Life on the Run (13 page)

Earl’s maternal grandmother lived next door to Earl in a Philadelphia row house. She ran a little business in her home, selling candy and flavored ice cones. She served liquor to the adults from a home bar that came to be known in the neighborhood as “The Speakeasy.” Earl’s mother and father divorced when he was five. He did not see his father again until he was twenty-one years old. His early childhood memories center on his grandmother’s business, the non-stop weekend card games that his mother ran in her home, and the vacation Bible school that he attended every summer from age four to fourteen.

At home there was little talk of the family’s past in North Carolina. “Very seldom people like to look back on that,” Earl says. “They just said some very bad things happened. They won’t be out of mind but they try to keep it off the mind.”

Rose remarried, and Earl developed friendships with kids on the block, one of whom, a ten-year-old, fell to his death from a Schuylkill River bridge. He also grew to fear his three older cousins, who frequently jumped from shadows to frighten him and beat him up. When Rose found out, she beat up the cousins, but she couldn’t be around all the time. Earl started playing basketball with a rubber handball and a trash can when he was nine. He was not good immediately. His shyness affected his play.

In 1961 the family bought a three-story building with a grocery store on the first floor. Earl’s mother, stepfather, and two sisters ran the store. The family lived on the third floor. “I don’t remember growing up when I wanted something that I couldn’t or didn’t get,” Earl says. “That may be because what you don’t see you don’t want. Bicycle, ping-pong table—I got all that stuff. I never felt pain, so to speak, but I did have a quick temper. I’d get mad, turn chairs over in the house and punch glass out of windows. Afterward I’d say, ‘I’m sorry, Ma.’ She was the only person I could, or would, say I’m sorry to. She wouldn’t let anyone hurt me. She’d do anything for me.”

When Earl grew older his cousins became less antagonistic and more protective. They were the gang leaders in their section of Philadelphia. Violence was commonplace. Every summer during Earl’s adolescence, racial battles erupted on the streets, and gang wars continued the year around. When Earl was eight years old he saw a stabbing in which the assailant literally cut the heart out of his victim and threw it on the street in front of twelve petrified onlookers. It was the first of three killings he was to witness.

A few years later one of Earl’s friends led him to the roof of a nearby steakhouse where he took a Tommy-gun and began spraying the street with bullets just to frighten the passersby. Earl did not participate in the rumbles of his friends. Whenever the action started, he faded toward the rear. As a 6′3″ fourteen-year-old ballplayer, he had a different status. Still, he kept his leather coat which certified him as a member of a gang that was called “The Road.”

Earl learned basketball on the playgrounds—first watching, then imitating. He played earnestly wherever there was a good game. On the court, the competition sometimes became heated, and anger turned to violence. “When we played in another section of town,” he remembers, “we would tie our clothes in a bundle and put them next to the court with an extra guy watching in case we had to leave quickly. If we played indoors and the lights went out, it was best to stay on the court because the home team fans would be waiting for you at the exits. If you were outside, you’d try to climb the wire fence to escape. At one place, Lanier playground, if you won you got an automatic fight. But you had to play. That was the only way to improve. I always tried to get the best competition. Whatever happened happened.”

After high school, Earl went to college in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where he majored in English and personally encountered segregation for the first time. Playing basketball in the southeastern United States in an all-black conference, Earl developed into a local folk hero. His feats inspired nicknames that soon became the trappings of his reputation. Among his manifold skills his spin move became unstoppable. He drove toward the defensive man only to turn his back to him at the last possible second before collision, pivot with his left foot and head away from his first path at a forty-five-degree angle. The aspect of the move that was different from any other player’s spin was Earl’s control of the ball with one hand, as if he had attached a short string from his fingers to the ball. When he was in a playful mood he spun, let the ball hang suspended in air, crossed his hands as if he were calling a baseball player safe, grabbed the ball, looked one way and passed it in the opposite direction. At such moments a murmur would ripple through the crowd and burst into an explosion of shouting, clapping, laughing, and stamping of feet. It was then that Earl became “The Pearl,” named after a sportswriter’s characterization of five high-scoring games as pearls, and, more appropriately, “Magic,” because he made things happen with the ball that defied normal explanation. Earl’s fans were not surprised when the Baltimore Bullets made him their number one draft choice in 1967. They were shocked, however, when the Bullets traded him to their biggest rival, the New York Knicks, in December 1971.

