The Book of Basketball (119 page)

I mention that we may have just figured out the final level of basketball—when a team plays so well together that even opposing fans concede. “I gotta say, even though we got our asses kicked, that was beautiful to watch.” Magic’s Lakers were like that. Bird’s Celtics were like that. The ’96 Bulls and ’70 Knicks were like that.

“You played on two teams like that,” I tell him. “Eighty-six and Seventy-seven.”

“I did,” he says. “I definitely did.”

He changes the subject because that’s what Bill Walton does when these things come up. He reveals that he’s been watching a lot of international soccer lately, which is interesting because I have been doing the same. A world-class soccer team and a world-class basketball team succeed for the same reason: They control the flow of the proceedings. In soccer, the best players are usually midfielders, like Kaka on Brazil, who can dominate offensively without scoring a goal. Players like Kaka are impossibly skilled.
¹⁰
They see angles others can’t see. They are always a split-second ahead of their peers. Their unselfishness permeates to everyone else. If you watch closely enough, you will notice Kaka and a teammate occasionally clicking much like Walton and Bird did back in the day. You know, the ESP thing. There isn’t enough of it in basketball anymore. How many times can we
watch an alpha dog aimlessly dribbling 25 feet from the basket while his teammates stand around watching him? Maybe that’s why Bill Walton and I have gravitated toward soccer. Just a little.

“It all starts with the flow,” Walton says. “Throw in the performance aspect and that’s when you really have something. Larry [Bird] played with passion, persistance, and purpose. There was
meaning
to his performances. Same for Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Jerry Garcia, Jordan, Magic…. It was important to them, which made it important to us. The personality of the lead player brings with it all kinds of responsibilities. Not just a job, it’s a way of life. With Larry, people would buy tickets where they couldn’t even see the game. Obstructed seats … just to be there! People just wanted to be in the arena and feel that golden glow. He was incomparable. He could do things that nobody else could even think of doing and he would do them in the biggest moments on the grandest stages. That’s control of the flow. Flow plus meaning equals performance.”

“And Kobe controlled the flow in his own way,” I add. “Maybe not in the ideal basketball sense for someone like you or me, but still, he’s controlling the flow.”

“Exactly,” Bill Walton says.

We have been talking for two hours now. The ’77 Blazers came up earlier when I mentioned an anecdote from
Breaks of the Game
and Walton reacted like he had never heard the story before. And he hadn’t. That’s how I learned that Bill Walton, one of the most well-read athletes of my lifetime and the focal point of the best sports book ever written, had never actually read the book.
Breaks
was released in 1982. Walton tried to read it when it came out. He couldn’t. He tried to read it a few months later. He couldn’t. Over the past three decades, Walton estimates that he started
Breaks
fifteen times. He never made it past the first few pages.
¹¹

“It’s too sad,” he said wistfully. “Such a special part of my life. So fantastic.”

“Wait, wouldn’t that make you want to read it?”

“I know how it ended,” Walton said grimly.

At the time, I changed topics because he seemed on the verge of breaking
down. Two hours later, I come back to it. I have to. The truth is, I don’t really care about Kobe. I thought I did … but I don’t. I didn’t drive all the way to San Diego to ask Bill Walton about Kobe Bryant. I had another reason. Even if I didn’t want to admit it.

“There are only like fourteen, fifteen guys ever who understood basketball the way you did,” I tell him. “You call it a choice, I call it a secret, but either way, it’s an exclusive club. You’re the only one who didn’t really get to use that gift. Now we have two generations of people who don’t realize that you were one of the best centers who ever lived.”

“I’m Luke’s dad,” Walton jokes.

Only it isn’t a joke. Now I’m angry. I glance at his mangled feet. I want to chastise them. I want to scream, “Look at what you did! YOU DID THIS!” Instead, I make an awkward comparison to the late Jerry Garcia—former lead singer of Walton’s favorite band—and how Walton lasting for just 517 professional games would be like the Dead’s career getting cut short by Garcia’s faulty throat.
¹²
It seems cruel even three decades later. Throw in the undeniable fact that nobody—ever, not in the history of mankind—openly relished and treasured the experience of playing on special teams more than Walton did, and that’s when it becomes somewhat tragic. The Secret should never get screwed up like this. Right?

