Seven Seconds or Less

by Jack McCallum

  “How long’s it take to write a book?” he asked one day.

  “Well, Moby-Dick took a long time, but I have to write this one pretty fast,” I answer.

  “A book,” he says. “Yeah, huh? Word for word. Straight up.”

  I’m not sure what he means but I nod.

  One day Stoudemire came in wearing that Rolling Stones T-shirt bearing the image of a cartoon figure sticking out his tongue, the cover of Sticky Fingers.

  “Now, STAT, tell me,” says Gentry, “can you name one single Rolling Stones song?”

  “Can’t help you, Chief,” said Stoudemire immediately.

  On another day, he was wearing a T-shirt bearing the likeness of a 1930s Time cover on which Al Capone appeared.

  “What’s with you and Capone?” I ask him.

  “Don’t know anything about him,” Stoudemire answers, “except that he was a bad guy.”

  I gave him the one-minute primer on Capone, Chicago, and Prohibition.

  “Damn,” he said. “There was a time drinking was illegal?”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  [The Second Season]

  MAY 26, Dallas……………….

  SUNS LEAD SERIES 1–0

  “I got a house in Scottsdale I will give you if he didn’t walk.”

  Like most teams, the Suns run two buses to visiting arenas on game days. (A third bus during the playoffs is for family and friends.) The first bus carries, in trainer Aaron Nelson’s words, “the hungry”—the assistant coaches, trainers, and those players who either don’t see much action and need extra work, those who are rehabbing an injury and need extra work, or those who just want extra work. Leandro Barbosa is the only one who always falls into the latter category. Typically, Brian Grant, Pat Burke, Nikoloz Tskitishvili, and, these days, Kurt Thomas, are on the “hungry” bus. The “nonhungry” bus follows an hour later, bearing the head coach, the regulars, the broadcasters, and other hangers-on such as myself.

  Eddie House, who in Game 1 played eight minutes and made three of his five shots, a limited night’s work but a nice one, strolls onto the “nonhungry” bus seven minutes late, ten minutes after Nash and Marion, the superstars, came on. One could argue that House would do himself a favor by taking the hungry bus, but, no, he takes the nonhungry and also shows up late. D’Antoni gives him a quick glance but doesn’t say anything. House will find a slip of paper in his locker the following day informing him that he has been fined $250.

  Over the last twenty-four hours, a clip of Avery Johnson using the phrase “transition defense” has dominated the evening sportscasts. In response to a question about what Dallas had to improve for Game 2—the Suns scored thirty-two fast-break points in Game 1—Johnson said it three times in a row, and, though only Faulkner could truly capture the coach’s distinctive Louisiana patois in full verbal fast-break mode, it came out sounding something like TRANZISHONDEEEFENCE-TRANZISHONDEEEFENCE-TRANZISHONDEEEFENCE. Naturally, it was added to Gillespie’s video, and the coaches and players have already seen it a dozen times. TRANZISHONDEFENCE. You can hear it being said around the locker room before the game.

  In the bigs meeting, Iavaroni says: “Whoever is near Nowitzki when the ball goes up, you got a free shot at him. Take it. It’s legal. It’s okay.” That is old-school ball—that’s how Iavaroni played the game when he was the forgotten fifth starter with All-Stars Julius Erving, Moses Malone, Maurice Cheeks, and—no baloney—Andrew Toney. “Who do you think they wanted to collect the fouls?” he always says.

  I happen to be sitting next to Marion, and, when Iavaroni mentions giving Nowitzki the extracurricular shot, Marion turns to me, shakes his head, and giggles. That is not in Marion’s arsenal. That is not what he does.

  On the board Iavaroni has written two other interesting messages. The first says PACK-TIVE and F.U.S.D. DISCIPLINE. He constantly looks for new phrases. The first one instructs his defenders to “pack it in” and “stay active” while doing so. The second is a familiar Suns’ expression that, believe it or not, is not an obscenity. “Fake Up but Stay Down” refers to a close-out technique in which the defender, coming out to contest a jump shot, fakes as if he’s going for the shot but keeps his balance (stays down) to protect against the more dangerous drive.

