On the bench during the second half I scooted up next to Coach Van.
“You’re letting this team fall apart,” I said.
“Come on, Lassner.”
“What?”
“You’re not gonna start this in the middle of a game.” He sounded tired of the conversation before it had even started. “Nobody’s letting the team fall apart. This could be a championship team.”
“This could have been a championship team. Now it’s a championship Vanilla Dunk and his Dunkettes.”
He made a face.
“What does ownership say?” I asked.
“What do you think? Fishall wants Gornan starting every game. The fans want it, too. As long as we’re winning I’m gonna have a tough time arguing for anything else.”
“Yeah.”
“I want Elwood out there, too, Bo, but if he doesn’t even suit up—”
“I know, I know.”
“Look, I can’t make everybody like Gornan. I don’t particularly like him. But if you get Elwood back in here, he’ll see playing time. The backboard—that’s no big deal. Just more headlines, is the way Fishall sees it. But this walkout deal—”
He didn’t finish his sentence. Something happened out on the floor, something that, as it turned out, would change everything. There was a crash, and a loud sigh, and the crowd fell to silence. It was so quiet you could make out the squeak of the team doctor’s sneakers as he crossed the floor, rushing toward the fallen player.
I got up and peered over the top of the cluster of players, but couldn’t see anything. So I counted heads. It was a Knick on the floor, and height—or rather, lack of it—told me it was Sal Pharoah.
In a minute they had him on his feet, and the crowd starting buzzing again, which made things feel more normal. Pharoah walked with his head bowed, while the doctor peeled the exosuit away from his damaged wrist. They hurried him off toward the trainer’s room, and a couple of kids with towels rushed over and wiped the sweat off the floor where he’d fallen.
Coach Van slapped me on the ass. “Wake up, Lassner. Get in there.”
I stumbled out onto the floor and we restarted the game. We’d built up a good lead, and even without Pharoah or Elwood available we cruised to victory—mostly on the strength of Gornan’s play, I have to admit. He was the only one on the floor who didn’t seem a little stunned by Pharoah’s going down. I did my best to fill the role of Gornan’s protector, though I must admit I felt a renegade urge to do what Elwood would have wanted, and leave him out there naked.
At the start of the fourth quarter, before Coach Van pulled the starters out, it hit me that with me, McFront, and Vanilla Dunk our entire frontcourt was white—the first time the Knicks had had more whites than blacks on the floor since I’d joined the team.
* * *
Sal Pharoah had broken his right wrist in the fall, and he’d be out for at least six weeks, probably more—I learned that from the television in our hotel room that night. Elwood burst in half an hour later, and he learned it from me.
What it meant, of course, was that I was the starting center for the time being. It also meant good things for Elwood, if he behaved himself. With Pharoah out he was our only enforcer, so he’d probably get the nod over McFront. With me in instead of Pharoah we also lost a lot of defense and rebounding, and Elwood was a better defender and rebounder than McFront.
On the other hand, Pharoah had served as a buffer between Gornan and Elwood—also between Gornan and the rest of the league, all those teams frustrated by being beaten by a white hot dog who was getting more endorsements in his rookie year than they’d see for their whole careers. I wasn’t going to be able to serve that role. I wasn’t strong enough, or black enough. That role fell to Elwood. The two of them had to play together or the team was in trouble.
Two nights later, in L.A., against the Time Warner Lakers, I saw that the team was in trouble.
The Lakers were a team that would have tested us with Pharoah on the floor. It was bad timing that we hit them on the first night without him, and the first night since Elwood’s walkout. We should have had a patsy, a fall guy, to give us confidence, to give Elwood and Gornan a chance to have some fun together. No such luck.
In the first quarter Gornan was playing his usual game, to the delight of the crowd. He was scoring a lot of the time but we weren’t coming up with any rebounds, and our defense had nothing, and very quickly the Lakers were up by ten points. I got all passive, starting leaning on my jump shot, and left the inside open, waiting for Elwood to take over. But Elwood was invisible. He was playing man-to-man defense so stubbornly that he had nothing left for the fast break. He was putting on a clinic, demonstrating what Gornan was doing wrong, but Gornan wasn’t paying any attention, and the crowd didn’t have the faintest idea what was going on.
