by Lance Allred
My first game was against the Colorado 14ers. I scored fifteen points in twenty-one minutes. But we lost that game and then promptly lost the next five, sprinting out of the gate to an 0–6 record. Every day it was a constant battle in practice to see which of the two bruisers—Jeff or Pete—was going to make life miserable for us. They usually would just talk heat to each other, flexing their muscles, threatening to break the other’s legs, but sometimes they ventured off to try to intimidate someone else on the team. Coach Gates would get in shouting matches with at least one of those two nearly every day, sending the whole team on sprints because of their petty grandstanding.
After starting off at 0–6, Coach knew his job was already on the line. He needed to change something. He cut a few players, and we eventually were able to turn the ship around, slowly but surely beginning to tick off a ten-game winning streak, climbing back into the standings. But even during the time we were winning, everyone was miserable. You never knew what you were going to get that day in practice.
I had roommate problems as well. My two roommates, who shall remain nameless, liked to smoke dope. And they liked to have women over, preferably mother-daughter combinations, through all hours of the night, laughing and screaming, slamming and banging doors until four in the morning. One day I’d finally had enough and told them that I didn’t care that they smoked dope or enjoyed prostitutes at night but that they had to take it elsewhere.
They never stopped. They did, however, just stay in their rooms and smoke pot by the window, but that smell, that pungent smell that I hate so much, which flares up my sinuses, would always leak through the vent. Always. I’m all for the legalization of drugs. I really didn’t care that they were smoking pot. I just hated the fact that they made me smell it and get sinus infections because of it.
At home or on the road, it was hard for me to be roommates with guys of such different backgrounds and preferences. Most of the guys loved to turn up the thermostat, preferring their room as hot as a sauna. They loved just falling asleep in a sweat on top of their covers. To me this was just about as unpleasant as trying to pop cysts in my armpit with a quilting needle. It was evident that I often didn’t fit in and made people uncomfortable without even trying.
Then the economic aspect of the D-League kicked in. Seattle sent down Mohammed Sene, their first-round draft pick that year, who wasn’t getting any play time up in the NBA. They wanted him to develop and get more playing time in the D-League. With one bimonthly paycheck, Mohammed made more than all of us combined for the entire season. The disparity was comical.
What player wants to leave the convenience of the NBA—where you fly on your own jet with all the food you want and stay in the nicest hotels in your own rooms—and go down to the D-League, where you fly on little commuter jets to second-class cities, traveling via vans and buses to your destination, stopping at Subways across the great American landscape? No one. The fact that an assigned player who is sent down to a D-League team can very well buy out that franchise makes it difficult for any such player to take playing there seriously.
People want in the D-League, but they also want out. No one wants to stay in the D-League. Everyone goes to the D-League in hopes of a better job: players, coaches, dancers, administrators, PR reps. Everyone. When an assignment (i.e., a player) was sent down, the NBA team he played for sent checks down to cover his expenses as well as his development. As they assign a player they’re investing millions in, they expect to see him play. And he gets to play. That’s the way it goes. An assignment gets x number of minutes regardless of his attitude or effort in practice.
It’s not economically sound to send a player down to the D-League and not have him play.
When Mohammed came down, it knocked me out of the rotation. No matter how hard I practiced or hustled, it didn’t matter. Mo was still going to get his minutes, regardless of his effort or interest. Resistance was futile. All I could do was shoot my extra shots after practice and then sit at the end of the bench and cheer my teammates on.
Sometimes I sat on the bench for stretches that went for games at a time. My confidence plummeted. I was making $12,000, and not even playing. How was this helping me in the long term? How was I hoping to have a better job the next year with minutes and numbers like mine?
My confidence was so bad that whenever I did get in a game for short spurts, I’d miss layups. Wide-open layups. And Gates felt that it was best to take me out, fearing I might otherwise compound one mistake with another. He subbed me out, and all I could do was sit and analyze that one minute I got to play.
I found myself once again staying up late at night, stressing and obsessing about the mistakes I had made in a previous game, never being given a chance to redeem myself. I was also concerned that I wasn’t getting any younger. I began to develop ulcers and vomit blood.
I was unhappy and depressed, and I saw no light at the end of the road. I kept trying to get hold of John, wanting him to do something, to trade me—anything. On the eve of the year 2007, we were in Austin. I had played for only a few minutes, and again was just perseverating over all the little things that had occurred in the time I had been in the game.
I texted John: “John, I’m unhappy. Why are you not listening to me? I don’t want to be here anymore. Where is this going?”
John had been MIA for a while, as there wasn’t a thing he could really do for me. Gates didn’t want to let me go or be traded. John finally sent a text message back: “Then go work at the 7–11 if you’re so miserable.”
As I walked down a quiet street in Austin, Texas, I put the phone back in my pocket and began to cuss obscenities at John, twenty-five hundred miles away. I’m sure he heard me. It was the only time I came near to firing him.