  The second message is more clear-cut. It reads:

  94 :07 4

  Feet off the shot clock quarters

  D’Antoni sketches out the defensive matchups and reminds them, “Our game is offense. If we run, we’ll have mismatches and cross-matches and, I’m telling you, Nowitzki and Van Horn can’t guard anybody. Keep running. All right, Noel.” The pregame video includes not only Avery Johnson’s by now familiar phrase but also a slow-motion reply of Iavaroni getting hammered by Barbosa’s spike. “I am sorry, Coach,” says Barbosa, genuinely contrite. Everyone else is laughing. “Damn,” says Tim Thomas, “Coach was looking straight up at that shit.”

  A few minutes later, Nash shouts, “NINETEEN ON THE CLICKETY!” but most of the team is watching a TNT pregame package on Diaw, who is being interviewed with his mother. “Let’s go,” says Nash, “we can watch Boris on TiVo.”

  The coaches listen to Barkley’s follow-up to the Diaw feature. “Well,” intones Sir Charles, “Boris Diaw is a pretty good player. But when Stoudemire comes back next year, Boris is going back to the bench. He’ll be behind Shawn Marion at 3.”

  D’Antoni shakes his head. “I’m so glad we took down that photo of Charles,” he says.

  Dan D’Antoni, hobbling in his protective boot, and Raja Bell, hobbling with his crutches, walk onto the court together. “The crips are here,” Dan says.

  “Wear a tie!” a few fans shout at them, for both are going with the stylish T-shirt look that fits into the NBA’s mandated business-casual.

  Dan just smiles. Bell smiles, too, and adds, “Suck my dick, Homes.” The quick, secret-assassin comeback has become somewhat of a specialty for Bell. During a game in Philadelphia on January 31, a 76ers fan seated behind the Suns’ bench rode Bell on and off the whole night with a single line: “Hey, Bell, go back to Utah.” Finally, in the fourth quarter, Bell turned around, noticed the fan’s mottled complexion, and said, with a big smile, “ProActiv, my man. Clear that right up.” Even the fan’s seatmates laughed at him.

  It takes D’Antoni less than thirty seconds to make a defensive change. Dallas forward Josh Howard, who was considered doubtful because of a sprained ankle he suffered early in Game 1—his loss was to be the compensating factor for Bell’s injury—jetted by Diaw for a layup, and D’Antoni orders the Suns to trap him from now on. So, though the Suns wanted to play Dallas fairly straight up, they are (a) trapping Jason Terry on high pick-and-rolls, (b) trapping Howard when he gets the ball in scoring position, (c) faking at Nowitzki to discourage his penetration, then coming late when he does go, and (d) being aware that Nash might need help on Harris’s drives. For the most part, they are treating tonight’s fifth starter, Keith Van Horn, like he’s the Invisible Man. Plus, whichever Sun happens to be nearest Van Horn when the Mavericks are on defense, is automatically given the ball and invited to embarrass him one-on-one. Exploiting Van Horn is a major factor as the Suns build a 52–47 halftime lead with Nash and Diaw again leading the way.

  There is real excitement in the locker room. Steal this game, another one on the road, and, well, you can almost kiss the Mavs good-bye. In the locker room, the coaches all offer tidbits.

  Iavaroni: “We’re doing too many panic things when the ball is at the free-throw line.” (He continues to suggest that the Suns play more straight up with fewer schemes.)

  Gentry: “We can’t leave Steve down there with Adrian Griffin.” (Griffin is a stocky forward who can post up.)

  Weber: “We’ve done a great job with their spins. Four times Nowitzki and Stackhouse spun and we were right there.” (Weber is much more likely to offer something that the Suns did right rather than wrong.)

  Dan D’Antoni: “We have to make it so at the end of the game it be
comes about [he goes into the Avery Johnson voice] transition defense, transition defense. We have to play harder than they do.”

  D’Antoni never says much during this time (unless he’s angry about something). He digests each coach’s offering, considers his own strategic thoughts, and makes a quick decision about what to tell the team and what is too complicated to communicate at halftime. To an extent, the coaches make their suggestions as much to remind themselves of what might have to be said later during a crucial time-out.

