Killer Crossover, page 18
We stood atop the Atlantic Division at the All-Star break with a 30–17 record. I was also voted to my fifth All-Star Game. The 1998 All-Star team was my favorite to play on—and, even though I didn’t know it at the time, would also be my last. It was thought to be Michael Jordan’s final All-Star team, too, and his last year both in Chicago and the NBA. I remember sitting next to Mike prior to the game, thanking him and expressing my appreciation for all he’d done for basketball. In the game, he would go on to score 23 points, matching his famous jersey number, and win MVP honors. Mike’s a great guy. People get on him for being too cutthroat, but that’s only if you aren’t willing to do what it takes to win.
The East won the game, 135–114, which meant that my teams had won in four of my five appearances. It also marked Kobe’s first All-Star appearance, and he and MJ went at it some on the court, as anyone who has seen the documentary The Last Dance knows. Also playing were stars like Grant Hill, Shawn Kemp, Penny Hardaway, Reggie Miller, Glen Rice, Gary Payton, Kevin Garnett, Shaq, Karl Malone, David Robinson, Mitch Richmond, and Tim Duncan.
While it felt good to give Mike his props, he and I didn’t often interact when we were on the court during the season. Even though we’d played them in 1996 and 1997, it was all business. Mike is a lot like me that way. You don’t need to give either of us something to get our fires going. Don’t need to give us something to think about. Because once you fuel that fire, you’re looking for hurt. You’re basically asking us to take it to the next level, and Mike was good enough as it was. That’s why I 180knew not to talk to Mike and he knew not to talk to me. We had that mutual understanding. We left each other alone while on the court. We didn’t want to rile the other up and then have to answer to our teammates on the bus about it after, even though we both knew what buttons to push when it came to the other one. Spike Lee, too. He never talked trash to me when I played the Knicks. He knew better. He knew I got my trash talk game from the streets of Chicago.
Some guys, though, I did like to talk with. Gary Payton comes to mind. We had our little back and forths, though I think Gary had those with just about everyone. We kept it to a minimum most of the time, but we both had such big mouths that we mixed it up and a few words got exchanged in the heat of battle. Kevin Johnson could talk a little trash here and there as well, but the great John Stockton never talked. He just went out and played. He was the kind of guy to hit you twice in a row on picks and, on the third time when you hit him back, he’d fall and the ref would call you for a foul. Mark Price never talked, either. A lot of guys didn’t say anything. But we knew the ones around the league who would give it that much more if you talked smack. Payton, Jordan, Larry Bird, Charles Barkley, and me to name a few.
Even though I was almost a decade into my career by now, I felt at the top of my game. I was healthy and feeling good, with no restraints or restrictions. I was motivating my team and feeling sharp. My knees felt great, my body felt great. I attribute it all to what we did as a team in practice and how we took care of ourselves. We’d get regular massages and make sure to rest between games. While I started all 81 games I played in during the 1997–98 season, I still felt fresh. I averaged 18.9 points 181and 8.3 assists, finishing sixth in MVP voting. One person that helped me stay ready was our great head trainer, Ron Culp. So was our strength and conditioning coach, Bill Foran. The only thing you couldn’t do when it came to them was be late!
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Another thing for certain back then was that I still had the best crossover in the NBA. Even though there was this new kid coming up in Philadelphia by the name of Allen Iverson, I knew I had the best one-two dribble in the league. Today, people have tried to put a wedge between me and AI, and I want to be clear once and for all that there is no beef between us. None whatsoever. We never had beef, and will never have beef. I’m fifty-seven and too old for that. But, at the same time, I’m not going to sit up here and let anyone tell me someone has a better crossover than me! If they do, it’s a flat-out lie.
