12.
The rain, Rashard Lewis wondered, was it ever going to stop? In Seattle, the gray skies cried endlessly and heavily, seemingly every day. The weather matched his mood. He was not necessarily depressed, but he had taken stock of everything in his life that had shifted so dramatically, so drastically. The climate difference from Texas was just another significant factor in the complete totality of the change. After the draft, Lewis had remained in Texas, practicing in the sweltering heat and humidity in a cramped gym with his high school coach, Jerrel Hartfield. There was familiarity and comfort in being home, although Lewis remained nervous about his own uncertain future and the NBA’s overall unsettledness. When it seemed as if the NBA was on the verge of ending its lockout, Lewis hurried to Seattle and moved into an apartment. His mother, Juanita Brown, offered to move to Seattle with him. In the end, they decided that she should remain in Texas, at her job and near Lewis’s siblings.
Lewis was excited to receive an invitation to play in a pickup game with some of Seattle’s veteran players, who now scrambled to work themselves back into shape. He hopped in a car with Jelani McCoy, a fellow rookie who had played at UCLA. Their driver took a wrong turn and the duo arrived in the middle of a game that had already started. Gary Payton, the team’s star point guard, savvy and outspoken, stopped dribbling up the court when he noticed the pair’s late arrival. “What the hell are you doing?” Payton yelled. “Y’all are late. Y’all are supposed to be here on time.” All eyes shifted toward Lewis and McCoy. They were not, Lewis noted, unlike schoolboys tardy to class. They pointed at their driver. “It’s his fault,” Lewis said. “He was late and didn’t know where he was going.”
For Payton, their lateness exemplified the mind-set of the NBA’s new generation of players. Payton was 30 years old and had been in Seattle for almost a decade. The SuperSonics were one of the league’s premier teams and their future success or failure hinged on Payton’s play and ability to lead. Seattle was one of the teams expected to vie for a championship with Michael Jordan’s probable retirement, having already been thwarted by Jordan and the Bulls in the 1996 finals. Payton was now one of the league’s marquee players, as Jordan and his generation of superstar peers—Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Patrick Ewing, Charles Barkley, Karl Malone, and others—were retired or nearing their final seasons. Payton was part of the group that rose to prominence after Jordan’s. Still, he had learned from those players. He had earned what he received and nothing had been handed to him. The new players expected to be millionaires first and learn the game’s intricacies later. Payton felt he had to immediately receive respect from Lewis and McCoy. So what, you’re a rookie? he thought. So what, you got drafted? Those other people who got drafted on this team before you are just as good or better. You’re coming in here like a regular job. Respect the job. If everybody else is on time, why should you be late?
“I don’t give a damn,” Payton yelled at the rookies. “Call one of my homeboys. They’ll come pick you up. But you gotta be here. You’ve got to put the work in.”
The admonishment took Lewis by surprise. Maybe he had wanted too much too fast. He had realized early on that his life span as a professional athlete came with an expiration date. He wanted to be an NBA player, sign a contract, and secure his future before suffering some freak injury. Only a few weeks earlier, he had been a teenager, or, more accurately, a boy, grateful for his mother to stir him in the morning, pack his lunch, and send him off to school. He had still not signed a contract and taken out an insurance policy for $2.5 million. While it was a safe assumption that he would earn money by playing basketball somewhere, Juanita Brown was certainly not about to allow her son to spend money he had yet to make. She took him to open his first bank account and they passed over purchasing the flashier items he preferred, like a big-screen television. She did allow him to buy a new cell phone and a car, and finally relented on letting him get a tattoo on his biceps. He now realized, almost as an epiphany, that he would be accountable for waking himself up, paying his own bills, and being disciplined enough to refrain from eating fast food every day.
