“She wrote in there?”
He nods.
“Okay, Mo, can I read it?”
“Nah, nah, I can’t let nobody read it.”
At this point in the NBA, Moses is the man. He’s taken over the title from Kareem as the best center in the league. Larry and Magic are still coming into their own. I’m in my twelfth season. Moses is the alpha dog.
But he’s still so country, with this arch sense of humor that comes out in flashes, like when he is checking out of a hotel in New York and the clerk hands him his bill. He studies it and says, “I just want to pay for a room, I didn’t want to buy no hotel.”
This is the first team I’ve been on since ninth grade where I’m not clearly the best player on the team. Even I have to defer to Moses. He is such a warrior down low that Billy has no choice but to run more of our offense through him. Moses takes more shots than I do, he scores more than I do. He becomes, in many ways, the physical leader of our team while I remain the verbal and spiritual leader.
And with the continuing emergence of Andrew Toney as a devastating scorer, we have so many weapons, not to mention Mo Cheeks and his steady hand at the point. Pat has signed a free agent rookie named Marc Iavaroni, a big, strong player who had preceded Ralph Sampson at Virginia before playing in Italy for three seasons. Iavaroni ends up starting, so Bobby can continue to come off the bench. Bobby still plays more minutes, of course.
At thirty-three years old, I’m picking my spots where I can impose my will. I’ve missed 24 games in total in the previous eleven seasons, so my knees are definitely feeling the wear and tear. It is a luxury to have a guy like Moses, whose presence forces defenses to double-team. Moses has led the league in rebounding three of the previous four seasons, and last year he averaged 31 points and nearly 15 boards. And we added that to a team that was already an NBA finalist.
Throughout camp, we are scrimmaging and playing with a certain anger that has never been there before. Every guy has Moses’s sneer and steely determination. I’m talking to Bobby and to Billy and to Little Mo, and we can all tell there is something different about this team. We felt great in ’80 and ’82, but we didn’t have this kind of confidence. “Now I know what it feels like,” says Little Mo.
“What?”
“Now I know what it feels like to know you can win every night.”
One evening, I stop in to see Billy at his house, to talk over some issues from practice and generally to discuss the state of the team. Sometimes, if Billy and I have an issue, instead of raising it in front of the guys, we talk privately. We’re practically neighbors, so it’s easy to just knock on each other’s door, which we do frequently.
Billy says he couldn’t be happier with the way this team is performing.
I agree.
“Do you think we have enough?” he asks.
I start laughing. “I’ve been there three times. In ’eighty I thought we had enough. Last year, too. But this does feel different.”
He nods. “It feels great.”
45.
We open the season with six straight wins, including a double-overtime victory over Boston in which Moses goes for 28 with 19 rebounds, I score 28, and Toney adds 24. Moses plays fifty-six of fifty-eight minutes. We win ten of our first eleven and eventually are 50-7. Moses is the leading rebounder in the league; in fact, he has more rebounds than Dawkins and CJ combined the year before.
“Basically,” Moses says, “I just goes to the rack.”
In January, the Lakers come to town, and we play another overtime thriller, with Magic dropping a triple double on us, including 20 assists. McAdoo, Wilkes, Worthy, Nixon, all of them put up big games. Kareem is out with migraines. But the Lakers are still an all-star team.
But we have our own big stars now, with Moses and Andrew. I score 27, and on a deflected pass from James Worthy that I control near the half-court line, I get a breakaway with only Michael Cooper between me and kaboom. I have great momentum toward the hoop, but I want to make sure Cooper can’t get at the ball before I bring it down. I know Cooper is a high flier—and a fine dunker himself—so I cup the ball in my right hand and rock it back behind me before windmilling it down for the jam. Cooper, realizing that he can’t block the shot, wisely ducks beneath the backboard.
We finish regulation tied at 112, and then with twelve seconds left in overtime and the score tied at 120, Billy calls a time-out to set up a play for Moses. This seems like the prudent option. With Kareem out of their lineup, they don’t have a shot blocker who can body up to Moses. But when Little Mo gets the inbounds, he is trapped by the Laker guards and hands the ball off to Toney. Toney is having a good shooting night, already going 12 for 22 from the field, so he’s not looking for Big Mo or me, he’s thinking basket.
