So anyway, I made sure those two weeks on non-U.S. soil coincided exactly with the playing of the games. Call it my protest against my country for defecating its crummy politics all over my chosen sport. Maybe I was only a sophomore at the time, and maybe I wouldn't even've made the team, but on the other hand I had a pretty good year in 79-80, averaged 19 points a game and made Honorable Mention All-American, so maybe I would've made it, who knows? But none of us friggin' even got the chance. So you can see why my memories of the city of London aren't exactly top drawer, right? (Of course by the time the '84 Games of L.A. rolled around I'd been in the pro game a couple years and was thus ineligible, ineligible to play in The Olympics in my own damn town.) Damn straight. The only reason I decided to come back to England was because my dear darling editor made me go, go somewhere, and as long as I had to go somewhere I wanted that somewhere to be as far from L.A. as possible, and England was the only place I could think of where they spoke something halfway close to my language.
So me and my rental car wasted no time in hopping on the M-4 and heading for the wide open spaces. That's right, the M-4 west---away from London.
Right away I guess I should say something about my rental car. Man, it is some sharp ride; a tough little MG Maestro with a sunroof, blood red, with a four-speaker stereo system to boot. Made by British Leyland. And made fast. Not quite in the same league as my Porsche, but after you get past eighty-five or so what difference does it make? And it was the perfect kind of day for some serious driving, a sunglasses-bright, sparkling dewdrop of a day, like squatting in front of a just-opened refrigerator, the kind of day that just makes you suck the whole thing up through your nose like you'll never get another clean breath. Naturally I drove with the windows down. I distinctly remember feeling my hair moving, being pushed straight back by the whirlpool of sharp stinging air the open windows and sunroof created, even cut short and curly-stiff like it is, that's how fast I was going, and my UCLA scarf was flapping up and down like the wings of some out-of-control yellow and blue bumblebee. And I can't say enough about my little Maestro's personality. The little guy accelerates like a greyhound and corners like a Sherman Tank, and he's always started up right away, even on the really bitter cold mornings later on. He's sort've been my best buddy over here. I haven't had much occasion to drive him lately, but during those first few weeks we were friggin' inseparable....
But the unexpected thing that's made my MG special is the carphone. Yes, sports fans, an actual by-god carphone! I didn't even notice it until I was a mile or two clear of the airport. I just looked down at the console to my left and there it was. (I'd always wanted my own carphone, but I was always afraid all the guys on the team would give me a hard time about it.) Eagerly, I picked up the receiver. I remember how good it felt, holding onto a telephone while driving a goddam car. If you've never had a carphone you can't possibly know what I'm talking about. Makes a guy really feel like somebody, no lie. Funny how things wear off....Anyway, imbedded in the back panel there was a grainy gray rectangle, running horizontal, composed of five smaller vertical blue rectangles that would light up and then disappear, and I figured out later---from driving through tunnels and near tall buildings and especially later when I got a long way from London---that this flickering sensor was a reception meter which measured the quality of....well, of potential telephone reception. Five squares, maximum; one square, faint, minimal. No squares, no contact with the outside world at all. I remember looking at the soft green lights of the ten numerals. I desperately wanted to call somebody! When I laughingly remembered that I didn't know the number of anyone in England I felt like an idiot and casually put the receiver back in its holder.
Within a few minutes of getting on the M-4 I took the M-25 south, angled over into the
far right-hand lane.................................
/////I thought that this might be a good time to fill you in on exactly what it is I do, so why don't we just leave my little MG Maestro alone on the M-25 for a few moments while I bring you up to speed. I play basketball. Pro basketball. That's my main gig; in case you haven't been paying close enough attention to make a good guess at it. Basketball. The greatest game ever invented. So naturally that's also what this story is about, basketball. Or, more specifically, my "ill-fated" professional basketball career (assuming, only for the sake of argument, that it is indeed over). Sometimes I think maybe the title of this thing should wind up being "Used Up" or "They Just Throw Us Fools Away" or something along that line, because what this book is really about, ultimately, is what happens to professional athletes in America when no one has any use for them anymore. Look at me. I'm 27 years old, in the prime of my life, at an age where most young men are just starting to milk their full potential, and I'm on the verge of being washed up and right down the drain. What happens if I can't latch on with another team next year? I'm not trained to do anything else! Oh sure, I have a college education and everything, but getting a degree when you're a hotshot athlete is the same thing as showing up for class; or simply enrolling in the class, for that matter. Hail the American educational system! Besides, all I ever intended to do was become a Pro ballplayer, I just figured everything else would take care of itself. Well, it didn't. And now I'm stuck. Why the hell you think I'm going to all the time and trouble to put together this manuscript? No offense, but do you think I'd be spilling my guts to a bunch of strangers if I wasn't scared to death about my future? The whole thing's embarrassing. And you should see the ridiculous sums of money my learned and esteemed and financially well-connected editor dangles in front of my face, just to get me to "get off my ass" and produce. If you knew how much dough I get if I manage to churn out a saleable yarn, you'd probably be embarrassed for me too.