Even though the crossover has evolved, coaches are still teaching my crossover to young players to this day. That’s how I know mine is the best, and always will be. When it comes to “The Answer,” I’m happy for everything that comes his way and I’m happy he’s back doing things with the NBA. We were worried about him there for a time; he lived a wild lifestyle for a number of years. But he’s back where he belongs, in the arms of the league. He deserves the world. He helped push the game forward and brought it to a whole new level (and also owes his coach in Philly, Larry Brown, a ton for that chance). But when it comes to crossovers, mine is still king! Why? Because mine is the tightest. I don’t carry the ball when I make my move. I just come down and shake and bake and get by the guy guarding me. 182My dribble is in the box—no extra movement, no wasted time or effort. If you dribble outside the box, you give up ground and waste time. When I do my killer crossover, I keep the ball on a string and go right by your shoulder, and if my shoulder hits yours, I’m knocking you over because that’s how low and under control I am.
Still, though, when it comes to the fraternity of the crossover there are some great names, including Iverson’s. There’s also Jason “White Chocolate” Williams. There’s Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf (formerly Chris Jackson when we played against each other in college), there’s Jamal Crawford, Chris Paul, and Chauncey Billups. When those guys needed to get somewhere, they got somewhere. Today, Kyrie Irving has an excellent handle. James Harden, Stephen Curry, and Donovan Mitchell do as well. Back in the day, Kevin Johnson could handle the rock and had a nice crossover. And of course there’s Rod Strickland. Those are some of the guys that come to mind when I think about the brotherhood of the crossover. But we all know who is still No. 1, don’t we?
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As I said, the 1997–98 season, despite some bumps in the road, went well for us. We were one of the best teams in the East heading into the second half of the season, but it was two weeks later, on February 19, when we felt our biggest blow. The problem was, unfortunately, self-inflicted. That day, we played the Los Angeles Clippers in Anaheim (for some reason), where the NHL squad, the Mighty Ducks, played. We won the game, 89–80. But before it, Pat made a trade that would haunt us. Making a deal with the Clippers, he sent away our Sixth Man and beastly 183center, Isaac Austin (along with guard Charles Smith and a first-round pick), and brought back the young guard Brent Barry.
I heard the news as I was headed to the gym to get ready for the game around 4 p.m. The move stunned us all because we thought we already had the team to make a run at a championship. If we were, we shouldn’t have dealt our award-winning backup center for an unproven, third-year guard. What are we doing? It all came down to money—the NBA is a business, of course. We had several big contracts on our books, and Pat needed to clear money to fit them all in. What sucks is that the decision to make the trade wasn’t about making us better. Now, I’m not trying to trash or bad mouth Brent here. But he wasn’t going to come in and make us better (he only played 17 games for us that year and we released him over the summer).
But Austin was a key player. Everyone on the team resented the trade. You could see it on our faces. Pat saw it on our faces. He knew. He addressed us before the Clipper game that night, and we talked seemingly for an hour. We just stared blankly back at him. Like, What the fuck did you do that for? We talked so much about the move that we almost missed tip-off. Normally a team comes out with about 20 minutes to go before the start of the game, but Pat kept talking and talking about the deal that we only made it out with five minutes to warm up. He was trying to get the point across and tell us the trade would help, but nobody was buying what he was trying to sell.
During the game, Pat didn’t coach much. He was mad at us for being mad at him. So he felt that if we thought we knew so much, we should coach ourselves that night. Let them do it on their own! When halftime came, he didn’t say anything to us in the locker room, so we just went out there and won the game on 184our own. I scored 16 points and dished five assists while Zo got 28 with 11 boards. P. J. Brown added nine points and a whopping 20 rebounds. We had a great frontcourt, but I knew that, in the playoffs, you need all the depth you could get. We needed Austin, and we’d soon find that out against our rivals.
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Around that same time, we lost Mash for the rest of the regular season (though he’d come back for the playoffs). Still, we finished the season 55–27 after going 13–2 in February, which was good for second in the East behind the Bulls. After splitting our first two games with the Knicks in January, we split our final two in April, with the home team winning all four contests (and a total of four points separating each team’s totals).
