The Big O
Page 38
Black people in this country have a problem though, in that we don’t produce or manufacture enough. When the average college-trained black man comes out with his degree in engineering or one of the sciences, where does he go? I observed that there were hundreds of people in the post offices who are not working in their chosen fields or up to their God-given capacities. I saw firsthand that blacks didn’t own enough companies to help themselves. When you work for other people, you can be fired for any number of reasons, relevant or otherwise. Sometimes, you can be affected by unforeseen variables that have nothing to do with you. It’s gotten to the point where the factor of true ability may be the last thing to keep a guy on a job.
By the time I ended my professional basketball career, I knew I wanted to build a solid foundation for a viable company. I wanted to grow a company that would create opportunities for hiring young black prospects out of the University of Cincinnati or Northeastern Louisiana, or wherever.
Maybe it was a pipe dream, but I intended to give it a thorough effort.
I didn’t exactly receive an open-armed reception from the business community. Banks did not want to lend me capital. When I tried to spearhead plans to bring two different franchises to Cincinnati—Coors and auto dealerships—I lost out. These experiences were disappointing, certainly. But when I stopped and thought about it, they weren’t all that different from what I’d gone through with the players union. Indeed, they only reaffirmed every idea I’d had about the business world, every notion concerning equality and competition.
Like with anything else in my life, I knew that the one thing I wanted was a chance. This meant I was going to have to accomplish certain things in spite of people. Back in my old hometown of Indianapolis, I soon became involved with the White River Canal Project, a redevelopment effort near my old neighborhood and the ghetto home where I’d been raised. In Indianapolis, I spearheaded a project that developed affordable housing in Oxford Terrace and helped families with the down payment, creating a financing arrangement that was a first for the city. I’ve never been able to put my childhood conditions behind me, and these projects were steps to make sure that others wouldn’t have to be raised in similar climates. But they weren’t the extent of my dealings.
They were the beginning.
I now own and am the CEO of Orchem Inc., a manufacturer of chemicals used in industrial cleaning and the nation’s largest minority-owned chemical manufacturing company. And I am the president, CEO, and majority shareholder in Orpack-Stone, a company that produces corrugated packaging, and I am starting the Oscar Robertson meat company. In addition, I have a hand in a general contracting and development company, a document management service, a trucking company, and a media ventures group. I also serve on the boards of a number of national and local charities. I am a member of so many boards of directors and/or trustees that I have to get out my résumé to track them all. These days, my principal motivation is to make sure my companies are sound for my daughters. Shana works for Orchem, and Tia works for Orpack. (Mari, my youngest, works for a company that provides low-, moderate-, and middle-income families with the financial services to purchase homes.)
No father has adequate words for the love he feels for his children.
Whenever anyone asked me if I wanted a boy, I said, “I never really thought about it.” And I didn’t. I just hoped my children would be healthy. My daughters loved sports when they were growing up, and all of them were excellent athletes. Yvonne says that they always tried to be their father’s boys. I guess it’s true. I used to play football with them. And whenever neighborhood boys knocked on the door and asked to shoot baskets, I always answered that if they could beat my daughters, then I’d be happy to come out. They were always able to talk sports with me, and still do. They have always been my pride, my joy.
In late 1989, Tia was twenty-five years old and working for the National Association of Securities Dealers in New York. She wanted the experience and she was happy. But one day she noticed there were strange marks, like stars, or little cracks, on her fingertips. It looked like her fingers were drying up. She didn’t think much of it at first, but it didn’t go away. She visited doctors in Cincinnati, but none of them knew what it was. Aches followed in her joints. I flew out to take her to a specialist. Before the appointment, Tia got scared in my hotel room. We called Yvonne, and Tia started crying, asking, “Mom, am I really sick?” The question hit me really hard. Worse still, I didn’t have an answer. I started crying too. Tia was diagnosed with lupus, a disease that causes the body’s immune system to attack tissues and vital organs. She moved back to Cincinnati and went to work at Orpack. Gradually, the disease took its toll. Her joints constantly ached. Soon she had to cut back on her physical activities.
In 1994, doctors determined the disease was causing her kidneys to fail. She moved back in with us. By November 1996, she began dialysis at our home; a machine cleaned her blood for seven and eight hours a night.
If she was going to have any semblance of a regular life, it became apparent that she would need a transplant. While Tia went on a waiting list for a kidney from a cadaver, our family started undergoing tests to see if one of us was a compatible as a donor.
Shana and I turned out to be good candidates. Shana had her own child, and I wouldn’t put her at risk. I didn’t even want her to have a chance to make the decision. I never thought twice about it. When you see a family member suffer and you know there’s a way out, you’ll do almost anything to help. That’s just part the territory that comes with being a dad.