That he remained mute, listened to his coaches, and stayed mindful of not stepping on the toes of any veteran teammates was natural for Rashard Lewis. Payton’s scolding did provide motivation. He entered the game and played as hard as he could. Dwane Casey, a veteran Seattle assistant coach, watched the action. Lewis, he noticed, did not say more than a couple of words to anyone. He just went about his business on the court and blended in. Lewis then showed his potential in a flash. He stole the ball from Payton and reversed the court’s action. Payton scrambled to catch up and leaped in an attempt to block Lewis’s shot. Lewis dunked on top of Payton and released a primal scream. Casey believed at that time that Lewis could develop into a star. Payton was one of the game’s better trash talkers. His jaw was in constant motion even in matchups against Jordan. In that instance, Payton simply asked for the inbounds pass and made his way back up court, mindful, this time, of where Lewis was so as not to have his pocket picked twice.
Because of the lockout, NBA personnel were prohibited from contacting players. The league canceled rookie camp, training camp, exhibition games, and the season’s start. Suddenly, when it looked as if the entire season would be missed, the sides announced their agreement. Players had lost nearly $500 million in salary. There would be a hurried schedule, one consisting of 50 games instead of the regular 82. Teams would occasionally play three games in three nights. Jordan indeed retired, saying he had accomplished everything he wanted to in the game. The league would have to deal with fan apathy and the loss of not just the most popular basketball player but one of the most recognizable people on the planet. Truncated training camps and exhibition schedules were announced. How individual teams developed their younger players was now more important than ever. High schoolers, more than any other rookies, needed molding and mentoring. Too often a bright prospect drafted by a bad organization proved to be a bust. But a gifted coach and his staff could sometimes push a player to advance beyond his potential. Rashard Lewis, Al Harrington, and Korleone Young would all be tended to differently, reflecting not only their own worth, but their respective organizations as well.
The Seattle coaches agreed to bring Lewis along slowly. Rushing toward the season hurt most of the league’s players. It worked for Lewis, however. The SuperSonics presented Lewis with a two-year guaranteed contract shortly after his dunk over Payton. They did not have to offer him a contract at all or they could have signed him to a make-good deal. Instead, they showed their commitment to Lewis and put his racing mind at ease. The lockout had allowed him more time to measure himself against professional players outside the spotlight. It built his confidence. Later, Lewis wondered if he would have ever made the team if not for the lockout. Everything happened so quickly once the season started that he did not have time to overthink things. Brown still worried about her son. They talked on the phone nearly every day, but Payton and some of the other team members eased her mind to some degree by vowing to watch over Lewis. He hardly, if ever, played. Still, the fewer number of overall games served as an ideal transition between the high school season of around 30 games and the pros. Sometimes, Lewis would be jealous when he talked to his twin sister and she spoke of the college experience she was having. Occasionally, he played pickup basketball over at the University of Washington and spent time on their campus, “almost like I was trying to live a college life, while I was an NBA player,” Lewis recalled. “I was trying to catch up to speed with them.”
Over the next few years, Lewis would develop into a dependable inside-out threat and eventually an All-Star. In 2007, he signed a contract with Orlando for $118 million. He did not hesitate when asked which contract meant more to him. “The first deal,” he said. “Being a young kid, dreaming of being in the NBA, signing that first contract, I don’t care if it was $100 or $100,000. I just felt so good about signing a deal in the NBA and being able to play and compete in the N
BA. The dollars didn’t even matter to me. I just wanted to be in the NBA and when I signed that deal, I was calling everybody. It was the minimum. It wasn’t for that much and it was prorated [because of the games missed because of the lockout]. I made $100,000 or less than that that first season, but I felt like a millionaire. I didn’t care.”
•••
The Indiana Pacers were another team looking to take advantage of the dismantling of the Chicago Bulls dynasty. For years, Reggie Miller, their star, was a constant nemesis to Michael Jordan, but also a constant runner-up to the superior Bulls. With Jordan gone, the Pacers were prepped to peak, propped up by Miller and a strong core of Mark Jackson, Chris Mullin, Rik Smits, and Antonio and Dale Davis. They were a powerful, united group that had played together for years. Al Harrington had spent the beginning of the lockout waiting for his dream to materialize and flying between New Jersey, Indiana, and Atlanta to find the best pickup games. Because he was drafted in the first round, his immediate future was assured and he took out loans to pay for the flights and hotels.