Heading into the playoffs as the second seed, we would be matched up against the seventh seed in the first round. And do you want to guess which team was the seventh seed? Yep, the New York Knicks. As previously mentioned, Pat had built the Heat in the Knicks mold. We were mirror images of each other. And it seemed like fate that we kept matching up against each other in the playoffs. Even if we tried to get away from one another in the seeding, it was our destiny to go to war. The NBA loved it, and so did the fans.
The Knicks knew we were a force in the East and wanted to inject talent to keep up. Today, I wouldn’t change our rivalry for anything. I loved every minute. Each playoff series was nip and tuck, back and forth, with fights and shoving. Each series went the distance. That’s what made it so fun. The nail-biting from game to game. There was real pressure. We knew that whenever 185we went to Madison Square Garden or whenever they came down to play us in Miami, it would be a slugfest.
Patrick Ewing had injured his wrist early in the season and was not expected to be back for the first round of the playoffs. With that edge, we wanted to make quick work of the Knicks to get a breather before the next round, unlike the season before when we’d gone the distance in the first two rounds.
With home-court advantage, no Ewing, and a healthy Zo, we were ready to dominate—which is just what we did in Game One. Up by 20 at the half, we were able to coast to an easy 94–79 victory. I had a game-high 34 points, and only LJ scored at least 20 points (21) for the Knicks. They were just no match for us! Even with Zo wearing a mask and looking like Jason from Friday the 13th in the game.
In Game Two, however, they showed their resolve and came back strong. The first half was back and forth. We finished the first quarter with a 10-point lead, but the game was tied by the half. We continued to go back and forth, and I think there were like ten or so lead changes in the third. But they outlasted us and won, 96–86. While Zo had 30 points and 13 boards, we lost Dan Majerle to a groin injury that would keep him out for Game Three. The Knicks, though, had three guys score 20-plus and we couldn’t get the win. It was also their first playoff win without Ewing in the lineup in more than a decade. Even so, the series kept going back and forth.
No matter who was playing for either team, the battle, the matchup felt the same. It wasn’t two teams or two sets of players facing it, it was two cultures engaging one another. But the funny thing was, we were mirror images of one another. The same culture going up against its equal. It didn’t matter who 186was sitting with injury, what new free agent either squad picked up. The evolution was always happening, but nothing about the tension changed. Still hard-nosed, still get-up-in-your-jersey defense. Even as we went deep into the ’90s. For me, my biggest rivals were Chris Childs and Charlie Ward. But I didn’t care who was on the team, I just wanted to beat the Knicks.
In New York, as the series continued, we won Game Three, 91–85. Voshon Lenard went crazy, scoring 28. I had 27 with seven assists and five rebounds. After stumbling in Game Two, things were now looking good. One more win and we’d take the series and move on. Our rivalry was great for basketball, great for TV, and great for the fans. It was like the old Boston Celtics and Los Angeles Lakers battles—bloody and personal. It was beautiful.
Two days later, on April 30, we prepared ourselves to close out the series, though again without Majerle. However, as had been the case in our matchups with the Knicks, things didn’t go as planned.
Throughout the first half things were essentially even, with us exchanging buckets back and forth. We went into halftime tied at 47 apiece, knowing that we’d need to turn things up to get the win and close out the series. New York had a balanced attack all game, and five guys finished in double-figures. I scored 33 points with nine assists, and Zo had 29 points of his own, but we didn’t get much out of our bench and they were able to out-muscle and out-rebound us, pulling out a 90–85 victory to tie the series. In fact, Zo and I had 18 of our teams 20 points in the fourth quarter, which is never a good sign (unless you’re talking about Jordan and Pippen). But it was what happened in the game’s final seconds that doomed us.
187 Things were still close, and we were down just five with 90 seconds left after I got a steal off Childs and then drained a three, and followed that with another bucket at the top of the key (thanks to my killer crossover) to make it a three-point game, 86–83. Things had already been aggressive under the boards, and with just 10 seconds left LJ had muscled Zo under the boards to draw a foul, hitting both free throws. I had to shoot a long three as time was expiring, and Starks grabbed the rebound and went to dribble the ball out before getting fouled. But it was what happened away from the ball that would make people talk about this game to this day.
