I May Be Wrong But I Doubt It

by Charles Barkley

  You know how long things were different?

  It didn’t even last two full weeks. Four days? Maybe a week. That’s about it. Maybe it was longer in New York because of the impact there, but that’s it. But everywhere else, it was business as usual. Democrat vs. Republican, liberal vs. conservative, black vs. white. We didn’t even get to October and we were pitted against each other again. Damn. I have to admit I was disappointed because I figure we all want the same things out of life. People, regardless of what race or ethnic group, seem to want to join in the pursuit of happiness, personally and professionally. But if that tragedy and the response to it can’t rally us for more than a week, then what the hell can? In a week’s time we were back to the same old life of lying and stealing and cheating poor folks and killing children. If we’re going to fight off all this evil, we’ve got to do better. We’ve got to pull together.

  Moses Was Right

  I modeled my game after Adrian Dantley and John Drew because they were undersized guys who had to play inside offensively but also had some perimeter skills they developed over the years that helped them evolve and become complete players. Dantley’s 6-5, if that tall, and he averaged 25 points for fifteen years and 6 or 7 rebounds a game early in his career. Drew was 6-6, if that, and he averaged 20 points a game and was a 10-rebound-per-game guy when he was young. So at just under 6-5, I really studied those guys and what they did.

  I had a coach at Auburn, Roger Banks. He was Sonny Smith’s assistant when I was in college. And because he had coached John Drew at Gardner-Webb, I got to meet Drew and be like a little brother. And we’d talk about basketball and life. He was giving me a ride once in his car—I’m talking about a $75,000 Mercedes—and he said to me, “Son, I snorted up about twenty of these. I’ve messed up so much money. I’ve got kids all over the place.” He told me, “Look, I’ll work with you on your game, but if you’re going to listen to anything I say, listen to me when I tell you not to do drugs.” I’m sitting there thinking, “Damn.” He told me about one Friday night when he got a big pile of coke, got naked, and snorted it all up, and didn’t wake up until Saturday just in time to make the game. I was a freshman or sophomore at Auburn when I heard this story. And it had an unbelievable effect on me.

  But after a while, I didn’t see John again, and I mean for years and years. I just didn’t know where he was. His last year in the league was 1984–85, which was my rookie year. He was only thirty years old that season but he played in just nineteen games for Utah. And then it was like he just disappeared.

  Anyway, I was still playing in Philly—I don’t remember the exact year but I was with the 76ers through the 1992 season—and we were on the road in Houston one night, we were right in front of the hotel at the Galleria. And this homeless guy walks right up to me and grabs me. I mean, the guy is just a bum, dirty and shabby. And he’s a big guy and he’s really on me, so I rear back to knock the shit out of him. But first I look. It’s John Drew. I was in total shock. I mean, I don’t even know what I said to him. Here’s a man who was a two-time NBA All-Star, a guy who had a productive eleven-year career who must have come in contact with all kinds of people, and he was homeless, a bum on the streets. I gave him all the money I had in my pocket, which must have been several hundred dollars, maybe $500. And then I went up to my hotel room and cried. I couldn’t get over it then, and I still can’t get over it. And I haven’t seen him since, don’t know where he is, can’t find him. I don’t know anybody who knows where he is. It just shocked me so bad. Even though you know somebody’s life can go bad when he’s on drugs, you don’t think it can go that bad. And I keep thinking back to when I was in college, him virtually begging me not to do drugs and not do the kind of stuff that would throw my life off course.