  “Great job,” D’Antoni tells the team. “Only thing is, don’t panic on defense, just like you don’t on offense. Keep your principles. Fake at Dirk, then come late. We have to judge when we have to hit him.

  “Now, we also have to recognize that when Steve has Adrian Dantley down—shit, not Adrian Dantley, I’m going back about twenty years—when he has Adrian Griffin down there, we have to be able to understand who he’s going against. He wants you to come, so you don’t. But when he goes to shoot, when he doesn’t want you to come, now you hit him.

  “And great job on the boards. The Suns have a 20–17 edge in rebounding. Every time we get it out, we run, every time we run, we score. Pretty simple game.”

  Then the point guard takes over. “The biggest thing is, they’re in their locker room saying, ‘This is the series right now,’ ” says Nash. “They’re telling each other, ‘We can’t lose this game.’ So they are going to come out with everything, and we have to match that. More energy, play harder than them. Then we’re going to get calls instead of lose calls. When we play a little hesitantly, that’s when we don’t get anything. We come out with massive energy, we’re gonna get calls, they’re gonna get tight and this game will be ours.”

  Nash never says anything loudly or even emphatically, but you can sense his passion for beating his old team and the sense of urgency he feels about the game. This is the one. Steal this, go up two to nothing and it’s all but over.

  Then the strangest thing happens. Nash is the one who loses his aggressiveness. He takes zero shots in the third quarter and only one (a fadeaway jumper with the game almost over, which he makes) in the fourth. Meanwhile, Josh Howard takes over the game, driving, hitting jumpers, and disrupting the Suns’ offense.

  With 1:57 left, Dallas leads 96–91. Marion gets the ball and is almost immediately whistled for traveling. The call represents a new point of emphasis for the officials: If a player moves both feet when he starts his move, make the call. It makes some sense except for the fact that the more obvious traveling violations—those that occur when a player is going in for a wide-open dunk—are almost never made. Those are the ones that drive anti-NBA fans out of their minds.

  Following the call on Marion, Nowitzki does a little foot shuffle at the other end and makes a layup to give Dallas a 98–91 lead. D’Antoni is beside himself on the sideline. He corners Joey Crawford, who did not make the call on Marion but was the official closest to the Nowitzki play and also the crew chief. Players and coaches have to be careful with Crawford, one of the league’s best officials and one with a notoriously quick trigger.

  “Joey, they call the walk on Shawn, and Dirk’s was much more obvious,” D’Antoni says during a break in the action.

  “Dirk didn’t walk,” says Crawford.

  “I got a house in Scottsdale I will give you if he didn’t walk,” says D’Antoni.

  “Yeah?” says Crawford. “Good for you. I got a house, too.”

  “Good, I’ll bet mine against yours,” says D’Antoni. He is smiling by now. It’s always best to have a smile on your face when you’re talking to Crawford.

  Still, the Suns have one more chance to win it. Trailing 101–96, D’Antoni designs a brilliant inbounds play that gets Tim Thomas a wide-open three-point look off of a screen by Barbosa. The shot appears on-line but misses, Phoenix’s sixth misfire in its final seven three-point attempts. Live by the three, die by the three. And the Mavericks go on to win 105–98. Series tied.

  “Let’s put it all in perspective,” D’Antoni says in the quiet locker room. “If we had lost the first game and won this, we’d be friggin’ bouncing off the wall. We came down here, got the job done, like you did in Clipper Land. We had three or four shots to win the game near the end and they didn’t go in. You know what? That’s life. We’re gonna go home and get them there. Let’s go.”

  The coaches repair to watch the film. Marion’s little jitterbug could conceivably be called a travel, but Nowitzki’s is definitely a violation.

  “Well, I got me a Joey Crawford house,” says D’Antoni. “So why don’t I feel better?”

  Nash, meanwhile, tells the assembled press, “Mission somewhat accomplished.” But, later, as he walks slowly to the bus for the flight home, he looks like a man who left something behind.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  [The Second Season]

  Phoenix, May 27……………….

  SERIES TIED 1–1

  “We lost, that’s one thing, but we sit here and feel sorry for ourselves. The mood is not great. I can’t put my finger on it, but it’s just not great.”