Billy is screaming at Toney.
Moses is already busy boxing guys out.
The entire Laker defense is converging on Toney, with Magic, Kurt Rambis, and Jamaal all closing quickly. On the left side of the key, about ten feet out, Toney stops and puts up a soft jumper, somehow clearing all those outstretched hands, and banks the shot in for the win.
As great as the victory feels, it is even more encouraging that we outrebound the Lakers 40 to 37. We sweep the regular season series with the Lakers.
In February, Billy and Pat call me into Pat’s office and they ask me again, “Do you think we have enough to win it all?”
I repeat what I told them, that I thought we had enough in ’77, in ’80, in ’82, so maybe that means you can never have enough.
They are both looking at each other. I can tell they are thinking about a specific move.
“Look,” I tell them, “if there is something you can do to make this team better, then you have to do it.”
That’s when Pat swings a deal to get backup big man Clemon Johnson and shooting guard Reggie Johnson. Clemon is a huge piece of the puzzle, because he’s basically as mammoth as Moses and almost as difficult to handle. We now have a backup center who doesn’t give opposing defenses any kind of break, and with Reggie we have another bench scorer who makes up for the fact that we no longer have Steve Mix on the squad. Our younger players, Iavaroni and Earl “the Twirl” Cureton, are also making steady contributions. We are deep.
We send four players to the all-star game in Los Angeles—Big Mo Malone, Little Mo Cheeks, Toney, and me—where Marvin Gaye does his incredible national anthem, setting up the metronome, tick, tick, tick as he makes his art. (It’s one of those moments, like Miles on his horn, or perhaps like one of my dunks, where it feels like it could spiral out of control, yet somehow it never does, and as he keeps singing, somehow harmonizing and working his voice into spaces in the music we didn’t even know were there, it emerges as a masterpiece.) After the song, he comes over to greet the players. I’ve hung with Marvin a few times, though I’m closer to Teddy Pendergrass, obviously. But Marvin is one of those artists I admire.
“I got something coming out you need to hear,” he says.
“Oh yeah?”
The album is officially titled Sanctified Lady. “They changed it up because I wanted it to be called Sanctified Pussy. You listen to it, but in your head, change the words to ‘Sanctified Pussy.’ It makes more sense.”
I’m laughing. “You’re crazy, man.”
I am the MVP of the all-star game, scoring 25.
But Moses is the MVP of the league.
We finish 65-17.
Moses promises “Fo, fo, fo,” and to this day I don’t know if he meant we would sweep three straight playoff series or if he was simply promising that we will win the title. We have no doubts about the latter, as we annihilate the Knicks and Moses goes 38-17, 30-17, 28-14, and 29-14. Though he can operate out of any low-post position he wants to, Moses prefers to play facing the basket—he will end up teaching Hakeem Olajuwon many of his post-up moves during off-seasons in Houston, where the Dream is in college. “I think I’m learnin’ that dude too much. He’s getting too good,” Mo tells me.
<
br /> But in crunch time, Moses has no problem backing up to the basket for easy entry passes. And he’s such a good foul shooter that there is no way for a defender to bail out by sending him to the line.
Our only playoff loss is to the Bucks. And we win game 5 at home to put them away.
Finally, we’re back to the finals and the Lakers, who have won 58 games and are playing in their third championship series in four years. This is still a five-Hall-of-Famer team, and now they’ve added my old roommate Steve Mix to their roster.
