Life on the Run (3 page)

The neighborhood Barnett grew up in was a slum, ringed by more prosperous white areas. The air smelled from factories. Homes, including Dick’s, were plagued by rats. Pollution was part of the living condition and the critical skill was survival. Dick’s parents told him to stand up and be a man, not to rely on anyone but himself. And they said that he would have to be twice as good as any white man to make it.

“I lived a very secluded childhood,” Barnett recalls. “I was self-conscious and shy. I probably had an inferiority complex about other kids’ clothes and their new shoes. I just had one old pair of brogans. I wanted to be away from people. To play cowboys and Indians, you needed other kids, but I could play basketball by myself. I didn’t need anybody else. All I needed was a ball and a basket, or at the beginning, when I was 10, only a ping-pong ball and a tin can.”

By the time Dick was a sophomore in high school, basketball had become his consuming passion. He spent more time on the Roosevelt High School playground than anywhere else. A big concrete tennis court, long since abandoned, served as his gym. It had no lights but a basket stood at each end. That was all he needed. Dick played basketball every day during his sophomore, junior, and senior years, one thousand ninety-five straight days of basketball. Some days, he played from 9
A.M
. until midnight, with an hour or two at home for meals of grits, lunchmeat, maple syrup, bread, and water. Other days, when the temperature shot up close to 100°, he played from six to ten in the morning and then came back at three and continued until midnight. One summer he got a job in the steel mills cleaning oil spills, coal bins, and lathes for seventy dollars a week. After working eight hours a day in the mills, he went to the playground for another four. When school was in session, he would get into the high school gym where he practiced from five until ten every evening. When the gym was closed and he couldn’t break in, he would shovel the snow off the playground and return to his familiar concrete. At first, he stole a ball from the school. Later, the high school coach gave him one. He says that he did not imitate anyone, but just started playing. His imagination provided the opponent and the game situation. He dribbled, faked, and took his jumper. He hooked and practiced twisting lay-ups. Occasionally, there would be a one-on-one game, but that wouldn’t last long. Dick was easily the best player in Gary. Still, he never relaxed his regimen. Even on the night of his senior prom, he was shooting. From the court, he watched his classmates in their tuxedos enter the prom. “I saw them, but they couldn’t see me because it was dark,” he says. “After a while, you’d adjust to the darkness and could play. You had a comfortable feeling about where you were…. Even when they couldn’t see me, they could hear the ball and they knew that it was me, Barnett, alone, shooting on Roosevelt playground.”

In his senior year, Dick’s high school team lost in the Indiana State final to Indianapolis’ Crispus Attucks, whose best player was Oscar Robertson. College scouts recognized Dick’s ability and offered him scholarships. Dick chose Tennessee State, an all-black school in Nashville. High school had not prepared him for the academic side of college and when he got there he devoted little time to study.

His college years—1955–1959—were turbulent ones for race relations in the South. Barnett experienced outright segregation for the first time in his life when he sat in the first row of a bus during his freshman year. Everybody stared at him and then he saw the sign, “Whites Only,” in the front of the bus. He experienced racial protest for the first time when he accompanied a group of students to a lunch counter sit-in. A white man spat in the face of one of his friends and the friend remained motionless. Such incidents had a lasting effect on Barnett’s view of whites and fused with his parents’ advice about self-reliance and the need to be better than a white man in order to succeed. Suspicion and distrust existed in him alongside great determination, pride, and good humor. Still, he was not a campus leader in the protest movement or the politics of race. He was first a basketball player; he didn’t have the time or interest for much else. Besides, being a star gave him a special status with most people at the school.

After four years at Tennessee State, during which his team won three NAIA small college championships, Dick joined the Syracuse Nationals of the National Basketball Association. For two years, he suffered Syracuse winters and sparse soul cooking. After a few swings around the league he realized that he
really was
as good as most of the white stars he had read about. He also knew that he was not equally paid. During those years, a quota system for black players operated on each team in the NBA as an unwritten rule. It limited the number of black players on a team, and even the number that could be on the floor at the same time.

