God and Starbucks

by Vin Baker

I can recall with some clarity (considering how inebriated I was) the first time I smoked marijuana. It was New Year’s Day (or night, actually), and I was hanging out with my college roommate and a few other guys at Todd Day’s house. After several hours of steady holiday drinking while watching football games, I reached the saturation point. This is a hard thing to explain. I was twenty-two years old and had never taken so much as a single hit of weed, hadn’t really even been tempted. I had grown up believing not only that smoking marijuana was bad for you—bad for the brain, bad for the lungs, bad for the heart—but also that it invited all kinds of trouble beyond the merely physical. It was, after all, still illegal, and I was the kind of kid who was terrified of getting in trouble, incurring the wrath of his parents, and generally letting people down. So I abstained. By the time I was a senior at Hartford, it was almost a running joke. My friends and teammates who smoked knew better than to even ask me if I wanted to partake.

  In the NBA, however, weed was a much bigger part of the culture; it was everywhere. For the first few months I continued to abstain and nobody really pushed me to change. It was just something guys did, and if you wanted to smoke, there was no shortage of opportunities. We all have free will, and we all are responsible for the choices we make. Repeated exposure to weed, and to guys who smoked weed and seemed to experience no deleterious effects, eventually had a withering effect.

  How bad can it be?

  As I sat in the living room at Todd’s house, watching one of the guys roll up some weed, I felt a surge of curiosity. I was a little queasy from a day of drinking and overeating, but not quite ready to turn in for the night. I’d been in this position before and had always found it easy to say no thanks when the joint came around. This time, though, I jumped in. I remember glancing over at my college roommate as I took the joint in hand; he wore a look of amusement, if not astonishment. I was such a novice that I didn’t even know how to smoke. I took a couple of light hits, didn’t inhale too deeply, because I didn’t want to gag and make a fool out of myself, and then passed it along. There were no jokes, no words of admonishment. It was no big deal. Except it was. Once lost, virginity cannot be reclaimed. I was no longer a guy who had never smoked weed, had never experimented with drugs in any way. I had crossed that threshold and there was no coming back. Not for me. For me, as it turns out, there are no half measures.

  At first I felt nothing, but a short time later, when we went out to a club, it hit me. The combination of alcohol and marijuana left me reeling. I felt like I was floating across the floor. It was the strangest sensation, more psychedelic than the alcohol buzz to which I had grown accustomed. I can’t say I liked it, but I didn’t find it unpleasant, either. It was just . . . different. As the night wore on, and I resumed drinking, I began to lose control. At one point I went to the bathroom. Inside, just hanging out, were three or four people smoking weed. Random guys I had never met. Ordinarily I would have turned around and walked out. This time, though, with my defenses down, if not completely shattered, I said hello. They seemed friendly enough and quickly offered me a hit. I took it . . . and then took another. And another.

  I don’t know how much time elapsed, but it must have been a while, because when I got back to our table, Todd asked me if I was okay.

  “Yeah, fine, bro. Just smoking some weed in the bathroom.”

  Todd stared at me quizzically. It was not the response I had anticipated.

  “Who you smoking with?” he said.

  “I don’t know, man. Just some guys.”

  Todd shook his head, and suddenly I realized that he was pissed. This confused the hell out of me. Todd liked his weed—that was no secret—but he was a year older than me and savvy about his recreational activities. He knew where the line was, and clearly he felt like I had crossed it.

  “Don’t ever do that again,” he said, his tone more parental than collegial.

  “What’s the big deal?”

  He leaned into me. “You’re a professional basketball player. You’re a rookie. You can’t be running around smoking weed with strangers in the bathroom. What the fuck’s wrong with you?”

