Got to Give the People What They Want

by Jalen Rose

  Superstars really are great for business. But often everything else gets pushed to the background. Including what helped create those superstars: where fate decided they’d spend their careers. For superstars, just as for the rest of us, the stars have to align.

  Once they do, watch out.

  —

  WHEN YOU know the rules better than anyone, you know how to break them better than anyone. So as I tell you this story, remember that before I came clean, no one suspected anything at all.

  The 2000 NBA Finals did not start well for us. The Lakers were heavily favored by everyone. They had won sixty-seven games in the regular season, had Phil Jackson on the sidelines (coming off his six titles with the Bulls), and had Shaq and Kobe playing their first year as a legendary—if tortured—tandem. This was Shaq at the peak of his powers and, sure enough, in the box score of Game 1, the thing that jumps out is forty-three points, nineteen rebounds, four assists, and three blocks from the big man. Rik Smits played twenty minutes and fouled out, and we had no one else with a prayer of stopping Shaq. As great as Shaq was in that game, Kobe was just as key in the game for L.A.

  This was the Black Mamba’s fourth season in the league. He was twenty-one years old, on the precipice between star and superstar. He was still in Shaq’s shadow, but in reality he was already just as big a factor on that team. He had bailed them out in the seventh game of the Western Conference finals against the Blazers in that infamous collapse by Portland, and then, in Game 1, while Shaq had put up the huge numbers, Kobe had actually got them going with a fast start in the first quarter, putting them up big early. Then he played complete lockdown defense on Reggie, who finished 1-16 on the game, if you can believe that stat.

  That brings us to Game 2, at the Staples Center, and me guarding Kobe as we try to turn things around. With about three minutes left in the first quarter, Kobe went up for a jumper on the wing. I turned around to look at the shot, and I felt something land on my foot. I heard a crunch, and as I ran back up the floor, I had to step over Kobe, who was suddenly curled up on the floor screaming in pain.

  Oops. Casualty of war.

  Now let’s go back to those rules of the game. Not the ones in the book about how many timeouts you get and what constitutes illegal defense, but the rules of the game that no one ever wrote down, the ones we all learn on the street or on the playground or in pickup games in the gym. Unwritten Rule No. 1: Never stick your foot out underneath a guy after he takes a jumper. Anything could happen—a twisted ankle, a sprained foot, even a break.

  Remember: The ones who know the rules best are the ones who are the best at breaking them.

  I think, for better or worse, I’ve made clear that winning mattered to me. After all I’d gone through to get to the NBA Finals, I was there to win, not to kiss Phil Jackson’s rings, or to be part of Shaq and Kobe’s coronation. If you want to call me out on a dirty play, remember that my mentality was: We need to find a way to stop this guy. Countless other players like me, even superstars, have made similar moves in games of that magnitude in an effort to get the W. Like me, they knew what they were doing, and no one suspected them of being up to no good. So, yeah—I’m guilty as charged.

  After we got “tangled up,” Kobe limped to the sideline, and Shaq was on his own. He still managed to lead them to the win with another forty points and twenty-four boards, and some help from good games by Ron Harper and Glen Rice. But Kobe’s ankle was too swollen for him to make it back for Game 3 in Indy. We made an adjustment guarding Shaq, doing more double-teams and less Hack-a-Shaq, and sure enough, we got on the board with a victory. We had two more games at home and the chance to seize control of the series. Then came the beginning of another lesson you have to consider the next time you break or bend a rule on the court.

  Unwritten Rule No. 2: Karma always has the final word.

  Game 4 was the best game of the series. We were up early, then they went up, then us again, then they were about to win it and ol’ Sam Perkins hit a big three in the final minute to tie it and send it to overtime. That gave us the momentum, which built a few minutes into OT when Shaq fouled out. But there was still one problem: Kobe Bean Bryant. In the first of many heroic performances on his way to his five NBA titles, Kobe took control of the game and put them up two with six seconds left. Reggie missed a three to win it, and they went up 3-1 in the series. It was pretty much all she wrote from there. Yeah, we won Game 5 by thirty points, and we actually played great basketball in Game 6, but you’re not going to win three straight games against Shaq, Kobe, and Phil.

