Killer Crossover, page 13
It wasn’t pretty. I’d come down the lane—something I’d done thousands of times in my life. I picked up my dribble and took two steps toward the basket … and then it just felt like the floor grabbed my foot and ankle and held onto it. Everything just stuck for a second. The bottom of my knee went in and out, and I knew at that moment that I’d torn my ACL. The trainer rushed over and asked what happened. “I just tore my ACL,” I said, pained but confidently. He said, “Don’t say that, don’t say that! How can you know?” And I replied, “Man, I just know it.” And sure enough, I was correct.
It was a huge blow for me and a huge blow for the team. I knew I’d miss the entire season rehabbing. Thankfully, it wasn’t the same knee that I’d had that cyst operation. If it was … well … I probably would have needed a knee replacement, which would have ended my career. But thankfully it was my other knee. Small victories, I guess. I still recall the feeling of it giving out under me. I saw the whole thing happen in slow motion. It was devastating. It had taken all summer to sign Webber— back then, there weren’t rookie contracts, so top picks negotiated with teams for what they could get. And now we couldn’t play together.
Chris and his agent had fought from June into October. And it was in that first practice with him when I’d torn my knee up— day-freaking-one after we signed one of the most exciting young players in the NBA. When the 1992 Dream Team was scrimmaging with college players to get them ready for Barcelona, Webber was on the select team. Larry Bird said of Chris then that, if he was going to be in the pros, he’d have to get out of the 124league soon. That’s how good Webber was. But now all I could do was lean on my sense of patience and try to heal. (Sadly, Šarūnas also missed that entire season with knee issues.)
In my absence, the Warriors signed free agent Avery Johnson to be the starting point guard and gave Latrell a bigger role. Spree really clicked with Mully. They were excellent in pick and rolls, and Sprewell was playing great defense. His shot had improved, and he was making plays up and down the court. We relied on his athleticism, and his strength and his confidence increased almost daily. It was very hard to watch the team play without me. I wanted everyone to do well, of course. But to not be out there … it killed me. We had so many great players and I could have been the one to tie everyone together.
Beyond how difficult being out was—have you ever tried to rehab a torn ACL? It’s brutal. While I was able to come back stronger after it all, that’s not a guaranteed thing. I knew I needed help. I prayed a lot. I leaned on my friends and family, who encouraged me. There were a handful of low points throughout my recovery that season where I almost gave up. The only person who saw it was my wife. Getting my leg to work again properly was no easy task. Believing you can run on it, bend it, be flexible—it’s all a leap of faith. The one thing I tell people is to listen to the doctors. Don’t push beyond what they tell you.
In my absence, the team had a good regular season, going 50–32. Billy Owens had a solid year, averaging 15 points and 8.1 rebounds. Avery averaged 10.9 points and 5.3 assists. Mully, though, missed the beginning of the year with injury and only averaged 16.8 points to go along with 5.1 assists and 5.6 rebounds. But the stars of the show were Sprewell, who scored 21 points with 4.7 assists, 4.9 rebounds, and 2.2 steals, 125and Webber, who scored 17.5 points with 9.1 rebounds and 2.2 blocks, along with taking home Rookie of the Year honors. While things seemed rosy on the surface, there were a lot of internal problems. Entering the playoffs as the sixth seed, we faced off in the opening round against the third-seeded Suns … and got swept. Losing that quickly after a 50-win season is indicative of a team that had internal issues.
For much of the year, Nellie and Webber were at odds. The power forward had spent two years at Michigan as part of the famous Fab Five, along with Jalen Rose and Juwan Howard. After back-to-back losses in the NCAA championship game, he left school and was taken No. 1. He was super talented, but was still raw as a player in certain areas. On offense, Chris liked operating down low, going one-on-one and using his athleticism to dunk and score. But Nellie wanted to expand his game all over the floor. He wanted to make him more of a passer, put him at the free-throw line, and let him be the focal point of the offense.
