by Paul Shirley
After passing my late August audition with Atlanta, I returned to Kansas and continued the workout routine that I had embraced for most of the summer so that I would be prepared for training camp. The Hawks offered to let me join the team’s pre-preseason training sessions anytime after Labor Day. I would have rather stayed in the warm uterus of the heartland, but the Hawks’ offer was not one to be spurned by an unguaranteed free agent who has never played in the NBA. To that end, I packed and prepared for an indeterminate amount of time in Atlanta.
I spent my first two days here in Atlanta participating in a mini-camp with the Hawks. The NBA recently decided to allow such events sporadically throughout the summer and fall so that each team can get together for extra work and/or confirm that none of its respective players has been recently incarcerated. Since my mini-camp experiences with the Hawks, my time has been consumed by individual workouts and pickup games while we prepare for the beginning of training camp in two weeks.
Mini-camp consisted of laid-back practices where, according to NBA rules, the drills could not go beyond three-on-three. So the two days ostensibly were not too difficult. However, it always re-surprises me that such a high level of concentration is required if one wants to have any success at the NBA level. The slightest wandering of the mind—especially when one is trying to learn a basketball system or philosophy from scratch—makes catching up a challenge. Over the years, I have come to understand that there are two intelligence-level options among basketball players: (1) A player can be relatively intelligent, and so can concentrate for long periods of time, or (2) he can be a Neanderthal. In the latter case, a coherent thought rarely sails through the participant’s brain. The relative emptiness inside that player’s cranium makes it easy to focus on simple activities. For example, when one has no other worries, the instruction “Put ball in basket” becomes a fairly easy command to follow. The rest of us are balancing the need to call about health insurance, concerns about our dinner plans, and confusion about our purpose on this earth. Meanwhile, the moron already scored and is pointing to the sky on his way back down the court.
Surprisingly, many NBA players fall into the former category—the smart-guy group. I make note of the unrecognized good fortune of the idiot only because I am envious. Such ease of focus has been demonstrated to me by many former teammates; it proves maddening for me to admit that it is so effective. The proverbial blank canvas, perhaps. For better or worse, I fall more easily into the category of the relatively intelligent soul. Thus my need for extreme concentration at all times, if only to dumb myself down. What a waste of brain cells.
September 22
Late this week I signed a contract with the Hawks, which sounds a lot better than it really is. As previously mentioned, my contract is valid only if I am on the team’s roster at the end of training camp. I will admit that it is somewhat intoxicating to sign my name to a contract that states that I will receive $512,435—the minimum yearly salary for a player with my experience. Because I went to training camp with the Lakers last season, I am no longer considered a first-year player—even though I was not on an NBA team during the regular season. The NBA regulates minimum salaries according to years of service. (Which makes it sound like the army. Life in the NBA is decidedly dissimilar to life in the armed forces.) I now qualify as having had one year of that service, so my salary escalates according to a preset scale. Unfortunately, that financial boon isn’t quite the benefit it would seem to be at first blush. While my potential personal financial gain does increase, the team is required to pay me more than a player who has never been to a training camp, so the system could work against me. I wanted to offer the Hawks some sort of Kevin McHale/Joe Smith arrangement whereby I would return some of the money if those in charge would allow me a spot on the team. But I chickened out. I still do threaten to someday go to the GM’s office and give him my best PowerPoint presentation, entitled “Why Paul Shirley Should Be an Atlanta Hawk.” Some of my key bullet points would include:
• I will never be pulled from the charred remains of a Ferrari at 5 A.M.*1
• I will never complain about playing time or my role on the team.**2
• The importance of actually learning the plays is not lost on me.***3
• I have no illegitimate children for whom I need complimentary tickets.****4
I think it’s a foolproof plan.
I have been impressed with the work ethic of most of the Hawks. Perhaps the most impressive is displayed by Shareef Abdur-Rahim. As far as I can tell, he is almost always the first player at the gym and he appears to actually work hard. In real-world logic, this would seem appropriate—he is set to make $20 million this year. I have found, though, that basketball logic is usually the exact opposite of its real-world counterpart. Usually it goes that the more money a player makes, the less effort he puts forth. Shareef is a thoughtful guy; we have had a couple of decent conversations—probably more because his locker is right next to mine than anything else. It turns out that he was a collegiate teammate of Kenyon Jones, the other American on my team in Greece last year. In fact, now that I think about it, I believe Kenyon once told me that he owes Shareef some money but, in his words, “I don’t think he’s missing it.” Anyway, Shareef and I were relating college experiences recently. I have always maintained that mine was not exactly a normal collegiate existence, but I can hardly imagine what he thinks of his. He was at Cal for only his freshman year. In essence, since he probably did not stay around much longer than April because he was headed to NBA pre-draft camps and the like, his college experience lasted eight months. Because of his short stay in college, the man is all of one year older than me and is now entering his seventh NBA season.
