Unguarded

by Lenny Wilkens

  He nodded, thinking about that for a while.

  I again told him how happy we were to have him on the team. We talked a little more.

  “Karl,” I said, “this is the opportunity of a lifetime. You love your country, right? We are representing our country. They’ll love you in Utah for doing this, and the whole world will get a chance to see what a great player you are.”

  He calmed down.

  “Karl, this is a great chance for all of us,” I said.

  He agreed, and that was the last time I saw Karl Malone upset during the Olympics.

  Part of Karl’s unhappiness may have stemmed from the hotel where we stayed. They had just built a new one in Barcelona, especially for us. A lot of our guys had never been to Europe before. They didn’t know that European hotels are different from those in America, especially the wonderful places we stay in when traveling around the NBA.

  At our hotel, Larry Bird had a big suite. So did Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan. The people running the hotel knew those names were the biggest, and they gave them the best rooms.

  The problem was that not all of the rooms for the players were suites.

  In a word, some of them were—small.

  The bathrooms seemed like closets. The beds were so tiny, the players’ feet hung over the side. Some guys had their families along, and they had five people in that little room. I know that Malone, Stockton, and Drexler had very tiny rooms, and I found myself talking to them, calming them down.

  These are men of tremendous pride, and they felt that if Magic and Michael had great rooms, then they all should have great rooms. They all were on the Dream Team, right? But the hotel just didn’t have enough suites for everyone.

  “Listen,” I told some of the guys, “we only have to be here for a short time, and we’ll be back home for the summer. What you’ll always think about is not that you had a bad room, but that you were in the Olympics. You were part of the greatest team ever assembled.”

  There were some unhappy campers at that hotel, and I spent a fair amount of time smoothing over the trouble spots. I felt that was part of my job, a way I could help Chuck. The players respected me, and I knew that I could talk to them and they’d listen.

  But other than those incidents, everything was fantastic.

  Naturally, we won the gold medal, and I was very proud of that. But what I enjoyed the most was being around those great players so much. We usually ate together. It’s one thing to see Michael Jordan playing against you, it’s another thing to see how hard he practices. Same with Magic Johnson and the rest of those guys. Jordan, Drexler, and Scottie Pippen all reported a little late to the Olympic practices because their teams had been in the NBA Finals. They had just played over 110 basketball games, from the start of the exhibition season to the end of the playoffs. As a coaching staff, we talked about letting them rest for a few practices, not wearing their legs out.

  “No, we’re here to play,” said Michael. “We want to practice with everyone else.”

  Drexler and Pippen said the same thing.

  That impressed me, because if they’d wanted to take it easy for a while, no one would have objected. Heck, the coaching staff thought of the idea in the first place. But the Dream Team was too important to them. Same with Patrick Ewing, who had had thumb surgery. It was still sore, but he insisted on playing. Charles Barkley worked extremely hard. Now, we worried a little bit about Charles after practice, because he’s such a social creature and you knew he was going to be out for most of the night. We coaches held our breath a bit, concerned that one night we’d get a call that Charles had had one of his scrapes and was in handcuffs. But that never happened. Charles knew the importance of the Dream Team, and none of these guys wanted to embarass themselves or our country. And when it came time to play, Charles Barkley was ready. They all were ready. Larry Bird’s back was killing him. When he wasn’t on the court playing, he was flat on the court—on his stomach, trying to cope with the pain. After the Olympics, he would have a spinal fusion and never play again. Larry Bird didn’t play a lot, but with that back, he never should have played at all—but he wanted to be a part of it. We all wanted to be a part of it. In the end, it didn’t matter that I had been passed over for the head coaching job; I was there, in Spain, with the greatest basketball team the world has ever seen.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  THE DOCTORS WERE WORRIED. They thought I might die.

  They never said that, but I could see it in their eyes. I could hear it in their voices, even though I couldn’t make out most of the words. They worked quickly, efficiently, urgently.

  No one told me what was wrong, but I knew:

  Blood clots.

  I knew the moment I heard they were giving me a drug called Heperin. It’s a blood-thinner. They don’t give you a blood-thinner unless they think your blood is clotting.

  That’s serious.

  So was the fact that I was having a hard time trying to breathe. And that I felt dizzy. And that when the doctor told me to come to the hospital, they brought me straight in—the first time in my life that I was admitted to the hospital and didn’t have to fill out some stupid forms. I got there and two doctors were waiting for me: not one doctor—two!

  I was fifty-four years old, I had just come off that summer with the Dream Team, and I was preparing to coach the Cavaliers, a team that had won 57 games the year before and advanced to the Eastern Conference Finals. I had a wife who loved me, children who loved me, everything to live for.

  And I had God.

  You can make of this what you will, but I knew God was with me in that hospital room, just as God has been with me every step of my life. For that reason, I didn’t think I’d die, not even after I found out that I had blood clots not just in one lung, but in both lungs. I was in pain and I was worried, but I wasn’t going to die, not unless God wanted me to die. And I knew that He didn’t think it was my time.

  It’s hard for some people to understand this, people who maybe have never taken God seriously. Maybe they went to church, but they never really prayed. Or perhaps some priest, minister, or Christian did something that turned them off to God. For whatever reason, they never really knew God.