Later in his career, when Webber was in Sacramento, he would do all these things to great success, challenging the Lakers in the West for NBA titles. But as a youngin, he was less confident in those skills and Nellie just couldn’t reach him. The hard part for me was knowing that if I’d been with the team and able to play, I could have been the liaison between the two and helped the rookie. I could have pushed him to become the NBA’s next great point forward. And who knows what would have happened with him, Latrell, Mullin, me, and the crew? But I wasn’t playing. I wasn’t even with the team most of the time. I was home, rehabbing and working out.
One of the things I did most while injured was shoot. I wouldn’t take jump shots, as my knee wouldn’t let me get off the 126ground while I was still healing. But I could stand there and get up on my toes and take set shots. So, I shot and shot. A thousand a day. Outside with a friend of mine at a sports complex in Los Angeles. Set shot after set shot. That’s how I got to be a better shooter. I’d shot 33 percent from behind the arc in 1992–93, and I knew that wasn’t good enough. And, as I had always seen, hard work meant results. The next season I not only doubled the amount of threes I took per game, but raised my average to nearly 38 percent. It was like night and day, and I gave myself more confidence with each set shot I took. If you shoot a thousand shots a day for five months, it better pay off!
I was able to observe the game while I was injured. Doing that, I actually picked up a few things that I used later on the court. I saw how to better control the tempo of a game in certain situations. When to slow it down versus speed it up. Once I got my leg stronger, I started to run on an outdoor track. I’d bring Tim Jr. with me—he was maybe two or three years old. I’d park him at one spot and run around the oval track. When I was running away, he’d cry. “Why are you leaving me, Dad?” But as I came back around, he’d smile again. It was very cute. And it helped those long days as I tried to get my wind back and my legs under me.
It was only late in the year with maybe a month or two left in the season—well, after the All-Star break—that I returned to the Warriors. After spending much of the first four months of the season away from the team, Nellie and Mully had asked me to start to come around. “I need you to help the young fella,” Nellie said. But by then everything had already gone sour. The two just weren’t on the same page. Webber was out there doing his own thing. The season hadn’t quite turned to chaos, but it 127was not what it could—or should—have been. Despite winning 50 games, no one was seeing eye to eye. Guys were playing more as individuals and not as a team. And while that might work in the short term, when you get to the playoffs it’s the opposite of what you need to have success. Webber had all the talent in the world, but he just didn’t believe in what Nellie was telling him. It was Billy Owens all over again, but even worse.
On defense, Coach wanted Chris to play center, too, knowing that if he could play that position, the team would be even more dangerous because he had a nice jump shot. But Chris didn’t want to bang down low on defense with guys like Olajuwon and Shaq.
Then, adding insult to injury, Webber decided that he’d had enough, and so used a clause in his contract that stated he wouldn’t be coming back to the Warriors for the upcoming season. The team really didn’t have any options, and so a few games into the following season, we traded him to the Washington Bullets for Tom Gugliotta and three first-round picks. If you ask me, that trade should never have happened. If I’d been there to help Nellie and Webber coexist, it could have all been different. I would have kept the tension down. Webber and Don Nelson could have stayed with the team, and we’d be able to make a deep run into the playoffs. But hindsight is always 20/20.
128
8 From the Bay to South Beach
I Didn’t know it at the time, but the 1994–95 season was my last full year with Golden State. Before the season began, the Warriors traded Billy Owens for Miami center Rony Seikaly, ending that experiment. To kick it off, the Warriors sent Webber to the Washington Bullets for Tom Gugliotta, who only ended up playing 40 games with us before being dealt to Minnesota.
Things just got worse from there. We started off slow, and went into the All-Star break with a dismal 14–31 record. Then, a day before we came back from the break, on February 13, 1995, Nellie resigned as our head coach. Then, three days later, our GM Ed Gregory traded Gugliotta to the Timberwolves for Donyell Marshall, turning a bad situation worse. But that’s NBA life. Things can turn on a dime. It happened to us with Mitch, and it happened again with Chris. Bad move after bad move. It was terrible. The only bright spot for the season again was Latrell, who made the All-NBA First Team, which was a huge honor. Some NBA seasons for teams can be fool’s gold and, sadly for us, the 50-win 1993–94 campaign was just that. What made it 129harder was that it was difficult to imagine improving next year. Over the summer, we lost Šarūnas, Avery, and Pop. Everything just seemed to be wrong.