Jerry Lucas hits several long jumpers. Kareem remains close to the basket, conceding Lucas the open shot. The Knick lead is now four points. DeBusschere and I shut off the Milwaukee forwards, while Monroe and Frazier score steadily, with an unusual array of one-on-one moves. Oscar cannot match them. He begins to fade. Fatigue saps the spirit of competition that once grew ferocious in the waning moments of a game. The Bucks begin to crumble. Sixteen times the Knicks have met them in Madison Square Garden during the last six years, and fifteen times we have won. Often, victory has required seemingly impossible efforts. Once, for example, Milwaukee led us by nineteen points with five minutes left in the game. Fans were already leaving the Garden to get an early start home. Suddenly, we “caught fire.” Everything we shot went in and our defense held Milwaukee scoreless for five minutes. We won by three points, accomplishing what came to be known as “a believer feat.” Those who saw it believed in our invincibility. I even think we did.

The Knick lead increases to nine points as time runs out. Kareem, though he misses two shots in the last minute and a half, remains impassive. Oscar swears, with a look of disgust on his face. Larry Costello, the Milwaukee coach, places his red face between his knees as if they were the walls of a vise. He holds a clipboard stacked with the diagrams and plays which failed again to provide a blueprint for a Garden victory.

“See you Monday for practice,” Red says in the locker room after the victory. “Take Sunday off. Okay, let the press in.”

The star of the game is Earl Monroe. He wins two knitted shirts. The writers crowd around his locker.

“How do you account for your streak tonight?”

“Is Milwaukee psyched out in the Garden?”

“Will a game like this have any influence on the play-offs?”

“Where are Milwaukee’s weaknesses?”

Monroe is still talking with the press when I leave the locker room.

My guest for the evening has seen her first professional basketball game. I like her detached perspective. She waits for me with the wives, girl friends, and acquaintances of the other players. Twenty people sit in empty seats at halfcourt while the Garden maintenance crew dismantles the hardwood floor. As we leave the building, she comments, “What’s so strange is how quickly everyone leaves. There are these frantic emotional moments with everyone sky high. Then it’s over, just like that.” She is right. Although it will take me four hours to come down from the game’s high, it
is
over “just like that.” Massive amounts of energy are expended, and then there is a silent void. There is a feeling of desolation about the Garden after a game. Paper cups, hot dog wrappers, programs, and popcorn boxes litter the arena floor—the residue of the same appetite that consumed the players’ performance. The cleaning women, shrieking at each other in three languages and sounding like jungle birds in the vacant arena, soon sweep it all away, and tomorrow the excitement of another game will recharge the air.

The abruptness of a game’s end, however, never strikes me as much as the change that comes with the season’s end. For eight months you play basketball and think about basketball; your happiness depends on basketball. Then it is over. Nothing fills the void. Fans and reporters seem to accept it, unaware that for some of us it can never be just the conclusion of a natural cycle. At the end of the season I find myself struggling awkwardly for a proper rhythm, like a novice drummer. For a few days I wander aimlessly, unaccustomed to the slowed pace, to the absence of flights and new cities, to the prospect of no work for four months. Gradually other interests impose routines on daily living and purpose replaces restlessness. Then, as September approaches, preparation for another season speeds up activity and basketball again dominates. But when there are no more Septembers with basketball, what happens then? Will it be over “just like that?”

S
UNDAY PASSES QUICKLY
.
I SLEEP UNTIL
11,
EAT BREAKFAST
, and read
The New York Times
. Around 4
P.M
. I go to a movie with a friend, then to a Chinese restaurant. Later I read and then more sleep.

