Life on the Run (4 page)

Wariness of the press comes from my years as a college player when much of what I said and did received exaggerated attention. For a while I lumped all reporters into one category and viewed them as people who imposed on my privacy, asking questions about many things unrelated to basketball. Later, I realized that in a pro locker room they are interested much more in the game than my life. I began to enjoy talking with a few, who were as aware of the charade as I. Still, immediately after playing, I am not capable of giving instant analysis. I am too involved with the game. Yet, when I do try to explain my version of what happened—and sometimes that is impossible in a few quick sentences—reporters frequently look at me with blank stares unwilling to take seriously the relation between my words and the game. Other times my explanation is incomplete because I leave out germane but occasionally derogatory references to teammates. The solution I have settled on is to help the reporter when I can but otherwise to utter a few standard comments so often that they lose interest in me.

Most reporters are hard-working family men making a living. Some are anxious young fans who stand somewhat in awe of their idols and write puff pieces which reinforce sports clichés. A few are fair, reflective commentators on the sociology of sport. A couple know the game themselves and are confident of their own analysis. Others are insecure, pseudo-journalists who will slant a story in any way that will promote their own careers. A newspaperman once told me, “When you come right down to it, the politician’s very survival depends on me and journalists like me. That’s why I have no mercy on them and never respect their privacy. But you, at root you don’t need us and it’s as simple as that. You have your performance.”

But it is not so clear-cut, for no one outside the arena would know about our games without the press. If the only information in the newspapers after a game was a tiny box score, professional basketball would be a different kind of experience for the player. And any writer who says I don’t need him is either misunderstanding his job or attempting to ingratiate himself to me. The players and the reporters are bound together inextricably, like partners in a dance.

After the game, nine reporters rush to Frazier’s locker. Five walk to the training room where DeBusschere sits on one of the rubbing tables sipping a beer. Another six spread out among the other players.

“What do you think?” asks one. “Why couldn’t you score during that stretch in the second quarter?”

“Do you think Kansas City has improved?”

“How would you describe Dave’s game tonight?”

“What did Red say at half time?”

“Do you think Kansas City has improved?”

Video Associates, in cooperation with WOR-TV and WNBC Radio, names Dave DeBusschere the star of the game. For this honor, he receives a gift certificate from a local haberdasher entitling him to three knitted shirts in the color of his choice. They probably will arrive some time next summer and there is a fifty-fifty chance they will be the wrong size.

After taking a long shower, I dry myself with my sixth towel of the evening. My home uniform already has been hung up by one of the ball boys. A blue road uniform is in my traveling bag. The home uniforms are cared for by the club. They are cleaned about five times a year. There are two sets, plus spares that Whelan keeps in his closet. Keeping road uniforms clean is the responsibility of the player, a responsibility individual players don’t always fulfill. Fortunately the group can always express its dissatisfaction in such subtle ways as inviting a particularly ripe uniform to shower with the team.

After I dress, I stuff my wet socks, shoes, and jock into the leather traveling bag with my road uniform. I gulp two sodas, take a beer for the bus ride to the airport, and leave the locker room.

Outside the Garden, a black man waits, another diehard fan who in the old Garden sat under the basket. I see him less frequently since the new Garden opened because he can’t afford the higher ticket prices. Tonight is the first time this season. “Hi ya, Bill,” he says, “how you doin’? You guys will win it all again this year if you keep goin’. The Pearl is ready. You know, you can score more if you drive for the basket. You should shoot more, too. I remember you in college….”

I finally get to the bus which will take us to Newark Airport for an 11:30 flight to Atlanta. I am cold and my eyes burn from the sweat and wind. Thirty teenagers stand outside the windows chanting “We’re number one, we’re number one.”

“How can these kids be here,” says DeBusschere, “don’t they have school tomorrow?”

They jump up and down pointing at their favorite players and begging for an autograph. As we start moving they run along the street with us, for one block. Two slip and fall.

The bus enters the Lincoln Tunnel and the lights come through the bus window and strike my black leather bag. The brightness of one light quickly fades as we move through the tunnel. Just as the bag is about to become dark, we pass another light and brightness returns. The variations make the bag look like a neon light blinking outside a cheap hotel.