(Side note: When talking to Shareef, most people call him “Reef.” I have a hard time latching onto nicknames, so I stick with “Shareef.” I contend that if I wasn’t around for the coining of the nickname, I am not allowed to use it. I think it is sound policy.)
Our pre-training-camp workouts continue to go about as well as could be expected. As is usually the case, my standout abilities in these situations are showing up early, touching the lines when we run conditioning drills, and staying longer than everybody else. Pickup games? Not my strong suit.
As I played with the Hawks in an informal setting, I examined the phenomenon of the pickup game in my mind. It is a strange beast, this pickup game, but it seems to follow set rules all through the basketball world. A pickup game can be loosely defined as an informal scrimmage where the number of players is greater than ten, leaving players on the sidelines to “pick up” players from the losing team for the next game. There are no referees, and scorekeeping is done by the participants. For illustrative purposes, we will allow that, in some cases, there may only be ten players available, in which case the same players stay on the floor (and the games get uglier and uglier as the players get tired). Some general rules apply:
1. Teams shall be picked by either the two tallest or the two eldest players participating. A shortage of players should not be looked upon as a hindrance to the beginning of action. If need be, bystander(s) with any level of basketball skill can be drafted, without regard to effect on the level of play. Eligible bystanders include coaches, ball boys, and all bipedal organisms from the class Mammalia.
2. After teams are established, the members of neither team should in any way differentiate themselves from members of the other team. The concept of “shirts and skins” shall remain just that—a concept. Which isn’t confusing at all.
3. There shall be, at minimum, two arguments concerning the score. At some point in the game, players will be forced to count up individual baskets in order to come up with an aggregate score for the team. (Understandable; it is easy to lose track when all baskets count as one point and the winner is the first to score the astronomical number of seven.)
4. No player on the court shall ever know whether the offensive or the defensive player is responsible for calling of fouls. In most cas
es, the opponent will have taken the ball to the other end of the court before it is established that a foul was called. Here, the player who calls the foul must stand up for his cause. The slightest hesitation or lack of conviction will result in forfeiture of future foul-calling rights, in addition to public ridicule. And manhood-questioning.
5. Upon conclusion of any one game, if players on the sidelines wish to join the game, they must make a case for inclusion with force and speed. If not, there exists the possibility that the players on the court will “run it back” and start a new game with the same participants as the previous game. When entering the field of play, the new player or players shall select, from the losing team in the previous game, enough participants to fill a new team. At this point, no one shall tell the players who were not selected of their gross ineptitude. Instead, they will be ignored until they make their way to the sidelines, heads held low.
6. If a number of games to be played has been established prior to the start of play, that number shall be ignored upon arrival at said number. No player shall admit that he is “tired” or that he “needs to do something else” or that “the games have deteriorated into nothing more than full-court layup drills” for fear of being viewed as weak in body and spirit.
7. Nothing resembling a coherent offensive plan will be employed on the court. Instead, players will limit themselves to a strict regimen of bad shots and ugly play at all times.
8. The author of these rules shall, at all times, participate in pickup games with the overriding goal being the avoidance of the shaming of his family’s name. He realizes that this is not a ticket to success and promises to try to find a better outlook. Next week.
I played in a pickup game with Dominique Wilkins recently. He is some sort of “special assistant” for the Hawks, so is often lurking around the practice court. More accurately, the Hawks keep him on the payroll in the hope that prospective ticket buyers will associate his former glory as a player with the potential glory of the current regime. At one of our recent workouts, we did not have ten for a pickup game (see Rule 1 above), so Dominique jumped into the fray. He didn’t stretch at all—he simply walked onto the court and started playing. During the game, I was not party to a single highlight-worthy dunk. But I didn’t leave disappointed. No matter the outcome, I got to play in a legitimate basketball game with Dominique Wilkins. As a kid, I used to watch on television as he would shock even his own teammates with his on-court acrobatics. Ten years later, we were sharing a court.
Sometimes even I realize that my life can be amazing.
September 29
Workouts continued this week. Formal training camp finally starts in a couple of days with a practice here in Atlanta, followed by an inexplicable trip to South Carolina for three days of practice. (Feels like escape-from-the-wives time for a particular coaching staff.) Upon reentry into the greater Atlanta region, a few practices will be had before the first preseason game. This geographically diverse activity will bring me closer to knowing my fate with the Hawks. I don’t know the exact date that those in charge will decide who will occupy the team’s roster spots, but the more practices I can get under my belt, the closer that mysterious day will be. And that is good. I mean, this state of mind—no earthly idea of where I will be for the year—is fun and all, but I’m willing to let someone else try it.
As camp begins, my mental and physical condition are both good. (Apparently, I am the Terminator now. Mental and physical condition: good. What a jackass.) My attitude is the time-worn, clichéd, “nothing to lose” one. Unfortunately, I think it applies in this case. My chances of actually making the team waffle between poor and very poor, but I will put everything I have into the opportunity; I don’t know if I will do this un-guaranteed training camp thing again, so I will “leave it all out there” as best I can.