  If I hadn’t been so drunk, I might have responded angrily to being scolded in this manner. As it was, I didn’t really care. I liked Todd and looked up to him. He was a good player; like me, Todd had been drafted eighth overall by the Bucks, so he knew what it was like to be a rookie facing high expectations. Unlike me, he had a reputation for being something of a tough guy both on and off the court, who said what was on his mind, often unfiltered. Todd had grown up in Memphis, played at the University of Arkansas, and felt comfortable in places that were foreign to me. I was drawn to him in a number of ways, so his opinion meant a lot to me.

  “Okay, Todd,” I said. “I get it. Sorry.”

  There was another time that season I joined Todd on a trip to Fayetteville, where he was being honored before one of the Arkansas basketball games. We had a road game against the Dallas Mavericks the next night, with a mandatory shootaround in the morning, so the schedule was tight. But the flight from Fayetteville to Dallas was short, so we didn’t think it would be a problem.

  I was excited about hanging out with Todd at Arkansas. I was his rook and he liked dragging me around, introducing me to people, showing me the ropes. Yet Todd had an edge that could sometimes be off putting. I hadn’t felt much of the sting since I’d arrived in Milwaukee, but something weird happened on that trip to Fayetteville. I spent a lot of time at the game meeting Todd’s friends and family, teammates and coaches, boosters and alumni. It was all very comfortable and polite and friendly. But after roughly the thirtieth introduction, Todd turned to me and said, “See, that’s what I’m saying, man. If you were Alonzo Mourning, I wouldn’t have to do all these damn introductions.”

  I stiffened, waited for him to laugh or poke me in the ribs. Something . . . anything to indicate he was kidding, just busting my balls. But there was nothing. He just sat there and shook his head.

  “What’s that, Todd?”

  He didn’t even make eye contact, just kept watching the game. “You know what I’m saying.”

  I did. I knew exactly what he was saying, and it hurt like hell. By the All-Star Break of my rookie year there were whispers around the league that the Bucks had wasted a high draft pick on a mid-major bust. I hadn’t broken out yet, hadn’t proved that I deserved the money I was making or the respect of NBA veterans. Todd was only a year ahead of me, and wasn’t an all-star himself, but he was the best player on our team and he considered himself to be a straight talker—even when the message was painful. But I also thought he was my friend, and friends didn’t dig at each other this way. It was, after all, a little early to be comparing me to Alonzo Mourning, who had for years been one of the best centers in the NBA.

  I sat there in stunned silence for a few minutes, waiting for Todd to add something that might soften the blow. But it never came. He was trying to send a message to me. While we may have been friends, Todd seemed to be disappointed in me as a player; if so, that was a painful thing to learn.

  That night we went to an apartment and smoked weed with some of Todd’s friends. Then we went out to a club, and this time the high hit me hard, probably because there was less alcohol involved. It was a different buzz than what I felt from drinking, more laid-back and relaxed. I liked it. A lot. The night ended with a trip to a local diner, where I experienced a raging case of the munchies. I couldn’t stop eating, and I didn’t even notice until I was nearly through that the rest of the guys at the table were all staring at me and laughing. For most of the night I had been insisting that the weed hadn’t really taken effect. But there was no denying it now.

  “You must be feeling something,” Todd said, “because you just ate three racks of ribs.”

  I looked down. My hands were covered with goo. Sauce dripped from my chin. I shrugged and giggled.

  “Maybe so.”

  We missed our flight the next morning, grabbed one that departed a
short time later, and went straight to the arena after landing in Dallas. Unfortunately, we still managed to miss the first ten minutes of shootaround, which is not a good idea under the best of circumstances, and certainly ill advised if you are a rookie whose best excuse is that he was out too late the night before. I didn’t feel all that hungover, to be honest, but we had screwed up. I’d had a perfect attendance record up to that point, so I didn’t know exactly what to expect; my hope was that ten minutes would be deemed a minor transgression and that some leeway would be given considering this was a first offense.

  When we arrived the team was gathered at center court in a loose semicircle, with Coach Dunleavy in the middle. Todd and I walked straight to the huddle, acting like we hadn’t done anything wrong. Mike saw us coming, stopped talking, and looked straight at Todd.

