Got to Give the People What They Want

by Jalen Rose

  All that said, in the early 2000s, I wasn’t thinking about the “business.” I was just wondering why they seemed to want so badly to run me out of town.

  My last game was on a Sunday afternoon, at home against—of all teams—Larry Brown and the Sixers. We won, and I led the team with seventeen points, adding eight assists to boot. Two nights later, on February 19, 2002, I got the call, and hopped in my truck to drive to Chicago.

  —

  ASK ANY basketball player what his dream is, and he’s supposed to immediately say: “to win an NBA title.” Don’t get me wrong—that’s the truth. But it’s not the whole truth.

  Winning a title is great, and as a professional, it’s your goal. My biggest regret is not winning a title, and not getting to be part of a championship parade. Forget the ring—I want the parade. Still, that doesn’t mean it is the only thing a player works for. Fans want players who try to win a championship, and, trust me, they’re working hard to do so. But they’re working hard for another reason—to become an important contributor to that championship, or at least to a winning team. That’s what will improve their stock around the league and will benefit them the next time they are in line for a contract. If they can string together enough years on those contracts, they can become what every NBA player truly aspires to be.

  A veteran.

  Why? First, a veteran is a guy who’s made some real money, enough to live off for the rest of his life. But money isn’t everything. Veterans are the guys who have earned something money can’t buy: the respect of their peers, and the knowledge that they are a true part of professional basketball. Ask Greg Oden what he’d give to be a veteran, instead of a guy who didn’t make it in the NBA after a promising college career. Switch sports and ask Tim Tebow what he’d give to be a veteran in the NFL. It’s the true holy grail for all pro athletes.

  Obviously, guys with a special kind of talent, like LeBron or Kobe or Jordan, are in their own category. Only a serious injury, or something totally unpredictable, would derail them from becoming a veteran. For them it’s about winning titles, because titles secure legacies, or, to use the more common term, brands. For the rest of us (and almost every player eventually realizes that they’re part of the larger group), becoming a veteran is in many ways the most satisfying and rewarding step in their career.

  When I got to Chicago, and the Bulls had twelve wins and it was February, I knew we weren’t going to run off fifteen wins in a row and somehow get back into playoff contention. If a team is bad, regardless of what fans hope for at the beginning of a season, players know they have no chance to win it all. With that knowledge, I immediately shifted my focus—from leading a Pacers team on the fringe of the playoff race to figuring out my role on a Bulls team headed nowhere. Very quickly, I realized I had to focus on being a veteran.

  On championship teams, veterans are a crucial part of the equation, the keynotes right behind the coach and the superstar. Veterans keep the dynamics in the locker room in sync and the politricks under control. They are the reliable guys who know their role, and who have enough capital with their teammates to make sure everyone understands their job. Guys like Derek Fisher and Ron Harper won a lot of rings under Phil Jackson for helping keep everything in order. On losing teams, the role of veterans is just as important, because there’s even more risk of guys going rogue, causing problems, and turning tough situations into really, really bad situations that don’t do anyone any good.

  In Chicago I became a veteran. That’s why I showed up for my physical at seven in the morning the day after the trade. That’s why I played in every game that season for the Bulls for a total of eighty-three games in an eighty-two-game season (Chicago had played fewer games than Indiana at the time of the deal). That’s why I took guys like Eddy Curry and Tyson Chandler and Jamal Crawford under my wing, talking to them about managing their money after their rookie deals. I’d give Tyson and Eddy five hundred dollars for each double-double they got. I gave my per diem to the guys on the league minimum or ten-day contracts. Took guys out to dinner on the road. An extra role fell to me because the coach, Bill Cartwright, had an issue with his voice that prevented him from yelling at the team in practice or the huddle. As the most experienced player, I stepped in and became, in effect, the voice of the team, yelling at the team in the huddle, leading in a new kind of way for me.

  To me, it also felt like a natural progression of my career and, really, my life. I had grown up in a place where mentors had played a huge role. Now, I felt like my Uncle Paramore—the one who hosted the parties, who doled out the advice, who everyone looked to as a leader. I had always acted like someone who’d grown up in the NBA, even if my connection to the league was based on the father I didn’t know. Now I made good on my approach.