New York Knick practices rarely take place at Madison Square Garden, because it is filled almost every day of the year with other events. The first two years I played for the Knicks, we practiced at a city recreation hall in Queens. It had a buckled floor, no hot water, and a low steel-beamed ceiling. Kids sometimes crowded the court so that it was difficult to work on plays. The building was called the Lost Battalion. The next site was the Columbia School for the Deaf, also in Queens. Now we practice at Pace College, across from City Hall in lower Manhattan. The gymnasium is on “C” floor, the third floor underground. The court is not regulation length, and the rims are always bent. You can easily hear the rumble of passing subways. Holzman likes the location because it gives him the privacy he needs to work with the team.

Danny Whelan arrives at 9:30 Monday morning for the 11
A.M
. practice. He checks the basketballs for air pressure and makes sure there is the proper number of dry, clean towels for post-practice showers. He takes tape and elastic wraps from his equipment bag, lights a cigar, and reads
The New York Times
, waiting for the team. The rookies and substitutes begin arriving around 10:15. Danny tapes their ankles and they begin working on their shots or playing one-on-one. The pre-practice session is necessary for the non-regulars. In order to improve and stay in condition, they need extra practice. The whole team will work out only eighty minutes. The regulars arrive just in time to be on the court by 11.

DeBusschere calls attention to the fact that I am taking my first shot with my left shoe untied. Holzman says that will cost me five dollars.

“At least,” says Earl.

“Way to go, Dollar,” says Frazier.

“Who else we gonna get today?” says Barnett, who then notices that only eleven players are present.

“Willis called in sick,” says Danny.

“Sick,” says Lucas. “I bet he got sick after he knew he was going to be late.”

“Okay, let’s have the shooting game,” says Holzman. He divides the squad into four teams, two at each end of the floor, competing against each other. Players shoot, fetch their shot and give the ball to the man on their team that is next in line. The object is to hit five shots from the corner, ten from the edge of the circle, and fifteen from the middle of the circle. The winners at each end play to see who will be the champion for the day. Each player on a winning team gets a point. At the end of the year the player with the most points (last year a rookie) gets one hundred dollars from the fine money before the party. Success depends upon having good shooters as teammates, since the shots are alternated. Holzman tries to balance teams, but usually there are half-serious complaints about “loading up” one team with all the better shooters.

“Look at the two blind mice,” Lucas says to a team of two rookies.

“Who is blind, chump?”

“You only chump here, plumber.”

“José, hey José,” shouts Barnett. “We got José Feliciano and Ray Charles shooting against Anvil Akins and the Computer. Hey, Computer, don’t lose count of the score.”

After the shooting game we run a full-court drill to loosen up the muscles. Players run at their own pace, passing the ball among themselves.

“Gimme two,” shouts Frazier as half of the team runs to the other end of the court and back, twice.

“Gimme three,” says Barnett. The other half goes for three round trips.

“Gimme four,” says Barnett.

“Okay,” Holzman says, “everybody loose. Let’s go to work.”

For the next half hour we work on the timing of our offensive plays. A full-court scrimmage follows. Holzman does not believe in keeping score during a practice scrimmage. He stops play occasionally to point out mistakes, but most of the scrimmage is left to the players. The veteran starters poke fun at the substitutes while executing plays and utilizing their experience to great advantage. The red shirts, or second team, often outplay the blue shirts, or first team. Today the reds start out fast, filling the baskets with shots and the air with epithets for the regulars: “He’s just an old man”; “Get a pension”; “I shot one in your eye.”

“We just warming up for you chumps,” shouts Frazier. “Now the pressure’s on. Let’s see what happens now that we’re ready.”

Frazier steals three passes. “Oh, oh,” he starts, “you ‘boys’ need help. Bring out the oxygen tent.”

“Nice try,” says Earl to his man, as he spins and drives to the basket, untouched. “You still young, you not ready yet.”

Holzman blows the whistle calling an end to practice, which concludes with everyone shooting free throws.

For a player who, like me, works thirty to forty minutes a game, the practices serve primarily to keep my body toned and my timing sharp, to “break a sweat,” and to shoot. By now, I can sense when the purpose has been served. Rest is often more important than practice. As one gets older, practice is less for improvement and more for combating the erosion of age. For me, practices are work and fun. The personalities of the players and the sense of team contribute more to that feeling than anything else does. I used to hate practice, though, when I first came into the league.