  Man, you can find physically talented guys anywhere. It’s as if they grow on trees. A whole lot of people have talent. And so many of them don’t know how to use it, or they put themselves in positions where they sabotage their own careers. I was thinking about doing another book, a where-are-they-now type book on all the guys I’ve been with and around, who played from high school to the pros. I really wonder where they all are now. Just ’cause a guy has talent doesn’t mean he’s going to make it. We assume guys are going to “get it” and they don’t. J. R. Rider is an example of a really talented guy, smart guy, too, who never got it. Richard Dumas was way, way up there in terms of talent. Oliver Miller. Kenny Green from Wake Forest. One day a week, Kenny Green was the best player in the world in practice. He was so scary-good you’d say to yourself, “If this guy ever gets it, he’ll be dangerous.” But they don’t get it. They’re too immature or too something to ever “get it.”

  When I first got to Philadelphia in the summer of 1984, Moses Malone told me, “You can come in here every day and work your ass off and still not make it. But I can guarantee you if you come in here and don’t work you won’t make it.” The second thing he told me was, “There are going to be big decisions you’ll have to make and you don’t have the luxury of making them in private. One mistake can hurt you. If you put yourself in positions where you’re vulnerable, it’s on you. Use your head.”

  The physical talent, everybody who makes it to a certain point has that. Then what? Guys screw it up, that’s what. Jayson Williams is a perfect example. He signed that contract with the Nets for $100 million, and even though he got hurt and had to retire earlier than he wanted, he still had the world in his hand one minute. On national TV, making a second career for himself. The next minute it’s all gone. He’s facing jail time and the money he made could be gone in a civil suit. I know Jayson and he’s a good guy and I just feel bad, but that’s such an example of one mistake. We could sit here and talk about basketball stuff, but it’s the management of your life that is really the big difference between making it and not making it for a lot of guys, or hanging on versus making it big. If you don’t start with that, you’re wasting your time. I’ve probably played with twenty players who should have played in the NBA for a long time but didn’t. It’s because their heads weren’t together. You see guys with talent all the time who can’t make it.

  And leaders are even harder to find in sports because most guys want to do it by example, when there’s more responsibility involved than that. It’s difficult to do because you can’t worry about what others think or say. You can’t put your efforts into pleasing folks. I had Julius Erving and Moses Malone as leaders, so I got to play with two great ones. It’s not a coincidence that in their prime they were able to lead a team to a championship, and Doc was able to lead them to the Finals three other times.

  You have to be obsessed to get to the NBA Finals, and I’m not talking about just one guy or just the best player on the team, but everybody. That first year in Phoenix that we reached the Finals, nobody cared about contracts or the number of minutes he played or the number of shots he got or who had the most endorsements. But what you see often in team sports is that after you win once or get to the championship series, guys start saying, “I need more minutes than him,” or “I should be making more money than that guy,” and when that’s the case, you ain’t gonna win. That’s what happened to us in Phoenix after that first season.

  But one guy who really helped me while I was in Phoenix was Paul Silas, who was an assistant under Paul Westphal. Paul Silas helped me with how to judge whether a guy could play, who could play and who couldn’t. My fourth and final season in Phoenix, which was 1995–96, I thought we had a really good team. Paul said, “Nope, we really don’t have that good a team.” And he was right. I’m not surprised by Paul’s success as a head coach one bit. Really, he should have gotten a job a lot sooner. Way too much time passed and far too many guys were hired between the time Paul got fired from the Clippers in 1983 and hired again, by Charlotte, in 1998. Hell, the Clippers were still playing in San Diego in 1983. There were something like 140 coaches hired between the time he was fired from his first job and hired in Charlotte.

  I’ve be
en fortunate to play for several different guys who were good leaders, good coaches, good communicators. Paul Westphal, who I played for in Phoenix, is a great person. No better person ever coached in the NBA, I can say that with certainty. Billy Cunningham was a strict disciplinarian, and he was a great coach for me as a rookie because he provided a lot of structure and discipline. Rudy T. is a great coach for a veteran team because he’s more lax. There are a lot of people who have very different personalities who can lead teams effectively in their own ways. Same thing goes for certain players. Mark West, who I played with in Phoenix, is a guy who you’ll never hear mentioned as a great leader. But he was a great guy and knew the subtleties of the game and could communicate with the star players or the role players. I had started to develop Michael’s mentality, hollering and screaming at guys and beating the hell out of my team. But we had Oliver Miller and Richard Dumas, guys you couldn’t scream at and get any results because they were too immature. Mark came to me and said, “Listen, man, you can’t put the hammer down on these guys every day, you’ve got to take a different approach with them.”

