s good for now.
Practice is over, and as I leave the floor, I’m brought over to shake hands with a family. A father, mother, two kids—older boy, younger girl. I say hello, but have no idea who they are. So we exchange handshakes and first names. I head into the food room since I can’t chill in the medical room. I’m trying to watch golf, but one of the trainers has commandeered the training-room TV for opening-day baseball. I take a seat in the food room and watch Lucy Li, a fifteen-year-old golfer who is a wonder to behold. She was the youngest player to ever qualify for the LPGA tour, and she’s an actual dynamo. When I look at her, an underdog with a laser focus that has taken her to a level most players only dream of, I recognize something in her. Something that makes sense to me and motivates me.
Now, sitting down, the full weight of today’s practice is sitting with me. I can feel my knees all over again. I get them wrapped in huge ice packs, and soon I’ll be fully immersed in an ice bath. I’ve had tendonitis in my knees forever, but there are days like today when I can actually feel each tendon in my knee. I can see them in my mind’s eye, throbbing red and hot.
The trainer comes in and asks me if I know who the family was that I was just introduced to. I do not. It’s a family who lost their oldest in the Las Vegas shooting back in October 2017, when a gunman opened fire on a crowd attending a concert. Fifty-eight people died, and 851 people were injured, including a member of this family. In the silence after he leaves, I sit with that. My knees are throbbing, my left hip still hurts. And I feel incredibly fortunate to be here in this moment.
I leave the facility with that unique combination of exhaustion and euphoria that I get after a decent practice. The fog has lifted a little, and now from the rooftop parking lot I can make out Oakland’s cranes in the distance. I stop for a moment to take it all in. The city below me, car horns, someone laughing, and the sound of a truck backing up. I watch a pigeon take off across the sky by itself until I can’t see it anymore. This is one of those moments that feels like a blessing.
Now it’s time to eat. It seems like a little thing, but it’s maybe the most important decision I make during the day. This morning I weighed in at 217, which is two pounds under my ideal weight for the regular season. I do my best at 219, or maybe 220. Anything more than that and I start to feel it in my joints. Once I played at 227 and I was as strong as an ox, just plowing through people, finishing at the rim. It was like having a super power, but a short-lived one—227 was just impossible to sustain. When I’m below 219, it’s harder for me to defend. Guys can push me around on the block, back me up, move me out of the way for rebounds. It helps to be over 220 to guard LeBron, but there’s only one of him. I’ve been eating vegan for health reasons lately. But I can’t go full vegan because it’s impossible to stay at 219 that way. So I pick and choose my spots. Today I’ll eat meat.
The rest of the day is about shutting down before tonight’s game. I head back home to decompress. I’m watching The Office—season 5, episode 20 is where I left off. I usually have three or four shows I’m watching at any given time. Atlanta, The Chi, Billions, and The Big Bang Theory are in the rotation right now. I watch three episodes before I take a nap. I know that when I wake up, everything will be different. It will be game night.
* * *
—
I like to think of all my media, everything I intake, as being part of a project. Music-wise my project right now is Jay-Z. I’m listening to the entire canon all over again from the beginning. I’m on Reasonable Doubt tonight. I just let it play through on my way to games. Wherever it stops, I pick it back up on the next game day. Never in between. I work myself up. My time to the games is time to get my mind right, and music is the key. I’ll also listen to Kendrick Lamar, Nipsey Hussle, and a few others. But in the end it always comes back to Jay-Z and Kendrick. There is a clarity, a directness and completeness, in those artists that I can’t seem to find anywhere else.
I arrive at the arena at 5:15 p.m., walk into the entrance, past the metal detector, past the cameras that film us as we arrive. I have some friends with me, so I need to take some time to make sure their family passes are all set up. Security at Oracle gets more intense the closer we get to the end of the regular season. They are preparing for the playoffs and maybe even the conference finals, where reporters from all over the world descend on our hometown arena.
Once I’ve got my friends squared away with their badges, I’m off. They’re going to have to be on their own for the next three hours, because I can’t think about anything but this game. The routine is the same. A small meal. Stretching. Getting the kinks rolled out. Getting into my uniform and warm-ups. Press availability. Shoot-around. Five shots from seven different spots on the floor. Layups, pull-ups. Jumpers. You can’t move to the next spot if you miss the last one. The crowd is starting to fill in, but I don’t notice it. A DJ is playing party tunes, but I don’t notice it. The jumbotron is showing an episode of Dre Days, a show I’ve recently started doing with TNT. It’s the one where me and JaVale McGee go to Big K.R.I.T.’s studio in Atlanta and I lay down tracks for the hook. It’s one of my favorite episodes. But still I barely notice it, even though it’s me on the jumbotron. All I can think about is playing. All I can think about is winning.
We tip off at 7:37 exactly, and from early on, I can tell something is off about this game. Milwaukee opens up on a 10–2 run. We miss a bunch of shots. JaVale misses a dunk off an alley-oop. But KD gets a three, and JaVale blocks Giannis on the other end, and we finally get to a time-out. I come in at about the five-minute mark in the first, and we’ve been able to tighten it up to an 18–16 game. My first play in, I pick up a turnover and we score on a fast break. Next trip down the floor, KD is fouled by Giannis on a three, and there’s no call. It’s only the beginning.
More substitutions. Nick Young and Zaza Pachulia come in. JaVale and the rookie point guard Quinn Cook, who has been turning heads stepping in for the injured Steph, have a seat. I’m mostly just trying to keep my man in front of me, but then I get Giannis on a switch. He is able to get a shot off on a turnaround layup. Damn, he’s quick. On the other end, KD shakes his man but can’t finish. On the defensive end we’re all confused. I get caught on a rough screen by Giannis, and I bump into KD, who is trying to cut. I’m not tired exactly, but I don’t feel energized. I do a quick scan of my body. Left knee is aching slightly but overall I’m OK. This is game seventy-four on the year. No one is 100 percent at this point except for the guys who just came up from the G League.
It is then that the turnovers start. A miss
ed pass, a shot clock violation, bad dribbles. We’re all doing it and it’s frustrating. On top of that, it really feels tonight, more than most nights, that the referees are just letting us get smacked around. I don’t know if it’s true, but we start focusing on it. Maybe it’s mental fatigue from a long season—everyone is limping to the end of the year at this point—but I can feel frustration seeping into our game and the tension is mounting. It’s carried over from previous games and from previous seasons. We’re still in the game, but it’s definitely a grind. Nothing seems to be coming easy.
I get a steal and lead a fast break, but by the time I get down floor, there’s already too much defensive congestion for me to convert. I dribble around waiting for my guys to set up, but in the meantime the ball gets poked out of bounds. While I’m setting up for the inbound, it occurs to me that when I was young, I would have been able to take all those guys to the hoop. Those days are over, I think to myself as I find David West under the basket for an easy two.
Other end of the floor, I’m trying to help on Giannis, and for a moment we have him trapped in a double against the baseline. But he somehow finds Brandon Jennings, who I was guarding and who drains a three. It just feels like this whole night is like this. Nothing is coming easy. The lights feel brighter, the music seems louder and more annoying. Draymond gets shoved on a drive, still makes the shot, and they call the foul on him somehow! It’s 40–38, we’re still down by 2. Frustration is mounting and so are the turnovers. Giannis gets another dunk off of one. Quinn Cook is getting it going; he hits a three and we’re still in there. Thank God for young guys. They don’t have any of the shit built up that we do. They’re just happy to be here.
The Sixth Man Page 22