At halftime the Lakers were fifteen points up, and in the second half things really started breaking down. Gornan tried to compensate the only way he knew how, by diving for ridiculous steals, hogging the ball even more, putting on an air show. He got fouled so hard I actually started to get a little worried about him, but each time he jumped back up with a grin. I tried to play a little post-up but the Lakers’ center, who had Artis Gilmore’s skills, was making me look stupid. Our guards were working the margins, trying to get us into the game from the perimeter, but the Lakers were picking up every rebound, so missed shots from the outside were very costly.
Elwood lost his patience, started falling off the defense and trying to mount a show of his own. As usual he strung together some impressive slams, and for a minute the momentum seemed ours, but another minute later he racked up two fouls in a row and the Lakers beefed up their score at the free-throw line. There isn’t any way to defend against free throws—not that anyone was playing defense.
Gornan responded as only he could, by taking up increasingly improbable moves. They had two or three guys on him every time he touched the ball, and he was turning it over a lot. He was airborne, but a lot of balls were being stripped away on the way up.
By the fourth quarter I was exhausted and humiliated. Coach Van called a time-out and I jogged reflexively toward the bench, but he wasn’t taking me out. He subbed McFront in for Elwood and sent in another rookie for Gornan. We lost the game by twenty-three points, our worst margin of the season so far.
We lost in a similar fashion the next night, and at the end Coach Van called me and Elwood and Gornan into his office. I assumed the idea was to mediate between the two of them, and that I was there more or less as Elwood’s official interpreter.
“What’s happening, guys?” said Coach Van.
Gornan jumped right in. “We need a center who can play, Coach.”
“What?” I blurted.
“Sorry, man,” said Gornan. “But let’s face facts.”
“I was starting for this team before you—”
“Whoa,” said Coach Van. “Relax, Bo. Alan, that wasn’t exactly what I had in mind. Seems to me the team is suffering from what I’d call, for want of a better word, a feud.”
“Feud?” Gornan played completely dumb. Elwood just sulked in his chair.
“I don’t care about the personal stuff,” said Coach Van. “It’s a matter of how you play. You have to play like you like each other. You have to be able to pretend on the court. You guys don’t seem to be managing it, and it shows in your game.”
“Hey, me and Bo get along fine,” said Gornan. “Far as I know. But he’s just not as strong as Pharoah under the net. If me and Elwood’s games are hurting, that’s the reason why.”
“This is ridiculous,” I said. Gornan’s strategy began to dawn on me. He was going to pretend he hadn’t even noticed Elwood’s hostility. It was instinctively brilliant, and vicious. He’d avoid the appearance of a black-white conflict by cutting me down instead.
I looked over at Elwood, but he wasn’t offering me any help.
“Look,” said Gornan. “Me and Elwood are playing the same as when the te
am was winning. Lassner here is the difference.”
“Are you gonna take this?” I said to Elwood. “He’s saying that the way you’ve been playing in the last few games is your normal game. Can’t you see what a veiled insult that is? You can play a hell of a lot better—”
“You getting down on my game, Lassner?” growled Elwood. “You a fine one to fucking talk, man.”
“No, no, I mean, I’m just trying to say, look at what he’s saying—”
“Enough, Bo. Be quiet for a minute. Maybe I’ve misunderstood the situation—”
“Coach,” I protested, “Gornan is twisting this—”
“Let me talk! As I was saying, I don’t know the details, I don’t want to know the details. What matters is the chemistry sucks right now. All three of you are playing below your capabilities. That’s my opinion, and I’ve told ownership as much, and I’ll tell the press the same when we get home. That’s all for now.”
End of meeting.
We lost the last two games of the road trip and flew back to New York. On the plane I slept and dreamed of missed shots. The cabbie who took me back to my Brooklyn apartment asked me how I felt about the trade.
“What trade?” I asked, and the cabbie just said: “I’m sorry.”