  I can say that I know God.

  It’s not like I’ve had visions or huge, emotional encounters with him. I wasn’t awakened in the middle of the night by his voice. I wasn’t healed miraculously. He just always has been a presence in my life, sort of a small, quiet voice guiding me, a light hand on my shoulder, telling me that He’s there. In the hospital, I heard the voice, I felt the hand. Nothing dramatic, I just knew He was close by.

  I think this comes from growing up in a Roman Catholic home, being an altar boy, seeing my mother go to all those Masses, say all those rosaries and all those novenas. As I said before, I don’t believe anyone has ever been prayed for as much or as hard as my mother prayed for me. Prayer was always a part of my life. As a kid, I attended a Catholic elementary school, and the nuns had us pray, and they said all those novenas, just like my mother. I was taught that if you honored God with how you lived your life, He would honor you. That doesn’t mean He’ll make you rich, or that you’ll never have pain, heartache, and setbacks. It just means He won’t let you go through them alone.

  I could have stared at the ceiling in that hospital bed, hooked up to all those monitors, feeling all those needles hooked up to my arms, and simply asked, “God, why me? What did I do to deserve this?”

  I didn’t ask that question. I’m not sure why, I just didn’t. It probably had to do with my faith. Yes, I felt my mortality. There was one day in the hospital when, I swear, about all I did was stare at the clock on the wall. I watched the second hand move oh-so-slowly. I watched the minutes crawl by. As for the hour hand, I thought it would never move. Watching that clock gave me a real sense of my own mortality.

  But I never was angry at God.

  I wasn’t thrilled with how all this had happened. A few weeks before, I had what was
supposed to be a basic operation to repair a torn Achilles tendon. Nothing life-threatening. I mean, they operate on your foot, and you end up with blood clots in both lungs? How do you explain that?

  I really should have known better.

  I should have remembered I was fifty-four years old, about seventeen years past my playing career. I still played basketball, but only a few times a year. Those games were halfcourt, with a couple of sportswriters who covered the Cavs.

  But these guys asked some of the Olympic coaches to play in a pickup basketball game with them. This was in Spain, and our team was two games away from the gold medal. It was the security force who wanted us to play with them, and they were a great group of guys. They’d protected us like the president, and anything we wanted, they were there to take care of it. The game was supposed to be our way of showing appreciation for them, so we put together a team of people from the NBA office, my son Randy, ex-NBA player Mike Bantom, and myself. I knew I was in pretty good shape; I played tennis regularly during the Olympics, and I knew to stretch, to watch myself, to keep my body under control. Why couldn’t I play basketball with those guys? I wasn’t going to try to be Michael Jordan or anything. No dunks. No tough moves. I’d run up and down the court a few times, throw some passes, maybe take a few outside shots.

  No big deal.

  I took my time stretching and loosening up. I felt fine, ready to go. Two minutes into the game, someone threw a pass that was over my head. I changed directions and reached out to try to grab it. That’s when it felt like a rubber band in the back of my left ankle was stretched to the limit—then, POW! It snapped. I swear, it was like someone whacked the back of my foot with an axe. The pain was excruciating. I hopped on one foot for a moment, then tried to put my injured foot down. It was like the foot wouldn’t work, it wouldn’t listen to the orders from my brain. This all happened in a matter of a few seconds.

  And I knew instantly that I had torn an Achilles tendon.

  Some of the other players said it didn’t look that bad, that maybe it was just a strain. But I knew.

  I had blown an Achilles tendon. The pain disappeared into anger. I couldn’t believe I did this: I blew out an Achilles tendon playing in a pickup basketball game with some security guys—and we still had two games left! How dumb! How could I do this? How was I going to get through the next two games? Why did I get involved in this game? I never play fullcourt basketball! I beat myself up mentally as they took me to the Olympic Village, where an American doctor was waiting to tell me what I already knew—I had completely severed the Achilles tendon. I needed surgery, and the best thing to do was operate immediately before the swelling became a real issue.

  No way.

  That’s what I thought, and that’s what I said.

  No way was I going to have surgery and miss the last two games, the most important two games. There were four days left, and somehow I had to make it through the gold medal game. The doctor put me in a bulky cast up to my knee. On crutches, I returned to my hotel, where Marilyn saw me. She couldn’t believe what had happened. How could I get hurt playing basketball? Well, I did. The real question was, what to do next? I called Dr. John Bergfeld in Cleveland. He’s one of the best surgeons in the country, working with the Cavs through Cleveland Clinic. I told him what happened, and how I wanted him to do the surgery, but only after the Olympics were over. I was not coming home early. The Olympic doctors agreed to put my leg in a cast. Dr. Bergfeld told me to take only Tylenol 3, no other kind of pain medication. I was supposed to keep my leg elevated as much as possible. He’d make preparations for surgery in Cleveland as soon as I returned home. So there I was, on a blown Achilles, hobbling around on crutches during the last few practices and games. Chuck Daly would just look at me and shake his head. He didn’t say a word about it, but the head shake said it all: “How could you do that?”