  Maturation, though, is a lifelong process. The next season, when we were still a young, struggling team, we went back to Indiana to play the Pacers. I decided as part of my veteran duties as a leader, I was going to have a huge party at my house there for all my teammates. This party had everything—drinks, food, music, women…you name it. I was DJ-ing. I think it’s safe to say it was the best party of the year in the NBA. Which was my goal.

  Of course, we lost the next day by fifty-one points.

  At twenty-nine years old, I guess the veteran game needed a little more polish.

  Partying is a part of life. And a big part of the NBA life. Your workday is essentially from the late afternoon until eleven or twelve at night. After a game, you’re pumped up on adrenaline and want a good meal, at least, if not also a few drinks to ease yourself off a bit. Smart players don’t do this the night before a day game, but if you’ve got nothing the next day or night, why not? Plus, being on the road, every new city is an opportunity to sample a different kind of experience. And, yes, experience it on every level.

  People ask all the time how much NBA players party. If they do drugs. If they sleep with the hottest women. My answer to that is: What do you think? Put yourself in their position. If you made a lot of money, and traveled all the time, would you go out champagning and campaigning when you had the opportunity? Yes, you would.

  In your own life, do you know people who smoke weed now and then? Of course you do. It’s legal in practically half the country now. And it’s no big deal. Obviously the NBA drug-tests, but especially back in my days, with one test in training camp, it wasn’t rocket science to get around it. And, anyway, for offenses like marijuana and other recreational drugs, the league has a policy that allows you to get off with a warning before you get into real trouble.

  With regard to women, again, if you were in the position that NBA players were, you’d find your way to some good times, absolutely.

  The lesson I always tried to impart as a veteran—the most crucial component to champagning and campaigning—is not to run your mouth about it. So many guys want to talk about their exploits, talk about last night in the strip club, talk about this girl or that girl. The most successful members of basketball’s social circuit, though, are the ones who operate by some rules I discovered. Never go out where people expect you to go out, and sometimes don’t even go where you say you’re going to go earlier in the night. And never talk about what happened last night. Be quiet about things.

  —

  IT’S A good lesson for a lot of reasons. Honestly, one of the biggest is safety. Some fans might roll their eyes, recalling stereotypes of black athletes who go to places they shouldn’t be and hang out with people they shouldn’t. But I am living, breathing proof (thank the Good Lord) that even when you think you’re keeping yourself out of the bull’s-eye, crazy things can happen. Case in point: the craziest night of my entire life.

  It was September 4, 2002, six months after the trade to Chicago, and basketball history was made when superstar forward Lisa Leslie led the Los Angeles Sparks to their second straight WNBA title. Lisa had been one of the best women’s basketball players in the world since she was a teenager. We came out of high school the sam
e year, and Lisa used to date a player at USC, Lorenzo Orr, who had been a Detroit star at Pershing High, so we knew each other pretty well. Plus, our moms were friendly because they were both active in the Mothers of Professional Basketball Players (MPBP) organization.

  Ever since the first summer Norm Nixon brought me out to L.A., I’d always kept a place there. I liked to spend my summers there, working out and going out. That night I was at my condo on Ocean Avenue in Santa Monica. I’d been at home playing video games with my buddy Rizz until around midnight, when we decided we’d go out for a little while. So we headed over to the Sunset Room.

  Randomly, we drove over in a silver drop-top Bentley that didn’t belong to me. Long story short, I’d had to take my Cadillac truck back to the dealer because it was having some wiring issues (that happens a lot when you trick out cars as much as I do), and in exchange they loaned me this Bentley, which actually belonged to Aaron Glenn, the NFL defensive back. Dealers do this from time to time. I don’t know if they would have given any guy off the street Aaron Glenn’s Bentley (which they were holding for him while he was out of town for a while), but for me, who they trusted to take care of it, and who they wanted to keep happy, they were willing to do it.

