Darkness to Light, page 12
The decision to stay on the Queen Mary and not in Olympic Village with the other athletes ruffled some feathers and was derided in the press. But the NBA considered the security risk to be too great. It was an enormous security undertaking just to get the team on and off the boat every day. You had to go through several different security checks whether you were boarding or leaving the boat. We had fun the couple times we visited the Olympic Village, but we mostly stayed on the boat. Once we managed to hit a strip club in Greece that was packed with beautiful Russian women, but that was it.
The ship had dozens of restaurants, a cinema, a shopping mall, a theater for plays, a library, a wine bar, countless works of art, and even a planetarium. But apart from some British dignitaries and Saudi princes, we were the only ones on the ship, so it felt like a ghost town.
We spent most of our time at the ship’s club called G32, named after the ocean liner’s hull number, on the second deck, where there was a huge dance floor and several bars where we’d go drink every night.
One night, A.I. stumbled into a cigar room and proceeded to organize meet-ups at 8 PM every night, where a bunch of guys would go to smoke cigars and trade stories. Iverson dubbed the group the Cigar Club. He held court and told wild stories about his life and career. Nobody wanted to miss them because you never knew what you were going to hear.
The Cigar Club was an education on the lives of the world’s best basketball players. No subject was off-limits. Near the end of the almost three-week run of the Cigar Club, Chuck (only A.I.’s close friends and family got to call him “Bubbachuck,” or “Chuck” for short) told one of his best stories. Several years prior, during the epic Jay-Z versus Nas hip-hop beef, Nas dropped his infamous diss track “Ether.” Jay-Z quickly responded with a track of his own called “Supa Ugly.”
In the first lines of the third verse, Jay referenced how both he and Iverson had flings with Carmen Bryan, Nas’s girlfriend and the mother of one of his children. In the lyrics Jay raps: “Me and the boy A.I. got more in common / Than just ballin’ and rhymin’ / Get it? / More in Carmen.”
Iverson said the day the song, came out he was driving with his wife. “I’m listening to the song, thinking this joint is hot,” said Iverson. “I mess around and turn it up. Then that line comes and I’m like what?! My wife looks dead at me and slaps me across the face! Slaps the shit out of me.”
Everyone was in tears. Cracking up. But nobody wanted to interrupt. Everybody wanted him to keep going. Chuck just puffed his cigar. “So I’m pissed, right. Just pissed. So, you know what I did?” asked Iverson. “I called Jay-Z up. I said why the fuck you put my name in that song? Why you drag me into your bullshit?”
There was a pause on the phone.
“Yo, it was just wordplay,” said Jay-Z. “I didn’t mean it like that. It’s no big deal.”
“But I’m married with kids, man,” replied A.I. “You can’t put me out there like that.”
“Yo, don’t take it that serious,” Jay-Z said calmly. “Mike Jordan is back.”
Then Jay-Z hung up the phone.
Everyone just started clapping at the story. The young guns like LeBron and Melo were in awe, soaking up every moment. When LeBron was a kid, his idol wasn’t Jordan; it was Allen Iverson. He wanted to be like Chuck from the headband to the shooting sleeve to the impact he had on the game. You could see how valuable these nightly get-togethers were for him. And me, too. Being with the guys on that trip was one of the best experiences of my life.
However, it was another story entirely on the court, as that 2004 team was one of the most disappointing US Olympic basketball teams ever. We were disjointed and never really clicked. It’s the only team since 1992, when the US started sending pros, that failed to win the gold medal. The three losses we suffered were the most ever in Olympic competition, and the nineteen-point drubbing at the hands of Puerto Rico was the biggest loss by Team USA ever.