  “You fucking owe me, man. You owe me for this.”

  He said it with a half smile, so that Todd would get the point but not feel threatened or embarrassed.

  “Yeah, man, I know. I got it,” Todd said. Then he nodded in my direction. “I’ll take Rook’s, too.”

  With that, Coach Dunleavy took a more serious tone. He stared me down for a moment, then cut loose.

  “A rookie pulling this shit?” he said, his voice oozing contempt. “Strolling in here late for shootaround? You do know we have a game tonight, right?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You got some fucking nerve, son.”

  My ears were burning by the end of his tirade. I felt small and stupid. That tongue lashing, combined with Todd’s comments the previous night, triggered a wave of anxiety that left me wondering whether I even belonged in the league. It’s interesting to look back on it now. I began drinking and smoking weed as a way to self-medicate, to try to alleviate some of the insecurity that had long been a problem in my life. But whatever short-term relief I may have experienced, there was always a price to pay. In this particular incident, for example, a night of drinking and smoking weed had caused us to oversleep and show up late for practice. Then again, if I hadn’t been out getting high with my boy Todd, I might never have had that moment of clarity: “If you were Alonzo Mourning, I wouldn’t have to do all these damn introductions.”

  Okay, so that’s what you think of me? I guess I’ll have to change your opinion.

  Coach Dunleavy’s rant caused me to become more focused. It fueled my desire to become one of the top frontcourt players in the league, and to convince the Bucks and their fans that I was worthy of being the eighth pick in the draft. I cut back on the drinking, went out maybe once a week, or even less in the last couple of months of the season. My play improved dramatically. Weed? I could take it or leave it. And for the most part, I left it.

  5

  Playing High

  Although I sometimes butted heads with Coach Dunleavy in my rookie year, I also had sympathy for the position he was in. The Bucks were not a good basketball team, and Mike was assigned the task of turning the franchise around. But that doesn’t happen overnight. It happens—when it happens—over a period of years, through a combination of good coaching and the acquisition of talent, either through trades or the draft. The goal is always to win as many games as possible, and to perform well in the playoffs; for a select few teams, winning a championship becomes a reasonable goal. Professional basketball is a business, and the teams that win also tend to sell the most tickets and generate the most revenue.

  The Milwaukee Bucks were not part of that club.

  For any team in a protracted period of rebuilding, challenging decisions must be made. When it becomes apparent that the playoffs are no longer a viable option, management begins to focus less on winning games during the current season and more on creating an atmosphere conducive to winning games at some point in the future. Fans hate to see their team lose, even if it means getting the top pick in the draft—at some point they just stop showing up for games and you wind up with a lot of empty seats and a disgruntled fan base. And players really hate losing. So the burden of managing this chaotic scenario falls on the coach. He tries to keep his team engaged and working hard regardless of the record. He is supposed to develop young talent and placate veterans without winning so often that draft position is compromised. This was the challenge Mike Dunleavy faced in the second half of my rookie season, and I did not envy him one bit.

  I felt the weight of this more than most players. Like I said, there were games when I was playing extremely well—games in which we had an opportunity to win—and I’d suddenly be pulled from the lineup. At first I found it confusing—Are we really trying to lose this game?—and then it made me angry. Finally, as the losses mounted, resignation set in. A pattern developed. I’d play twenty to thirty minutes, get in a good run, feel good about my performance . . . and then go to the bench. That was player-development time. The end of the game was losing time, and I was often not on the floor. Coach Dunleavy, meanwhile, began handling me differently. He would be softer, more complimentary. Our last trip to New Jersey could not have been more different from the first, when I didn’t play at all and got into a shouting match with Mike. It was near the end of the season, and we were all just standing around waiting for a bus to take us from the airport to the hotel, when Mike turned to me and said, loud enough for everyone to hear, “I’m going to grab a cab. Vinnie—let’s go.”

  The vets really let me have it after that. They all started laughing and yelling.