When the American Basketball League was formed in 1961, Barnett left the NBA for the ABL’s Cleveland franchise, which was coached by his old Tennessee State coach John McClendon, the first black professional coach in any sport. The Cleveland franchise went bankrupt within a year, and Dick Barnett returned to the NBA, this time to play for the Los Angeles Lakers. During six years there, as third guard behind Jerry West and several (as Barnett put it) “white hopes,” he remained underpaid, under-publicized, and unappreciated.

The day businessman Robert Short sold the Lakers to businessman Jack Kent Cooke for four million dollars, Short told the Laker players how much he appreciated their loyalty and hard work. To show his gratitude he said that everyone could have a steak at the hotel and charge it to him. Barnett went back to the hotel and ordered twenty steak dinners from room service. He stacked them up in the hallway and left them there. “Man just made four million dollars and he’s going to buy me a steak dinner—shit,” he says.

In 1966, Barnett was traded to the New York Knicks, where he became less a shooter and more a complete ball player. He promptly became a star—too late to be known as a superstar. He had already spent his best years as a substitute in Los Angeles. When the Knicks won the title by beating Los Angeles in 1970, Barnett’s wife told me, “They never would understand. Jerry [West] and Elgin [Baylor] always had to be the stars. That’s why they never won and that’s why I’m glad we beat ’em tonight.” Once during those same play-offs, a referee called a foul on Walt Frazier, giving Jerry West two free throws. Barnett, who was on the bench for a brief rest, and who very, very rarely yelled at players or officials, shouted, “He doesn’t deserve it. He doesn’t deserve it. That sucker doesn’t deserve it.”

Barnett, still making excuses for his lack of discretion with the ten dollar bill, walks to his locker carrying a plastic suit bag. He is wearing boots, blue jeans, a black turtleneck, a tan outer shirt with yellow and black suspenders, and a Dutch boat captain’s hat. He asks Danny for a jock and changes to a practice outfit. He goes out for some exercise, one-on-one, with a chosen rookie, before the game.

DeBusschere reads his mail, much of which arrives in yellow and red envelopes with flowers around the edges. Walt Frazier tapes his ankle as if he were a master mason building a wall. Willis sits in street clothes talking to reporters. I undress, spray adherent on my leg, tape my ankle, put my uniform on, get a leg massage from Whelan, wash my hands, and sit waiting for Red Holzman’s pregame talk, wiping my hands with a towel and biting my fingers. A few minutes before Holzman starts talking, Barnett walks in with the rookies who have been working out before the game. Perspiration rolls down his face and arms and legs. His face is wrinkled and he looks drawn, worn, old. “Chump, rookie,” he says.

“Mothahfuckin’ old man don’t guard nobody,” the rookie says after losing the one-on-one game. “He holds you—anywhere closer to the basket than 20 feet and he’s got his arms pushing your hips, knocking you off balance.”

“Hey, Barnett,” says Frazier, “that belt’s gettin’ bigger and bigger. All that running isn’t gonna do no good unless you stop eatin’ all those chocolate bars and nuts.”

Barnett looks dissatisfied with the comment. He walks over to his locker. One by one, pieces of his equipment come off: his shorts, jock, shoes. He sits, staring at his socks after he taken them off and lays them on top of his shoes. He gets up and walks into the shower, the roll of fat around his hips jiggling with each step. As Holzman finishes his pregame talk, Barnett opens the suit bag which hangs in his locker and takes out a tie, a clean shirt, new shoes, and a gray pin-stripe suit. With meticulous care he transforms himself into a model suitable for the pages of
Gentlemen’s Quarterly
. As we leave the locker room Assistant Coach Barnett knots his tie and prepares to meet the public as a new part of the Madison Square Garden management. His blue jeans hang on a nail.

The game tonight is against Kansas City, coached by Bob Cousy. It is strange to see this former Boston Celtic great in street clothes and on the bench. For me he will forever be #14 in green and white. Everyone in my home town believed he was the most deceptive, smartest guard in basketball. I have never seen a better passer.

