Basketball (And Other Things)

by Shea Serrano

  10. During a retrospective on TNT where they were talking about the best dunks of all time, Steve Nash, talking about the Ricky dunk, said, “Well, I dare him to try that again. Now that I know where he’s—I didn’t know he was gonna dunk it or I’d have blocked it.” Steve Nash is neat.

  11. In several of the cases, the dunks mentioned in this section ended up being the plays most often associated with each player. For example, if I say, “Think of a Scottie Pippen play,” you’re almost certainly going to think of his dunk on Ewing first. That’s not the case for Ricky, though. The moment most often associated with him is the time he shot the ball at his own basket at the end of the game just so he could get the rebound because he was one rebound short of a triple double. His explanation years later during an interview with Grantland: “It was probably a selfish thing. But I really wanted that triple double.”

  12. A neat aside about this dunk: As the date indicates, it happened in 1983. Dr. J and the Sixers had lost to the Lakers in the NBA Finals twice in the prior three years (1980, 1982). So make no mistake: For as breathtaking of a play as it was, there was ill intent behind it from the good doctor.

  13. This dunk became known as The Lister Blister. I wish more dunks were named.

  14. He was also, as it were, a mothermaker, if that’s even a thing. He fathered at least seven children.

  15. The Warriors actually only made the playoffs one time in the 14 years that followed the dunk.

  16. What’s lost in all of this is that after the play, Kemp jogged down court and gave a teammate a double low-five, probably the most secretly disrespectful kind of celebratory five to give. If we arrange all the celebratory fives from Least Disrespectful to Most Disrespectful, it goes: single high-five, double high-five, single low-five, double low-five.

  17. Additionally, this was the last Bulls game ever played at Chicago Stadium.

  WHO IS YOUR MEMORY HERO?

  A memory hero is, in most (but not all) cases, someone who you remember as being way better than he or she actually was. Most times, the talent inflation happens because the memories were formed when you were a child or young person, and so since children and young people don’t know things and are very bad at placing things in context,1 that’s how you end up having a moment when you’re an adult where you say something like, “Whoa, wait, actually maybe Bio-Dome wasn’t the best movie of 1996.” Or, “Whoa, wait, actually maybe Wreckx-N-Effect wasn’t better than Wu-Tang.” Or, since we’re talking about basketball, “Whoa, wait, actually maybe Vinny Del Negro wasn’t a generational basketball talent,” which is a thing I said to myself some years ago.

  Vinny was one of my first memory heroes.2 He played guard for the Spurs from the 1993 season to the 1998 season, and that’s for sure part of the reason I really liked him. But an even bigger part of the reason I liked him so much was that someone lied and told me he was Mexican, and so of course I loved him, and of course I was also so incredibly proud to brag to everyone how a Mexican led the league in points,3 rebounds,4 steals,5 assists,6 and blocked shots7 in 1995.

  When Vinny started coaching the Bulls in 2008 is when I actually went back and looked through his stats and accomplishments and saw that he wasn’t what I had him built up to be in my head. It should’ve maybe been a big moment for me, or a profound moment for me, or a sad moment for me. But here’s the thing of it: It didn’t matter. It didn’t matter then and it doesn’t matter now. The real truth on Vinny is that he was a role player who bounced around the league and also in and out of the league. The real truth on Vinny is that he didn’t even hold a double-digit career scoring average when he was squeezed into retirement in 2002. The real truth on Vinny is that he made zero All-Star teams and zero All-NBA teams. But, again, none of that matters. He’s my memory hero. And, given that he doesn’t do anything absolutely irredeemable, I don’t think that can change. I will love him forever, and well past then. Sometimes basketball is just metaphysical like that.

  A neat thing about memory heroes is how much people enjoy talking about them and thinking about them. As such, it made sense to me here to pull in some of my basketball friends and let them talk a bit about their memory heroes. That’s what the rest of this chapter will be.

  BILL SIMMONS, ON NICK WEATHERSPOON: My dad bought a single season ticket for the ’74 Celtics and carried four-year-old me into many of the games. Apparently, we won the title. My memory kicks in the following spring, when we blew the Conference Finals because someone named Nick Weatherspoon absolutely eviscerated us. The Spoon was a 1970s irrational confidence guy who came off Washington’s bench and drained baseline jumpers instead of threes. Imagine blowing a Finals trip because of Dion Waiters or Nick Young. For the next 40-plus years, that’s how my father and I bitterly remembered Weatherspoon: that random Bullet who ruined our three-peat because flames started shooting out of his ass. Every time a Boston opponent ever caught fire, my dad would grumble, “It’s like Nick Weatherspoon!”

  Recently, I combed through Weatherspoon’s stats and learned that he only averaged 13 a game in that series. What? Impossible! I couldn't find any YouTube footage or Google evidence, which makes me think (a) my dad and I exaggerated the Spoon’s impact, (b) we imagined the whole thing, or (c) we’re living in a simulation and the master computer forgot to add Spoon’s 1975 heat check. Only one Internet tidbit gives me hope. Someone posted the Spoon’s 2008 obituary on the APBR.org message board; one commenter wrote, “His baseline jumpers destroyed the Celtics in the 1975 playoffs.” So maybe it happened. Maybe.

  CANDACE BUCKNER, ON DAN MAJERLE: I cried the day my favorite player announced he had HIV. For years following his retirement, I abandoned the NBA and wanted to light fires to the bandwagon carrying those front-runners called Chicago Bulls fans. But during the ’93 season I discovered the greatest thing since Magic: Thunder Dan Majerle.

  The only thing doper than his perfect tan and lead-character-in-an-’80s-soap-opera good looks was his shot. I don’t think Majerle missed a three all season, who cares what the stats on Basketball-Reference say. I just remember watching the ’93 playoffs on NBC and actually feeling the roar of the Phoenix crowd every time Majerle held his perfect form. Just money. My goto player on NBA Jam, and the real reason why the Suns won 62 games that year.

  This sounds goofy, I know, but Majerle was, like, my reverse Jackie Robinson: the first white boy I respected as a hooper. I wanted the Suns to crush the Bulls so badly that year that I would’ve sacrificed my own black card. Alas, MJ apparently wanted to preserve my heritage.

  I quit the Suns after that season but had returned to my first love: the NBA. All because of Majerle’s magic.

  JONATHAN ABRAMS, ON SEDALE THREATT: The Lakers experienced some dreary seasons in the ’90s during that dark span between Magic Johnson’s retirement and Kobe Bryant’s emergence. The Lakers and winning went together during my childhood, and the shocking and abrupt retirement of Johnson, a figure so revered that I used to practice smiling like him in the mirror, tossed the organization into turmoil. Sedale Threatt, a point guard originally obtained to back up Johnson, provided some light during the sucky years.

  First of all, he had a great name for a guard who could pick your pocket at any moment, and the legendary Chick Hearn rightfully dubbed him “The Thief.” Threatt led the Lakers in scoring one year and had his moments on the big stage, dropping 42 points in a game against the Knicks and 35 in a playoff game against the Suns. With his legend ensured, Threatt was gone from the Lakers by the time Kobe arrived and soon out of the league altogether.

  Fast-forward a couple of decades and I found myself playing against his son, Sedale Threatt Jr., at a pickup game on USC’s campus. I swear he had the athleticism and explosiveness to play in the NBA just like his dad, but Junior wound up playing quarterback at Lehigh, where he drew the attention of plenty of NFL scouts. I should have told him to thank his dad for getting me through those down years, but he was too busy getting buckets on me.

  ZACH LOWE, ON AN
TOINE WALKER: I don’t remember the game, or even the year, and I don’t even want to. But I remember this: Antoine Walker snagged a defensive rebound, took it up the court himself, toasted someone around midcourt with a behind-the-back dribble, kept going, and eventually dished a behind-the-back pass to someone for a dunk.

  I immediately called one of my college buddies I always argued about basketball with: “Did you see that? That, right there, is why I won’t shut the hell up about Antoine Walker even though he’s barely shooting 40 percent.” It was why Walker, around 2000 or 2001, was my favorite player—by a healthy margin over Paul Pierce. In my crappy little apartment, the one I rented right out of college, I had a few pieces of sports memorabilia. One of them was a little plaque, about 4 inches by 4 inches, with an Antoine Walker basketball card mounted to it.

  I was obsessed with Antoine Walker. I was convinced he could redefine the entire idea of a power forward. And he could have! Antoine Walker should have been Draymond Green, only with more offensive game, 15 years before Draymond Green became a thing.

  That Walker clearly never would be was part of the appeal. Walker was deeply flawed, and deeply flawed athletes are always more interesting than the guys who do everything right. I regarded Walker as a wayward son. I lamented his, umm, lax approach to conditioning. I chastised him through the TV: “Concentrate less on jacking threes, and more on guarding all five positions! Pass more! Get to the basket! Why can’t you realize I know what is good for you!”

  Antoine Walker was my unrequited basketball love. He was possibility unrealized. Pierce realized his full potential eventually. That’s cool. It made me happy for him, even proud. Those good Walker plays—those plays only he and maybe one or two other bigs could make during his prime—stick out because they represented proof of attainability. Walker’s ideal version of himself was there, so obviously there, and yet you knew he would never reach it even if he could see it. He wasn’t disciplined enough. He didn’t get it.

  He was a regular dude in that way. But I will spend my life wondering what Antoine Walker could have been. I still have that plaque.

  DORIS BURKE, ON MAURICE CHEEKS:8 It’s 1983 and I am all in for the game of basketball. My home was right next to a park and I’d be on that blacktop playing the game I loved, and that would shape my life every day from the time I was seven years old. The NBA team that was the epitome of cool that year: the Philadelphia 76ers. Julius Erving, Dr. J, was always on call to dissect an opponent or leave us breathless with the spectacular. Moses was brought in to bring them to the promised land and boy did he, with the emphatic Fo’-Fo’-Fo’ declaration. The defensive stopper of the group was Bobby Jones. The too-often-overlooked and at times forgotten scoring machine was number 22, Andrew Toney. That guy could flat fill it up. But for me, my eyes always drifted to the ultimate example of a floor general: Mo Cheeks.

  This team ripped through the playoffs, going 12–1, one heavy of Moses’s famous prediction. Every kid had a player they’d try to emulate. Could you fly like the Doctor or dominate with relentlessness like Moses? For me, Mo Cheeks was my guy, the be-all and end-all. I loved his handle, the unselfish, team-first approach, and yes, the defensive toughness. If the 76ers needed to get Moses the ball in his sweet spot, Mo would deliver the entry pass. If the break got started and the ball needed to find Dr. J in space to operate, Mo triggered it. An opposing player goes behind the back, gets into the lane, and you worry the game could turn? Think again. Mo gets a strip steal and turns the other direction.

  His demeanor was calm, cool, dignified, and unflappable. It is no wonder, many years later, as a little girl was struggling with the national anthem before an NBA game, someone had to come to the rescue and help her finish the words to the song. That someone, well, of course, it was Mo.

  MIKE LYNCH, ON LIONEL SIMMONS: There’s little debate about who the best basketball player in the world was in the late ’80s and early ’90s. It was, without question, Lionel Simmons. I was fortunate enough to grow up watching him rewrite the NCAA record books as a La Salle University combo forward. The L-Train was a big enough deal in Philly that you might see Charles Barkley in the crowd if he had a free night. That’s affirmation. Simmons, the 1990 National Player of the Year, went to the Kings in the lottery and was runner-up to Derrick Coleman for 1991 Rookie of the Year. He was even NBA Player of the Week during a stretch in which he hung 38 points and 13 rebounds on Barkley’s 76ers. But injuries (including the NBA’s first recorded case of Nintendonitis, which was literally wrist tendinitis caused by excessive Game Boy use) took their toll. Now people consider some guy named Jordan the best of that era.

  SEAN FENNESSEY, ON GERALD WILKINS: Gerald Wilkins was better than Michael Jordan. You know how I know? Because when I was five years old, Wilkins averaged 19-4-4 while shooting nearly 50 percent from the field and 35 percent from three. In modern basketball terms, that is what we call A Good NBA Wing. But back then it was what we called Oh Snap, Gerald Wilkins Just Dunked on MJ. That was all it took to understand the power of Wilkins’s silk, the ease of his game, the power of his windmill, the grace of his J. And though Jordan averaged more points, more rebounds, more assists, played better defense, dunked more memorably, and just generally seemed cooler, Wilkins had a try-hard charm that may have inspired my own more than I’d prefer to admit. And so for that reason Gerald Wilkins is the greatest player of his generation.

  RAMONA SHELBURNE, ON NICK VAN EXEL: I grew up in LA during the Showtime Lakers era, so I was super spoiled as a kid with Magic and Worthy and Kareem. I also had way too hard of a time letting go of that era, which caused me to believe that Nick Van Exel was way better than he probably was. Nick the Quick! He’d do these behind-the-back passes with his left hand that if you closed your left eye and squinted, seemed like something Magic would do. Then when he’d hit a big shot, he’d shadow box down the court. There was just something about the way Chick Hearn and Stu Lantz pumped him up that made me think he was capable of keeping Showtime going. He was never actually able to, but it was the hope that mattered.

  JASON CONCEPCION, ON PATRICK EWING: The thing about the ’90s was there was never any debate about who was the best. Jordan was the best. He dunked on everyone, was on every poster, he had the best commercials, and everyone wanted to wear his shoe. So, even though my favorite player was Patrick Ewing, I never had any illusions that he was better than Jordan at anything besides copious perspiration and sadness. THAT SAID, as a kid, I was 100 percent sure that Patrick Ewing was the greatest center in the league. Better than Hakeem (he wasn’t). Better than David Robinson (it was pretty much a push). Better than Shaq (based on the now-defunct theory that all the Diesel could do was dunk). Better than Rik Smits (fair, but the Dutchman was underrated). Better than Alonzo Mourning (THIS IS TRUE). Okay, so I was mostly right. Except for Shaq. And Hakeem. Whatever. I still believe in Patrick Ewing.

  KRISTEN LEDLOW, ON GRANT HILL:9 Dad was in a sports bar in Tampa on March 28, 1992. With 2.1 seconds to go in OT, the defending national champions at Duke trailed Kentucky 103–102. I was four years old.

  With the winner headed to the Final Four and the loser headed home, Grant Hill threw a pass the length of the court to Christian Laettner, who drained a jumper as time expired to win 104–103. Dad, half of the duo who raised me to love basketball, was cheering for Duke. Ask him, and he’ll tell you it’s because Coach Krzyzewski bred talent and Duke boasted class. Ask me, and I’ll tell you it’s because he’s a born rebel and was surrounded by Kentucky fans. Either way, The Pass became an iconic moment in NCAA history.

  When I was 12, Dad told me the story of The Pass as Grant Hill came to play for the Orlando Magic. He and Mom also bought me Grant’s jersey. Thirteen years later, NBA TV decided to produce an Inside Stuff sequel with Grant Hill as host. I asked for an audition, just to tell Grant this story. I’ve never made a life-changing, full-court pass, but I’m glad he did. It changed mine.

  SEERAT SOHI, ON LEANDRO BARBOSA: Leandro Barbosa, in his prime, topped ou
t as an 18-point scorer on Mike D’Antoni’s Seven Seconds or Less Suns, a team that helped inflate individual stats before it became fashionable. Not that those numbers are anything to sneeze at, but my fun-addled mind took the man with the off-kilter gaunt to be Manu Ginobili-lite. He operated at a different frequency from most players, and at the time, it was easy to confuse a different frequency for a higher frequency.

  Barbosa with possession was mesmerizing, the way he galloped toward the rim with the fast-twitch muscles of Road Runner and the smooth finesse of a ballet dancer, and he consistently shot layups with the wrong hand—an appealing example for a right-hander who was sick of hearing coaches harp about fundamentals. There are moments, now past his 14th season, that Barbosa can summon the old tempo, but he was, in ways both figurative and literal, like a comet flying over the basketball universe, in the end representative of an ethos that defined those Suns teams: Given the right situation, anyone can be great.

  CHRIS RYAN, ON MARK MACON: Mark Macon was my first local basketball hero. Dr. J and Charles Barkley loomed like gods, but Macon—a 6-foot-5 two guard with a Dodge Ram engine, and Gamble and Huff jumper—was my generation, and he was part of a Temple University basketball boom that captured the competitive Philly sports moment.

  Macon arrived at Temple University in 1987 after winning Mr. Basketball in Michigan in his senior year. His first year in North Philly, he led the Owls to a number-one ranking and a 32–1 record heading into what would be a heartbreaking loss to Duke in the tournament that I've never forgiven Coach K for. There was no basketball blog industrial machine to promote prospects back then, so a freshman phenom was like a ghost story. Where did he come from? He’s coming to Temple? Macon came to Philly to play for John Chaney and damn if he didn't look like the next MJ. He went eighth to Denver in 1991, but even then the genie was out of the bottle. He appeared like a dream, and was forgotten like one, playing out an itinerant career in the NBA, CBA, Italy, Venezuela, and Turkey. I know better now, but you couldn’t tell me shit back then.