In February, my twenty-sixth birthday approached and the family gathered in Boise to meet up and see a game of mine. I played for one minute, getting two rebounds. And then, having done nothing wrong, I was subbed out. I looked up and saw my family in the stands. There I was, turning twenty-six, in debt, with nothing to show for myself, sitting on the bench in the D-League, making $12,000 a year. I couldn’t even look at them from across the arena. The rest of my siblings were carving their way through the world, doing their best to make themselves a life, while I was chasing a pipe dream. Before the game was even over, I snuck off to the locker room and began to violently vomit blood.
That night the family gathered at the hotel, where they all gave me gifts. I have never been a fan of birthdays. I think that on my birthday, if anyone should be giving a gift to say thank you, it should be me. I couldn’t look my siblings in the eye as I opened their gifts. They knew I was in pain. They knew it was difficult for me to accept their generosity when I had nothing to give them. I still owed them money. Yet here they were, giving me more.
That night as I lay in bed, my stomach churning, eating at my insides, I came to the conclusion that I was living in a fantasy and it was time to grow up.
That next morning I packed my bags and told Coach Gates I at least needed to take a medical leave of absence to get my ulcers under control. But I also told him I might not be coming back, and that I was pretty sure I’d be quitting.
I felt I had traveled this road as far as I could, that it had come to its end and life needed me elsewhere. Driving home to Salt Lake, I cried in the car as I recalled all those morning with Coach Rupp when the game was innocent.
I had given so much to this game. It had given me a free education. But other than that, nothing but heartache. Why were people who didn’t respect it, who didn’t touch the line every time when running sprints—why were they being rewarded while I wasn’t? I believed that the game of basketball was a living, breathing organism, that she had a soul, and that she watched me doing the little things when no one else was or could even appreciate them. Why had she let me fail? Was I simply another candle in the wind? Was my lesson in all of this to take it to the very end, with no regrets?
She had broken my heart.
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28
COMEBACK DREAM
Often things are never quite what they seem,
No matter how often you plead or ask why.
Will I see you there in a comeback dream?
Your yearning hopes flow with a steady stream,
Down into a barren womb, long since dry.
Often things are never quite what they seem.
You find yourself in a tyrant’s regime.
No more will you be dancing with the sky.
Will I see you there in a comeback dream?
There’s no bright future of gold and gleam,
No crystal balls from which you scry,
For even those are never quite what they seem.
In places where you could’ve never foreseen
You wonder if you’re chasing a lie,
A lie that will mangle your comeback dream.
You laugh at my grief, busting at the seams,
Fool, yet you never even dared to try.
Even though things are never quite what they seem,
At least I have myself a comeback dream.
I sat at home for a week recovering from the ulcers and putting on some weight. John was in Italy and thus wasn’t able to give me any immediate word on options or trades within the D-League from other teams. In truth, I was ready to call it a career.
John called me back late one night: “Lance, it’s time to go back. A window is opening for you. Coach Gates will be giving you a call.”
Coach Gates called me, and after a long phone call, we were able to at least get some of the issues on the table. “Jeff is leaving for Turkey in two days,” he told me. “We need some bodies, plus Lukie may be leaving.” Jeff Graves had had an offer from Galatasaray, and Luke Jackson was looking at an offer from Spain.
I told Gates that I needed him to let me play through my mistakes. If I was continually looking over my shoulder toward the bench, afraid of making a mistake, I couldn’t be as effective as I needed. He agreed and told me he would make a more concerted effort to do that.
I drove back up to Boise and met the team for the flight to Arkansas. Jeff had finalized his deal with Galatasaray, and all I could do was smile and wish him good luck. I found it so humorous that the same team that had mistreated me in the beginning, setting me off on this roller coaster of a career thus far, was now doing me a favor by taking Jeff Graves away, removing him from my path. Karma comes full circle.
In my first game back, against the Arkansas Rim Rockers, Pete Ramos broke his leg. He was done for the season. A week later, Mohammed Sene was recalled to Seattle. Within a week, I had gone from being a fifth and seldom used big on the bench to being the starting center. Things can change in the blink of an eye, and they often do. As bad as I felt for Pete and his leg, I also knew that one man’s misfortune was another man’s opportunity. I failed the first time, when opportunity knocked at the University of Utah after Chris Burgess broke his foot. I wasn’t going to repeat that mistake.
What I did this time was dig way, way back to my high school days and dust off many of the moves and skills that Coach Rupp had developed with me.
In many ways, some of the skills that Rupp taught me were too advanced, too farsighted, for even the collegiate game, let alone high school. Rupp could tell that I had decent, but not the greatest, athleticism, but he foresaw that my size and quickness would be enough to compensate for lack of raw natural athletic ability. He taught me to be a face-up post player, to shoot over the smaller opponents and drive past the bigger ones.
Like college coaches in general, mine didn’t want me to play the face-up game, preferring to have me play my back to the basket and pound my way inside. Part of the face-up game entails having a jump shot, and most college coaches don’t like their big men “settling” for jumpers. Rupp taught me to shoot the jumper. The rationale college coaches use against big men shooting jumpers is this: college coaches can go find shooters anywhere, while big men are a rarity; the big men, rather than trying to do what the other kids can do, should do what no one else can do, which is use their size and plow their way in.