“I can’t think about it,” Walton explains simply. “It’s about what’s next. That’s what I think about.”

And that’s how he handles it … by not thinking about it. Walton won’t watch any tapes from when he played. He won’t read an unforgettable book about the pinnacle of his playing career. Something like twenty surgeries later, Bill Walton is still healing. He looks forward and not back. That’s why he owns a black cat. He is telling the Gods of Bad Luck, “even after everything that just happened, you cannot break me.” I love this about Walton. I love the fact that he has a black cat. I fucking love it.

On the other hand, I am suddenly worried that he won’t read my book. I want him to read my book. I tell him this.

“Of course I’ll read it,” he says. “I read everything you write.”

“Yeah, but you’re in it, and you said you don’t like thinking about—”

“I will absolutely read your book,” Bill Walton says again. I wish I could believe him.

We say our goodbyes a few minutes later. On my way home, I call my father and recount the entire experience with him, right down to the part where one of Walton’s sons (Adam) opened the front door to greet me.

“Wow, remember watching those kids jumping on each other in the Garden?” my father says. “You told them we were right there for those games, right?”

I did.

“What a year that was,” my father says. “All our Celtic years blend together for me now, but I can still remember everything about the eighty-six season. You tell him that?”

I did.

Only a few weeks earlier, my father renewed his tickets for the thirty-sixth time. After too many years toiling away in coach, he’s back in first class: The Celtics won the 2008 title and should contend for the next few years at least. Funny how life works out. We hang up only because I am entering a highway with my convertible top down. I leave San Diego with my epilogue already written in my head, with Bill Walton’s house behind me and the Pacific Ocean to my left, with the sun shining and blue skies above, with my family waiting for me to come home. Picture me rollin’.

1.
For the paperback, I’m expanding the Pyramid to 13 and sticking Kobe at No. 8. And you know what? Duncan’s No. 7 spot isn’t safe. Let’s see how the next few years play out.

2.
Kobe’s numbers jumped from 21.9 FGA and 5.0 APG in the ’08 Finals to 27.0 FGA and 7.4 APG in ’09. The Magic didn’t have a traditional 2-guard to stop him; ’08 Celtics were superior defensively and handled him straight up.

3.
The Cavs could have dealt Wally Szezcerbiak’s expiring contract for Shaq, Antwan Jamison or Vince Carter and stupidly opted to do nothing. After Orlando shocked them in the Eastern Finals, they traded for Shaq four weeks later. This was like a family buying homeowner’s insurance four weeks after robbers cleaned out their house.

4.
Thanks to the ’09 Finals, Luke and Bill became the third father-son combo to win an NBA title along with the Barrys (Rick and Jon) and Goukases (Matt and Matt). I wanted to make a Nick/Teresa Weatherspoon joke here—badly—but they aren’t related.

5.
In my column the following day, I called it the “Phil Jackson ‘Should I point out that MJ would have absolutely passed there? Nahhhhhhh’ Face.”

6.
Russell and Auerbach were the Cleavers. Havlicek and Heinsohn were the Bunkers. Magic and Riley were the Huxtables. Jordan and Jackson were the Simpsons. Duncan and Popovich were the Barones. Phil and Kobe? They were definitely the Sopranos. And I don’t need to tell you who was Tony.

7.
Bird even blessed Kobe publicly as his favorite active player. I will now peel the skin off my body.

8.
Not even 36 hours after I visited Walton, the Lakers allowed Ariza to sign with Houston and replaced him with Ron Artest, a loose cannon and attention hog with a penchant for taking bad shots at the wrong times. This won’t end well.

9.
Walton believes basketball’s highest level comes down to one question: “Can you make the choice that your happiness can come from someone else’s success?” He then added, “My favorite part of the game was starting the fast break.” That’s the closest he’d come to saying that his way was the best way.

10.
You know you’ve been watching too much soccer when you stop noticing how funny Kaka’s name is. At this point, I don’t even blink when I hear announcers yell things like “Here comes the great Kaka!”

11.
I brought two ’86 Celtics DVDs to watch with Walton: the third quarter of Game 5 vs. Atlanta, and the fourth quarter of Game 4 in Milwaukee. They never came out of my bag. Obviously.

