Book of Basketball

by Simmons Bill

  months. As far as I can tell, this is the most random thing that ever happened. 75. Be honest: part of you wanted to believe this.

  76. That would be Jellybean Joe Bryant, or as we know him now, Kobe’s dad. He was an unapologetic gunner who spent much of the ’77 season demanding to be traded. Let’s just say that the apple landed about 3 inches from the tree.

  77. I’m stating the perception, not the reality. It’s sad that I have to clarify that. By the way, Jabaal Abdul-Simmons may have been the only white American outside Philly rooting for the Sixers in the ’77 Finals. Every Doc dunk made me “Gilligan’s Island is on!”–level happy. I was also fascinated by Lloyd Free and his jump shot; when he changed his name to World B. Free and averaged 30 a game in San Diego, I felt vindicated for jumping on the Free bandwagon so early. That was the perfect combo of talent and craziness that I was looking for in elementary school. 78. Let’s say Walton stays healthy and Portland wins three straight titles. Our ’80 Conference Final matchups: Philly-Boston and Portland-L.A. with Walton, Bird, Doc, Kareem and Magic. Wow. 79. Four perfect candidates: Seattle at Denver, ’78 (Game 5, series tied at 2); Philly at Washington,

  ’78 (Game 6, Bullets leading 3–2); Seattle at Phoenix, ’79 (Game 6, Phoenix leading 3–2); Washington at San Antonio, ’79 (Game 6, Spurs leading 3–2). The less sexy team won all 4 of those games. Um, this never happens anymore. Not sure if you’ve noticed. 80. That was an “I’m standing up for my teammate” moment that ranks alongside Flatch punching the guy who cheap-shotted Jimmy Chitwood in the ’54 North Sectional Regionals, then getting thrown into the trophy case and cutting his shoulder. That’s a gutless way to win! That’s a gutless way to win!

  81. The NBA spruced up the fighting penalties after the ’77 Finals, doubling the maximum fine ($10,000) and eliminating limits for game suspensions.

  82. In Giant Steps, a book that will make you hate Kareem between 25 and 30 percent more by the last page, Kareem bitches about Awtrey making his reputation for sucker-punching him from behind, then neglects to mention that he did the same thing to Benson … and later brags about the Benson punch. He also suckered Happy Hairston during the ’72 season (it’s on YouTube). 83. The cameras missed it, but Kunnert got clocked—even when they’re scraping Rudy off the floor, you can see Kunnert still wiping blood off his own face with a towel. Only 10 months later, Kunnert and Kermit were teammates on the Clippers, setting up one of the all-time awkward “Hey, good to see you again” moments in NBA history.

  84. This was a much bigger deal in 1977 because we only had a few channels and SNL averaged 30–35 million viewers. In the segment, Garrett Morris “defends” Kermit and says, “We blacks get blamed for everything. Look at this film. Why, he just grazed the cat. Whoops! Let’s look at it from another angle …” One of his only funny moments ever.

  85. In Breaks, Halberstam argues that it’s the most devastating punch ever thrown—a chiseled specimen planting his feet and throwing a perfect right cross into the face of someone sprinting toward him. Or as the Grumpy Old Editor calls it, a “cosmic accident.” Ten years earlier, Willis Reed easily could have been Kermit during that ’67 Lakers brawl.

  86. That was the year the Celtics fell apart and Hondo retired. When Irv Levin switched franchises with John Y. Brown and moved the Braves to San Diego, he took Kermit with him. I was crushed. Two favorites gone in 4 months.

  87. It’s really a long magazine profile, only Feinstein doubled the word count and repeated more than a few stories to stretch it into a book. Feinstein was a big influence on The Book of Basketball because he rushes his books to get to the next one. I want you to feel the opposite with mine. I want you to say, “Not only did I get my $30 worth, but honestly, I’m burned out on Simmons for like 9

  months, that book could have been about 200 pages less.” Wait, you’re already saying that? What the hell? We’re not even at the halfway point yet! Get some coffee or something. 88. The Bulls passed up Sidney Moncrief for David Greenwood at number two. Ouch. In Magic’s book, he writes that Jerry West wanted to trade down and pick Moncrief—remember, they already had Norm Nixon playing point—only Dr. Jerry Buss overruled him because he was buying the team and Magic was a bigger name.

  89. How do I know this? I called the commish and asked him. We talked for 35 minutes. Amazingly, he could still recall every detail and number off the top of his head 33 years later. 90. Incredibly, no tape exists of the four missing games, but you can buy the first two seasons of Simon and Simon on DVD. I don’t get the world sometimes.