From the start, no one got along with coach Larry Brown’s style or substitution patterns. He was an old-school disciplinarian who took the fun out of the experience for a lot of guys. Playing basketball in the summer is supposed to be fun. Brown overlooked more talented upstarts like LeBron and Melo in favor of veterans like Shawn Marion and Richard Jefferson. LeBron, Melo, and D-Wade were so upset, they gathered in the ship’s computer room at midnight one night and feverishly looked up next season’s NBA schedule to see when they would be playing against Marion and Jefferson.
We came home with a bronze medal that no one even wanted. It was hard not to be upset with the result, and it lingered with many of us. One positive was that I played really well and ended up being one of our most consistent players. I averaged 9.3 points and 5.8 rebounds on 57 percent shooting while starting all eight games. Even though it wasn’t gold, I was still happy to get my medal. In many ways it represented how far I’d come. When I got home, I gave it to my son, LJ, and he put it on his dresser, where it remains to this day.
21
I’ve had sex with more than two thousand women.
I don’t remember most of their names. Many of them were one-night stands. There were too many strippers to count. It wasn’t a big deal, but often I would pay them. I would just give them money in the morning. I never thought less of them. I would make love to them and leave $2,000 on the dresser. It was understood that they would be gone when I got out of the shower because I usually had to be at practice or shootaround.
I have been obsessed with sex as long as I can remember. I love to touch women, and I need to feel close to women and feel their skin on mine. To touch a woman is to feel safe. The physical contact is something that I need. It doesn’t even have to always be sex. If it’s spooning on the bed, it will satisfy me just the same. I just need the connection.
And I know you won’t believe this, but I don’t remember my first time. That sounds crazy, right? I think I was fourteen. It was during the two-year period right after my mother died, and I’ve purged almost every memory of that time. My first memory of sex is with Liza when I was in the eleventh grade. It was the summer of 1996 after I came back from Las Vegas.
We conceived Destiny, our first child, the following year.
I’ve been looking for my mother ever since she died. I looked for her in the women I took home. I used sex to fill the void . . . to make me feel complete. I wanted to be loved, but I could never find love. I could be physically fulfilled, but I was always left emotionally empty. I would fuck five or six girls a week, but my demons tormented me the one night I went home alone. I needed women as an outlet . . . an escape. But this does not come without problems. Most of my sex had been unprotected, and I’ve paid for plenty of abortions over the years. I’m not proud of it. It’s the law and legal, but I don’t feel proud about it at all.
I am a sex addict.
My sex addiction and my cocaine addiction go hand in hand. They afflicted me from the moment I woke up until I laid my head down to sleep. Try this with a day job.
The first time I did cocaine, sometime in the summer of 2004, was an eye-opening experience. I was at the Shore Club, a high-end hotel in Miami that caters to celebrities and the super-rich. I was at the pool with a bunch of friends and happened to walk past a rich white couple sitting poolside. The man got up from a lounge chair and asked me if I had any cocaine. It was a weird question to which I gave a really strange response.
“I think I can get some,” I replied. I don’t know why I said that.
I walked over to my boys and they slipped me a little baggie of coke.
I was a little nervous to do it. I didn’t know how it was going to make me feel. Worse, I was afraid that I would like it. And my fears were confirmed. The first time I did cocaine it felt like I had a full-body orgasm. Actually, I kind of did.
The stranger, his wife, and I went into a secluded area away from the pool. The woman was about thirty-five, blonde, and beautiful. She looked like a Playboy Playmate straight out of the 1970s. They were both excited that I could score so quickly. They were also excited to meet a famous black basketball player. We sat at a little table and the woman told her husband to leave. He did so dutifully and quickly.
“About fucking time,” she said.
We emptied the bag onto the table and I pulled my American Express Black Card out of my pocket and began separating the coke into several lines. I didn’t know exactly what I was doing, but I had seen it done in movies. The woman took off her top. She had amazing tan lines. I stared at her tits as she leaned over and snorted a line with a rolled-up one-hundred-dollar bill.