The veteran Pacers, like Seattle, organized pickup games to stay prepared for a season that could begin at the snap of a finger, or more accurately, the signatures of David Stern and Billy Hunter. Harrington played in the pickup games but, unlike Lewis, the matchups diminished his confidence. He had been able to declare for the NBA because of his strong mind-set. He had believed he was the best high school player and willed himself to play like it. It was impossible to convince himself he was the best against the professionals. Even the most menial tasks, like fighting through a screen, was a herculean task in Harrington’s estimation. Meanwhile, the wily older players slipped through screens set by burly players as though they were ghosts. I’ve got to start from scratch, Harrington thought. I’ve got to start all over again just to get respect and be a player in this league.
Harrington also received veteran mentorship, but of a different sort than Payton offered Rashard Lewis. Antonio Davis was a fan favorite in Indianapolis. The Pacers had drafted him in the second round of the 1990 draft from the University of Texas at El Paso, but Davis began his professional career in Greece before moving on to Italy. He finally joined the NBA in 1993 and entrenched himself in Indiana’s rotation, providing scoring and rebounding as a reliable power forward. Because of his circuitous professional beginnings, he appreciated his NBA standing and remained cognizant of the nourishment that a young player needed. Davis had confidence in Donnie Walsh and Larry Bird. If the Pacers believed in Harrington and felt that he could help the team in the future, then Davis would do all he could to help bring him along in the present. Harrington had yet to secure permanent housing in Indiana and was staying with a trainer. He asked to stay at Davis’s home one weekend. Davis called his wife, Kendra, who agreed to the request.
Davis could not imagine transitioning into professionalism after high school. Harrington stayed a weekend at his house. The weekend turned into a week and then a month. Before long, Harrington had become both family member and tenant. Davis was 30 years old and half-teammate, half–father figure to Harrington. He hoped to teach Harrington what being a professional entailed. “No one is saying not to go out there and have fun,” Davis told Harrington. “But when practice starts, we’re there an hour ahead of time. When practice starts, we’ve already been sweating and ready to go. After practice, we’re getting better every day. This is not something you do when you feel like it. This is a job, and if someone’s going to be paying you to do this and you want to do it for a long time, hard work is not an option.”
At home, Harrington enjoyed playing with Davis’s twins, Antonio Jr. and Kaela. Harrington lived in the basement and often played video games. At first, he had a lot of free time, which was new and exciting to him. In high school, everything was planned out with his school and practice. Now, he could practice for six hours and still have much of the day to kill. Antonio Davis had his wife and kids, so he could not constantly watch over Harrington. He told Harrington that even though he had free time, he did not have to fill it all. “Just because you’re 18, doesn’t make you have to act like you’re eighteen,” Davis would say. Sometimes Davis still caught himself smiling. Whenever they attended a high school football game together, Harrington would become lost in a sea of high schoolers, mixing and mingling. Well, Davis would think. Those are his peers. The Davises paid a housekeeper and Kendra Davis’s parents lived around the corner and often helped with the twins. They still wanted to assign Harrington some responsibilities to help round out his day. They would ask him to take out the trash and do the dishes and occasionally retrieve the three-year-old twins from day care. It was Harrington’s job to drive Antonio Davis to practice every day. Harrington mostly adhered to the rule of no guest visitors of his own at the home. Davis tried to find the middle ground between being a father figure and a teammate. He did not particularly want Harrington to stay out late, but cautioned that it was his decision, with the only caveat being that he alert the family of his location.
It did not take Davis or the organization long to realize that the reputation Harrington had carved out in high school was accurate. He worked hard and wanted to improve. Harrington was grateful. He was not on his own and lived with a family who cared about him, an arrangement that helped him stave off homesickness. Mona Lawton visited her son and found comfort in the Davises. They called her son “Baby Al.” She still asked that Harrington return home until the lockout ended. Antonio Davis insisted that returning home would stunt Harrington’s basketball growth. “We’re going to be working out every day, keeping busy, and staying in shape,” he told her. “He’ll be fine, Mama Mona.” Lawton planned to move her family to Indianapolis after the lockout ended. Of all the arrangements, she thought, having her son stay with a grounded family seemed like one of the better ones and she allowed him to stay.