Even though the news off the court was louder than it had ever been, we did our best to start the season off on the right foot. When I came back to the team, I felt confident I could return to my old self. But I would’ve had to become Superman to get us off the mat … and open the year, we won seven of our first eight games! I began the season averaging more than 20 points, to go along with almost nine assists per game.
But then, the wheels fell off. We followed our hot start by dropping 14 of our next 15. Then, after winning two straight against the Bullets and Lakers. We dropped 13 of 15, finishing the calendar year at 12–28. It was miserable. Along with that, I was still shaking off some rust from my injury and it was hard to get excited to play. (I’d developed bone spurs during my rehab and had to get arthroscopic surgery in June before the season.)
NBA legend Bob Lanier, who’d been an assistant, was named interim head coach. A former eight-time All-Star and the 1973–74 MVP, Lanier had a history of success in the league as a player with the Pistons and Bucks. As a coach for the remainder of the year, he was solid. But with Mully missing most of the year again, there was little hope to turn the year around.
Though Lanier brought enthusiasm to our locker room, we went just 12–25 with him at the helm. But at first, he was telling the press he didn’t want the job. I told him to go for it. “Stop saying you don’t want it! If you want the job, go for it!” I said. “Never tell these reporters and owners that you don’t want to be a head coach, that’s crazy! This is your opportunity.” I was trying to talk him up. And when he did get the job, I worked with Bob 130to get him straight with the offensive and defensive schemes. He’d only been an assistant with us for a short time, so I also helped him with running practices.
But in mid-March, I tore ligaments in my left wrist and had to get more surgery, which kept me out the rest of the season. Doctors told me it wasn’t going to heal unless I got the operation. So with our team far from making the playoffs and their guarantee that I’d be ready for next year, I agreed and went under the knife. For the year, I played in 62 games and averaged 20.1 points, 9.3 assists, 3.1 boards, and 1.4 steals. Latrell Sprewell, who was an All-Star again, averaged 20.6 points with four assists and 3.7 boards. It had been a lost year for the franchise, which was still suffering from trading Mitch, now a three-time All-Star and two-time All-NBA player. Our 26–56 record was the franchise’s worst in almost a decade.
* * *
Off the court, life was a bit better. Ever since the mid-1980s, the NBA has been a globally popular league, and I was the beneficiary of that a decade later. In 1995, Sports Illustrated put out its Below the Rim VHS, which highlighted the league’s top point guards, from Mark Price to Kevin Johnson to me. It was the era of NBA video tapes, which included Michael Jordan’s Come Fly With Me. Around that same time, I was picked by the league to host its NBA Rising Stars VHS, which showcased the NBA’s up-and-coming talent, from Alonzo Mourning and Larry Johnston to Shawn Kemp and Gary Payton.
The ’90s were truly an incredible time for the NBA and its marketability thanks to David Stern taking the game global. 131Video games were popular, too. EA Sports came out with their NBA Live 95, and one of the commercials showed me and Mully playing video games in the locker room, dunking on each other. Then Nellie came in to stop us like an angry dad and put an end to our fun. A few years later, EA Sports put me on the cover of their NBA Live 98 game (Mitch had been on the cover the year before). And five years before that, one of the bigger video games of the 1990s, NBA Jam—a two-on-two full-court basketball game—included me and Mully as the main duo for Golden State.
As it turned out, we were one of the more popular pairs used in that one over the years. To this day, people still come up to me on the street saying how much they loved having me in the game, running up and down and passing the ball to Chris for three. I was in my fair share of commercials around this time, too. From Cheetos to sneakers. There was the Nike ad where I was “Professor Hardaway,” and took everyone to school with my dribble. There was another Nike ad where me and Kevin Garnett played “The Fun Police.” I was even in a barber shop–themed commercial for Nike with Dennis Rodman and David Robinson talking smack.