  You see how Bill Cartwright has done a nice job with the Bulls? I know it’s early and he’s got a long way to go with a young team. But we really shouldn’t be that surprised because Bill had more influence with those championship Bulls teams than people thought. Michael would yell and scream at everybody. And one day Michael told me that Bill said to him, “ ‘If you yell and scream at me again I’m gonna kick your ass.’ “ When I got to Auburn I was an eighteen-year-old kid who was basically lazy. And my head coach, Sonny Smith, would tell me over and over, “Charles, you’re fat and lazy.” And I’m thinking, “If I’m leading the Southeastern Conference in rebounding, these other guys must really be lazy.” So Sonny and I were always butting heads, and after two years I was just ready to leave. But one night we sat down and had dinner and I told him, “Sonny, if you change your approach just a little . . .” And after that he said to me once, “Charles, you’re doing great . . . now if we could just do this a little better,” and it made all the difference in the world in my case. Leading a team is difficult: it’s so much about knowing when to do something and when not to.

  I’ve got to tell this story about some of the best basketball advice I ever got. People looking in from the outside think that the most important thing is Xs and Os and devising strategies for certain situations. And yeah, that stuff is damn important at the end of games and in special situations. But when I first got to Auburn, Roger Banks watched me struggle with rebounding and he told me, “Son, you averaged twenty rebounds a game in high school . . . I’m gonna watch you for a while and figure out why you’re not rebounding here.” He came back to me after watching me and said, “No wonder you’re not rebounding; quit boxing out and go after the damn ball.” I’m standing there looking at him . . . he just told me the opposite of what people preach all the time and he said, “Son, go get the ball. If you’re blocking out all the time, five rebounds might bounce right to you, but we didn’t bring you here to get five rebounds a game.” So much for conventional methods. Might be the best basketball advice I ever got. I’m so glad Roger took me under his wing from Day 1 at Auburn.

  I guess the thing I’d want any young or aspiring player to take away from this is that making a successful career in anything has to do with so much more than pure talent. And that doesn’t pertain to just sports. I’d bet it’s the same way with any profession. It’s just that sports are right out there in the open for everybody to see. But there’s a lot of talent wasted in the world because people don’t realize that what’s just as important as the physical skills and the Xs and Os—maybe more important—is managing your life and staying away from the big mistakes that can ruin your career, ruin your life no matter how much talent you have.

  If the Playing Is All

  You’re Going to Do,

  You’ve Missed the Boat

  I was watching a Bryant Gumbel Real Sports episode last summer that had a long segment on Muhammad Ali. And it was wonderful to see that his mind was so great. The guy reporting the piece reminded Ali that thirty-five years ago he had talked about the “white devil” and Ali said, “Hey, I was wrong, because the devil comes in various colors and it has nothing to do with race or ethnicity.” While he doesn’t sound like the old Ali and it’s painful to see him suffering from Parkinson’s disease, his mind is still very sharp. It’s still Ali’s mind and it just makes you feel better to see that that’s the case. I met Ali once, in 1996 at the Atlanta Olympics. I walked up to him and said, “I’m so pleased to meet you. You’re probably the greatest influence in my life.” And he said, “Aaaaaw, I’m just another nigga.” He was a great influence on my life because of the hope he’d given black people in the 1960s and ’70s, and the way we felt so proud not just because of the great fights he won and the great skill he displayed, but because of the way he put himself out there when doing so could cost a black person his career, his wealth, and his freedom.