  Everybody had a bad night after getting back from Dallas. Thoughts of the one that got away just wouldn’t go away. But Alvin Gentry also had a terrible morning, as he reports when he arrives at the arena for the morning coaches meeting. The burglar alarm at his neighbors’ Scottsdale home had gone off early, and Gentry dutifully climbed out of bed, put on a pair of shorts, and went over to investigate.

  “So the Scottsdale police arrive and start asking me questions,” says Gentry. “I tell them my neighbors are on a cruise in the Mediterranean, and I came over to check on the house when I heard the alarm.

  “Now, this one policeman starts giving me the third degree. ‘How long have you lived here?’ ‘Do you have any I.D.?’ ‘Do you know the name of the people who live in this house?’ Guy’s got a tight shirt on, belly sticking out. Now, what does he think? That I robbed the house in a pair of shorts, then waited for the police to arrive?

  “The guy kept me there like twenty minutes. Finally, I said, ‘Look, I live next door and I’m going home. If you don’t believe me, arrest me.’ I go outside and another neighbor is driving by and he says, ‘Alvin, anything wrong?’ And I say, ‘Nothing that not being black wouldn’t cure.’ ”

  Game 2 was a puzzler, replete with statistical anomalies. Dallas point guard Devin Harris, who had thirty points in the first game, had only nine; most of the pregame conversation about him had been a waste of time. Tim Thomas, who sometimes gets his hands on every defensive rebound that comes his way, finished the game with one. On the other hand, James Jones, who almost wasn’t noticed, had six blocked shots, an extraordinary total for someone considered a smart defender but not a particularly athletic one. Leandro Barbosa had good looks the entire night but made only three of fifteen shots.

  And then there was the Nash number: One shot taken in the second half. But as the coaches review the game film, the explanation for it seems painfully obvious: The Mavericks threw constant double-teams at him, sometimes triple-teams, and Nash almost never had an open perimeter shot or a clean path to drive. On the rare occasions when a big man had to defend Nash alone (last night it was usually DeSagana Diop), that defender did a good job and discouraged Nash from even attempting to break him down, or, as Kevin Tucker always shouts from the bench when Nash is isolated on a big, “walking the dog.”

  One school of thought holds that Nash could be faulted for not at least attempting to do more, for hurtling his body into the lane and trying to get to the foul line. But that isn’t his game. Another school is that he could be praised for trying to play the correct way and not letting the offense devolve into one-on-one chaos. But sometimes that’s what a leader has to do. The coaches choose not to take either school. The most frightening alternative isn’t talked about either: That the Mavs are good enough and smart enough defensively to have seized upon a game plan that will throttle Nash the rest of the way.

&
nbsp; A more familiar topic does evolve out of the film-watching, however: the spiritless play of Marion. Again, it is not what he does—it’s what he doesn’t do. Make the extra effort to block a shot, for example, or stand around on offense while Nash dribbles instead of cutting to the basket and looking for a pass. “There are about six plays on defense in the second half,” says D’Antoni, “when he doesn’t even compete.” Earlier in the season, before a 102–96 loss to the Mavericks, D’Antoni had shown a snippet from the first game of the year against Dallas, when the Suns had blown a seventeen-point lead and lost 111–108. “Shawn,” said D’Antoni after Dirk Nowitzki took an unimpeded shot in the lane, “you might look at getting that from behind.” Five months later, he is still trying to make the same point.

  But, then as quickly as they castigate Marion, the coaches wonder if they’re being a little hard on him, that old problem of expecting too much from someone so gifted. “Nobody in the history of the game got nineteen points and eleven rebounds,” says Gentry, laughing, “and took more shit about it.”

  As D’Antoni paces the floor, which he often does when he’s trying to figure out a game plan, he notices a strange sight out of the fourth-floor window. “You gotta see this,” he says. And there is an African-American riding a horse down Jefferson Avenue, which passes in front of the arena. Nobody can believe it.

  “Good thing that guy wasn’t at your neighbor’s house this morning,” says Phil Weber.

  “Now I just know that guy doesn’t have his black cowboy card,” says Gentry. “Hey, remember in Blazing Saddles when…”

  There ensues a few minutes of conversation about Mel Brooks’s classic comedy that tells the story of a black sheriff; it is welcome respite from talking about the game.