So you can see how I'm sort of under pressure to develop quickly as a "professional" writer. I should probably go into a little more explicit detail about how I was practically run out of the league, the cold impersonal way they informed me of my "outright release", how they took special care to time the announcement of my release with the beginning of my rehabilitation from the routine, commonplace arthroscopic surgery I had performed on my bum left knee, how pretty much all the bloods on the team were in on it, how nobody on the team said one friggin' contradictory word to management on my behalf either when it happened or when I got canned (why should they incriminate themselves?), not to mention the ridiculous innuendos that suddenly started circulating regarding alleged problems in my personal life, that sort of thing, but it seems to me that the more natural suspense and intrigue I create by not spilling all my guts right away, the more fascinating and riveting a story I'll have and the more engrossed and spellbound you'll become as I go along. It's good practice. Sorry about that.
Besides, some things are personal.
But let's just say, for simplicity's sake, that all my problems on the Clippers and therefore practically all my problems in general can be summed up by saying one thing. I'm white. Not the usual stuff, too little money, too many drugs, sub-par women, none of that. I'm convinced that my career has come to a screeching halt simply because there are a lot of black players and coaches and a lot of white sportswriters who think that the white guy can't compete anymore. Simple as that. No wonder the league's almost 80% black! I'm convinced I'm right about this. Some people might call this phenomenon "reverse prejudice", but as far as I'm concerned there's no "reverse" about it, no such thing as prejudice in reverse. Prejudice is prejudice, period. Just so happens I got the short end of the stick this time.
{ MISCELLANEOUS ENTRY (no date given---*ed. note)
Back home I'm starting to read where this glib, gumflapping jig Jackson is actually running for President. A fucking minister, for godsake! Can you imagine this shitty country electing a black minister for President? First thing you know he'll be proposing some goddam amendment to the Constitution, probably during his first month in office, prohibiting whites from playing in the NBA at all. Just to get back at us for slavery, or some du
mb thing. Not that it would change things very much. By the time the bill reaches the Senate floor there probably won't be any fuckin' whites left in the league anyway. (Okay, so I tend to get a little out of control once in a while. With some things, I can be kind've a passionate guy; especially now that I'm, well, a little jumpier than usual. For your sake, I recommend you learn when and when not to take me 100% seriously. But I think you get my drift.) Anyway, I just happened to see this Jackson thing mentioned again in the Washington Post the other day, and I just thought I'd mention it. }
But a conspiracy of prejudice can't hide the damn facts. And so now, in my immediate defense, I want you to know that I happen to be one hell of a basketball player. Don't let anybody ever tell you different. You may not've heard of me, but that doesn't mean I wasn't any good. I could do it all....I still can! Why, when I was in high school in Pasadena I averaged over 35 points a game! Nobody can tell me that by the time a guy that good works his way through college and then into the Pro game that he all of a sudden just isn't any good anymore, just because by then the competition is a little taller and springier and faster and quicker and blacker. Put the damn thing in the hole, that's still what the game's all about, isn't it? You bet your butt it is. What difference does it make if the white guys who can shoot can't run the floor like the jigs can run? Ever watch Larry Bird try to run? My job was always to score, to shoot, and shooting is shooting no matter who you're playing against. There are always other guys on a team to do the other things, play the defense, crash the boards, make the transition, set the picks, run the floor, all that other stuff. But every team needs a guy to take the shot, somebody who can hit the bottom of the net from long range just as easy as you'd piss in a three-foot bucket from two feet away. I was always that guy. Even in the Pros, where I spent most of my career relegated to second or third man off the bench, the coach would always pull me aside as I was preparing to go into the game and say something like "just look for your shot and bury it" or "we need a 'three', kid". I was always that guy. And I think some of the bloods on the team were jealous. Guys are always jealous of the ones who can score. Particularly the ones who can score from long range. Hell, what's so special about some mutant freak of nature, who just because he happens to be able to jump fifty feet straight up he can therefore ram-and-jam it home as hard as he can like he's trying to brain somebody with a rock. Think about it. That's what makes me think it was the "darker side" of the team going behind my back to management that got me bounced. It wasn't because I'd slowed down or anything, and my trivial knee surgery had nothing to do with it either. I wasn't that fast to begin with! And to think I actually considered some of those guys my friends....