  Ultimately, we did everything we could against the best team in the world. As strong a team as we were, they had the three ingredients of a championship team: (1) superstars—two of the greatest talents of all time; (2) a legendary leader who’d already won six titles and was on his way to eleven; (3) don’t forget about fate—especially after I messed with it. Kobe got karmic revenge for the foot that got stuck underneath him.

  Oh, and even after taking the title, Kobe wasn’t close to finished with his revenge on me.

  —

  IT WAS the greatest season of my pro career. Timing is everything, and it was the last year of my deal before I headed into free agency. Larry Brown had told me he’d be the one to determine if I ended up on the level of Chris and Juwan or out of the league, but actually it turned out I was going to determine that myself.

  You know by now I’m not the most sentimental guy in the world, but I can’t lie and claim that the thought of Jimmy Walker wasn’t rattling around my head more and more that season. Coaches, assistants, fans, everyone was coming up to me wanting to talk about my dad, saying I looked like him, saying I played like him, saying I reminded them of him. Yeah, I’d been hearing that for years, but now it was different. Now I wasn’t trying to live up to his name. Now I’d climbed up alongside him. That letter, the one Mitch Albom had given me almost a decade earlier, was still in my house, unopened.

  At some point I started carrying the envelope around in my bag, intending to open it, but not sure when. Then one day I realized the ceremony around it was overrated. I was on the team bus headed from a hotel to an arena and decided to open it, right there and then. It was just a short note that said that he had been following my progress, that he was proud of me, and that he wanted to emphasize he wasn’t looking to get involved in my life just because I’d made it with the Fab Five. Mitch had tracked him down, so he felt like it was important for me to know.

  A few weeks later, I was talking to my teammate Austin Croshere, who’d been a star at Providence College, where Jimmy Walker had risen to fame. After we talked about my situation, Cro’ called the school’s sports information office to see if they had a number for him, and—go figure—they did. By then, it was just before the playoffs, at the end of the regular season. One day I was over at Dale Davis’s, where some teammates were playing poker. Poker has never been my game, so I was just hanging out, and I decided there was no time like the present. I went into D-Squared’s bedroom, went into my bag, found the letter, and read it again, one more time. Then I dialed the number, and listened as the phone began to ring.

  10. From the NBA Finals to a Grand Tour of Basketball’s Worst Teams (and Almost Being Assassinated in Between)

  A woman picked up the phone. It turned out that Austin Croshere had given me the number for Jimmy Walker’s ex-girlfriend. When I explained who I was, she gave me his sister’s number (technically, my aunt), who I called up right away (why stop now?). She picked up, and we started talking. I had always viewed my situation as unique, but she told me that Jimmy Walker had thirteen kids by eleven women scattered all across the country. Many of them had fallen out with him over the years, for one reason or another, and had no real relationship with their father, like me. She told me that Jimmy and his mom (technically, my grandmother) weren’t getting along at the time and that was a big family problem for them. She filled me in on stuff that I didn’t know anything about, and truthfully had never real
ly thought about.

  Some kids who never get to meet their dads fantasize about where they are and what they’re like. In my case, following my mom’s example, I hadn’t really focused on it much. No one—neither my uncles nor my family friends—had bothered thinking about him. The feeling was “out of sight, out of mind.” There wasn’t the time or energy to be emotional about it when we were worried about how to pay the rent and how to afford groceries. When I made that phone call, though, everything had changed. I was curious. Maybe that was because I was on the verge of having more fame and more money than Jimmy Walker ever had. I figured it was time to hear his voice.

  His sister gave me yet another number, and, still sitting in Dale Davis’s bedroom—I can see the paintings on the wall right now as I remember the day—I dialed again. Somebody answered the phone, I told them I was looking for Jimmy Walker, they told me to hold on, and then, BOOM. At age twenty-seven, I was speaking with my father for the first time.