* * *
The Disney Heat were a mediocre team with one big star: Gerald Flynnan, their center. He played with the skills of Akeem Olajuwon, and he carried their team to the lower rounds of the playoffs each year, but no farther. The rest of the team was talented but young, disorganized, and possibly stupid.
Knicks management had offered me, Elwood, and a first-round lottery pick to the Heat in exchange for Flynnan, and the Disney team had taken the bait. The Knicks picked up a dominant center to replace the injured Pharoah, and to fill his shoes in protecting Vanilla Dunk. And they’d gotten rid of the tension in their frontcourt by unloading Elwood; McFront and Dunk would start.
What the Heat got was a midseason mess: an angry, talented star and a tall white guy with a jump shot. The lottery spot wouldn’t help the team until next year. Elwood and I were flown down and in the Disney uniforms before we knew what hit us, and the coach tossed us into a game before we’d even had a chance to introduce ourselves to the other players.
The result was an ugly loss, but then the players there seemed pretty used to that.
The crowd, too. The Disney fans were a jaded, abusive bunch, mostly concerned with heckling Coach Wilder for not playing local favorite Earlharm “Early” Natt, a talented eccentric who carried the skills of Marvin Barnes. At the start of the game they cheered Elwood and greeted me with shouts of “Where’s Gerald?”, but by halftime they were drinking beer and shouting for Early Natt, a request that Coach Wilder ignored except in the final, hopeless moments of each game. Natt looked pretty dynamic when he got in, which explained the crowd’s affection. He also paid zero attention to defense or team play, which explained the coach’s resistance.
The same pattern held in the two losses that followed.
That brought us to the all-star break. Elwood and I were 0-3 with our new team, and nobody was particularly happy. I couldn’t figure Elwood—he was playing quiet, walking quiet, and, I suspected, mixing a little thinking in with his brooding. For my part, I was just trying to keep my head above water—to my embarrassment, I was exhausted by starting every night. Plus management and media caught on that I was the communicative one of the new pair, which meant I was answering questions for me and Elwood both.
The all-star break gave us most of a week before we played again, and Elwood surprised me by suggesting we get out of town. He’d located a beach hotel on Key West with a nearby high school gym we could rent. I agreed. Without having to say so, we were both avoiding paying any attention to the all-star game, which was sure to be yet another installment of the Vanilla Dunk show.
Elwood shocked me again by getting up first that morning, to rouse me out of bed. He called up a breakfast on room service; I swear in all our years rooming together I’d never seen him pick up a phone before.
At the gym he said: “Okay, Lassner. I’m gonna teach your tall white ass how to play a trapping defense.”
“What?”
“You heard.”
“What is this punishment for, Elwood? What did I do? Just tell me.”
“Here—” He threw me the ball.
And proceeded to do exactly what he’d promised.
The next day word had gotten around—possibly with Elwood’s help, I never found out—that a couple of pros were working out in the local gym. Six guys showed up: confident, tall kids out to impress, all lean and strong from boating on the island, a couple of them with real talent. Elwood worked them into the clinic he was giving me, and they and he spent the next four days busting my ass.
I went back to Miami exhausted, and Elwood still wouldn’t tell me what he was getting at.
It quickly became clear, however, that he’d been looking at the schedule. The first team we played after the break was the Knicks. That afternoon in practice, while the rest of the team was drilling, he took Coach Wilder aside.
“Let me call the plays tonight,” he said, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
“What?”
“Let me call the plays.” He actually smiled.
“We’re playing the Knicks.”
“Exactly.”
“What are you saying, Elwood?”
“You traded for me, man. Give me a night to run the show. One night. If you don’t like the results we go back to your way tomorrow. Nobody will ever know.”
I walked over to show my support—for what, I didn’t exactly know. “Give him a half, at least,” I said.
“He did this in New York?” asked Coach Wilder.
“Yes,” I lied.
* * *
Elwood pulled Early Natt off the bench as we took the floor at the start of the game, saying to him only, “Go crazy.”
I got Elwood aside. “Okay,” I said. “I’ve waited long enough. What’s the deal here, Elwood?”
