The Book of Basketball (90 page)

And then there’s this: Only Russell and Kareem spread postseason heroics over a longer time frame. Hondo’s series-saving steal against the ’65 Sixers became one of the five most famous plays ever. He played all 48 minutes in the clincher of the
’66
Finals, with L.A. coach Fred Schaus saying afterward, “No one in the league his size is even close to Havlicek in quickness. He is entirely responsible for the trend to small, quick forwards.” He made the winning jumper of the ’68 Finals and averaged a 26–9–8 in 19 playoff games—serving as Russell’s unofficial lead assistant in his spare time (Russell handled the defense and subs, Hondo handled the offense)—with
SI
’s Frank Deford noting afterward, “Because Havlicek can play the whole game at top speed and because he can move about the lineup so nimbly, he makes it possible for Russell always to replace whoever is tired or cold with the best man on his bench, regardless
of position.” He averaged a 25–10–6 on the ’69 championship team, playing an inconceivable 850 minutes in 18 games (47.2 per game, a playoff record for 15-plus games), making the game-winning shot of the Knicks series and carrying Boston’s offense in the Finals. He led the ’73 Celtics to a team record 68 wins, separated his shooting shoulder in the Eastern Finals and played left-handed in Games 5 through 7 (with Boston falling short). He pulled off the epic 289/291 in the ’74 Finals and made a super-clutch banker to extend the famous double-OT game. He gutted through constant pain from an injured right foot in the ’76 playoffs, made the single biggest shot of the Finals (the running banker in the triple-OT game) and played 58 minutes in Game 5 when doctors had ordered him to play no more than 25.

Havlicek was the ultimate winner. You would have wanted him in your NBA foxhole. You wouldn’t have blinked with
SI
wrote things like “It is altogether unlikely that you will ever see another Havlicek. The dimension Havlicek has brought to basketball is entirely and uniquely his own, and it will probably go with him once he finally winds down,” or when peers like Jerry West raved, “Superstar is a bad word. In our league people look at players, watch them dribble between their legs, watch them make spectacular plays, and they say, ‘There’s a superstar.’ Well, John Havlicek
is
a superstar, and most of the others are figments of writers’ imaginations,” or even when Rick Barry admitted during Hondo’s final season, “Havlicek is the only true superstar.” And if you have any doubt about his resume, remember that Havlicek was so consistently cool under pressure that everyone started calling him “Hondo.” That’s right, John Wayne’s nickname. The guy was named after John fucking Wayne! The point is, we reached a point with Havlicek where everyone agreed, “This is one of the greatest NBA players ever.” It wasn’t a debate. Now it is. And it’s only because he was white.
⁹⁰

1.
Ron Harper told
SI
in ’99, “Everybody talks about MJ first, but Pip had a more all-around game. Defense, offensive rebounds and defensive boards: Pip made the game easier for us to play.”

2.
Hue Hollins whistled a touch foul on a last-second Hubie Davis jumper in Game 5, pretty much gift-wrapping the series for the Knicks. Even Vince McMahon was embarrassed by that call.

3.
Another NBA tragedy: watching Scottie toiling away for one season in a stilted, slow-it-down “Hey, Scottie, dump it into Hakeem or Barkley, go to the corner and stand there” offense. Almost as bad as Kidd in the triangle.

4.
Scottie in ’93: “I hope [MJ] leads the league in scoring for the rest of his career. And when it’s all over, I’ll be able to say, ‘I helped him do it. And I played with the greatest player ever.’” Now that’s a second banana!

5.
Jackson told
SI
in ’99, “[Scottie] was probably the player most liked by the others. He mingled. He could bring out the best in the players and communicate the best. Leadership, real leadership, is one of his strengths. Everybody would say Michael is a great leader. He leads by example, by rebuke, by harsh words. Scottie’s leadership was equally dominant, but it’s a leadership of patting the back, support.”

6.
Don’t forget, Tubbs had to bang Calderon’s ugly daughter just to get to Calderon. Much bigger sacrifice than Scottie passing up some shots. She looked like Andy Pettitte with a crewcut.

7.
It narrowly edged the time Cartwright realized that he couldn’t grow a full goatee.

8.
NBA draft code words “upside,” “length” and “wingspan” were pretty much invented during the Pippen draft.

9.
Had Scottie played out that rookie contract and become a free agent in ’93, right as Jordan was retiring, his value would have soared. For the first
eleven years
of his career, Scottie Pippen was woefully underpaid. He was the 122nd-highest-paid player in the NBA in 1998.

10.
Our three best guys that year: Dana Barros, Todd Day and Dino Radja. Little known fact: Dino was the last 19–10 guy (in ’96) who also smoked butts before and after games. In a related story, we went 33–49.

11.
You know I feel passionate about something when I spring a double negative on you.

12.
Remember, Isiah made 28% of his threes in ’83 and somehow finished second in the league. If he’d come along ten years later, it’d have been a bigger part of his arsenal.

13.
On the other hand, this was one of the ten greatest moments of my life … so thank you, Isiah!

14.
One of my favorite clips: Isiah getting busted open by Malone’s elbow, flipping out and briefly strangling his trainer as the guy was trying to stop the bleeding. That was the only inexplicable strangulation in NBA history. Even the Spree/Carlesimo incident was semiexplicable.

15.
What, you don’t believe me? Isiah retired on May 24, 1994, and suddenly had a ton of time on his hands; the murders happened two weeks later. You don’t think that’s a coincidence? Prove me wrong!

16.
And if you’re nitpicking, I want to know why it was okay to show Magic and Isiah kissing on network TV, but when Matt the Gay Guy made a move on Billy’s best man before Billy’s wedding five years later on
Melrose Place
, Fox didn’t have the balls to show their kiss.

