“C’mon, Elwood. This is a showtime league and you know it. You’re one of about five guys playing serious defense. Everybody goes for the fancy moves. That’s what the sampling is all about. He’s just better than most, because he’s got the hot skills package. Somebody had to get the Jordan skills.”
“It didn’t have to be some little white jerk.”
Once it was out it was kind of a relief. Black and white was the issue. Of course. As much as that was supposed to be a thing of the past. I’d known all along, but in some stupid way I guess I’d thought not saying anything might make it better.
“I’m a white guy with a black guy’s skills,” I pointed out.
He waved it aside. “Not important. It’s not Jordan. You play white, anyway.”
What was it about basketball that made it all seem so stark? As though it were designed as a metaphor—the white style of play so plodding and corporate and reliable, the black style so individual and expressive and so often self-destructive, so me-against-the-world. When a black guy couldn’t jump they said he had “white legs,” or if he was slow it was “white man’s disease.” Basketball was a white sport that blacks had taken over and yet the audience was still pretty much white. And that white audience adored the black players for their brilliant moves—thanks to sampling, that adoration would probably kill the sport—and yet was still thought to require the token white face, for purposes of “identification.”
Solve basketball, I sometimes thought, and you’d solve everything.
“Okay,” I said. “He’s a jerk. But white shouldn’t matter. Jordan wasn’t a black separatist, as I remember. I mean, call me naive, but scrambling the racial stuff up was supposed to be one of the few good things about this sampling deal, right?”
“Michael’s career meant something,” Elwood mumbled. “Should be treated with respect.”
“Look who turns out to be Mr. Historical,” I said. “You have to get hip, Elwood. Basketball is postmodern now.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Means Michael’s career might have meant something, but yours doesn’t, and neither does Vanilla Dunk’s—so relax.”
Once Gornan started hauling out the realtime poster shots the media wouldn’t let it go. He was all over the sports channels, dunking in slow-mo, grinning and pumping his fists. He made the cover of Rolling Stone, diamond earring flashing, spinning a basketball with one hand, groping a babe with the other. Then his agent started connecting with the endorsement people, and you couldn’t turn on the tube without seeing Vanilla Dunk downing vitaburgers at McDonald’s, Vanilla Dunk slurping on a Pepsi or a Fazz, Vanilla Dunk checking out the synthetic upholstery inside a new Chrysler SunFrame.
With Gorman playing the exuberant Michael Jordan game and Elwood playing angry we kept on winning. In fact we opened up a sizeable lead over the Celtics in the division, and it wasn’t necessarily a good thing. Being too far ahead was almost as bad as floundering in the basement of the division. Without the tension of a tight race to bind us together as a team all the egos came rushing to the forefront. Otis was struggling with accepting his fading powers and diminished role, and we all missed the way his easy confidence had been at the heart of the team. McFront was sulking on the bench. Pharaoh was playing hard, trying to make the new team work, trying to show by force that Gornan fit in. Meanwhile Gorman’s theatrics got more and more outrageous, and every slam dunk was another blow to the dam holding back Elwood’s rage.
One afternoon in Oakland before a game with the IBM Warriors someone made the mistake of leaving the TV on in the visitors’ clubhouse. Elwood and Otis and I were sitting playing cards when a pre-taped interview with Gorman turned up on the sports channel.
The interviewer seemed to be trying to work around to the subject of race. “How’d you choose your nickname, Dunk?” he asked. “Why Vanilla, in particular? What point are you trying to make?”
Gorman shrugged. “Hey, don’t get heavy,” he said. “They call me Vanilla ’cause I’m completely smooth and completely sweet. It’s simple.”
“Why not something else, then?” said the interviewer. “Chocolate, say.”
Gorman laughed, and for a minute I thought he was going to grant the man his point. Instead he realigned his sneer and said: “Chocolate don’t go down smooth.”
“What are you saying, Dunk?”
“Nothing, man. Just that I’m not chocolate. That’s why I’m like a breath of fresh air—I go down smooth. People are ready for that, ready to lighten up. Chocolate’s sweet, but it’s always got that bitter edge, y’know?”
And then, God help me, he turned to the camera and gave it a big wink.
I got up and shut the TV off, but it was too late. Elwood had already slammed his cards down on the table and stalked out. Otis looked sick. I prayed that Gornan wasn’t in the locker room. I went through and found Elwood out on the edge of the floor, watching the Warriors take their warmups.
At game time we managed to get out on the floor without any explosions. But from the opening tipoff I knew it was going to be a bad night. When the ball got into Elwood’s hands he drove like a steamroller up the middle and went up for a vicious dunk. Then he stole an inbound pass and did it again, only this time he fouled his man on the drive. Everyone on the floor looked nervous, even the Warriors—even, for once, Gornan, who was usually oblivious.
The Warrior hit his free throws and the game resumed. The pattern came clear soon enough: Elwood was calling for every pass, and when he got it he was going up for the dunk, every time. He was trying to play Gorman’s game, but he was too big and strong, too angry to pull it off. He was stuffing a lot of shots but he’d accumulated four fouls before the second quarter. When Coach Van finally pulled him, he had twice as many points as Gorman or anyone else, but the Warriors were ahead.