“Only 18 more,” says DeBusschere.

“Not so soon,” I say. “Too early to start counting.”

On and off, shining and dull, light and dark; off to another city. Travelers in the dead of night.

At the entrance to Newark Airport stands a young Marine with his head shaved, his shoes spit-shined, and his hat tilted over his eyes. He rests at semi-attention, perhaps expecting the military bearing to conceal his human fragility.
His
team makes uniform dress a part of its overall discipline. My team emphasizes individuality in dress. Yet we both work to achieve disciplined cooperation. It occurs to me that he might be going home tonight; unprepared for a life without the platoon-certainties both he and I have come to depend on.

On board there is the usual struggle of a late night flight. We are tired but can’t sleep. Card games start. One is going on in the seats in front of me. I sit next to Jerry Lucas, who sometimes keeps the card game results in his head; when each player wants to know if he is ahead or behind he can ask Lucas, who reports for instance that Barnett is $268 behind for the year and $18 ahead for the evening. The team calls Lucas “The Computer.” Tonight he does not keep score but concentrates on a piece of paper (the card players will have to settle up when the plane lands). About halfway through the flight, he looks over at me and says, “I just made a million.”

“How?” I ask.

“This puzzle I just figured up. I’ll sell it to Mattel or Cross and it’s bound to market like wildfire.”

Jerry Lucas is an eternal optimist. If twenty people before him had placed their hands into a basket and had been bitten by a snake, Lucas, the twenty-first, would be sure he could hypnotize the snake with his fingers. His positive approach to life meshes well with his quest to make millions overnight. When I met him, I was a junior in college and he was a successful pro. He spent two hours telling me about some children’s games he had designed which were going to be big national sellers. He reasoned that because Kroger Inc. was located in Cincinnati and he was then a hero for the Cincinnati Royals, Kroger would love to market his games in their stores.

After playing at Middletown High School and Ohio State, and starring for the 1960 U.S. Olympic team, Jerry Lucas was the most famous basketball player in Ohio history, even more famous than Oscar Robertson. He was Phi Beta Kappa—a straight A student in marketing. Handsome, with thick black hair and perfectly formed teeth, he was every mother’s hope and every coed’s dream. The national press pictured him as an All-American boy who drank postgame milk shakes, married a barber’s daughter at age 20, and knew where he was going in life. Important things always took priority with Jerry. When he and a few other Ohio State seniors (including John Havlicek and Larry Siegfried) barnstormed the state, Lucas apparently was careful to announce to his teammates that since he was the star attraction his share of the gate would be 50 percent. The other four players divided the rest.

For Lucas basketball could never satisfy his thirst for activity or wealth. During his fifth year with the Cincinnati Royals, he started a restaurant business. Bringing in some of his teammates as investors, “Jerry Lucas’ Beef ‘n’ Shakes” prospered. According to Lucas, in 1968 a prospective buyer offered him $1.5 million, which he turned down because he wanted to maintain control and was convinced that an even bigger payoff would come in the future. Besides, the buyer demanded that Lucas quit basketball to manage the business. Jerry refused because he knew he had some good money years left.

Lucas took a set of expansion plans for his company to various banks. One gave him a verbal commitment for financing, and he began extensive construction. During the recession of 1969 the bank canceled his credit line. In 1970, Jerry Lucas declared bankruptcy.

He was traded to San Francisco, moved to California, and began anew. After two successful and happy years on the coast, he was dealt to New York. He brought with him his penchant for deals and mental games. He has an odd talent for pulling words apart and rearranging their letters alphabetically. The first day he was in the Knick training camp I drove him to practice. We stopped behind a car and he said in rapid-fire order, “E-E-E-J-N-R-S-W-Y. That’s New Jersey spelled alphabetically.” Another time after one of his early games as a Knick I saw him confound the chess champion, Bobby Fischer, with his memory of the Manhattan phone book. “What is number 34 in the first column on page 146?” Fischer asked. “The number,” Lucas replied, “is 758–4010.” Fischer became so perplexed by the feat that he sat on a stool alone in the kitchen of our host’s apartment for fifty-five minutes trying unsuccessfully to figure it out.

