The Wall of the Sky, the Wall of the Eye

by Jonathan Lethem

  “Yo, Lassner, check it out,” said Elwood, tapping the screen with his long black club of a finger. “We gonna get you and McFront some company.”

  He meant the white kid in the Gulf and Western Knicks jersey, stranded with his parents in that sea of black faces. Michael Front—“McFront” to the black players—and me were the two white players on the Knicks.

  “Not too likely,” I said. “He won’t make the team unless he draws the Jordan.”

  Elwood sat back down on the end of the bed. “Nobody else we’d take?”

  “Nope.” There were, of course, six other sets of skills available that night—Tim Hardaway, if I remember correctly, and Karl Malone—but none with the potential impact of Jordan’s. In a league where everyone played with the skills of one star or another, it took a Jordan to get people’s attention. As for the little white rookie, he could have been anyone. It didn’t matter who you drafted anymore. What mattered was what skills they picked up in the lottery. Which star’s moves would be lifted out of the archives and plugged into the rookie’s exosuit. More specifically, what mattered tonight was that the Michael Jordan skills were up for grabs. It was fifteen years since Jordan’s retirement, so the required waiting period was over.

  The Jordan skills were just about the last, too. The supply of old NBA stars was pretty much depleted. It was only a couple of years after Jordan retired that the exosuits took over, and basketball stopped growing, started feeding on itself instead, becoming a kind of live 3D highlight film, a chance to see all the dream teams and matchups that had never actually happened: Bird feeding passes to Earl the Pearl, Wilt Chamberlain going one on one with Ewing, Bill Walton and Marques Johnson playing out their careers instead of being felled by injuries, Earl Maginault and Connie Hawkins bringing their legendary schoolyard games to the pros, seeing if they could make it against the best.

  Only a few of the genuine stars had retired later than Jordan. After this they’d have to think up something new. Start playing real basketball again, maybe. Or just go back to the beginning of the list of stars and start over.

  “Nobody for real this year?” asked Elwood. He counted on me to read the sports papers.

  “I don’t think so. I heard the kid for the Sixers can play, actually. But not good enough to go without skills.” Mixed in among us sampled stars were a handful of players making it on their own, without exosuits: Willard Daynight, Barry Porush, Tony Smerks, Marvin Franklin. These were the guys who would have been the Magic Johnsons, Walt Fraziers, and Charles Barkleys of our era, and in a way they were the guys I felt sorriest for. Instead of playing in a league full of average guys and being big stars, the way they would have in the past, they were forced to go up against the sampled skills of the basketball Hall of Fame every night. Younger fans probably got mixed up and credited their great plays to some sampled program, instead of realizing they were seeing the real thing.

  The lottery started with the tall black kid with the Pan Am Nuggets drawing the David Robinson skills package. It was a formality, a foregone conclusion, since he was the only rookie tall enough to make use of a center’s skills. The kid stepped up to the mike and thanked his management and his representation and, almost as an afterthought, his mom and dad, and everyone smiled and flashed bulbs for a minute or two. You could see that the Nuggets general manager had his mind on other things. The Pan Am team was one of the worst in the league at that point, and as a result they had another lottery spot out of the seven, a lean, well-muscled kid who could play with the Jordan skills if he drew them. If they came up with Robinson and Jordan the Nuggets could be a force in the league overnight.

  Personally, I always winced when a talented seven-footer like Robinson was reincarnated into the league. Center was my position, and I already spent most games riding the bench. Sal Pharaoh, the Knicks’ regular center, played with the skills of Moses Malone, one of the best ever, and a workhorse who didn’t like to sit.

  Elwood read me like a book. “You’re sweatin’, Lassner. You afraid the Nuggets gonna trade their center now they got Robinson?”

  “Fuck you, Elwood.” The Nuggets old center played with the skills of a guy named Wes Unseld. Not a superstar, not in this league, but better than me.

  I played with Ralph Sampson’s skills—sort of. Sampson was briefly a star in his time, mostly because of his height, and as centers go he was pretty passive, not all that dominant in the paint. He was too gentle, and up against the sampled skills of Abdul-Jabbar, Ewing, Walton, Olajuwon, Chamberlain, and all the other great centers we faced every night, he and I were pretty damned ineffective.