He sat until halftime, and with McFront in we got the game tied. During the break Coach Van called Elwood into an office and closed the door. Meanwhile Gorman was off in his usual corner of the locker room smoking a cigarette, but he had a hollow, haunted expression on him, one I’d never seen before.
Elwood was back in for the start of the third quarter, and whatever Coach Van had said to him in his office hadn’t worked: he picked up right where he’d left off, breaking for insane inside moves at every opportunity, going up for ill-fated dunks and making some of them, smearing a lot of guys with his sweat. The Oakland crowd, which had been abuzz with expectations of seeing the Vanilla Dunk Revue, fell to a low, ugly murmur. When Elwood got called for another foul I was almost relieved; that made five, and with six he’d foul out of the game, and it would be over.
But he wasn’t quite done. On the next play he pulled down a rebound and dribbled the length of the court, flattening a Warrior on his way up. I waited for the ref’s whistle, but no whistle came. The Warrior center braced himself between Elwood and the net. Elwood ran straight at him, tossed off a perfunctory head fake, and then went up with a spinning move, his bulk barely clearing a tremendous head-on collision with the jumping center. He jammed the ball down with both hands and hit the glass so hard it shattered.
Suddenly the arena was dead silent, as Elwood and the Warrior center fell in a tangle amid a rain of Plexiglas fragments. When the two men got up unhurt the roar started. The referees called the game a Warrior victory by forfeit, and Elwood took them on singlehandedly; we had to drag him off the floor.
When we got him into the clubhouse we found Gorman already showered and in his street clothes, giving his version of events to the press.
I looked up the details on Maurice Lucas’s career once. I was working on a theory that the basketball skills you sampled contained an element of the previous player’s personality, some kind of style or attitude that was intrinsic to the way they played, something that could be imparted, gradually, to the later player, along with the actual basketball skills.
Well, bingo, as far as Maurice Lucas and Elwood Fossett were concerned. Lucas, it turn
ed out, spent a considerable part of his career feeling misunderstood and underpaid. Specifically underpaid in comparison to the white players on his team. As a result he spent a lot of time playing angry. I mean apart from the forcefulness that came with him (and Elwood) being so big and strong; his game was specifically fueled by rage.
Another result of the conflicts in his career was that he was widely understood to have dogged it, to have played intentionally poorly, as a kind of protest, during some of the key years of his career. Which got me thinking: the skills that Elwood inherited might also contain an element of this struggle that Lucas had waged against himself, to suppress his skills, to not give the best of what he had to the company men he hated.
Elwood wouldn’t have known, either. Maurice Lucas’s career was before his time. Elwood’s interest in basketball history went back no further than Michael Jordan’s rookie year.
McFront started in Elwood’s place the next night, and Elwood went back to the lockers, got dressed, and walked out. Gornan had a great two quarters, undeniable as basketball, unsurpassable as spectacle, and in the locker room at the half he was more exuberant than usual, clowning with Pharaoh and McFront, turning the charm he’d previously saved for the media on his teammates. It was a fun scene, but it made me a little sick to see Elwood being drummed out so easily, even if he’d opened the door to it himself, with his walkout.
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 Gorman. 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 business—”
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 towards 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 Pharaoh.
In a minute they had him on his feet, and the crowd started buzzing again, which made things feel more normal. Pharaoh walked with his head bowed, while the doctor peeled the exosuit away from his damaged wrist. They hurried him off towards 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 Pharaoh or Elwood available we cruised to victory—mostly on the strength of Gorman’s play, I have to admit. He was the only one on the floor who didn’t seem a little stunned by Pharaoh’s going down. I did my best to fill the role of Gorman’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 more whites than blacks on the floor since I joined the team.
Sal Pharaoh 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 Pharaoh out he was our only enforcer, so he’d probably get the nod over McFront. With me in instead of Pharaoh we also lost a lot on defense and rebounding, and Elwood was a better defender and rebounder than McFront.
On the other hand, Pharaoh had served as a buffer between Gornan and Elwood—also between Gorman and the rest of the league, all those teams frustrated by being beaten by a white hotdog 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 Pharaoh 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, started leaning on my jumpshot, 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 Gorman 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.
Gorman 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 towards the bench, but he wasn’t taking me out. He subbed McFront in for Elwood and sent in another rookie for Gorman. We lost the game by 23 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.
Gorna
n jumped right in. “We need a center who can play, Coach.”
“What?” I blurted.
“Sorry, man,” said Gorman. “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 a feud.”
“Feud?” Gorman 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.”
“Hey, me and Bo get along fine,” said Gorman. “Far as I know. But he’s just not as strong as Pharaoh under the net. If me and Elwood’s games are hurting, that’s the reason why.”
“This is ridiculous,” I said. Gorman’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 team 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—”
The Wall of the Sky, the Wall of the Eye Page 7