Armed with a Knick contract, new business opportunities, and no debts, Lucas prospered. He looked for ways to avoid paying taxes. He constantly hunted for bonanza tax shelters. Once, trying to encourage me to join him in an apartment deal guaranteed to yield triple deductions and a 15 percent annual tax-free income, he said, “Those fuckers have stopped auditing me. They used to audit me every year until finally I told ’em it was ridiculous. They didn’t find anything wrong in seven years. To continue was harassment. I don’t pay taxes, period, but I do it legally. I’m not stupid.” With no taxes to pay, he dreams of other jackpots in puzzles and magic seminars. He has even begun to write a book about memory which he thinks will be a bestseller. If it was 1849 and Jerry Lucas was living in New England he would be on a clipper ship bound for California, along with many of the other fortune hunters who helped build America, convinced that he’d find the biggest gold strike in the West on his first day of prospecting.

We land in Atlanta at 1
A.M
. It is 21 degrees outside and the frost makes the runway sparkle as if it were sprinkled with bits of glass. Inside the gate three other groups wait to board planes to Miami, San Antonio, and New York. Two hundred people in such a small space so late at night confirms the strangeness of the travel world. Some of them sleep while others, unable to rest, read with bloodshot eyes. Wiry men with leathery skin stare at our entourage as it passes.

“Is this the circus?” asks a tiny woman with a bouffant hairdo that adds a foot to her height.

“No, must be ballplayers.”

We wait forty minutes for our bags, which delays our arrival at the Atlanta Marriott Hotel until 3
A.M
. Even at that hour, a fan with a New York accent approaches me in the lobby. He says he came all the way from Miami and could I spare some time tomorrow to talk basketball. He tells me he knows everything about me. I nod, yes, force a smile and keep walking. This is Atlanta, after all, and tomorrow is another day.

I put my leather bag in the room and go to the coffee shop, where I eat two eggs over easy with sausage, toast and jam, milk, and grits. The first time we played in Atlanta we also arrived early in the morning and everyone was hungry. Most of us didn’t go to our rooms first but went directly to eat. Barnett, who usually was the first one to the coffee shop late at night, said he was going to his room. All the way in from the airport the black players had been making allusions to “bossman,” “boy,” “sit in the back of the bus,” revealing the abiding wariness many blacks have about parts of the South. Several of us were eating our eggs, ordered from a black headwaitress, when Barnett walked in wearing a Dashiki. He had changed just for the Marriott coffee shop in Atlanta. He claimed he did it only for comfort.

T
HE NEXT DAY
,
WEDNESDAY
,
AFTER BREAKFAST AT NOON WITH
the late-night fan, I discover that the week’s convention at the Marriott is for Georgia beauticians. Carefully coiffed ladies fill the halls, lobbies, and restaurants of the hotel. They try to resemble the women in
Cosmopolitan
magazine ads, but only succeed in looking like the women in department stores who spend all day, every day, demonstrating the proper application of various cosmetics. The beauticians giggle, pat their permanents, and look at themselves in their compact mirrors. Six of them crowd into a restaurant booth made for four, and order cherry cokes.

At 2
P.M
., Dave and I sit across from each other, both ordering the same lunch: green salad with Thousand Island dressing, steak medium with french fries, coke, chocolate sundae, and a cup of coffee. I remain seated after he leaves and overhear two college students in the next booth talking about their future. At other tables I catch bits of conversation dealing with life insurance, pregnancy, and local construction projects.

For all the camaraderie of DeBusschere and the rest of the team, there is an overpowering feeling of loneliness on the road. I telephone friends and conduct business over long distance, hoping to connect with someone who will share my life’s experience and understand. The day passes. Local acquaintances may show up. There is chit-chat with them of times past and superficial discussions of contemporary events—his job, and my activities outside of basketball. After that exchange, it’s over. There is nothing more to say, little common interest. Sometimes I take in an art exhibit, call on a local politician, or visit an unusual section of town. There is too little time, though, and there are too many towns, each one different and exclusive, yet all part of a whole too large to know well in the time available. So I sit in a hotel room reading books, listening to the radio, and arguing with DeBusschere about whether the TV should be on—dropped into a city of which I’m not a part, unable to explore it or to know its people as much as I would like. I remain a performer traveling from city to city with only my work to sustain me.