12.
A better comparison: Springsteen, who openly relished performing with others much like Walton did. Imagine Bruce only appearing on stage for 517 concerts spread over 15 years. Imagine him wistfully remembering those few times he leaned into Little Stevie’s microphone and happily spat all over it, wondering why he couldn’t have played 5,000 concerts instead of 517. Depressing, right?

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book was a labor of love and could not have been executed correctly without the unyielding support of John Skipper, John Walsh, Gary Hoenig, Gary Belsky and Rob King from ESPN. They believed in this project and afforded me the scheduling flexibility to pull it off. Thanks to all. Special thanks to Hoenig for being the greatest Grumpiest Old Editor ever. His enthusiasm and savvy helped me through some dark times.

Thanks to Malcolm Gladwell for the foreword and for his advice, friendship and feedback. He’s one of my top 700 favorite biracial Canadians. Thanks to William Goldman and Chuck Klosterman for making crucial cameos in the book. (I will always remember when Goldman read me a rough draft of what he had written over the phone. One of the true highlights of my career.)

Thanks to Isiah Thomas, Steve Kerr and especially Bill Walton for making this book better.

Thanks a thousand times over to Paul Hirschheimer of NBA Entertainment, a good friend who attached himself to my book from the beginning and made it 9.33 percent better. Thanks as well to David Stern, Adam Silver, Matt Bourne, John Hareas and David Zubrzycki.

Thanks to Hirschy and my buddy Joe House for their early feedback on chapters and Pyramid rankings. House deserves special commendation for twenty-one years of NBA conversations that shaped this book to some degree. Also, thanks to Wally and Gus Ramsey for three decades of friendship, including that fortuitous day when we created the Pyramid while driving to Shea.

Thanks to a remarkable group of friends (a few made cameos in this book) for making me funnier by osmosis. In particular, John O’Connell, Kevin Wildes, Dave Jacoby, Connor Schell, Jamie Horowitz and House had
valuable suggestions every time I emailed them footnote-related questions like “Who were the worst celebrity dads ever?” Thanks to my old boss, Jimmy Kimmel, for seven years of friendship and career advice, as well as Shawn Sullivan (the MVP of my wedding) and Rob Strikwerda for their friendship and help with the Celtics/Clippers. Thanks to my friend Russell Sherman for coming up with this book’s title. And thanks to every reader who ever took time to email me, especially the ones who appeared in this book.

Thanks to Neil Fine, Kevin Jackson, David Schoenfield, Michael Philbrick, Michael Knisley, Jay Lovinger and Mark Giles for their editing expertise from 2001–2009. And thanks to Gary Sulentic, Bob Holmes and John Wilpers for giving me chances all those years ago.

Thanks to Random House’s Mark Tavani for his help and for convincing me that this book wouldn’t get screwed up like my first one did. Thanks to everyone else at Random House, as well as Steve Wulf, Sandy DeShong and everyone at ESPN Books. Thanks to my agent, the legendary James “Baby Doll” Dixon, someone who should have become my teammate before 2009. Thanks to Lewis Kay, Dan Klores and Ellie Seifert for everything they’re about to do. Thanks to every writer and teacher who inspired me (too many to list). And thanks to Bill Russell, Larry Bird, Bob Ryan and the late David Halberstam for teaching me Basketball 101 once upon a time.

Thanks to my parents, stepparents and extended family for their unwavering support. You already know how my father affected this book, but my poor mother didn’t get enough credit for giving me the writing gene and for being my single biggest fan.

Thanks to my wonderful wife, Kari, for putting up with me these last three years. Her take: “Thank God life is back to normal. If you ever start another seven-hundred-page book, I’m going to murder you in your sleep. Either way, I wish I had married Zack Galifianakis.” Good to know.

Thanks to Ben for everything that’s about to happen. He’s my best-friend-in-training.

Finally, thanks to Zoe. I could have turned into Jack Nicholson in
The Shining
these past three years if not for my beautiful daughter cheering me up, making me laugh and constantly putting a smile on my face. She won’t remember this a few years from now, so I wanted to mention it here. I wish I knew her secret.