17.
I mulled this analogy long and hard: At the time, Joel was the fourth-most-famous person in that video behind Michael Jackson (MJ), Bruce Springsteen (Bird), and Stevie Wonder (Magic) and just ahead of Bob Dylan (who had lost his fastball). Finishing the analogy: Michael McDonald (Barkley), Huey Lewis (David Robinson), Tina Turner (Ewing), Lionel Ritchie (Mullin), Kenny Rogers (Malone), Tom Petty (Stockton), Quincy Jones (Chuck Daly) and Christian Laettner (George Michael). Sadly, there’s no basketball equivalent to Dan Aykroyd singing in the chorus.

18.
I say we make it up to him by letting him pick the 2012 Dream Team. “And starting at center, weighing more than Angola’s entire team … Eddy Curry!”

19.
I’d make a GM joke about McHale here, but he handed Boston the ’08 title and I don’t want to be an ingrate. By the way, KG faded in the ’09 season with a mysterious knee problem loosely described as “I spent 13 solid years playing 1100-plus games and 40 minutes a night at an intensity normally reserved for mothers trying to rescue their children who are trapped under a truck” but with an “-itis” at the end.

20.
In his only Game 5 (’98 against Seattle), KG practically crapped himself with 7 points, 4 rebounds and 10 TOs.

21.
Every red-blooded male born between 1965 and 1980 dug T.A.T. for the Kelly Kapowski/Valerie Malone resume, only it never translated to a movie career or a leading sitcom role. She couldn’t have had Christina Applegate’s career?

22.
KG fans defend his unclutchness because he never got clutch reps in his formative years (whereas Duncan did). Decent point. Think of KG’s career like a video game: spend a ton of time playing Grand Theft Auto and you’re more likely to complete a mission than someone who doesn’t own a PlayStation, right?

23.
After Game 3, I wrote a column that included the question “Is Garnett on pace to pass Hayes, Chamberlain and Malone as the biggest choke artist in the history of the NBA Finals?” Sadly, it had to be asked—he had missed 36 of his last 50 shots with the likes of Pau Gasol and Ronny Turiaf guarding him.

24.
This was fun during the regular season and not as much fun in the playoffs, as Boston struggled vs. Atlanta and KG was blocking shots after whistles but refusing to post up Solomon Jones. I think I screamed, “Come on, KG, take this goddamned stiff to the hoop!” at least 250 times that spring.

25.
Extending this analogy, Duncan was like Eric Clapton—great in a band and really good by himself, although there’s no way Duncan ever would have done something as sleazy as stealing George Harrison’s wife.

26.
Cooz had a phenomenal French/New York accent. He couldn’t pronounce
R
, but that didn’t stop him from announcing Celtics games for two solid decades, leading to him calling Rodney Rogers “Wodd-ney” in 2002. When they acquired Bryant Stith in the mid-nineties, we just assumed Cooz would grunt his name like a deaf-mute. He settled on “Bwwwy-unn.”

27.
To clarify, when Cousy finished first in assists and second in scoring in ’55, he’d get 10 points for assists and 9 points for scoring for a total of 19.

28.
I know, I know … West wasn’t a true point guard. But he handled the ball for L.A. during the second half of his career and even led the NBA in assists in ’72. So there.

29.
Tommy Heinsohn claimed in Elliott Kalb’s book that assists only counted in the fifties if you passed to someone without dribbling. In other words, none of Cousy’s fast-break passes counted as assists. Could this be true? Again, it’s hard to trust someone who once compared Leon Powe to Moses Malone.

30.
You had to like the fifties, when sportswriters had names like “Herbert Warren Wind.” I wonder if I would have been “William John Simmons” back then. Kinda catchy.

31.
Grumpy Old Editor wholeheartedly disagrees: “Granted, Cousy is a good guy and an innovator for an all-white league. But unlike Russell and even Sharman, his game does not survive beyond the sixties. And the idea of him as a pioneer when
Black Magic
screams otherwise is a joke. If he played in New York, you would have buried him.” I am firing him soon.

32.
Cooz played an athletic director named Vic. I hate to nitpick here, but couldn’t they have gone with Bob Kiley or Bill Corsey there? How did they settle on “Vic”? Do you think Vic ever tried to recruit Rumeal Smith? That was an inside joke for the three people who have been reading every footnote so far.

33.
In fact, that’s what I plan on calling that book:
The Second Book of Basketball: A Quick Influx of Cash.
I’ll give you 9–2 odds that in the acknowledgments, I’m thanking everyone at the Promises Rehab Center in Malibu, as well as my new girlfriend, Destiny (or Amber, or Crystal, or Jasmine, or anyone else who sounds like I may have met her as she was writhing on a pole).

34.
Four Boston athletes were like that for me: Bird, Pedro, Orr (a tad before my time, but still) and Rich “El Guapo” Garces. I mean, did you
see
Guapo? He was built like the Penguin and so overweight, one time he covered first base on consecutive ABs and became so out of breath that the pitching coach had to come out to buy him some time. Now that’s fat. I miss you, Guapo.

35.
I picked Bron fourth for 2005 MVP and compared his season to “one of those early Tom Hanks movies, where you spend most of the time just feeling bad for him that he’s not in something better.” Like
The Money Pit
, basically.

36.
Back then, I was convinced that he’d average a triple double. Now? I don’t see it unless he signs with the Knicks and plays for Mike D’Antoni. Then he might average a 40–15–15. No, really. I once had a reader joke that there should be a word called “D’Inflation” to cover these scenarios.

37.
There’s a persistent rumor, never confirmed, that LeBron has a $50 million unwritten promise from Nike that kicks in if he joins the Knicks or Lakers. The Clips aren’t covered by the alleged bonus; given their history of bad luck, Nike would probably pay him $50 million
not
to play there.