You know what? If I had any balls, any friggin' testicles at all, at some point I would've gone up to the three or four brothers responsible for the whole thing and just called them a bunch of niggers or something. But I didn't. You certainly would've thought that after I was acshully released, and I therefore had nothing to lose, that I would've at least then thrown out a few appropriate nigger insults, nigger this nigger that. But I didn't. I know I know, I'm such a wussy. You can chalk it up to my upbringing if you want. My mom sort've spent my entire early life "conditioning" me, teaching me to think certain things, talk a certain way, not talk a certain way, etc. When you come right down to it, I guess we're all at the mercy of what our parents teach us. Or show us. Or do to us. And of course Mom, being Italian, was sensitive to racially based insults of any kind. Needless to say the "n" word was forbidden territory when I was growing up.
I want to say one quick thing, about Mom. That she had a tough job raising me, all by herself and all. Especially in the neighborhood I grew up in, in Chicago, not so much because she was Italian as because she was the only Italian. She didn't get much help from the neighbors and wild as I was I didn't help much either. But that lady has always backed me up. When I was about four or five she even tried to teach me to bounce a ball up and down! She's actually pretty coordinated, for a woman. Probably why I'm such a good dribbler. Anyway, she had to work and raise me at the same time, and having to do it all by herself I know she probably worried constantly about whether or not she was doing everything right. I guess that's why she might've tended to be a bit careful.
But I know you're not interested in my mother. I was telling you about how important a good 3-point shooter is to a basketball team. Personally, I always idolized the ones who
could score, and only the ones who could score. When I was growing up, the NBA was dominated by guys like Jerry West and John Havlicek, and later Pete Maravich, guys who could hit their shot and weren't afraid to take it, white guys, and I worshipped them. Man, you throw names like that at the bloods on our team, and they act like they never heard of those guys! Like you can get a nickname like "Zeke from Cabin Creek" or "Hondo" or "Pistol Pete" and not be any good. Not hardly. You think any of those guys would've rated
a nickname like that if they couldn't score?
By way of clever introduction, then, a nickname of my own. When I was in college, when I was a junior I think, some fat L.A. sportswriter gave me the one nickname I ever really liked: "The Rifle". Like it? Well, I always liked it. I averaged 17 points a game as a junior, down only a couple of points from my sophomore year, which I think is pretty incredible considering how they spread the ball around at UCLA and how they pound that idea into you, and I mean all the time, nagging at you to pass the ball around even when there's no reason to keep passing it, and so I think in retrospect I kind've deserved a neat nickname like that. If you ever saw me fire away from long range on a night where I was real smokin' hot, you know I deserved it! But even in college there was jealousy everywhere. A few of the guys on the team tried to spread it around that I got the nickname because I was a "gunner", which in basketball is sort've a derogatory term for a guy who shoots too much, but like I say those were the jealous ones. The ones who couldn't hit a backboard with a shotgun. Any one've them would've given anything to have a jump-shot worthy of "The Rifle". So I just let all the phony criticism run right off my back. Just jealousy. Emotions do tend to run high in athletics. An athlete has to get used to fickleness, to people suddenly turning against him. For example, the same fat sportswriter who gave me the nickname when I was in college was the first one to write that I "didn't deserve to take up a seat on the bench" just three or four years later when I was on the Clips. That should tell you something.
But y'know something else, even my girlfriend used to get on my case about it. I remember she used to harp at me all the time to pass off more, to get back on defense, be patient on offense, etc. It drove me crazy. To this day I'm convinced her continual nagging was partially responsible for my ppg average dipping my junior and senior years (not to mention my not getting into the starting line-up very much in the Pros). I hate it when women think they know about sports. Women....
Since I'm taking the time to bring you up to date on everything, I might as well mention this particular girlfriend a little bit. Frankly I don't see any great point in it, but my self-appointed guardian angel said to include everything in my reports, including ("especially" including, I think was what he said) any stray thoughts about women, and I did promise. And we've already established that he's in charge, right? Grudgingly, though, I must admit I suppose I do understand the natural curiosity about the women in a man's life, especially a professional athlete, I know it makes for good copy, and so since I've already teased you a couple times already let me informally introduce Sam. "Sam" was my idea, short for Samantha. Samantha Carlisle. Samantha J. Carlisle. I'm so embarrassed I'm not even going to tell you what the J. stands for, it's so juvenile and pretentious. Everything about that blue-blood family of hers was sort of pretentious, though, right down to the spelling of their goddam last name. I mean I didn't mind that the e was silent, but there's just no damn reason to have a silent s in there. I mean, don't you think it's ridiculous to have a letter in your last name that looks so obviously out of place? Thi
ngs like that just have never made any sense to me. I guess that's why I'm going on and on about it, if I am. I hate it when little things like that don't make sense. Always have. I can deal with the big things alright, the really big problems and hassles and endless major negatives in life, but when the little things just don't fit together....well it's just always annoyed me, that's all. Sorry. And that's the way it was with Sam's stupid last name. But then she didn't make much sense to me either, never did I guess, so I guess there's a certain symmetry there.
The Basketball Expatriate Page 4