There were commercials with the famous movie director, Spike Lee—one about talking trash and another where I was on a big bright outdoor court called “Spike’s Urban Jungle Gym” for the Nike Air Raid. That shoe was meant for outdoor use only, which was perfect for me as I grew up playing the game on the hardtop of Chicago. The sneakers would be good for families who couldn’t afford multiple pairs every year, since they were tough and didn’t wear out quickly. The commercial for the Air Raid shoe was probably my most famous, and ended with me 132saying, “I got skeeeelllls!” (One time a guy came up to me in the airport and said, “I just need to hear you say it!” and I repeated the line. “Thank you!” he said.) Later in 1996, I also had the red and black Air Bakin’, which were so beautiful.
The problem with all these shoe commercials, though, was that Nike didn’t pay much for them. The money was in the royalties if you had a signature shoe, and a lot of guys—myself included—didn’t have their own dedicated pair. We may have endorsed sneakers, but only names like Jordan and Shaq got those great deals. My agent Henry Thomas didn’t have his own marketing firm like some athlete agencies had, so I never really got the payday I wished I could have. And it could be difficult to find one that could handle you right or that you could trust. Still, I put in the work where I could. But Gatorade and Fruit of the Loom never called!
I remember one ad I did for Hibbett Sports about patenting my killer crossover. The tag line for that one was, “You don’t need a patent on something nobody can copy.” Those were fun. I grew up talking a lot on the court, and to take advantage of that for Nike and video game ads was a bonus—not something I could have ever predicted when I was just a kid playing ball for fun. But they were something I took to like a duck in water, which is why I always wanted more. I like to think I’m a pretty personable guy. Even during NBA games, if fans called out to me I’d engage with them. One time I remember a guy in the stands said, “Man, Tim you look tired.” And instead of mean mugging him, I replied, “Shit, I am! You know how hard it is to win a game?” I’m not the type of person to say, “Man, shut up, you don’t know shit!” What good is that going to do? That doesn’t help anyone—not the fan, not me, not the game of basketball or the NBA. If you have a 133good relationship with the fans, it will pay off. It’s like that movie Gladiator—win the fans and you’ll be loved.
One of the most fun moments in my career was playing in the MTV Rock N’ Jock game in the summer of 1995. MTV put those on at the UCLA campus and they included NBA players and celebrities. The games were famous for the 25- and 50-point shots, and hot spots around the court. People like Kemp, Queen Latifah, and Mark Curry from Hangin’ with Mr. Cooper (a show I was a guest on in ’92 when Mark tried out and played for the Golden State Warriors) would lace ’em up in the exhibition. They were a blast and quite popular when broadcast on television. As I’ve said, music and basketball have long been related. I was even mentioned in several rap songs, from Common Sense to Kanye West. That was a badge of honor for me coming from those Chicago-born hitmakers.
* * *
Getting back to basketball, with the trainwreck that was the 1994–95 season—from our terrible play and losing Nellie to my injury—I knew that the 1995–96 was going to be one of the most important seasons of my career. The previous season was one to forget, so in the offseason the team had made some big moves. Heading into the summer, the Warriors again saw good fortune in the draft. We got the No. 1 pick, and this time the team took sophomore Joe Smith, a slinky forward from the University of Maryland. The team also brought in point guard B. J. Armstrong. A six-year veteran, he had been selected by the Toronto Raptors in the 1996 expansion draft, but refused to report and so was traded to us.
134 It was clear that the team was headed in a new direction when the franchise and GM Dave Twardzik brought in Rick Adelman to coach, replacing Lanier. Adelman, who’d had success earlier in his career with the Portland Trail Blazers, taking a squad led by Clyde Drexler to two NBA Finals, decided to put me and Mully on the bench in favor of Armstrong and Jerome Kersey. It was the mark of a new era. Everything just felt different. Going into training camp, though, I tried to be optimistic. I’ve only ever wanted to win, and while I thought I was still the best option at point guard, I did what Coach thought was best for the team.