Still, they are missing their rookie sensation James Worthy. But even if they had James, there is something different about our team this year, and I think even Magic and Jamaal can sense it. For one thing, whenever they take a lead, which they do early in games 1 and 2, we come storming back like it’s no big deal. And I can see in Magic’s and Jamaal’s body language, they aren’t as confident as in years past. During time-outs, when I catch a glimpse of them, they are looking at each other like, What do we have to do to put these guys away? In previous matchups, it would be our team that jumped out ahead and then felt helpless as the Lakers went on a tear and then put their dagger into us. Now we are in that position. They can play rabbit all they want, but with Moses down low, we are always coming back. His line this series is 27-18, 24-12, 28-19, and 24-23. We’ve completely reversed the rebounding situation, so that the Lakers are now struggling on the glass. Moses goes through stretches where he takes over games, going up and grabbing offensive rebounds and getting putbacks that break the Lakers’ spirit.
The fourth game is typical as the Lakers pull ahead by 11 at the end of the third quarter at home. But then Moses goes to the rack and I have a stretch where I score 7 in a row in the fourth quarter.
Finally, Mo Cheeks steals the ball. I’m running downcourt ahead of him, waiting for Little Mo to set me up for the fast-break dunk, but Little Mo just keeps going. He makes one of his very rare dunks. It’s over.
So this is what this feels like? The NBA title, after seven years of trying, and we are finally here, walking down the tunnel away from the Forum floor. In the locker room, I’m hugging Billy and Andrew and Little Mo. I’m up on the podium with Brent Musburger and Moses. I don’t want to drink any champagne because I want to be completely, 100 percent sober in order to savor all this.
On my way to the shower, I’m hearing guys whooping and hollering when I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror.
No matter how old I get, no matter what I accomplish, I still see a lanky fifteen-year-old staring back at me. I’m still Mom’s son and Marky’s brother. I’m still Junior.
Photographic Insert 2
Larry Bird and I had a ferocious rivalry; here I’m dunking all over him and Kevin McHale (feet pictured in the center). (Tony Tomsic/Getty/Sports Illustrated)
Showing the NBA just what they were missing, 1976.
(Larry Berman/BermanSports.com)
Sometimes when I went airborne I didn’t even look at the basket. By the 1980s, I was more concerned about finding a way around my hero, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. (Jim Cummins/Getty/NBA)
Moses Malone was the missing piece that enabled us to win the NBA title. (Focus on Sport/Getty)
After clinching against the Lakers, at the Forum, in 1983. (NBA/Getty)
My children, Cory, Cheo, and Jazmin, on the Fourth of July in 1996.
My family in Atlanta, 2010.
With my daughter, the tennis player Alexandra Stevenson, at my sixtieth-birthday celebration.
When I met my second wife, Dorys, she had no idea who I was: “They said you’re called Dr. J. What kind of doctor are you?”
My hands are just as big in the boardroom as they were on the court. (Dorna Jenkins Taylor)
Barry with my late son, Cory, in 1996, four years before the accident.
This is the face of a satisfied man saying good-bye to the game.
At the Forum in 1987. (Rick Stewart/Getty)
1.
It goes by in the blink of an eye. A child is born, he grows, he rises, he becomes a man. As a father, you watch this progression, from crawling to walking to jumping, with pride at each developmental milestone but also with some pathos at the time passing, the baby, the child, repository of so many of our wishes and desires. Too quickly he is grown, gone.
You want to stop time, to freeze the frame, so you can live in that moment with that child forever, before the corrupting influences of the world rush in to besmirch innocence. The child will grow to a man. Yet in my mind’s eye, when I see Cory, when I see any of my children, I still see them as the boys and girls they were. Just as I can still see in myself the boy I was.
I am riding in a convertible Cadillac down Broad Street, at the helm of a procession of Cadillacs nosing their way forward amid swirling confetti and the cheering throngs of Philadelphians lined up a half-dozen deep, leaning out of windows and climbing up trees and lampposts. We have brought the championship back from Los Angeles, and this is an exultant moment. This is a relationship between sports fans and their team, and like any relationship that works, this one is honest, our fans booing us when we let them down, bitterly complaining when we fail them. Now, when we succeed, their enthusiasm is unbridled. We owed them one but now we’ve paid in full.
Riding in my arms is Cory, age two, his eyes wide and bugging out at the crowd, the noise, the ticker-tape blizzard. The roar is deafening, fans running alongside the vehicles, shouting up at us. Moses Malone is behind me, holding up one finger. Billy is behind him. My children are all around me, Cheo, J, and Jaz. But my arms are around Cory. I’m sheltering him. From what? There is nothing but good intention out here today. He is still a child, so small. My instinct is to protect him.
