The Book of Basketball (50 page)

We thought Kemp would end up on thirty different posters. Instead, he became the poster boy of an unlikable era defined by overpaid, overhyped
black superstars who grabbed their crotches after dunks, sneered after blocks, choked coaches, quit on teams, sired multiple kids by multiple women and didn’t seem to give a shit. (Important note: I’m just stating the unfair general perception, not the reality. Although Kemp’s generation
did
have a knack for turning off casual fans.) When you mention Kemp’s name to most NBA fans in twenty years, they will remember the way he dunked in traffic, how personal problems (drugs, alcohol and conditioning) sidetracked a potential Hall of Fame career, and the “seven kids by six different women before he turned 30” revelation (a bombshell at the time that provides comedic mileage to this day).
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Here’s what they won’t remember:

1. After Moses Malone, another fourteen years passed before another high schooler thrived in the NBA without playing college ball.
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   You could say Kemp paved the way for KG, Kobe, LeBron and everyone else. He even paved the way for Ndudi Ebi.
   

2. With the notable exceptions of Howard and Young Shaq, there hasn’t been a force of nature like Young Kemp: he ran the floor better than any big man ever, finished off alley-oops from every conceivable angle (and some that hadn’t been conceived yet) and dunked on everyone in sight (his ’92 playoff dunks on Alton Lister and Chris Gatling reside in the Dunk Pantheon). We haven’t seen anyone like him before or since. He also had one of the better nicknames of the past thirty years: “Reign Man,” definitely the name of his sex tape if he ever releases one.
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3. Kemp was Seattle’s dominant big man on teams that averaged 58 wins from ’93 to ’97, including a ’93 team that lost Game 7 of the Conference Finals when Phoenix shot 68 free throws (Tim Donaghy alert), as well as a ’96 team that won 64 games and lost to Chicago in the Finals. In the ’96 playoffs, he outplayed Hakeem in a sweep of Houston, bested Mailman in the Jazz series, and thrived in the Finals against Dennis Rodman. Then Seattle signed semi-stiffy center Jim McIlvaine, for the reprehensibly dumb figure of $33 million. Kemp was saddled with a crummy contract and coming off a breakthrough spring in which he nearly busted down the Pyramid door like a SWAT cop. Instead of using excess cap space to fix Kemp’s deal, Seattle paid a backup center twice as much. A bitter Kemp wiped the gym every day with the much wealthier McIlvaine, eventually falling into a drugs/weight/bad attitude spiral and prompting Seattle to swap him for Vin Baker.
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   I doubt that McIlvaine’s contract single-handedly turned Kemp into a VH1 special. But it didn’t help.
   

Whatever. Just watch a game from the ’96 Finals sometime. During MJ’s title run (’91–’93 through ’96–’98), Kemp gained steam as the series went along (remember, Seattle won Games 4 and 5) and caused Sonics coach George Karl to proclaim afterward, “He was the best player on the court. No one can say otherwise.” So if we’re giving players like Bill Walton the benefit of the doubt in this Pyramid from a “what could have been” standpoint, Kemp deserves the same courtesy even if he was probably predisposed to losing his marbles. Really, the late-nineties Sonics should have controlled the West just like the Sampson/Hakeem Rockets should have controlled the late eighties. Then the McIlvaine signing sent Kemp into the tailspin, Houston’s teams with Barkley and Hakeem never quite gelled, Shaq’s Lakers didn’t put everything together yet … and suddenly those Stockton-Malone teams were title contenders. Ridiculous. Kemp and GP should have played in four or five straight Finals together. These are the dopey realities that keep me awake when I’m watching ESPN Classic at two-thirty in the morning.
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88. GAIL GOODRICH

Resume: 14 years, 8 quality, 5 All-Stars … top 5 (74) … 3-year peak: 25–3–5 … 2-year Playoffs peak: 25–3–5 (27 G) … leader: FTA (1x) … 3rd-best player on 1 champ (’72 Lakers) and 1 runner-up (’73 Lakers) … left unprotected in ’68 expansion draft

One of the better-scoring guards from the confusing ABA/NBA era, the crafty southpaw gets bonus points for being a top-three player on a 69-win Lakers team and abusing Earl Monroe in the ’72 Finals, as well as having an unorthodox low-post game, punishing smaller guards down low, and attacking the rim like a crazed Manu Ginobili (attempting 550-plus FTs four different times). Near the tail end of his prime, Goodrich carried enough weight that Utah forked over number ones in ’77 and ’79 to team him with Pete Maravich.
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Goodrich played 27 games, injured his knee, and never really recovered. Since the Lakers grabbed Magic with one of those picks, Goodrich was actually responsible for
six
Laker titles, as well as the incredible game of Moses Hot Potato detailed. Part of me wonders if we never took him that seriously from a historical standpoint because his name made him sound like an LPGA golfer. But if we ever slapped together an all-time team of lefties, he edges Ginobili as the shooting guard.
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87. CONNIE HAWKINS