This is a nice philosophy for the college game. But once I began to play professionally, I struggled. I’m not broad-shouldered enough or long-armed enough or thick enough to force my man back and muscle him into the basket, as the competition is now much stiffer and just as big as me—if not bigger, faster, and stronger. It wasn’t until I finally told myself to go back to what Rupp had taught me that I began to excel in the professional ranks. Rupp told me to play not to my weakness but to my strengths—my speed and shooting touch—to counter the slow, brute force of most big men.
In my first two games as a starter, trying to dust off my old skills and mind-set, I averaged a respectable twelve points in about twenty-four minutes. Then in my third game, I exploded for a thirty-point and ten-rebound game and a win in Bismarck, against the Dakota Wizards. As I scored every which way with left-and right-hand shots around their shot blockers, everyone—the reserves on the bench, the players on the court, and the fans in the crowd—was asking, “Who is this white guy?” All they could think to do was yell at me from the front row, “Ivan Drago!”*
People were quick to pass my thirty-point game off as a fluke—none more so than me, as I didn’t know that I was capable of scoring thirty points in a game anymore. A week later, I scored thirty again, against Austin at home.
Then Coach Gates did something no other coach in my entire career has done: he admitted he was wrong, without any buts. He told my father one day in Boise, “I made a mistake with Lance. He told me he could play. I should’ve believed in him.” Gates finally understood me and the player I was. He came to appreciate me and knew how to coach me. He became my friend and my ally.
That last month of the season, I averaged twenty-two points and thirteen rebounds a game. We clinched the best record well before the end of the season. Randy Livingston and I would just pick and pop the other teams to death. If I couldn’t get a jumper, I’d roll all the way to key, creating space for Ronnell Taylor to cut through an open lane or for Ricky Sanchez to drift off for a three-pointer. We were deadly and efficient. We were patient, as patient as twenty-four seconds allowed us. We perfected the art of spacing. We created so much room for everyone to score that the defense had to either let us have a lane or else be called for a defensive three-second penalty. They had to choose their poison.
Randy loved playing with me, because I never got cute. I never put the ball on the ground. He would just pass and I’d just shoot it, whether it was for a jumper from the elbow after drifting from a pick or for a layup while rolling. Randy would lead me with a pass and I’d finish. He got me buckets and I got him assists. If I didn’t have an immediate look, I wouldn’t try to force it and dribble my opponent down; I simply kicked it back out to Randy or to Ronnell as he cut through a lane.
We cruised through the rest of the regular season, and Randy finally was called up to Seattle for the last week of the season. This was an integral call-up, as it marked the tenth season Randy played in the NBA, thus making him eligible for pension upon retirement. After Randy left for the last week, we continued on and won our last two games, clinching the best regular season record in D-League history. Randy was named MVP, and Gates was named Coach of the Year.
A first-round bye was awarded to us from the playoff seeding, but since Randy had not been on the roster at season’s end, as he was in Seattle for the last week, he wasn’t eligible to come back down and play with us for the postseason. He did come down to sit on the bench and support us, coaching us through the West Conference semifinal game.
John Greig was at the game, and so were Pax and Sam. It was televised internationally on NBA TV, and I did an interview in the pregame show, talking about my writing and the books I was working on, but mostly answering questions about how I had managed to come onto the scene after sitting on the bench for most of the season.
“How did you manage to stay in shape?” one
interviewer asked.
“You always take that extra stride in practice, whether it be in drills or in scrimmages, and if you’re not needed down on the other end, you still run down there. That extra stride will always carry you just that much further, especially when you’re asthmatic like me.”
I had twenty-four points and seventeen rebounds in that playoff game, but we fell in overtime to Colorado.
I had no regrets. I had returned and left it all out on the floor, knowing I had done the best I could, lighting the D-League on fire, averaging twenty-two and thirteen in the last month of the season. But by this time it was too late to really be considered for a call-up. Time had run out.
I’d have to wait through another off-season of hype and politics, just like the NASCAR drivers do on a maintenance lap, allowing the others to catch up. I knew I was never the type of guy who’d get a job based solely on hype. I was going to do it only through my actions on the court. My comeback dream wasn’t yet complete.
29
I started out that summer by joining my teammate Ricky Sanchez down at his home in Puerto Rico, playing for a club there, in Humacao. As tradition would have it, I left Puerto Rico with only half of what I had been guaranteed, because people who know I’m deaf and struggle to understand a foreign language also like to think I’m stupid and thus won’t notice that they’re cheating me out of money. But the team did give me a small shirt that fits on me like underarmor on a football player. It was gracious of them to give me that shirt in lieu of the $7,000 they still owe me. I framed that $7,000 shirt.
I flew to Seattle so that I could train with John Greig and several of his other clients for summer camp. The Boston Celtics had been energetic in getting me to commit to them for the summer, well before the NBA draft. I was hesitant to at first, not knowing what rookie they’d take in the NBA draft later that month. I didn’t want to commit early to Boston for the summer only to have them draft a rookie big man. At the end of the day, I appreciated their enthusiasm, and they said I’d get decent playing time. I liked what I was hearing, and so I went to Seattle with John, getting in the best shape I could for the Celtics’ summer camp in Las Vegas.