  91. Just stating the stigma, not the reality. By the way, our top-ten TV programs in 1980: Dallas, Dukes of Hazard, 60 Minutes, M*A*S*H, Love Boat, The Jeffersons, Alice, House Calls, Three’s Company, Little House on the Prairie. You know it was a competitive TV year when C.H.I.P.S. was twenty-fifth.

  92. Had Game 6 moved to Saturday, Game 7 could have moved to Tuesday and bumped CBS’

  worst night of the week: some rerun (extensive Googling couldn’t figure out which one) followed by a “Movie of the Week.” I did find that a show named California Dreaming held the 8:00–9:00

  spot until December 10, 1979. IMDb.com’s synopsis: “Vince and Ross are suburban L.A. teenagers enjoying disco, surfing, cars and the rest of the Southern California lifestyle.” One of the show’s stars? Lorenzo Lamas! I loved the late-seventies.

  93. CBS’ ratings for every Finals from ’76 to ’90: 11.5 (Boston-Phoenix), 12.7

  (Philadelphia-Portland), 9.9 (Washington-Seattle), 7.2 (Washington-Seattle), 8.0 (L.A. Philadelphia), 6.7 (Boston-Houston), 13.0 (L.A.-Philadelphia), 12.3 (L.A. Philadelphia), 12.3

  (Boston-L.A.), 13.7 (Boston-L.A.), 14.1 (Boston-Houston), 15.9 (Boston-L.A.), 15.4

  (L.A.-Detroit), 15.1 (L.A.-Detroit), 12.3 (Portland-Detroit).

  94. “Wedman! Dunleavy! It’s the Western Conference Finals on CBS!”

  95. Remember the days when players could get in fights and remain in the game? Then the Kermit punch happened and everything changed … oh, wait, not true.

  96. Even better, they used the Miami Vice theme for everyone’s turn. Two of my biggest heroes in the mid-’80s were Bird and Sonny Crockett—now they were basically teaming up? Throw in a girlfriend putting out right after the contest and that could have been the greatest night of my sixteen-year life. So close. I was one piece away.

  97. My second-favorite 3 ever behind Bird’s 3 in the 60-point game that didn’t count and ended with him falling into the trainer’s lap as the Hawks celebrated.

  98. Technically, Gus wasn’t running a team because his agent, Howard Slusher, foolishly advised him to hold out for the entire ’81 season in a misguided effort to get a new deal. I think Slusher secretly advised the dolts running the Writers Guild during their 2007–8 strike. 99. Former teammate Eddie Johnson later told SI that Furlow, his best friend, was a free-baser and

  “did a lot of things I didn’t want him to do. I tried to get him to change, but Terry felt like he could conquer anything.” You’ll understand the irony within two pages.

  100. Denver made Thompson take responsibility for the team’s crappy ’80 season by making him return $200K to help its financial troubles (which Denver loaned back with interest by 1983). Can you imagine the Players Association going for that now? Also, how big a favor did they inadvertently do for Thompson? That absolutely would have been coke money. 101. During this same stretch, the NHL suspended New York’s Dave Murdoch for one year for coke possession; baseball suspended Steve Howe; the NFL’s “drug problem” appeared on the cover of SI in 1982; and Mackenzie Phillips tried to snort the entire cast of One Day at a Time. 102. The ’79 and ’80 Hawks had Drew, Furlow and Eddie Johnson. I spent 20 minutes looking for a freebase pipe in their ’80 team picture and couldn’t find it.

  103. In a June ’81 SI piece, Lucas denied using coke and claimed he was suffering from depression, a diagnosis confirmed in the piece by his therapist, Dr. Robert Strange, or as he’d come to be known, “the worst therapist of
all time.” Within a few years, Lucas admitted to snorting everything in sight for most of his career. I love the “SI Vault.”

  104. Eddie’s explanation to SI: “I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. I was at these chicks’

  house, and these guys busted in the door. I didn’t know what was going on. I was just there. Then they started shooting at me.” Oh.