  “Uh-oh, he’s the franchise now!”

  “There he goes—Vin Baker . . . the future of the Bucks.”

  I’ll be honest: it felt good to be viewed this way, and I thought I had earned it. I was one of the top rookies in the league, the leading rebounder on our team, and its third-leading scorer. But there is something undeniably frustrating about being a very good player on a very bad team. And the Bucks were without question a terrible team, compiling a record of 20 wins and 62 losses—at the time, a franchise record for futility; only the Dallas Mavericks (13–69) had a more feeble record.

  But there was cause for hope. We had some promising young players and a chance at getting the top pick in the draft. I say “chance,” because draft picks are not exactly assigned in reverse order based on the previous year’s record. It’s a little more convoluted than that, and has been ever since the NBA instituted a draft lottery system in 1985, ostensibly to reduce the likelihood of teams tanking at the end of the regular season to enhance their standing in the draft. Any team that did not make the playoffs went into the lottery, and draft position was based on the outcome of the lottery. So, a team with the league’s worst record might wind up with the tenth pick overall, rather than a guaranteed number one.

  The lottery system was subsequently modified, but it has remained basically unchanged over the last quarter century. Any team that does not make the playoffs is automatically entered into the draft lottery, but the system is now weighted: the worse a team’s record, the more entries it has in the lottery, thus the greater its chances of receiving a high draft pick. So while incentive to perform badly during the latter stages of the season remains, that incentive is somewhat reduced. Finishing last, after all, does not guarantee the top position in the draft.

  In the 1994 draft the Milwaukee Bucks pulled the winning lottery ticket and selected Glenn “Big Dog” Robinson, an explosive six-foot-seven forward out of Purdue University. Glenn was the national college player of the year in 1994. A gifted athlete who could run the floor, shoot, rebound, and play defense, he was deservedly coveted by every team in the NBA. He was considered a legitimate franchise player, a young guy who came with ability and physical attributes tailor-made for the professional game.

  I was excited about Glenn’s arrival in Milwaukee, because I was confident he could make us a better team. Typical of my mind-set in those days, however, I was also racked by insecurity. A few months earlier I had been the face of the franchise, the “future.” Now along comes Big Dog, with a significantly more impressive college résumé t
han mine. I fretted about my place in the pecking order. I bristled at the club’s new marketing campaign, which centered on Glenn. I coveted the attention he received from the national and local media. Most of all, though, I was stung by the way our coaching staff and, especially, my teammates seemed to treat Glenn like he was some sort of savior. All of this, of course, can be distilled down to a simple and not very attractive emotion: jealousy. I was too insecure and immature not to feel threatened by Glenn. His presence in the lineup was a big deal. Bucks fans had waited a long time for a championship (there has been only one in franchise history, way back in 1971), so it was perfectly understandable that a number one draft pick would provoke some excitement.

  I spent way too much time overanalyzing and obsessing about every little thing. It bothered me that Todd Day and Glenn seemed to have an instant connection, which I figured was a big-school thing, Todd having gone to Arkansas and Glenn to Purdue. It annoyed me that some of the other guys on the team—vets who should have known better—were flat-out kissing Glenn’s butt. There is a protocol in the NBA, and rookies, no matter how highly touted, are not supposed to be treated deferentially. Then again, maybe I was just upset that I hadn’t been afforded the same degree of respect a year earlier. Either way, I had trouble getting past it.

  At a preseason press conference, Jon Barry was asked a fairly benign question by a reporter.

  “Jon, how do you see your role this year with the Bucks?”

  Jon had come into the league a year ahead of me and was very much a role player. He was also a smart and funny guy who liked to have a good time. I considered him a friend, as well as an integral part of our posse when we went out to clubs at night. But Jon could also be a wiseass, and he had a bit of a chip on his shoulder. I suppose that comes with the territory when your dad is Rick Barry, a Hall of Famer and one of the greatest scorers in the history of the game. Anyway, Jon smiled at the question and offered this response: