If you are going to make all this money, I feel like you should give some of it back. I have a few charities that I’m really committed to, and there are countless others that I hear about every day. Some I do, and some I don’t do. I know people get disappointed, but you can’t believe how many calls Jill gets. Then there’s all the phone calls that come to the Pacers offices. It gets overwhelming. Some just want you to sign a ball or a jersey. Others want you to speak at different things. They get really disappointed when you say no, but if I said yes to all of them, I’d be doing three speaking engagements every day, 365 days a year, and I would be signing basketballs for the rest of my life. The bad part is, every day, I have to say no to somebody, and that’s tough. People don’t understand the demands on our time. They’ll come in and say, “Hey, we want you to speak at this thing. C’mon, Larry, it will only take an hour.” It may take only an hour to do the appearance, but what they are forgetting is it takes two and a half hours to drive down there, then another two and a half hours to drive back, and all of a sudden a whole day is gone, one that I could have spent at home with my family.
The key for me is to try and use my time wisely to help the charities that I have agreed to support. If I’m going to do it, I want to do it right, and I want to make sure I have the time that is required to fulfill the commitment.
I’ve picked a number of different causes to support. One thing I do every year in Naples is participate in an annual golf tournament that benefits the Hospice of Naples and the homeless in that area. I found out about that particular charity from a friend of mine who played golf with someone down there who was the head of the hospice. It wasn’t that big at first, but we raised about $150,000 in one day. Now it’s really big.
The other golf tournament that I’ve sponsored for sixteen years is in Terre Haute, and it benefits the Boys and Girls Clubs of Terre Haute. We get the same guys every year. There’s about 280 of them, and we have a 98 percent return rate. And the best part about it is I don’t have to bring anyone else in. Let’s say they wanted me to bring Magic Johnson in. It’s time-consuming for him to come all the way from the West Coast, which he would do if I asked him as a favor. But if I did that, I would know I would have to go out to Los Angeles at some point to return the favor. What’s nice is that some of my old teammates come each year, just because they enjoy it. Last summer Joe Kleine, who is a great guy, was there. I really enjoy that tournament, because it’s a chance for me to catch up with old friends. I know I’m going to be having it for a long, long time to come, so it’s one day when I can plan on enjoying myself and spending time with people that are a whole lot of fun to be around.
The Hospice event in Florida is a great event because the people who run it aren’t demanding at all. In fact, they are very understanding. As long as I show up, they are very happy with it. I don’t even have to play in the tournament if I don’t want to. Sometimes I just stand at one hole and each group comes around. They pay fifty dollars, or something like that. Then they have a situation where if one of the golfers hits the green on a par three, he gets an autographed ball from me. All the money goes to charity, so I don’t mind.
I tend to be interested in helping charities that involve kids. What I’ve worked out with a number of different charities is to license my likeness to them so they can use it for their campaigns and programs. The Indiana Attorney General’s office is using my likeness on a CD-ROM program that teaches kids how to safely use the Internet and avoid any kind of fraud, or pornography, things like that. Of course, I also sign tons of stuff for various charity auctions; everything from the American Cancer Society to antidrug programs. Most of my endorsement contracts are structured so they include charity donations. There are plenty of other causes I’ve helped over the years, but the problem is that for every ten organizations you help, another ten go away thinking you don’t care. I guess that’s something I have to live with, but I don’t like it.
It happens all the time, even with people you know. You have all these people who call themselves friends, and they figure, “Hey, Larry’s rich, what’s a couple hundred bucks to him?” and expect me to give them whatever they need, just because I have money. What those people have forgotten is I worked for everything I’ve earned. Nobody handed me anything. I had to go out and prove I was worth it. It’s pretty easy to spot a guy who wants something from you, as opposed to real friends who don’t want a dime. The guy that never asks for anything is the one I’m going to end up helping out.
Listen, I’m still uncomfortable sometimes with all of it. Dinah and I have a house in French Lick, one in Naples, Florida, and a new home in Carmel, Indiana, that we bought when I took the Pacers job. Sometimes I think it’s too much. I like to mow my own lawn and take care of my flowers, but I can’t keep up with three places. I look at my children, Conner and Mariah, and I know they are spoiled. Dinah and I try to teach them to appreciate what they have. I hope they’re listening. It’s important to me that my kids are capable of making a living for themselves. Yes, their mom and dad have money, but I want those kids to understand that they can’t just sit back and coast through life. I think they realize that. As I write this, Conner is seven, and he gets an allowance, but he never spends any of it.
I asked him why. He told me he’s saving his money for his family.
On Life in French Lick
W
hen I took the head coaching job with the Pacers, everyone kept saying how excited I must be, because I was coming home again. But the truth is, Indianapolis isn’t really home for me. It’s a lot different from the area of French Lick and West Baden, where I grew up. Indianapolis is a legitimate city. French Lick is a little country town. It’s a beautiful place, with lots of hills and trees and winding roads, a very simple town, full of decent, hardworking people. It’s the second poorest county in Indiana, but still I think it’s beautiful. The people I grew up with don’t have a lot. I understand that. I was one of the lucky ones to go out and do my thing, but I love spending time there, and my kids love it too, because it’s quiet and comfortable. The people there leave us alone. It’s definitely not someplace you want to go if you are looking for excitement. There’re no nightclubs. There’re a couple of family-style restaurants. We don’t have a McDonald’s there, but we do have a Dairy Queen. If you want to see a movie, you’ve got to drive to Jasper, which is about twenty miles away. The main attraction in French Lick is the French Lick Springs Hotel. Tourists go there to play golf, have a massage, whatever. Some kids I knew worked at the hotel when we were growing up, but I never really spent much time there. For me, the attraction of French Lick was always that it was home. I have never felt more comfortable anyplace else. But it hasn’t really been the same since my mother died in 1996.
The one thing I always think about is how much Mom would enjoy going to all the Pacers games now that I’m coaching. She would absolutely love it. It would have been the ultimate for her. She would make that drive up to Indianapolis for every game, I’m sure of it. It’s a little less than two hours from French Lick, but she never minded driving. It was flying she hated. I think she probably only saw me play in person about two or three times in Boston Garden, because she didn’t want to have to get on that airplane to get there, and it was too far to drive. I don’t know why she was so scared of flying. By that point of my life, I was flying to places all the time. But my mom was a lot like me: stubborn. If she said she wasn’t going to get on an airplane, then that was it. It wasn’t going to happen.
I never talked to my mom about coaching. I never once told her it was something I was thinking about. But she was the first one to tell me that’s what I’d be doing once I stopped playing. One day some guy was at our house and he said, “I’m sure when Larry is done playing, he’ll coach.” I said to him, “You must be crazy. There’s no way I’m going to do that.” But Mom looked at him and said really matter-of-factly, “Oh yes. Of course he’ll coach.” Which is funny, because she had no way of knowing. Mom loved basketball, and she got into the games as much as anyone. She knew what she was talking about too. I never keyed in on the crowd when I was playing, but people tell me she used to hoot and holler for the Celtics when we came to Indianapolis. That doesn’t surprise me. I bet she yelled at the officials too.
The truth is, whatever she did, I wouldn’t have noticed when the game was going on. I was never one to look up and search for people in the stands. It never even occurred to me to do something like that, because I was so focused on the game. The only time I might notice the crowd was when I would be sitting on the bench, and the place would be going crazy. But not while I was out there playing. It took me ten years before I knew there was a wives’ row set aside for all the Celtics spouses. I never knew who was sitting down at the other end of the court, never mind who was watching in the stands. That’s why I never knew my assistant Dick Harter, because I never looked down at the other bench. I played against him when he was head coach of the Charlotte Hornets. I told him I don’t remember that, but I’m sure we must have kicked his butt.
When you are growing up and your mom is yelling at you to pick up your stuff, or wipe your feet, you don’t think too much about her and what kind of sacrifices she is making for you. One thing I did appreciate even back then, though, was how hard she worked. It seemed like she worked all the time. She had to, so we could have something to eat. Mom had two jobs—one as a waitress, and one as a cook—and she did the best she could. She didn’t complain; she just went out and did what she had to do. She would have never wanted anyone to feel sorry for her. Most people know by now that my dad took his own life in 1975. That left Mom with six kids, on her own. At that point it would have been easy for Mom to just let everything fall apart, but she wasn’t like that. She got us all together and said, “Okay. Let’s see what we’re made of.”
I learned to be tough by watching my parents, and the sacrifices they made for us. My dad was one of those guys who would come home one night, and he would have hurt his ankle at work. I remember one time he had an ankle that was so swollen it was horrifying to look at. It was all black and blue, and big and puffy-looking. It was the weekend, and it hurt him so much that he wasn’t moving around at all, and it just got worse and worse. But by the time Monday came around, he had his boot out and he was jamming that swollen ankle into it, and he tightened it up as much as it could go and then headed back out to work.
My mother was the same way. Sometimes she would wake up sick in the morning. She’d be throwing up and feeling feverish, but since we didn’t have a family car, she’d get herself dressed and walk to work. She’d walk over a mile to her waitress job at this breakfast place at four o’clock in the morning, then come back two or three hours later and get us breakfast and get us ready for school. Then as soon as the school bus took off, she’d be walking back another mile to the restaurant and work until seven, eight, nine o’clock.
My mom and I were alike in some ways. We’re both proud, and we’re both stubborn, no question about that, but there was one big difference: Mom loved to gossip. I hated that. I always called her the mayor of West Baden, because she had all the information. She knew everything there was to know about everyone, including me. There are a lot of people in that town who believe everything they hear, and Mom was one of them. She was always hearing all sorts of stories about me, both good and bad, and she’d soak up every word of it. I remember a few years ago, my brother’s buddy had this sister, and, just kidding around, she told somebody in town, “Larry bought me a new car.” Well, in about five minutes’ time Mom had heard about this, and she got really mad. She was mad at me for a long time too, about two or three months, for buying this person who was practically a stranger a car, but she never said anything to me about it. She gave everyone else an earful, but not me. Then finally one day she realized I hadn’t bought anybody a car. It’s like I told her: “See, Mom? Don’t believe everything you hear.”
As much as Mom liked to talk, she was always real protective of us. You didn’t say anything bad to her about her kids. That would be a big mistake. When I was home in the off season, the phone would always be ringing off the hook. She knew I didn’t want to be interrupted, so a lot of times, no matter who was on the phone, she’d be looking right at me sitting on the couch and would tell whoever was calling, “No, Larry’s not here. I haven’t seen him.” She did it to my friends. She even did it to my former attorney, Bob Woolf. The truth was, when I came home she wanted some time with me, and that was hard to come by. Once I made the pros, and built the house in West Baden, we always had an unlisted number. People don’t understand, I never had a phone in my house until my senior year of high school. We couldn’t afford one. My sister Linda worked, and she really wanted one, so she paid to have one put in. I hated it, because every call that came into that house was for her.
Anyhow, my mom caught on pretty early how it was all going to work. She knew when I got home that if somebody called, I would leave. So she would take a message, because she wanted me to stay. I’ll never forget when we won the championship in 1984. I drove home from Boston to French Lick, all night, straight through. It took twenty-two hours. I got home around twelve or twelve-thirty, and my mom runs out and grabs me and hugs me. She said, “I know you’re really tired,” but she makes me a sandwich, and we go outside, and we’re sitting on the porch, talking. I could tell she was really enjoying it, and so was I. But I wasn’t home an hour and all of a sudden I look up and here come two of my buddies in their trucks, hauling their boats. She says to me, “You’re not leaving, are you?” I said, “No, Mom, I just got here.” But the next thing you know, my buddies are up on the porch, and they want me to go fishing. My mom is scolding them, telling them, “Larry isn’t going anywhere. He just got home. He’s been driving all night. He’s tired.” But the guys keep pestering me. They wanted to go up to Terre Haute, to this place they can only get into if I’m with them. I looked at them and said, “You guys really want to go?” They said to me, “C’mon, Larry, we’ve been waiting for you all summer.” So I tell them, “All right then, let’s go.” Mom was ticked off. She said, “I knew you were going to leave.” Even so, she still helped me pack up some stuff, because we were staying overnight. So I went up to Terre Haute and fished all night and the next day too. But Mom never stayed mad. She understood. She did warn Dinah, though. She told her, “You better know what you’re getting into.”