Resume: 9 years, 4 quality, 5 All-Stars (1 ABA) … ABA MVP (’68) … top 5 NBA (’70) … 3-year NBA peak: 23–9–4 … best player on ABA champ (’68 Pipers), 30–12–5 in Playoffs (14 G)

86. ARVYDAS SABONIS

Resume: 7 years, 1 quality, 0 All-Stars … 1-year peak: 16–10–3 … 2-year playoff peak: 11–8–2 (29 G) … career threes: 135–415 (33%) … best player on Russia’s ’88 Gold Medal team … four-time European Player of the Year

We’re exercising the “what could have been” clause here. Eligible for the ’63 draft, Hawkins didn’t join the NBA until the ’69–’70 season because of a college fixing scandal back in 1961, when the NBA dubiously banned everyone involved under their “no taint” rule (even a misguided soul like Hawkins, who never actually fixed a game). Hawkins spent the next few years toiling away in failed pro leagues, minor leagues and playground games before becoming the ABA’s first superstar and suing the NBA for blackballing him. When writer David Wolf (who eventually released
Foul!
, a superb account of Connie’s ten-year odyssey to make the NBA) wrote about his plight for
Life
magazine in 1969, public sentiment swung behind Hawkins and the league settled with him for the startling sum of $1 million, then assigned him to Phoenix, where he peaked by making first-team All-NBA in 1970.
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Although we’ll never know how good Hawkins could have been, he was the first modern power forward with athleticism and length (a good seven to ten years ahead of Gus Johnson and Spencer Haywood), a prototype for the Kemps and Garnetts, someone who played above the rim before his knees started going on him. His freakishly large hands allowed him to palm basketballs like tennis balls; Hawkins waved the ball over his head and found cutters with laser passes, and when he drove to the basket, nobody stripped him because the ball was embedded in his giant paw. But Connie’s lack of college coaching and skinny body (he weighed 200–205 pounds in his prime) led to effort/defense issues at every stage of his career, so his game couldn’t have translated to success in the Playoffs unless he played with a shot blocker like Russell or Thurmond. Had he played a full NBA career, it probably would have resembled
what Adrian Dantley or Alex English did: big offensive numbers, more than a few first-round Playoff exits. Regardless, it’s all so tragic. Connie’s whole career played out like a bad
White Shadow
episode.

You can’t play the what-if game with Hawkins without bringing up Sabonis, potentially one of
the
great centers if his legs hadn’t betrayed him. By 1995, poor Sabonis ranked just behind Artis Gilmore on the Moving Like a Mummy Scale. Thank God for YouTube, where a young and healthy Saba lives on breaking backboards, draining threes and throwing no-look passes; there’s a reason everyone compared him to Walton with 25-foot range.
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You might remember a twenty-three-year-old Sabonis carrying the Soviets to the 1988 gold medal (even though he was recovering from a ruptured Achilles tendon), outplaying David Robinson in the semifinals, controlling the game on both ends and putting himself on the map as an “all right, they weren’t kidding when they said he was great” guy. Portland took a first-round flier on him in 1986, then spent an eternity luring him over before succeeding in 1995 (well after knee/foot injuries sapped his quickness). Lumbering up and down the court in what looked to be concrete Nikes, Sabonis still played a key role on a ’00 Blazers team that choked away a potential championship. Considering he couldn’t run or jump and remained effective, imagine how great he could have been in his prime. In fact, that nearly made the what-ifs chapter: what if Portland had signed Sabonis in ’89, once Russia fragmented and he was allowed to leave the country, when he shockingly signed with Spain over joining the Blazers? Remember, Portland made the Finals in ’90 and ’92 and the ’91 team won 63 games with Kevin Duckworth starting at center. Imagine swapping Duck for one of the best centers of that era. If Hawkins makes it on the coulda-been premise, then we can’t leave out Saba.
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85. ROBERT HORRY

Resume: 16 years, 0 quality, 0 All-Stars … 4-year peak: 10–5–3 … 2-year playoff peak: 13–7–3, 40% 3FG, 78 threes (45 G) … played for 7 champs (’94, ’95 Rockets, ’00, ’01, ’02 Lakers, ’05, ’07 Spurs) … leader: Playoffs games (244) … played for ten 55-win teams and eight teams with a .700-plus winning percentage … played for 1 team that won fewer than 47 (’97 Suns, 40–42)

And we can’t leave Big Shot Rob out of a Pyramid that hinges on The Secret. It’s impossible. If you want to know why, here’s a trimmed-down version of a Horry column I wrote after Game 5 of the 2005 Finals, when Big Shot Brob
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turned the series around in Detroit with a number of big shots (including the game-winning three in overtime). The title? “Big Shot Bob Bangs Another One.”