She handed the bill to me. Fuck it. I leaned over, put the bill to my nose, and inhaled with my left nostril. My mind went blank. I immediately jumped up. The rush was like nothing I had ever felt before or since. It went straight to my cock, and I got hard instantly. She did the third line, and I did the fourth. The woman then got down on her knees, pulled my shorts down, and took my manhood in her mouth.
I couldn’t believe how it felt, and I came after a couple minutes. She got up, pulled her top back on, and fluffed her hair.
“It was nice to meet you,” she said before walking away.
I stood there wondering what the fuck just happened. I was blown away. A new dimension had come into my life. Cocaine. And the way it made me feel. How it went straight to my cock. I had to feel that way again. Like, right then. I wanted to fuck on cocaine.
I spent the better part of the next fifteen years chasing the feeling of that first high. I needed to feel like that again. I would kill myself to do it if I had to.
Cocaine is a hell of a drug.
Once we got back to Los Angeles at the end of summer 2004, I decided to make a few changes for what would be my second fresh start in as many years. I moved to a new place right on the ocean.
It felt good to be back in LA with its familiar routes, beautiful views, and old haunts. Al Harris and Kamal McQueen were still living out in the Valley, and I was looking forward to reconnecting with them. As usual, Greg moved in with me and began to take care of all house-related issues and remained my driver/manager.
In late September, the Lakers players began to return to LA and gather for pickup games at the practice facility in El Segundo, just south of LAX. I was coming off my best season as a pro and was in great shape to start the season thanks to playing for Team USA in Greece.
But there was one person in camp who was already in better shape than anyone. In fact, in his first eight years in the league, I don’t think he was ever out of shape. I marveled at the way he treated his body. At twenty-six, with three NBA championships and six All-Star appearances, Kobe Bryant was on a meteoric rise and had without a doubt claimed the title of best player in the NBA.
Everything Kobe did was in the pursuit of perfection. Whether it was how he conditioned his mind and body, religiously watched film, or competed like a demon on the floor, it was easy to be in awe of him. When you were around Kobe, he either rubbed off on you or grated on you. He set the tone and it was up to everyone else to adjust.
But this was a different Kobe Bryant and a different Lakers team. Phil Jackson had retired and taken his three rings and four Finals appearances in the last four years with him. Shaq passed me in the night on the way to Miami. For the first time in decades, the Lakers were a rebuilding team.
The previous year, Kobe had played under a dark cloud in the form of a year-long sexual assault investigation stemming from an incident in a hotel room in Eagle, Colorado, in which a hotel employee accused him of rape. The hearings and discoveries dominated the headlines, and Kobe had the poorest season of his prime years.
Shortly after I got back to LA, the charges against Kobe were dropped because his accuser refused to testify. Although Kobe’s public image took a beating, and his reputation as the clean-cut face of the league had been shattered, Kobe was determined to put everything behind him and focus all his energy into basketball.
You could sense that Kobe wasn’t the happiest person in the world. He had narrowly avoided what would have been a psychologically draining and image-crushing trial—win or lose—that would have changed the course of his life. The mental anguish of losing basketball and facing a decade-long prison sentence took its toll on Kobe.
Still, he arrived at training camp in phenomenal shape. From pickup games to shooting drills, he was ultra-competitive and would be furious if he lost. Or worse, if someone’s lackluster play contributed to that loss. And Kobe talked a lot. He threw elbows while berating opponents and teammates alike. When he walked into the gym, the tenor of the room changed noticeably. It was all business. If pickup games started at eleven in the morning, Kobe would likely have already been up since five. Sometimes I’d just be getting home at that point.
I never had another teammate with the drive Kobe had. Even when his personal life was in utter turmoil he never lost that drive. But I knew being in such close proximity to someone as competitive as Kobe would be perfect for me. In those early days of pickup ball and practice, Kobe put everyone through what he called his “vetting process” to see what they were made of.
Kobe would walk right up to you and ask, “What are you gonna do?”