“We’re gonna defend these mothers,” he said. “That’s the deal. Our guards can play a zone defense if they hang back. You and me are boxing out Dunk, taking the rebounds, stripping the ball. Don’t hold anything back.”
“What’s Early doing?”
“Cherry-picking. Outdunking the Dunk.”
“I never saw Marvin Barnes play,” I said, “but I didn’t think he could hang with Michael Jordan. Early is stupid, Elwood.”
“We’re not playing against Michael Jordan,” said Elwood. “We’re playing against Vanilla Dunk. Jordan had an integrated game. The best there ever was. Dunk’s just a show. I’ve played a little one-on-one with Early. He can put on a show, if he doesn’t have to think about defense or passing, and if the coach isn’t breathing down his neck. That’s our job, Lassner. Keep Early from having to think about anything. He’ll put on a show. Trust me.”
Gerald Flynnan, the Knicks’ new center, beat me on the tip-off, so the Knicks came up with the ball. I followed Elwood’s lead—after the week of drills, it was second nature. We charged the ball, my hands up wide and high to block the pass, Elwood’s hands low for the steal off the dribble. Our guards scurried behind us on the zone defense, picking up the slack.
Otis Pettingale beat us on a head fake and went up. Score: Gulf + Western 2, Disney 0.
One of our guards fed it in to me, and Elwood hissed, “Up to Early!” I did what I was told. Early Natt was halfway up the court. He twisted through three Knicks, not looking back to see if he had any support, and scored. Tie game.
The second time up the court the ball was in Vanilla Dunk’s hands, and Elwood seemed to go into another time signature. He was all over him. Dunk dribbled back and circled and came up again. I put up my hands and cut off a pass opportunity. Dunk hesitated, and Elwood stripped the ball away. A flip pass upcourt into Early’s hands and we were ahead.
The crowd went wild. Not because they had any idea of
what Elwood and me were up to, but because Early was in the game, showing off, doing the only thing he knew how to do: score. The Knicks brought the ball back to us, and this time Elwood took it away from McFront, tipping it into my waiting hands. Not waiting to be told this time, I tossed it to Early. Score.
The strategy was working, at least for the moment. No team in the league played this kind of defense, and it had the Knicks confused. High on the novelty of it, and the crowd’s response, we roared to a fifteen-point lead by half-time. Elwood ran back to the bench and spread his hands in a mute appeal to Coach Wilder.
“This one’s yours,” said the coach.
In the second half the Knicks adjusted somewhat, and I got tired and had to sit for a few minutes. Flynnan bulled his way through Elwood for six straight points, and Otis added a couple of outside shots, and they nearly tied it. But Vanilla Dunk looked all flummoxed, and he never got into the game. A few minutes later we opened up the lead again and we ended up winning by five points.
I took Elwood aside in the locker room. The media all wanted Early Natt anyway. “When I was sitting in the third period I checked my suit,” I said. “It wasn’t working.”
Elwood just smiled, and made a little pair of imaginary scissors with his fingers.
“You fucked with my suit?”
“I just noticed you play better without it, man. You think I didn’t see you were turning it off?”
“That’s just for my jump shot!”
“I saw you in practice in Key West, white boy. You play better without it. Notice I ain’t saying you play good. Just better.”
“Fuck you, Elwood.”
* * *
It was a nice night, but it was just a night. A fluke loss by the almighty Knicks—it happens sometimes. The Vanilla Dunk Revue went back to cakewalking its way to a championship, while we struggled on, treading water in the middle of our division, barely clinging to our playoff hopes. Surprisingly, Elwood didn’t seem that interested in applying the defensive techniques we’d developed together against any of the other teams. Oh, we trapped here and there, but Elwood didn’t ever take command the way he had. He seemed to go back into a trance, like he’d done when we were first traded. We won our share of games, but nobody was particularly impressed. As for Early Natt, he saw more minutes, but they only seemed to give him more opportunities to blow it, and soon enough he was in the doghouse. Elwood had abandoned him. I guess Elwood liked that one-dimensional game a little better on a hapless black man than he liked it on an arrogant white one, but not so much that he wanted to encourage Early to make it a regular habit.
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