  The reason I say I only sort of played with the Sampson skills is that, lacking the ability to dominate inside, when I actually got on the floor—usually in the junk minutes towards the end of a game—I leaned pretty heavily on an outside jumpshot. It’s a ridiculous shot for a center, but hey, it was what I had to offer. And my dirty little secret was that Bo Lassner’s own jumpshot was just a little better than Ralph Sampson’s. So when I took it I switched my exosuit off. The sportswriters didn’t know, and neither did Coach Van.

  “Relax, fool,” said Elwood. “You ain’t never gonna get traded. You got skin insurance.” He reached over and pinched my thigh.

  “Ouch!”

  They gave away the Hardaway subroutines, to a skinny little guy with the Coors Suns. His smile showed his disappointment. It was down to four rookies now, and the Jordan skills were still unclaimed. Our kid—they flashed his name, Alan Gorman, under the picture—was still in the running.

  “Shit,” said Elwood. “Jordan’s moves are too funky for a white cat, man. They program his suit it’s gonna break his hips.”

  “You were pretty into Michael Jordan growing up, weren’t you?” I asked. Elwood grew up in a Chicago slum.

  “You got that,” he said. His eyes were fixed on the screen.

  “He won’t get it,” I said. “There’s three other teams.” What I meant, though I didn’t say it, was that there were three other black guys still in the draw. I had a funny feeling Elwood didn’t want our rookie to pick up the Jordan moves. I could think of a couple of different reasons for that.

  The Karl Malone skills went to the kid from the I. G. Farben 76ers. Down to three. Then they took a break for commercials. Elwood was suddenly pacing the room. I called the desk and had them bring us up a couple of beers, out of mercy.

  The Nuggets’ second man picked up Adrian Dantley, leaving it down to two rookies, for two teams: us and the Beatrice Jazz. I was suddenly caught up in the excitement, my contempt for the media circus put aside for the moment.

  We watched the commissioner punch up the number on his terminal, look up, and sigh. His mouth hung open and the crowd fell silent, so that for a second I thought the sound on the hotel television had died.

  “Jazz, second pick.”

  That was it. Alan Gornan, and the Knicks, had the rights to the Jordan skills. The poor kid from the Jazz, who looked like a panther, had just landed the skills of Chris Mullin, undeniably a great shooter, a top-rank star, but just as undeniably slow, flat-footed, and white. It was a silly twist, but hey—it’s a silly game.

  The media swarmed around Gornan and his parents. Martin Fishall, the Knicks GM, thrust himself between the rookie and the newsmen and began answering questions, a huge grin on his face. I thought to look over at Elwood. He hated Fishall. Elwood had his head tossed back, chugging his beer.

  The camera closed in on a headshot of Alan Gorman. He looked pretty self-possessed. He wore a little diamond earring and his eyes already knew how to find the camera and play to it.

  They shoved a microphone in his face. “Got anything you want to say, kid?”

  “Yeah.” He grinned, and brushed the hair out of his eyes. Charisma.

  “Go ahead. You’re live.”

  “Look out, New York,” said Alan Gorman. “Clear the runway. Vanilla Dunk is due for takeoff.” The line started out a little underplayed, almost shy, but by the time he
had the whole thing out he had a sneer on his face that reminded me of nothing, I swear, so much as pictures I’ve seen of the young Elvis Presley.

  “Vanilla Dunk?” I said aloud, involuntarily.

  “Turn that shit off,” said Elwood, and I did.

  That was the last of Alan Gorman for the moment. The new players weren’t eligible until next season. All bravado aside, it would take Gorman a few months of working with the Knicks’ programming experts to get control of the Jordan skills. In the meantime, we were knocked out of the playoffs in the semifinal round by the Hyundai Celtics. It should have been a great series—and we should have won it, I think—but Otis Pettingale, our star guard, who carried Nate Archibald’s skills, twisted his ankle in the first game and had to sit, and the series was just a bummer.