  We small-talked a little bit, and then I launched into what I wanted to tell him—that I loved him and I appreciated the fact that he was my father. That it was unfortunate we had never met, but I didn’t have any hard feelings. I told him I had read the letter and, ultimately, was happy that it had led, after all these years, to us connecting. I asked him if he’d watched any of my games. He said he had, though it was clear he wasn’t following me, or basketball, closely. He did share that he now played a lot of tennis, a game that I had never played—so I told him I’d love to meet him, and play tennis with him. He said great. I said maybe after the season I’ll reach out, now that I’ve got this number, and we’ll go from there. That was that. I hung up the phone, put the letter back in my bag, went back out to the living room, cracked another cold one, and got back on the couch, flipping through League Pass while the guys wrapped up the poker game.

  I called him again in the off-season, after the NBA Finals were over. His number had changed again.

  —

  FOR ALL the complications of the pro life, the best and most important thing that ever happened in my NBA career was very simple. Just after midnight on the night of July 1, 2000, I got a call from the Pacers informing me that they were offering me a ridiculous amount of money to continue to play basketball for their team: $93 million over seven years. The maximum amount allowed, in fact, under the collective bargaining agreement. All guaranteed money.

  Crack open some bottles!

  It wasn’t a surprise, but that didn’t take away from the adrenaline rush. Late in the season, as we’d made our run, Donnie Walsh had let me know that I was in the team’s plans, and I was going to be the first priority in the off-season, with almost every key member of the team headed toward free agency. There was going to be a lot of movement in the league—Tim Duncan, Tracy McGrady, and Grant Hill were all among a big class of free agents—but I wasn’t interested in moving. I was smart enough to know I was in a good situation, and it wasn’t worth messing it up by flirting with Chicago or even my hometown Pistons. So the morning after I got the call, I woke up early, went down to the team offices, and signed the deal. That was the whole thing. Nice and clean.

  The transition from one season to the next was not going to be so easy. The team was in flux, starting with the corner office. Larry Bird kept his word and resigned as head coach after three seasons. Larry wanted the job to go to Rick Carlisle, but Donnie had his mind set on a bigger splash. After seeing what Larry Bird—the proven winner, the Hall of Fame player—had done, he wanted to hire another former superstar to follow Larry—someone the players could look to and believe in. As much as I loved Carlisle, it was hard to disagree with Donnie’s pick, because it was one of my idols growing up.

  That said, if Carlisle had gotten the job instead of Isiah Thomas in 2000, I wonder if the second half of my career would have turned out differently.

  —

  THERE’S AN easy way to find out quick just how much the NBA is a business. Get yourself a big contract.

  Growing up, I had all kinds of fantasies about getting a big deal someday. I used to dream about buying a big house with a hot tub and filling it up with forties. Do I need to confirm that I got one? I made it, and I don’t regret that deal one bit.

  Still, I’d be lying to you if I didn’t acknowledge that getting that deal changed the course of my career from a basketball standpoint, and not necessarily in a positive way. Some of that was fate. A lot of it was business.

  Isiah Thomas came to the Pacers at an interesting time. Donnie Walsh had spent a decade building a team that could reach the Finals. In its last shot, it finally did. But by then, everyone important was either at the end of their contract, or close to the end of their career. So while myself, Reggie, Cro’, Travis Best, and Derrick McKey (aka “Heavy D”) were brought back, other pieces were gone. Rik Smits was thirty-three in 2000, but struggling with injuries, and he decided to retire. Mark Jackson was thirty-five, and Donnie decided to let him walk (he went to Toronto). Antonio Davis had already been dealt away for Jonathan Bender, a high school draft pick, and Donnie traded the other “Davis Brother,” Dale, to Portland for Jermaine O’Neal, a former high school pick who had been languishing on the Blazers’ bench. Finally, they drafted a third high schooler with high hopes, Al Harrington.