By 1969 he was coach of the Cincinnati Royals, and for a short time that year put himself on the roster as an active player. We played them one night, after we had won 17 in a row. If we beat Cincinnati we would set a new league record for consecutive victories. Oscar Robertson, then with Cincinnati, fouled out with one minute and forty-nine seconds to go in the game and Cincinnati leading by three. Cousy had not played for six years, but he put himself into the game. He would try to save it. This was supreme audacity or monumental foolishness. As he would have done ten years earlier in his prime he looked down the bench, took off his warm-ups, and motioned to the scorer. His long arms dangled and his head arched backward with a sort of haughty determination. I fouled him with 27 seconds left. He made both free throws, giving Cincinnati a five-point lead. Willis Reed was fouled with 16 seconds remaining and hit two foul shots, cutting their lead to three. Then with eight seconds left, Cousy threw the ball away on an in-bounds pass, which led to a DeBusschere dunk. Then Cousy lost his man, Frazier, who got fouled on a rebound and hit two free throws, giving the Knicks a one-point victory, 106–105, and the record. At the point when Cousy put himself into the game, the official score sheet read, “Robertson out (P6, T4). Cousy goes in—yeah team.”

I have heard rumors about Cousy’s inability to communicate with his players. They don’t seem to agree with his insistence on perfection. Only Nate Archibald, his best player (a 5′10″ guard from the giant government housing projects in the South Bronx) who ironically plays with a style reminiscent of Cousy’s, seems to understand such dedication. But tonight they start the game strong, hitting long jump shots and unmolested lay-ups. During the first half we seem unable to do anything right. We walk, double-dribble, and throw passes away frequently. The timing on our plays is awry. It is as if we are playing out of synchronization. Still we go into the locker room at half-time only five points behind.

Holzman is hot. “When we lose the ball,” he begins, “don’t hesitate. Get your ass back on defense. And stop flying around out there like crazy men. The first thing
all
of you did that first half when you got the ball was to put it down on the floor and dribble right into the pack. Play with some poise, look around, see what develops. Play like you’re pros and not some fuckin’ high school kids. This half get the ball to our good shooters at the right time. And that open man—take the shot. The way we played, I’m surprised we’re not down more. Five points isn’t much. Cut out the stupid mistakes and we’ll win. Okay. Let’s go.”

Red proves the prophet again. We slow down our game and gradually roll over the young Kansas City team. They make mistakes not out of carelessness as we did the first half but because we force them into our traps. We run simple plays five or six times each, and they never catch on. They do not help one another on defense; our screens consistently pick off pursuing defensemen. DeBusschere takes every opportunity to shoot and hits most of his shots uncontested. We win by twenty points.

Basketball players and politicians have at least one thing in common. They meet the press almost every working day. In basketball, the interaction leads to a charade. Reporters try to lead players to statements which will confirm the reporters’ own preconceptions and players try to avoid saying anything that will make them look bad. So, every game must be followed with explanations of the self-evident. Each explanation must be short enough to fit into a five-hundred word story and perhaps interesting enough to sell papers.

On an October trip to Philadelphia, four sportswriters accompany us, but on a play-off trip to the West Coast, there might be fifty writers, TV announcers, magazine reporters, and public relations people. On a Tuesday night at the Garden, there will usually be twenty members of the press in the locker room after the game. A few players run to the showers to avoid reporters and others practically solicit attention. Often standing in the nude, players will explain their own play and describe the weakness and strength of the other team. Everyone knows the interviewing process is brief. It takes place in twenty to thirty minutes and varies little from game to game.

The newspaper press and the broadcasting media have a spirited rivalry and often come close to fighting for access to players. Four or five times I’ve seen pushing, and once I saw a blow thrown. Middle-aged writers have stood in the center of a locker room screaming, “I can’t do my job with all those microphones in my way. I have to talk to the players. We were here first.” The Knicks’ public relations man usually resolves the dispute by giving the newspapers the first five minutes, then the microphones join the questioning.

Many journalists have a herd instinct. They cluster around two or three players, elbowing for position. At times they seem to work together, one reporter covering one player, another a second—later pooling their quotes. Sometimes those around one player will go to a second, where the same questions will be repeated. Often, after the pack leaves, a reporter will return to ask the questions which will distinguish his story from the others. If a player gives the persistent reporter the angle he is looking for, the reporter reciprocates by focusing attention on the player. Among the press, players get reputations as being “good copy” or “bad copy,” depending on their quips and cooperation. I’m bad copy.