The surgery took six hours and left an eighteen-inch scar down my side and back. Doctors at the university said the kidney was one of the largest they’d ever seen. The first thing I said when I regained consciousness was, “How’s Tia?”
The doctor said she was doing fine.
It wasn’t something that any of us wanted publicity for. But somehow news got out anyway, and there was a media blitz. Tia refused all interview offers, but People still ran a four-page spread, calling it the Big O’s biggest assist. Soon after, Oprah Winfrey offered praise on her Father’s Day show. Our family received hundreds of cards and letters from throughout the country. A basket of them sits on a display case I built, next to a basketball from the 1960 Olympics.
These days, Tia is taking medication, of course, like many transplant patients, and I think she is doing great. I tell anyone who asks that I’m no hero. Just a father. I have to believe that any dad worth his salt would do the same. The reason I tell the story anymore is because now I’m a spokesman for the National Kidney Foundation, as well as for organ donation.
In so many ways my life has worked out perfectly. I have a lovely wife who I’ve been fortunate enough to love and spend my entire adult life with. I have three healthy grown children, am a happy grandfather, a successful businessman. Mine is a dear and wondrous life. And basketball has been a huge part of it.
The game has done more for me than I could ever begin to repay. Basketball has opened a lot of doors for African-Americans. Every day it continues to help bridge the gaps between whites and blacks that exist to this day in this country. I was fortunate enough to play an important part in the sport’s development, to have been able to stand up and fight to achieve better working conditions for the men who played the game. Throughout, no matter what I was going through, no matter how I felt about some of the things that happened to me, no matter what kind of people I had to deal with, basketball itself never stopped being fun for me; I’ve never felt anything for the game except love.
Once I heard someone say that in order to write love songs, you have to have been through some bad times. To write a love song, you have to have had your heart broken.
If that’s the case, I can state right here and now that I could write the greatest songs in the world.
I have viewed the game as a spectator for the past twenty-eight years, less an outsider than a Moses figure, unable to enter the Promised Land. Where the men I helped build
the league with—Jerry West, Bill Russell, Elgin Baylor, and Willis Reed, among others—received offers to coach teams or were general managers, I was passed over. Did I really want that experience? We’ll never know. I can’t say whether my union involvement had anything to do with this, or if it happened, in part, because of my struggles with various front offices, or because I had a reputation as being difficult. Maybe other factors were involved as well.
I’ve been told that I could never have survived as a coach, that I’m too much of a perfectionist, too blunt. Even my wife thinks I would have had problems dealing with players who weren’t as dedicated as I used to be. There might be some truth to this. Magic Johnson and Larry Bird each had chances to coach teams, and this very problem drove each of them from the bench. Maybe it would have gotten to me as well. I can’t speculate on how I might or might not have responded. I just know that I played professional basketball for fourteen years, played in a lot of big games, shouldered a lot of pressure. I always noticed who should be in a game in certain situations and who shouldn’t. I know how to evaluate talent. I know players. And I doubt there have been ten people who understood the game as well as I did. But you must play the cards you are dealt.
I also know this: When I left basketball in 1975, Wayne Embry was the only black man involved on a management level. Wayne remained general manager of the Bucks until 1977, when he “accepted” a less active role with the organization. In 1985, he left Milwaukee and became general manager of the Cleveland Cavaliers, assembling a team that could never get past Michael Jordan in the playoffs. Aside from Wayne, it’s almost impossible to come up with a black man who had a serious career in NBA front offices during that period. I am not talking about being hired as a community relations officer, mind you; I am talking about a significant position.
If you look at the history of the league, it wasn’t until the late 1980s and early 1990s that African-Americans began being hired as general managers, and even then strings were attached. But things are changing. Elgin Baylor has been the general manager of the Los Angeles Clippers for some time now. Willis Reed spent time as the general manager of the New Jersey Nets and is now an executive.
The league has publicly spearheaded a push for diversity—in ownership, in management, in coaching, in announcing. Right now, Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan each own parts of various franchises. The Nuggets, for a time, were owned by a group of minority businessmen, and the expansion Charlotte franchise is owned by Robert Johnson. Throughout the league, you can find African-Americans coaching and behind the microphones. But I also know that to this day, coaching jobs have too often arrived in the middle of the season, only after the old head coach has gotten the axe and the team has fallen apart. That’s when a black assistant gets bumped up to the head job. I know that too often the announcers have nothing to say or are put in milquetoast positions such as a studio anchor.
I can’t tell you how much it dismays me that in the storied history of the New York Knicks, just one African-American has ever been involved with their front office. In a diverse city like the Big Apple, just as there are untold good soldiers who will do as they are ordered, there are untold good prospects, men and who could work for teams and someday become strong general managers.
But of course, some of us are generals.