  I spent that off-season mostly brooding, as I remember. Ringing my ex-wife’s answering machine, watching TV, fun stuff like that, mostly. Plus practicing my jumpshot. Silly me. If I’d only been six inches shorter I could have been a big star . . . that’s a joke, son.

  Training camp was a media zoo. Was Otis Pettingale too old to carry the load for another season? What about the Sal Pharaoh trade rumors? And how were they going to fit Alan Gorman in, anyway? Who would sit to make room for the kid with the Jordan skills—Michael Front, who played with Kevin McHale’s skills, or Elwood Fossett, who played with Maurice Lucas’s? The reporters circled the camp like hungry wolves, putting everyone in a bad mood. They kept trying to bait us into second-guessing Coach Van on the makeup of the starting five, kept wanting to know what we thought of Gorman, who we’d barely even met.

  And they all wanted a piece of Gornan. Martin Fishall and Coach Van kept him insulated at first, but it became clear pretty fast that he knew how to handle himself, and that he actually liked talking to the press. He had a knack for playing the bad boy, and with no effort at all he had them eating his “Vanilla Dunk” bullshit for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

  At practices he more or less behaved himself. The Jordan skills were pretty dynamic, and Gornan was smart enough to know how to work them into the style of the rest of the team. It was a little scary, actually, seeing how fast something new and different was coming into being. The Snicks’ core had been solid for a couple of years—but of course the Jordan skills weren’t going to sit on the bench.

  Gornan was initially polite with me, which was fine. But nothing more developed, and by the third week of camp what had passed for politeness was seeming a little more like arrogance. I got the feeling it was the same way with Otis and McFront. He seemed to have won a friend in Sal Pharaoh, though, for no apparent reason. We played a lot of split-squad games, which meant I got to start at center for the B team. As such it was my job to clog up the middle and keep Gorman from driving, and I got a quick taste of what the other teams were going to be facing this year, with Pharaoh playing the muscle, setting picks, clearing the lanes for the kid’s drives. It was a bruising experience, to put it mildly.

  One afternoon after one of those split-squad events I found myself in the dressing room with Pharaoh and Elwood.

  “You like protecting that motherfucker,” said Elwood. “Why don’t you let him take his licks?”

  Pharaoh smirked. He and Elwood were the two intimidators on our team, and when they went head to head neither had any edge. “It’s not about that, Elwood,” he said.

  “He thinks he’s fucking Michael Jordan,” said Elwood.

  “As far as the team’s concerned, he is Michael Jordan,” said Pharaoh. “Just like I’m Moses Malone, and your stupid ass is Maurice Lucas.”

  “That white boy’s gonna ruin this team, Sal.”

  Pharaoh shook his head. “Different team now, man. Figure it out, Elwood. Stop looking back.” He wadded up his sweaty shorts and tossed them into the bottom of a locker, then headed for the showers.

  “What was that shit?” Elwood snapped at me the minute Pharaoh was out of earshot. “ ‘Figure it out.’ Is he trying to tell me I’m not making the cut?”

  “Don’t be stupid,” I said. “You’re in. McFront’ll sit.”

  “White boys don’t sit. ’Less they suck as bad as you.”

  “I think you’re wrong. Don’t you see? With Gorman they’ve got their token white starter. You’re a better player than McFront.” What I was saying, of course, was that the Maurice Lucas skills were more valuable than the Kevin McHale skills. Which was true, but it didn’t take team chemistry into account.

  “Two white forwards,” he said. “They won’t be able to fucking resist.”

  “Wrong. You and Pharaoh both in there to protect Gornan. All that muscle to surround the Jordan skills. That’s what they won’t be able to resist.”

  “Huh.” He considered my logic. “Shit, Lassner.”

  “What?”

  “Shit,” he said. “I smell shit around here.”