  Anyway, back to the Sunset Room. When we walk in, who do we see but Lisa Leslie and the Sparks. Of course, we go up to them and say hi and buy them Champagne to help them celebrate. The whole time, Rizz is on me to get close to Lisa. He had it on his mind that we were gonna get together that night and make the next Kevin Garnett—the next “Big Ticket.” He kept saying, “C’mon, you’ve got to make a little ticket tonight! You’ve got to make a ‘ticket stub’!” No disrespect to Lisa, who is beautiful and a Hall of Famer, but Lorenzo Orr was one of my homeboys, and that was just one of the reasons neither Lisa nor I thought it was such a good idea.

  Anyway, we didn’t hang out for too long, because Lisa and a bunch of her teammates were leaving in the morning for a Team USA camp. We all walked out of the club together. As we got to our cars, they mentioned where they were headed, and I told them we’d lead them out to the highway because I knew a better route.

  At that point, what I wasn’t thinking about was that I’d already broken a few of my rules. First off, I hadn’t overtipped the valet guy, which is something I always do when I go out so they keep my car right in front. Instead, I had to wait for the car for a while, standing in plain view until the Bentley was pulled up. And then, when I left, I was paying attention to the Sparks following behind me and not another red Cadillac truck that was also trailing us, which I would have noticed otherwise.

  We got to the intersection of Sunset and Barrington in Bel Air and pulled up at the light. And then the red Cadillac pulled up next to me—and I saw its dome light come on. A dude sitting in the backseat of the passenger side gets out, walks over to our car, and holds up a 9 millimeter handgun.

  It was completely surreal.

  I couldn’t hear what he said, because our window wasn’t open, but it didn’t matter. At that point, instinct just took over. For some reason I felt like he dropped his guard a little bit when he opened his mouth to talk. At that moment, I floored the gas and took off. I heard gunshots behind us. I ducked and kept driving, and maybe five seconds later—it felt like five minutes—I saw the I-405 come into view ahead. My escape route. I came to my senses, realized I wasn’t shot, and I’m about to thank the Good Lord when—

  “Yo man, I got shot!”

  Rizz’s face was bleeding. He’s telling me he got popped in his neck, and I can see the blood, and it’s crazy. We’d grown up on the west side of Detroit, and here we were in Bel Air and some carjacker shoots us. This was never a plotline in the Fresh Prince! The shot that got Rizz had thankfully gone through the headrest, but he was still bleeding—a lot—and it was unreal. Nothing like this had ever happened to us in the hood.

  I’ve got one hand on Rizz’s leg, trying to comfort him and tell him everything’s gonna be all right, and the other hand on my cell phone as I dial 9-1-1. And I’m trying to drive because I still think these guys are chasing us. When the operator picked up, I didn’t want to start screaming and get Rizz more upset, so I turned my head to the left a little bit, and talked out of the side of my mouth.

  “Yeah, my dogg got shot, I want to take him to a hospital, I’m driving, could you please direct me?”

  The operator gets it. She can tell the urgency in my voice, and she tells me where to go. To a hospital right off Santa Monica Boulevard.

  A veterinary hospital.

  I’m not kidding you.

  Like I said, the hood doesn’t translate well, does it?

  Fortunately, almost as soon as I realized I’d taken “my dogg” to a “doggie” hospital, I looked up, and could see the sign for an actual hospital just a few blocks away.

  I pulled up to the emergency room and got Rizz in there as fast as possible. They operated on him and a few hours later told me that he was going to be okay. One catch: They couldn’t get the bullet out of his neck. It’s still in there to this day.

  They never caught the guys, either. I wasn’t concerned they were targeting me specifically, so I wasn’t too upset they didn’t catch them. They saw a guy in a Bentley—maybe they knew it was me, maybe they didn’t—who would make a good robbery target, and that’s that. If I had been smarter, they never would have been able to come out of the club and follow me.

  I’m not sure if the dealer cleaned up the Bentley for Aaron Glenn, or if they got him a new one. I’ve never caught up with him to talk about it. Maybe he knows the story, maybe he doesn’t. Props to Bentley, though. That car never stopped working, even when it got hit by nine bullets.

  Including one in the driver’s headrest. Three inches from my head.