Davis was the Pacers’ player representative, at the front line of the labor negotiations, and Harrington figured he would be one of the first to know whenever a deal to end the lockout was reached. He was overjoyed when there finally was an agreement. He still needed to find a place to stay. The season would be starting soon. “It’s going to start soon, but there’s only another couple of months before it’s going to end,” Davis said to Harrington. “Why don’t you just stay here?” Harrington did.
The Pacers, in those days, had another advantage over other organizations in helping players adjust to the NBA. Her name was Kathy Jordan. Jordan was just out of college when she married a player named Walter Jordan, who was about to embark on his own professional basketball career. The couple lived in minor league cities before Walter played briefly with the Cavaliers in Cleveland. At every stop, Kathy found little support awaiting a couple who knew nothing about the practicalities of that city—where to live and eat and how to get around. To her, that did not make sense. The players were treated more like movable commodities than human beings. Wives, she believed, were viewed in an even dimmer light. She felt like a piece of baggage carried to whatever new city her husband landed in. An injury derailed Walter’s career and the couple eventually separated. Kathy accepted a job with the Pacers as a promotions assistant. She developed into a jack-of-all-trades, influencing nearly every corner of the organization. The Pacers drafted Vern Fleming in 1984, the first year she worked for the Pacers. Fleming was from New York City and had a wife and a young child. Jordan thought how foreign everything had been for her when she was young and introduced to professional basketball, how no one had reached out to bridge that uneasiness. She phoned Fleming and his family and asked if they had any questions concerning the transition and living in Indianapolis. The job developed from there. Donnie Walsh heard of her work when he became the team’s general manager in 1987 and asked her to keep it up. She was one of the first from the organization to meet and greet a new player’s family and offered the information she herself had earlier lacked. She directed families on where to live and the best schools for younger siblings. Harrington came
to call Jordan his second mother and Reggie Miller referred to her as his aunt.
At first, Jordan simply welcomed the drafted player and his family to the city. They were mostly four-year graduates and largely prepared for the NBA. Jordan’s role evolved as the league drafted more and more teenagers. The “Mother of the Pacers” was how people outside the organization described her, but she thought of herself more as a mentor than a mother. She began working with other organizations and gave presentations about the healthy relationships a franchise should develop with their younger players and their families. Her work tied in with that of the NBA/NBPA Rookie Transition Program, which began in 1986. The retreat was mandatory for all rookies. The new players enjoyed the company of some of the league’s pioneers—Tom “Satch” Sanders, the Boston Celtics legend ran the program—and included seminars from professionals about dealing with the media, image building, gambling, financial management, and HIV and AIDS awareness. The players could not learn about all the trapdoors that could ruin their career in a few short days, but it was a start.
•••
Korleone Young found no safety net like the ones Rashard Lewis and Al Harrington landed on in Seattle and Indiana. Young had people around him. More often than not, they pitched the wrong opinions and dispensed the wrong advice. Young had been coddled throughout his life as a superstar athlete and while he had developed as a high school basketball star, he was ill suited to face every other aspect of adulthood. The Detroit Pistons were another solid team and featured Grant Hill, a young player who had spent four years at Duke. Hill burst onto the scene in 1994 as an immediate sensation and appeared uniquely equipped to step into the league’s superstar void left in Michael Jordan’s absence. The Pistons were not nearly as invested in Young’s future or development as the SuperSonics and Pacers were in Lewis’s and Harrington’s. Young signed a one-year contract with an option for a second year held by the team. Kim Young remained in Wichita and kept her job at Cessna Aircraft Company. Korleone Young’s pro career had a suspect beginning. Young split with his agent, Jerome Stanley, soon after the draft. Stanley had secured a $500,000 deal with Nike for Young, but the lockout loomed and that was not the kind of shoe money that Myron Piggie had envisioned. “I declined,” Young remembered. “I had people decline half a million dollars. That’s the truth. That’s a fact. Nike was gonna give me half a million my rookie year, just for nothing.” With Stanley removed, brothers Carl and Kevin Poston became Young’s representatives. The Postons counted NFL Pro Bowlers Charles Woodson, Orlando Pace, and Champ Bailey among their clients. “We went with bigger agents,” Young recalled ruefully. “That was the worst move I could’ve made.”
Boys Among Men Page 15