  At the start of the season Coach Van played Gorman very conservatively, off the bench. He was a rookie, and we were a very solid team, so it was justifiable. But not for long. When he got in he was averaging more points per minute than Elwood or McFront, and they were points that counted, that won games. He was a little shaky on defense, but the offensive impact of the Jordan subroutines was astonishing, and Gorman was meshing well with Sal Pharaoh, just like in the practices. Otis Pettingale’s offense at guard was fading a bit, but we had plenty of other weapons. Our other guard was Derrick Flash, who with Maurice Cheeks’s skills was just coming into his own. We reeled off six wins in a row at the start of the season before taking a loss, to the Hyundai Celtics, on a night where Gorman didn’t see many minutes. That was the night the chanting started, midway through the third quarter: “Vanilla Dunk! Vanilla Dunk! Vanilla Dunk . . .”

  The next night he started, and scored 43 points, in a game we won easily. He was a starter after that. McFront was benched, which broke the heart of his fan club, but the sports pages agreed that Elwood belonged on the floor, and most of them thought we were the team to beat. We should have been.

  The trouble started one night when we were beating—no, make that thrashing—the Disney Heat, 65 to 44 at the start of the third quarter. I was in, actually. I guess Gorman had been working overtime with the programming guys, and he hauled out a slamdunk move all of a sudden, one where he floated up over three of the Disney players, switched the ball from his right to his left hand, and flipped it in as he fell away. It was a nice move—make that an astonishing move—but it wasn’t strictly necessary, given the situation.

  No big deal. But a minute later he did it again. Actually this time he soared under the basket and dropped it in backwards. As we jogged back on defense I heard Elwood muttering to himself. The Disney player tossed up a brick and I came up with the rebound, and when I looked upcourt there was Gorman again, all alone, signaling for the pass.

  I ignored him—we were up more than twenty points—and fed it in slow to Otis. Otis dribbled up a few feet, let the Disney defender catch up with Gorman, and we put a different play together.

  Next time the ball got into Gornan’s hands he broke loose with it, and went up to dunk. The crowd there in Miami, having nothing better to do, started cheering for us to pass it to him. Elwood’s mood darkened. He began trying to run the team in Otis’s place, trying to set up plays that locked Gorman out of the action. I could feel the resistance—like being part of a machine where the gears suddenly start grinding.

  Coach Van pulled me out of the game. From the bench I had a clearer sense of how much Gorman was milking this crowd, and of how much they were begging to be milked. He was giving them Michael Jordan, the legend they’d never seen themselves, the instant replay man, the one who stood out even in a field of stars. And the awful thing about Gornan’s theatrics was that they worked, as basketball. We were up almost thirty points now. He’d reduced the Disney team to spectators.

  A minute later Elwood joined me on the bench, and McFront went in. Elwood put a towel over his head and then lowered his head almost
below his big knees. The bench got real quiet, which meant the noise from the crowd stood out even better.

  Elwood toweled off his head and stood up suddenly, like he was putting himself back in. He turned and looked at me and over at Coach Van. Then he spat, just over the line and onto the court, and turned and walked towards the locker room.

  Coach Van jerked his thumb at me, meaning I should go play therapist. Needless to say my contribution wasn’t sorely needed on the court. Sometimes I wondered if they kept me around because I knew how to talk to Elwood.

  I found him dressing in his street clothes, without having showered. When he looked up at me I almost turned and ran back to the bench. I held up my hands, pleading not guilty. But of course the skin on those hands was white.

  “You see that shit out there,” he said. It was a command that I nod, not a question. “That’s poor taste, man.”

  “Poor taste?”

  “That dunk is from the third game of the ’91 finals, Lassner. That’s sacrilege, hauling it out for no reason, against these Disney chumps.”

  “You recognize the dunk?”

  “’Course I recognize the dunk. You never watch any Jordan tapes, man? That dunk is a prayer. He can’t just—”

  “Whoa, Elwood. Hold on a minute. You’re sampling, I’m sampling. This isn’t some purist thing here, man. Get some perspective.”

  “Michael Jordan, Lassner. You ever see the tape of Michael crying after winning in ’91?”

  “At least he’s on our team. Jeez, what would happen if you had to play against the almighty Jordan, or somebody with his skills—you’d probably fold up completely!”

  “It’s not just the dunks, Lassner. He won’t play defense. He’s always up the court cherry-picking, waiting for the easy pass. Michael was a great defensive player!”