  The subsequent season, 2000–2001, was a lesson in how hard it is to rebuild an NBA team. Donnie Walsh has built and rebuilt a lot of great teams in his career. In this case, he overstretched. Trying to keep both Reggie and me at high salaries while the club developed new talents around us didn’t quite work as the framework of the new roster. Perhaps it would have if Larry Bird or Rick Carlisle were still there and there was a little more stability. That’s the kind of stability San Antonio has had all these years with Pop while they’ve changed supporting casts around Tim Duncan, Tony Parker, and Manu Ginóbili. We didn’t have that. In Isiah’s first year, we dropped to .500, and in the first round of the playoffs we lost to Larry Brown and Allen Iverson, who were on their way to the finals.

  Fast-forward to the next year, when Jermaine came into his own and made the All-Star team, and Jamaal Tinsley was a pleasant surprise as a rookie point guard. The team still played only .500 basketball, and the organization realized that it had to make a change. Everything pointed to me. First off, Reggie wasn’t going anywhere, because he was an icon in Indiana. Second, I had the biggest contract, which meant moving me would give them the most return.

  This was all business. The money belonged to the Pacers’ owners, Herb and Mel Simon. As much as it was their prerogative to offer me the deal, it was also their prerogative to trade the deal. That was easy enough to stomach. But there’s another part of a trade—what I call getting traded before you’re traded. That was more difficult to take.

  Think about it: How often does a trade happen when the fans don’t know it’s coming? When they are about to trade someone who’s an integral part of a team, the organization tries to get the public’s approval of a deal before it’s final. If they trade a big-name player and shock the fans, they run the risk of a revolt. An NBA franchise makes money when fans come to the games and support the team. They’ve got to keep their fans happy.

  Here’s how it goes down. First, the player starts to get trashed in the media. Unnamed sources saying he doesn’t practice hard, or he doesn’t have the team in mind, or he parties too hard, or whatever else. The next step is lowering the player’s minutes and, more specifically, keeping him out of the game in the biggest moments. Afterwards, the coach pretends it was coincidence, spouting clichés and playing it down, even though he very much did it on purpose. But it puts the idea in everyone’s head—the team, the media, and the fans—that this guy is on the decline, or doesn’t fit, and makes saying good-bye a lot easier, and a lot less surprising.

  Check the box scores, read the old articles—it all happened to me in Indiana. It was often subtle, but it happened. I knew it was going on and what was coming. Looking back, I’m proud I handled the situatio
n like a professional, kept coming to work, kept practicing hard, and, of course, kept cashing my checks. Though I was wrong in one aspect: I pinpointed Isiah Thomas as the culprit. Years later, I understood that, once they decided to part with their biggest contract, the organization was doing what it had to do to manage the fans and the fallout. Isiah was just the messenger. Isiah had been one of many individuals who made the decision, but he was the only one who had to execute it.

  Today, I have nothing but love for Isiah Thomas and his wife, Lynn. He sponsors a classroom at the Jalen Rose Leadership Academy. We were able to patch up any gray areas. I think the reason it was so easy for us to do is that he had been a player. Eventually, I realized that while he might have been fortunate enough to spend his career with one team, he actually went through the same learning process as I did, and discovered that professional basketball needs to be thought of as a business, not just a game. If I had had that perspective when I was with the Pacers, I would have realized that Isiah is a perfect role model for players who need to understand the business aspect. During his career he was president of the National Basketball Players Association. Afterwards, he was the first player, before Michael and before Magic, to get involved in ownership, buying a stake in the Toronto Raptors and helping that franchise launch. Eventually, he ran the Continental Basketball Association, the CBA, though not so successfully. All that was before he got into coaching, and came to Indiana to replace Larry Bird.

  Just a few years ago, when I was overseas with the Pacers on a preseason trip to the Philippines and Taiwan along with a few other NBA alumni, Herb Simon and I ended up talking about when he and his late brother Mel traded me. He told me that since I was the first huge deal he had ever given out, he never got comfortable with paying that much money to one player, and he was in support of dealing me. Much more than Isiah was. It was another reminder that it was just business.