Somebody needs to go through Robert Horry’s playoff games, pluck out all the big plays and shots, then run them in sequence for like 10 straight minutes with one of those cool sports video songs playing (like Aerosmith’s “Dream On” or Led Zeppelin’s “The Rain Song”). Who wouldn’t enjoy that? I bet Horry nailed at least 20 to 25 humongous shots over the years. Seriously.
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You might be asking yourself, “Wait, that opening paragraph sounded a little familiar.” It should. I wrote it two summers ago. See, we would have remembered Big Shot Bob for life even before he saved his defining moment for Sunday night, throwing a rattled Spurs team on his back in Detroit and making … I mean … it would almost demean what happened to write something like “some huge 3-pointers” or “a number of game-saving plays.” Considering the situation (a budding Spurs collapse that seemed eerily reminiscent of the ’04 Lakers series), the circumstances (nobody else on his team was stepping up) and the opponent (a terrific defensive team playing at home), Horry’s Game 5 ranks alongside MJ’s Game 6 in 1998, Frazier’s Game 7 in 1970 and every other clutch Finals performance. If Horry hadn’t scored 21 of his team’s last 35 points, the Spurs would have been “Dead Man Walking” heading back to San Antonio. Instead, they’re probably going to win the title Tuesday night.

Forget about saving the season; Horry possibly altered Tim Duncan’s career. If the Spurs blew that game, they would have eventually blown the series and everyone would have blamed Duncan all summer, mainly because his epic stink bomb down the stretch brought back memories of Karl Malone and Elvin Hayes. Now he’s just another great player who had an atrocious game at the wrong time. That’s the power of Big Shot Bob. And if you think a rejuvenated/relieved/thankful Duncan isn’t throwing up a 35–15 Tuesday night, you’re crazy.
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My favorite thing about Sunday night’s game: When Horry drained a go-ahead three at the end of the third quarter, it was like sitting at a poker table with a good player who plays possum for an hour, then suddenly pushes a stack of chips into the middle.
Uh-oh. He’s making his move.
You could just see it coming. The rest of the game played out like that—the Spurs always seeming like they were one mistake away from blowing it, then Horry bailing them out again and again. By the time he jammed home that astounding lefty dunk in overtime, everyone knew the game would somehow end up in Horry’s hands. Well, everyone but Rasheed Wallace. We’re always too quick to demolish athletes who make dumb plays or screw up at the worst possible times, from Byner’s fumble to C-Webb’s timeout to poor Bill Buckner … but at the same time, I feel like ’Sheed’s brain fart will somehow get swept under the rug in the afterglow of such an electric game. Let the record show that Wallace’s decision to leave a scorching-hot Horry to double-team Ginobili in the final nine seconds of OT was the single dumbest play in the history of the NBA Finals. For sweeping significance and staggering inexplicability, it cannot be topped. You can’t leave Robert Horry alone in a big game. You just can’t.
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Horry’s career has always been a nice litmus test for the question, “Do you understand the game of basketball or not?” Nearly all of his strengths aren’t things that casual fans would notice, and he’d be useless on the “And 1” tour. He’s a terrific help defender who constantly covers for his teammates. He’s big enough to handle power forwards and quick enough to handle small forwards. He picks his spots and only asserts himself in big situations when his team truly needs him. He doesn’t care about stats or touches—at all—which gives him something in common with maybe 2 percent of the league. And he gets better when it matters. What more would you want from a supporting player? I once compared him to a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, explaining that “Nobody ever talks about him, but he’s always there when you need him, just like the Peebee and Jay.” I compared him to Nate Dogg, John Cazale
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and every other famous person who flew under the radar screen but always ended up in good situations.
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When someone asked me in a recent mailbag whether I would have Horry’s career (multiple rings and rich) or Barkley/Malone’s careers (no rings and obscenely rich), I opted for Horry’s career and didn’t think twice. Imagine playing on five (soon to be six) championship teams, ending up with a cool nickname, making $50 million, earning the everlasting respect of everyone who ever played with or against you … and you didn’t have to deal with any of the superstar BS? Have a great game, everyone notices you. Have a terrible game, nobody notices you. And that’s your life. Doesn’t that sound like the ultimate gig? In a league loaded with guys who believe they’re better than they actually are, Horry understands his own strengths and limitations better than anyone. That’s what makes him so great. And that’s why I like the poker analogy for him. He’s the guy sitting at the table with a towering stack of chips, the guy who never chases a bad hand, the guy who makes your heart pound when he’s staring you down. You never remember the hands he lost, but you always remember the ones he won. And when he finally cashes out and gets up from the table, you hope you never have to see him again.