(Apologies for the hokeyness of that paragraph. It would appear that I have lost my mind. I probably could have written, “Blah, blah…I’m going to try hard to make the team.”)
October 6
There is a somewhat obscure movie called Gattaca that stars Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman. Gattaca is about a future in which every person’s destiny is preordained based on the genetic potential he displays at birth. It is one of my favorite movies. The plot follows the life of a man named Jerome who, it has been determined, will rise only to the level of laborer but who wants more than anything to defy his birth and become an astronaut. In order to do this, Jerome buys another man’s genetic identity. In the end, he fools everyone around him into thinking that he belongs in his station in life through all manner of tricks involving faked blood and urine samples. Jerome does not have some of the capabilities of his colleagues, forcing him to put an extraordinary amount of effort into anything he does.
I was reminded of the movie a few times this week during my first few practices of training camp. On more than one occasion, I asked a teammate what he thought of practice. He would invariably reply, “Oh, piece of cake. How about you?” Meanwhile, I was actively considering that my effort to make the Atlanta Hawks is the most idiotic thing I have ever attempted. Instead, I replied with, “Um, it was okay.” The movie has a happy ending, wherein Jerome realizes his dream and becomes an astronaut. I will continue to hope that such is the case here. (The realization-of-the-dream part, that is. I don’t want to be an astronaut. Very cramped existence.)
Actually, when compared to some of the torture I endured in college, Hawks’ practices are not nearly as terrible as I make them out to be. In fact, so far, the use of curse words in a violent manner has been limited, no one has questioned my testosterone levels or familial origin, and I have not once been made to run a sprint over again because some moron did not touch a line on the court. I suppose that practices are made difficult if only because I—as I have mentioned before—must maintain a rather high level of concentration in order to have any chance. Also, the players are moderately large and strong and tend to balk when I suggest that they get out of my way.
October 13
During one of our first preseason games, I found myself on the court with Shawn Kemp. He was wearing an Orlando Magic uniform, which was odd—Shawn Kemp will always wear a Sonics uniform in my mind. But the strangest aspect of Kemp’s appearance was not his uniform. It was what was under it. Shawn Kemp is huge. And not huge like tall and strong—huge like Oliver Miller. Huge like Chris Farley, post–Saturday Night Live and pre-overdose. Kemp is listed at 280 pounds in the media guide, but he looks a lot bigger than that. I think they weighed him on the moon.
And so another rung in the belief system ladder is destroyed. Shawn Kemp was the “Manchild”—the high-flying power forward who was the anchor to my entire NBA Jam dynasty. (Best basketball video game ever made.) Now he has been reduced to lumbering up and down the court like a drunken brontosaurus, holding on to the glory days so that he can support the gaggle of children he has fathered. (And, to be sure, this is no large Mennonite family. In fact, I’m sure there is nothing even remotely familial about the situation.)
We won the game against Kemp and Co. by twenty-five points or so—not that anyone cares. Preseason games serve only as a chance for the coaches to try out new plays on unsuspecting foes. Players who know they will be on the team for the whole year use them to slowly work back into game condition. Players like me just hope to get into the game.
I was sent into the game late in the second quarter, which was encouraging because, after the first ten players, I was the next one in. I was a bit spastic in my first-half action. In a move that will surprise no one who saw me play in college, it took me all of four seconds of game action to commit my first foul on Tracy McGrady as he flew toward the basket. In good news, I settled down for some garbage minutes at the end of the game. It’s the little victories that keep me going.
We’ve played three preseason games. The home game against the Magic was followed by a trip to Florida for a return engagement, which we lost by ten. Once again, I did not play until th
e end of the game. (It seems that I’m really making an impact.) After returning from Orlando, we flew to Indianapolis for a game with the Pacers, which we lost by two. I played the last six minutes of that game and did a good job of doing what I was supposed to do. (Story of my basketball career—I pretty much do what the coaches tell me to do; anything beyond that might be an iffy proposition.) While in Indiana, I ran into a former college teammate, Jamaal Tinsley, who plays for the Pacers. We had a meaningful, in-depth, thirty-second conversation and then both went on our way. We are not close. In fact, I consider very few of my college teammates to be good friends of mine. My college experience wasn’t quite what I expected it would be, which is sad. I have met players who were very close to their college compatriots. I am always quite envious.
I have to take the blame for some of the emotional distance between myself and my fellow alumni. When I was in school, surviving in both basketball and class was much more important to me than anything else and so completely dominated my life. I rarely went out—I didn’t have time. Resting for the next practice or studying to keep up with the über-dorks who were the bane of my engineering existence took up most of my discretionary hours. Of course, I didn’t have much motivation to hang out with my teammates. Many of them were only short-term additions—one guy survived all of six weeks before giving up and going home. And a large percentage had few interests outside of basketball, with the distinct exception of the chase of the Iowa-bred sorority girls who had never seen a black person before.