“I ain’t scared of you,” I would shoot back. I had to let him know right away.
He dished out loads of trash talk to see how we’d respond. He was hard-fucking-core. You were no one to him unless you proved yourself first. If you got rattled and didn’t hand it right back, you would immediately lose points in his book. And he would come harder at you with the intention of running you off. If he couldn’t trust you in practice, he wouldn’t trust you during the games. But I’m from Queens, so nothing he could say to me was new.
As storied as the franchise was, the mystique didn’t feel quite as I expected it. The Lakers were still the jewel in the NBA’s crown, but the 2004–2005 Lakers weren’t Riley’s Lakers. Or Phil Jackson’s, either. Over the summer the Lakers hired Rudy Tomjanovich to a five-year, $30 million contract to guide the team back to glory. But as intense as Rudy was on the bench and in his preparation, he ran a pretty loose ship with his players. The team had a decidedly different feel than the way Riley presided over the Heat, which I had grown to love.
My friends and trainer could now fly on the team plane and show up to practice whenever they wanted. Riley didn’t even let my boys attend team dinners at Joe’s Stone Crab.
The team was uneven and disjointed, but as predicted, Kobe helped me elevate my play, and I averaged 15.2 points, 10.2 rebounds, 3.7 assists, and a career-high 47 percent shooting from the field. But we were a lost cause, finishing 34–48 and missing the playoffs for the first time in eleven years. The eleventh-place finish in the Western Conference standings was the worst in franchise history.
I was glad to be back in Los Angeles, but as a whole, we were ready to put this forgettable season behind us.
My love affair with cocaine wasn’t going to go away. You know how you meet a new girl and fall head over heels in love and can’t see enough of that person? Yeah, that’s what happened when I first did coke. And when you first do it, you don’t realize the power it has. Both the potency and the control it has over you. I started to surround myself with people who did the same thing. It’s not hard to find enablers. They are a dime a dozen. They want to bask in your fame, and they’ll provide you with a fix. Sign me up, I thought.
The Shore Club in Miami became our home away from home, leaving work in LA for escape on the other side of the country. It was a playground where nothing was off-limits and rules didn’t exist. When the night was either too debaucherous, scandalous, or illegal, I knew the comfortable confines of my favorite beach paradise would be someplace to go where the only thing that would fade away faster than my inhibitions was my better judgment.
On some nights it seemed like there was almost as much cocaine in South Beach as there was sand. As my drug use slowly escalated, I found that strippers made cocaine better and coke made sex better. I felt the kind of invincibility that basketball, money, and fame never brought me. That was a high in itself.
As my cocaine use transformed from experimental to habitual, I hid it from my closest friends—my New York crew. Greg, Al, and Kamal would have flipped if they found out the level I had taken it to. As far as they were concerned, this was a pastime for the new group of friends that I so easily let into my trusted circle.
My collection of friends grew as fast as my “hobby,” and sometime early during my stint with the Lakers, I met music producer Scott Storch. He was at the top of his game producing music in his Miami studio for the likes of 50 Cent, Beyoncé, Snoop Dogg, and even Paris Hilton. At his height in the mid-2000s, he was one of the biggest hip-hop producers in the game. He’d charge $250,000 for a single beat.
Scott lived in a $10 million mansion in Palm Island, Florida, and had a fleet of twenty cars. It was like he lived in a music video. But Scott had a way of winning people over by telling them what they wanted to hear. His atmosphere was a twenty-four-hour party, swirling, pulsating, and scooping up everyone in its path with gale-force velocity.
But it was also cool that Scott was a self-made man from Long Island who accomplished what no one thought he could, and he always tried to hold on to that New York grittiness. He had everything . . . including cocaine. I’d spend hours . . . days . . . at his mansion with pounds of coke everywhere. It was modern-day Tony Montana shit.
“Okay, I’m reloaded!”
I used to love that quote from Scarface. Because I always reloaded.