  105. One of the coaches featured in the article? Westhead, fired a few weeks later for clashing with Magic. See? Coaches ultimately don’t matter except for a select few. 106. All you need to know about NBA coaches: during every time-out, they huddle with their staff about 15 feet from the bench, allow the players to “think,” then come back about a minute later with some miraculous play or piece of advice. “Hey guys, listen up—I think we just figured out how to stop LeBron!” I want to see an owner forgo a coach, put the players in charge of themselves and see if there’s any difference … and with the $4 million they saved on coaches, they could knock down season ticket prices. I pray that Donald Sterling reads this. 107. You gotta hand it to Harold here—I mean, they did win the ’83 title, right?

  108. If I was putting together a cheesy-but-phenomenal ’80s time capsule and could only use 30

  minutes of material, I’d include the “We Are the World” video; the “One on One” NBA ad; the final training scene in Rocky IV when he climbs the 25,000-foot mountain in Russia wearing ski boots and a normal parka; Madonna’s performance at the ’85 MTV Video Music Awards; Journey’s “Separate Ways” video; The Karate Kid’s “You’re the Best” fight montage; the Super Bowl Shuffle video; and the Beverly Hills Cop scene where Axel Foley drives through Bev Hills for the first time. That’s really all you need to know about the ’80s. It’s all in there. 109. Marvin’s father murdered him just 14 months later. Don’t forget to include Marvin Gaye Sr. on the Mount Rushmore of Worst Celebrity Dads along with Ryan O’Neal, the Great Santini, and Jim Pierce.

  110. Two key provisions: teams could exceed their cap to match offer sheets and use 50 percent of a retired/waived/injured player’s cap figure to acquire another player. That kept the good teams good, if you catch my drift.

  111. You can find that website at www.cbafaq.com. I’m convinced that Larry Coon is a stage name.

  112. Any conviction or guilty plea involving a cocaine/heroin crime also resulted in an immediate ban. We never had a guinea pig for this one; just think, if someone like Richard Dumas had ever been caught selling 30 pounds of pot during his playing days, we’d be calling this the Richard Dumas Rule.

  113. The complete list of players banned for at least one season: Richardson (’86), Lewis Lloyd (’87), Mitchell Wiggins (’87), Duane Washington (’87), Chris Washburn (’89), Roy Tarpley (’91), Dumas (’94, two-strike suspension), Stanley Roberts (’99) and Chris Andersen (’06). Nice nine-man rotation! The starters: Sugar, Lloyd, Dumas, Tarp and Roberts. The coach: Amy Winehouse.

  114. I can’t speak for every other kid in the mid-’80s, but I remember counting down the days to two random events: the first dunk contest and WrestleMania I one year later. In a related story, there wasn’t a girlfriend to be seen during that stretch. Not a one. 115. Red went ballistic after Thurmond blocked Barry’s shot with 59 seconds left and got whistled for a cheap foul. Hissed Red afterward, “I don’t mind getting beat, but my guys were playing for pride and to win the game, and [ref Norm Drucker] tried to make a joke out of it.” Red was the best. The Old-Timers Game disappeared after someone (can’t remember who) got seriously hurt one or two years later. Nobody wanted to see someone drop dead during All-Star Weekend. Not even if it was Kareem.

  116. The two sides took a staggering 241 shots and made 53 percent of them. As always, two great PGs make for a great ASG, and with Bird involved, it’s even better. Everyone played at least 11

  minutes except for the immortal Kelly Tripucka (6 minutes, 1 point), whose hair, mustache and teeth made him look like a mutant John Oates.

  117. Indiana’s pick went for Portland’s Tom Owens in ’81; Cleveland’s went for Dallas’ Mike Bratz in ’81; and the Clips traded theirs for Philly’s World B. Free in ’78. Maybe coke infected not just players but owners and GMs. By the way, the Cavs beat Washington in game 82 for their twenty-eighth win, dropping their pick to number four and costing Dallas a shot at MJ. Ouch. 118. Busty was a local stripper who became the Morganna of the Bird era. You know whose section she kept landing in? Mine! Busty, thanks to you and your mega-guns for helping me get through puberty. And to the guy who was sitting in front of me during Game 5—I’m sorry for standing up too quickly and knocking you unconscious with my boner. That was uncalled for. 119. In March ’85, SI ran a feature about the decline of TV sports ratings but passed on its usual NBA-bashing, even admitting, “A kind of dry rot [for ratings] has set in for all major sports except pro basketball.” My baby’s all growns up! My baby’s all growns up!

  120. Also, I needed to save something extra for the paperback. Get ready for How the Hell Did We Get Here: The Sequel, seasons 1985–2010, available for the 2010 holidays! I am shameless.