  —

  ALMOST GETTING assassinated wasn’t the only memorable development of the spring and summer of 2002 for me. Just a few weeks before, I’d made my official debut as a member of the media, covering the NBA Finals between the Lakers and the Nets. The people at BET MAAD Sports had considered the offer I’d made to them at midseason—to just send a camera, and I’d handle the rest—and decided there was really nothing to lose. It had worked out pretty well. Though I was a little raw, I had the most important quality for the job: confidence.

  The next year, when the Bulls missed the playoffs, I worked the Finals again, this time featuring the Spurs and the Nets. That went well, and as I started making more and more contacts, I sent around tapes of my BET coverage. The Best Damn Sports Show Period on Fox took notice, and I did the job at the Finals for them one year. From that gig, I became a regular correspondent on Best Damn, all as my playing career was continuing.

  It wasn’t an accident. I was a mass communications major at Michigan, and I’d always had it in the back of my head that I’d want to do TV work after my playing days were over. As my career developed, I started to look up to Jayson Williams, the former Nets forward who had begun his media career while he was still active in the league. I observed what he was doing, and kept my eyes open for opportunities to get in front of a camera. I was motivated to get better and better, especially as it became apparent that the business of basketball made it highly unlikely that I was going to be traded to a winning team before my contract ran out.

  The second half of my career became a lot different from the first half. I was on playoff teams five out of my first seven years in the league. But once I got traded, I didn’t sniff the playoffs again until my last season, when I was on the bench for Phoenix. Still, I continued to play at a high level, and to embrace the role of the veteran.

  Where I come from, being the elder statesman doesn’t necessarily mean staying quiet and following orders. Being a leader means showing your fellow players the right path, speaking up when things are messed up, and standing up when it’s time to stand up. I did it in high school, I did it in college, I did it in the NBA, and I don’t apologize for any of it. So, really, I’ll leave it at this: the second half of my caree
r—everything that happened after the trade from Indiana—was two things: a continuation of my favorite thing to do in the world—play basketball—and my graduate-level education for what I had decided would be my next life: telling stories from the inside on television.

  —

  ONCE I was on TV, I learned what the fans wanted. Yeah, they wanted to know why their team stank, or how it could be better, but they also wanted to know what went on behind the broadcast action.

  Like the time in Indiana when we were at the height of our rivalry with the Knicks, and I’d gotten mixed up with Patrick Ewing a few times on the court. Those games were heated, and dangerous—you never knew when the talk was going to escalate into something else. The morning after a game in which we beat them in Indiana, I happened to be at the airport to pick up Rizz when I came across all the Knicks’ luggage in the terminal, stacked where the team planes took off. I happened to see one box—a trunk, really—with a sticker that said “Patrick Ewing” on it. I happened to shuffle over to the trunk, get it open, and discover it was a TV/VCR combo, also labeled with his name.

  In the NBA at that time, star players like Patrick Ewing would sometimes get their own TVs so they could watch game tape on the road. Well, Patrick was nowhere to be seen. The Knicks probably hadn’t even gotten to the airport yet; their luggage had probably been sent ahead. Since Rizz was around to help me carry it, I figured I’d be opportunistic, and help myself to the TV. I was just looking for a little competitive advantage, west Detroit style. I kept that TV for years in my house, and the sticker that said “Patrick Ewing” never came off. Meanwhile, Patrick claims he never knew it was missing. But Jeff Van Gundy corroborated my story—he was coaching the Knicks, and they had to buy Patrick a new one.

  Another night was an example of the bling-bling in the league, a trend that I was definitely a part of. (Remember my bracelet—“the Mansion”?) Players would regularly bring a heap of jewelry on the road, and during games we gave it to the trainer to hold, or put it in an envelope, wrapped tape around it, and left it in our bags. Not the most genius idea. One night in Milwaukee, my jewelry got stolen out of the locker room during the game. Everybody else had theirs, but mine had disappeared. I didn’t care if the bus was waiting—I wasn’t going to leave town without finding my stuff. They made everyone who was still working at the arena get frisked. My stuff didn’t turn up, and we left, but the aggressive approach worked. Whoever stole it must have gotten scared and thrown the loot under the bleachers. When I got home I was told some cleaning people had found it, and I sent Rizz from Indiana back to Milwaukee to claim it.