  Well, I was asking myself the same thing, especially at night, when the pain was the worst. Sometimes, it felt like my leg would just explode inside that cast. The Tylenol didn’t work very well, and I also hate taking medication, so I used it sparingly. Some people said not to worry about the team, go home and have the surgery. The gold medal was a lock. But after all the work and all the preparation, I had to be there for the last game—even if I was forced to grit my teeth through all those agonizing, sleepless nights until I got home. I knew it wouldn’t kill me.

  The players had fun with me. At first, they’d see me coming and run away, as if I were cursed and they didn’t want to catch the injury bug from me. In the back of their minds was the possibility that they could rip up a knee, an ankle, an Achilles, or something else during these games. No one ever wants to get injured, but they sure didn’t want that to happen in the summer. After that joke wore off, the players were great, very concerned. I already admired them tremendously, and my appreciation for them grew even more. My wife suggested that I have the Dream Team sign my cast, which had to make it the only leg cast in the history of the world signed by Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, and Michael Jordan. When the gold medal game came, I was not going out there on crutches. I can’t explain why that was so important to me, I just wanted to be able to walk out there—or at least limp, dragging my foot and that cast behind me. I was tired of bothering people with my crutches. So I made it through the last two games. I received the gold medal without being held up on crutches. Then I flew back to Cleveland, assuming I’d have the surgery immediately. I figured I’d be in and out of there in a couple of days. I knew some people who’d had the Achilles surgery, and they usually were in the hospital for one night, maybe two. That’s it.

  No big deal, right?

  Guess again.

  Because I’d been dragging that foot around for nearly a week, then flew from Spain to New York to Cleveland, I really couldn’t keep it elevated as much as I should have.

  The thing was swollen like an overripe pumpkin by the time I made it to Cleveland Clinic. They made me stay in the hospital for three days with my leg elevated, just to get the swelling down so they could do the surgery. I was starting to pay the price for my stubbornness about staying for the final games. But that was OK; if I had to trade a few extra days in the hospital to be there for the gold medal, that was fine. I could handle it. Up to this point in my life, I’d never had a serious operation. I’d had some arthroscopic surgery on my knee, but that was eleven years after I quit playing: I had been very blessed to have had such a lengthy career and never suffer a major injury.

  So I really wasn’t fully prepared for the Achilles surgery, even though I understood what the procedure entailed. I had the operation and ended up spending eight days in Cleveland Clinic. For the first three weeks after the operation, I was in a cast up to my hip. They didn’t want me to move that leg, for fear I’d reinjure the Achilles. Then they put me in a cast from below my knee, which made it a little easier to move around on crutches. The worst thing was having those bulky casts, which cause your skin to itch and your muscles to feel like soggy, useless noodles.

  I spent the first month recovering from the surgery at my condo in the Akron area. When I was put in the short cast, I wanted to go to our regular home in Seattle. Marilyn was with me, and we had an awful flight. We had to go through Minneapolis. The plane was delayed, and then we finally left for Seattle. After any sort of leg surgery, what you discover is that your leg isn’t happy when you don’t elevate it periodically. When the leg is straight down—as it would be when sitting in an airplane seat—your leg feels as if it’s burning, like all the blood is draining right out of it. When I got home, I was relieved. I’d been gone for over two months because of the Olympics and the surgery. I figured I could relax, put the leg up, rest, and in a few weeks I’d feel great.

  By the second day at home, my back was killing me.

  I didn’t panic. I thought, “It’s probably because I’ve spent so much time on crutches, all that strain on my arms and shoulders, that could mess up your back.”

  I’d be fi
ne with a little rest, or so I thought.

  Marilyn could see I was in pain. She kept saying, “Why don’t you call the doctors? Call the trainer?”

  The last thing I wanted to do was see another doctor. Maybe I was being macho, but athletes are taught to deal with pain. Besides, I thought once I was home for a while, I’d be fine. All I needed was rest.

  The third day home, we were having dinner. But instead of feeling better, I was worse. I was more tired than ever. I wasn’t hungry.

  “Marilyn, I’m going to head upstairs and rest,” I told her.

  “I think you should call the doctor,” she said.

  “I’ll be fine,” I said.

  When I got upstairs, I wasn’t fine. I tried to lie down, but I couldn’t make it. I couldn’t even breathe. I felt like my lungs were on fire.

  In the meantime, Marilyn had called the doctor. She put me on the phone, and I told him the symptoms I was having, the gasping for breath, the sore back.

  “Get down here right away!” he said.

  He wanted to send an ambulance, but my son Randy was home, and I said Randy could get me there faster than waiting for an ambulance to come to the house and then take me. When I arrived at the hospital, they were ready: They checked me and ran some tests, but couldn’t conclusively prove there were blood clots. At first, I felt pain just on one side of my back. The next day, it was the other side. In fact, it was shifting back and forth. Right side, left side. Then left side, right side. I was having trouble breathing. I knew this was very serious. They decided to do an angiogram. It’s a nerve-racking test, because you’re flat on your back with this thing on your chest, the doctor looking through it, not saying much, and you’re wondering what’s going on. Hey, they’re looking at your heart, right? What do they see?

  What they saw was blood clots.