  FOUR

  THE WHAT-IF GAME

  WE SPEND AN inordinate amount of time playing the what-if game. What if I never got married?

  What if I had gone to Harvard instead of Yale? What if I hadn’t punched my boss in the face? What if I never invested my life savings with Bernie Madoff? What if I never walked in on my wife banging our gardener? You can’t go back, and you know you can’t go back, but you keep rehashing it anyway.

  There are three great what-ifs in my life that don’t involve women. The first is, “What if I had gone west or south for college?” This haunts me and will continue to haunt me until the day I die. I could have chosen a warm-weather school with hundreds of gorgeous sorority girls, and instead I went to an Irish Catholic school on a Worcester hill with bone-chilling 20-degree winds, which allowed female students to hide behind heavy coats and butt-covering sweaters so thick it became impossible to guess their weight within a 35-pound range. That was a great idea. 1 The second:

  “What if I didn’t quit the Boston Herald, take a year off from writing, and tend bar in 1996?” You wouldn’t be reading this book if that hadn’t happened. I needed to recharge my batteries, stay up until 4:00 a.m., date the wrong women, smoke an obscene amount of pot and figure some shit out. That’s what I needed at the time, and nobody can tell me different. And of course, the third: “What if I had tried to write this monstrosity of a book without the help of copious amounts of hard alcohol, cocaine, amphetamines, ADD medication, Marlboro Lights, coffee and horse tranquilizers?” I’ll let you decide whether that decision worked out or not.

  The what-if game extends to every part of life. For instance, I have three and only three favorite movie what-ifs. In reverse order …2

  • 3. What if Robin Williams played the Duke in Midnight Run? He signed to play Jonathan “the Duke” Mardukas and backed out before shooting because of a scheduling conflict. The producers scrambled around for a replacement before settling on Charles Grodin, not exactly a scorching-hot name at the time. The rest is history. Maybe Williams would have taken things in a more frantic, slapstick direction—and that’s saying something, since this was the same movie that broke the record for most guys knocked briefly unconscious by a punch—but it wouldn’t have been a good thing. Grodin nailed the Duke. Understated, sarcastic, never flinched. Williams messes that movie up. I am convinced. And if you don’t agree with me, I have two words for you: shut the fuck up.

  • 2. What if Leonardo DiCaprio did Boogie Nights instead of Titanic? Leo had the choice, mulled it over, opted for Titanic … and ended up carrying that movie and becoming a superduperstar. (By the way, that movie bombs with anyone else.) 3 But imagine if he played Dirk Diggler. Look, I liked Mark Wahlberg’s performance in that movie. It’s a solid B-plus and he didn’t take anything off the table. But that could have been the defining part of Leo’s career. To rank the best new actors of the past fifteen years, Leo
and Russell Crowe are either one-two or two-one, Philip Seymour Hoffman is third and Matt Damon is fourth. 4 As much as I like Wahlberg, he’s not on that level. Leo could have taken Dirk Diggler to new heights, which seems significant since Boogie Nights is already one of my ten favorite movies ever. I even think he could have pulled off the “Feel the heat” and “It’s my dojo!” scenes. 5

  • 1. What if Robert De Niro was hired for Michael Corleone instead of Al Pacino? This almost happened. When Francis Ford Coppola screened them, he liked De Niro so much that he saved the part of young Vito for him in The Godfather: Part II. This will always be the number one movie what-if because it can never be answered: Pacino was tremendous in I and submitted a Pantheon performance in II. Could De Niro have topped that? Possibly, right? That character was in both of their wheelhouses. I guess it comes down to which guy was better, which is like the Bird-Magic debate in that there isn’t a definitive answer and there will never be a definitive answer. 6 Now that, my friends, is a great what-if.

  We should set some ground rules if we’re extending the concept to the NBA, like avoiding injury-related what-ifs because injuries are part of the game. (“What if Bill Walton’s feet never broke down?” sounds fine on paper, but if you’ve ever read anything about Walton, you know he never had a chance running around on those fragile clodhoppers. He was predisposed to breaking down, the same way someone like Kurt Cobain was predisposed to becoming a suicidal druggie maniac.) I also want to avoid fascinating-but-nonsensical what-ifs, like “What if Shaq and Kobe had been able to get along?” (those guys had mammoth egos and were destined to clash), 7 as well as draft-related what-ifs unless the right decision was glaringly obvious even at the time and the team still screwed up. And I’m avoiding the “What if Jordan didn’t retire for eighteen months?”