  I guess what I’m getting at is, Ali’s boxing career has been over for twenty-five years, really, and he still has worldwide impact. He didn’t stop using his influence when he stopped boxing. Retirement may be the end of your athletic career, it’s the end of physical influence in the arena of competition. But it’s just the start of your adult life. And I guess I’m paying real close attention to all this stuff even more now that I’m new to retirement and trying to figure how best to use the influence that comes with playing in the NBA for sixteen years and making money and building relationships with other people who have money and influence.

  What it amounts to is that God gave me some special stuff through basketball, and it just seems like a waste if I don’t do something more than play golf and count my money. Ali stepped out there, man. Refusing to go in the Army and being the first public person of great stature to oppose the Vietnam War so openly, embracing Islam, Ali put it way out there. As historic a figure as Jackie Robinson is, Branch Rickey had to find someone with the necessary demeanor for dealing with all the ugly racist behavior that was going to come his way. But Ali, you had to take him as he was. And even then he lost the three most prime years of his career. I mean, at some point standing for something important is what defines you, even beyond athletic achievement. John Carlos and Tommie Smith could have kept quiet and done nothing on that medal stand in 1968 in Mexico City. But because they gave that gloved salute, there was no celebration for them when they got back to the U.S. Curt Flood was pushed away forever from baseball. No TV career, no coaching, no front office, just blackballed. He could have ridden the gravy train forever if he’d played along, but he didn’t and now look what his sacrifice has done for major league ballplayers.

  And those guys made significant contributions during their careers, which is even more amazing. So how can you not want to make some kind of contribution after your career? I just think if you are fortunate enough to have a productive career and you can put away some money and set yourself up, you have an obligation in your next career to do something meaningful. It doesn’t have to be in the public spotlight, it just needs to be something that can make a difference. Things have gotten a lot better for athletes and entertainers who are black, but not for regular black folks. When it’s over and you don’t have any money and you’ve squandered your influence, that’s just sad to me. I don’t know whether to be mad at the Darryl Strawberrys, the Dwight Goodens and the Mike Tysons or feel sorry for them. Mike Tyson has made HBO and Don King and all those leeches millions and millions of dollars. And for him to have no money or even a tiny fraction of what he made, it’s just unthinkable. Black and Hispanic communities don’t have so many people of wealth and influence that we can lose any.

  I’ll bet you Earvin Johnson is getting more satisfaction from the impact he’s having as an entrepreneur in his second career than he did in his first. I know people will read this and think, “Oh, Charles is crazy,” but I’m serious about this. Don’t get me wrong, a lo
t of people got great joy from Magic Johnson’s basketball career, the way he ran the Lakers’ “Showtime” and entertained people and played some of the best basketball ever. But from being around him some during his retirement, I really believe he’s getting more enjoyment from his entrepreneurial efforts. It’s so profoundly significant what he’s doing. He’s creating revenue, creating jobs for people in communities that go years without seeing new businesses of that magnitude come into the neighborhood. And it’s not just revenue for himself he’s creating; he’s bringing people along. Earvin is improving people’s lives. Seriously, how cool is that?

  Earvin found something great in retirement that he’s passionate about and good at and he’s making a huge contribution. It’s not easy finding the right fit when you retire from something so high-profile and financially rewarding when you’re still in your thirties. It’s very difficult because the first thing you have to do is be honest with yourself and most guys aren’t honest with themselves. First thing is you’re not going to work a nine-to-five job. Guys making the minimum are getting $1 million for playing basketball, so there’s almost no chance you’re going to a nine-to-five job, make $60,000 and be passionate about whatever it is. You’ve got to convince yourself, “I’ve had the greatest time of my life playing pro basketball. It’s never going to be more exciting or more glamorous than it was when I was playing, so let’s get on with the next phase of life.” Then you have to realize you’re going to get bored just playing golf every day. Then, with the help of people you trust and whose advice you value, you have to try to figure out what it is you’re good at and what it is you want to do with the rest of your life.