“Daddy,” he is saying, “Daddy.” He is just finding his words, putting his mouth around those sounds, working a lazy tongue into syllables.
“It’s loud, Cory,” I tell him. “It’s loud.” I point to my ears.
“Daddy!” Jaz is shouting. “Daddy is a champion.”
We’re all champions, I want to tell Jaz. What I achieve we all achieve.
Or that’s what I tell myself. I don’t know that it’s true. I now believe that the gifts of the father are not always passed down. Perhaps the flaws and weaknesses, but not always the gifts.
You want to protect your children, to keep harm away, to wrap them in the safe cocoon of paternal love. But I can’t.
I put Cory on my shoulders. I want to put all of my children on my shoulders. I would carry them through the fires if I could.
Cory has my demons as well as my gifts. Even as a child, he is obsessed with order, with arranging his animals and matchbox cars in straight, neat rows. If J comes in and messes up the descending order of his Schleich animals, the careful logic of bunny to lion to bear to elephant to whale, Cory makes an angry scrunch, goes into a quick seethe, then he rearranges.
“Nah, nah, J, don’t.”
He’s the only one of my boys to make his own bed, to tuck in his shirt, to pick the lint from his pockets.
As much as a father is his son’s true north, his brothers, however, loom larger in his daily life. Cheo, nine years older, is in Cory’s mind flawless and perfect. Millions may look up to Dr. J, but Cory worships at the altar of Cheo Erving and his lieutenant, J. And as the youngest, he is excused from the worst of Cheo’s and J’s cabals, but when they are receiving their regular lecture, there will be smiles and giggles in the midst of my sternest reprimands because behind me, there will be Cory, making faces, mugging, mocking my attempts at discipline. And as Cory becomes more verbal and better at arguing, he becomes Cheo’s advocate. “Leave Cheo alone. Why you hollerin’ at Cheo?”
Sometimes, when I see Cory, I see Marky—the same mischievous eyes, broad smile, russet skin, curly hair. I see the younger brother always in awe of the older sibling. I want to give to Cory what I never could to Marky. But Marky was studious, a hard worker, disciplined, focused. And for what?
The boy grows. He is becoming longer,
leaner, the tallest of my children, a lanky boy, a good athlete, a fast runner. Yet he shares Cheo’s disinterest in school, a result, perhaps, of his dyslexia, a diagnosis that sends us scurrying again to experts and specialists, to new programs and schools. By now Cheo is having his first brushes with the law, scrapes because of drinking and drugs. I’ve never smoked a joint, taken a nonprescribed medication, yet my boys are enthusiasts, will give over their time and, in the case of Cheo, his freedom for the sake of getting high. I don’t understand it. I don’t know how to fix them.
So begin the steady visits to rehab centers and more counselors and sitting in treatment facilities and having family sessions with Cheo where I tell him how much Turquoise and I care about him and how he has hurt us. And the tearful confessions of dishonesty and shame, and the reconciliation, and the vows to stay clean, to stay sober, to attend meetings, to work one day at a time, and then the eventual relapse. Turq refuses to visit rehab, doesn’t want to see her son that way and insists that it’s not a disease, as the counselors tell us, but a damn weakness. I don’t know. I only know what I am told, what the experts tell me.
And Cory’s persistent defense of his brother continues, only now instead of blaming me for being too hard on his brother, he blames the world for keeping Cheo down. “Why are people always on Cheo’s back? Why can’t people accept him?”
Because of the decisions Cheo makes, I tell Cory, because he takes drugs and drinks alcohol and then finds himself in bad situations in bad neighborhoods. I’ve risen to get my children away from the culture of guns and violence that grows up around drugs, yet as teenagers, they all dabble with cocaine and marijuana. I want to understand. I try to have a dialogue on the subject.
“I’ll meet you halfway,” I tell Cheo. “What are you thinking?”
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