I know that it is more than possible that the present-day corporate NBA has less of an issue with race than it does with outspokenness. Whatever problems still exist in the game today, no matter how much I may feel that nonwhites are still underrepresented in front offices around the league, in fact the NBA has taken extraordinary steps forward. In this struggle any victory, by anyone, is a victory for us all.
I also think it’s important to acknowledge the role of history.
It’s important that there be some record of how the game of basketball got here. How we got here. It’s important that my grandchildren know. That their children know.
Because too often I tell people what happened to me and am met with disbelief. I’m told that I am just being bitter.
I’ll never forget the time a young reporter interviewed me. He listened for a little while and then said, “You’re opinionated.” I answered, “Young man, I’m not opinionated, because these things happened, they happened to me. You’re opinionated because nothing’s happened to you. You’ve decided you are a writer, but you don’t have any firsthand experience in the world of basketball. But somehow you’ve decided who is and isn’t opinionated. That’s what being opinionated is. Whether you like it or not, this is what happened to me.”
I do wish I could look back on my time in basketball and how I left and feel that it was all done cleanly.
My solace has been the knowledge that what I achieved in the game of basketball was unparalleled both on and off the court. It is the knowledge that whatever people may have thought of my methods, I fought the good fight. In retrospect, maybe it could have been fought in a different manner, but what the hell, it was a good run. I can see now the price was high—higher than I could have ever known. But I was more than willing to pay it.
I would never want anyone to think I was the only person who suffered, because I was not. My life was just one piece in a much larger puzzle. There were players in each and every sport who suffered just as I did, whose accomplishments have been forgotten. Even more could have set records and created history but never received the chance. Those players have faded away. It is as if they never existed.
As I write this, basketball has entered a strange new century. The game has become international; it has become computerized and wireless and fiber-optic. Nobody knows what the next five years will look like, what heights players will be capable of reaching, how brightly they will shine. Whatever happens to the sport, I hope that the men who gave their blood, sweat, and tears to build the league will be remembered. I hope that people will never forget that when any man reaches for previously unattainable heights, he does so only because he stands on shoulders of those who came before.
If you forget the contributions and accomplishments of Oscar Robertson, then how will you understand about Bill Russell’s role?
Without the context of history, the accomplishments of Wilt Chamberlain and Jerry West and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar mean nothing.
Without understanding the struggles of the players who came before, the highlights of Magic and Bird and even Michael Jordan might as well never have existed—because one day they, too, will be dust.
Add Tim Duncan to the list. Add Shaq.
This sport has had to fight and scratch for its place on the landscape. It has come so far. It has so far to go.
This country has had to fight and scratch for the slightest bit of understanding between blacks and whites. We have come so far. We still have so far to go.
Credits
The article on page 82 entitled “Cincinnati to Meet Seton Hall Tonight,” which appeared in the January 9, 1958, issue of The New York Times, is excerpted with permission of the publisher.
The excerpt on page 85 from Jimmy Cannon’s column, which appeared in the New York Post on January 10, 1958, is reprinted with permission of the publisher.
The article on page 103 entitled “How to Stop ‘Big O,’” which appeared in the January 19, 1959, issue of Newsweek magazine, is excerpted with permission of the publisher.
The excerpt on page 146 from the article entitled “The Graceful Giants,” which appeared in the February 17, 1961, issue of Time magazine, is reprinted with permission of the publisher. © 1961 Time Inc.
The excerpt on page 156 from the book Giant Steps by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, © 1989 Bantam Books, is reprinted with permission of the author.
The excerpt on page 222 from the book Miracle on 33rd Street: The New York Knickerbockers’ Championship Season by Phil Berger, © 2001 McGraw-Hill, is reprinted with permission of the publisher.
The excerpt on page 230 from the article entitled “The Big O’s Hardest Time” by Milt Gross, which appeared in the Janu
ary 22, 1970, issue of the New York Post, is reprinted with permission of the publisher.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Contents
Acknowledgments
Preface
Chapter One: The Crossroads of America: 1938–1951
Chapter Two: Li’l Flap: 1951–1954
Chapter Three: “They Don’t Want Us”: 1954–1955
Chapter Four: “Talk Is Cheap”: 1955–1956
Chapter Five: Collegiate Life: 1956–1958
Chapter Six: “What They Eat Don’t Make Me Fat”: 1958–1959
Chapter Seven: Gold: 1959–1960
Chapter Eight: Rookie Stardom: 1960–1961
Chapter Nine: The Triple-Double: 1961–1963
Chapter Ten: Union President, NBA Royalty: 1963–1968 (Part One)
Chapter Eleven: The Sixties Continued: 1963–1968 (Part Two)
Chapter Twelve: Moving On: 1969–1970
Chapter Thirteen: Milwaukee, Lew Alcindor, and the Championship: 1970–1971
Chapter Fourteen: Do Not Go Gently: 1971–1974
Chapter Fifteen: Endings: 1974–1976
Epilogue
Credits