It was common knowledge that Zo and Larry Johnson disliked each other. It’d gone back to their Charlotte days and carried over into the Heat-Knicks rivalry. But just before the whistle blew on the foul of Starks, I looked over and saw the two big men start swinging their giant fists at each other like they were in some backyard brawl. The two had been going at it for most of the game, and I guess they couldn’t contain themselves at the end—especially with LJ hitting Zo in the neck on a box out. Thankfully their punches didn’t connect. Still, the event was ugly. Knicks coach Jeff Van Gundy seemingly lost his mind and tried to break up the fight midway. What’s crazy is Oak was one of the first to get in between the two, trying to keep Zo from getting back at LJ.
But after Larry hit Jeff in the ear by accident, the 5-foot-9 coach got swallowed by the swarm and could only cling to Zo’s leg for safety like a child. I had been behind Oakley trying to get him off Zo when I saw Van Gundy on the floor and tried to push the guys away to help him up. In the aftermath, Zo and LJ were each suspended, and so we were without one of our best 188players for the deciding game back in Miami. That’s when the trade of Isaac Austin really came back to bite us in the ass. Even without Ewing they’d been out-rebounding us for much of the series, so now without Zo we knew we’d be in trouble under the hoop. It was a huge outcome and much worse for us than for New York.
To this day, people want to know why Zo and LJ started to fight. What was the real reason? All I can say is that it was something personal that went way back. It wasn’t about basketball. But that’s all I can say. If either of them ever wants to talk about what happened, that’s up to them. That’s their business. But it was more personal than it was basketball. I wish I could say more, but it’s not my story to tell. In the end, though, what hurt us more than even Zo getting suspended was what Pat Riley said to us after the game. Pat came into the locker room, saying, “Zo, what did you do? What did you do? God damn, Zo, you don’t do shit like that! You just lost the series for us!”
Meanwhile, we still had one more game. Pat saying that lost him the locker room. (He later said his only regret was that none of Zo’s punches landed.) It was as if Pat didn’t believe in the rest of the guys who would be playing in Game Five. That hurt the team and took our spirit. The rest of us looked around like, What are we, castoffs? What about us? You don’t believe in us? That’s where our minds went. I could see it flash on the faces of all my teammates. We might have been able to win Game Five, but we were deflated. Our leader didn’t believe we could do it and we were without our All-Star center and Sixth Man of the Year backup and no Majerle, too.
It was the Knicks game to win, and they got it done. We were down by 17 at the half and could barely make a dent in their 189lead. P. J. Brown did his best to step into Zo’s spot, scoring 18 points with 10 rebounds, and despite my 21 points and eight assists, we just couldn’t compete. Allan Houston got 30 for the Knicks, Oakley had 18 points and 13 rebounds, and we got blown out at home, in the series-deciding game, 98–81.
With the disappointment of getting eliminated in the first round of the playoffs after the season we’d had, we knew there’d be some changes to the roster. I’d averaged 26 points in the Knicks series, and while you never know the future, I was confident I’d be back. It was too bad, though, losing how we did. It was a tough pill to swallow. We’d had expectations to go far—to the Eastern Conference Finals, or beyond. In the next series, the Knicks lost in five games to the Indiana Pacers. Maybe we could have done better, but that’s life in the NBA. It comes at you fast. Like a fist flying in the air. You have to duck, bob and weave, and counter. Then there was always another thing coming.
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11 A Lockout and the Bouncing Buzzer-Beater
Allan Houston was a killer in the playoffs. But before there was any possibility of us facing him and his Knicks again in the postseason, in the hopes of avenging last season’s loss, the entire league had to navigate a complete basketball shutdown. Not only had Michael Jordan retired (again), but the NBA had come to a screeching halt due to an argument over money. The owners wanted changes, including a ceiling on player salaries, and the players wanted changes, including higher minimum salaries. I was there in New York for some of the negotiations. As far as the players were concerned, some wanted to cancel the year and some wanted to play. It was a mess, and a difficult time for everybody—players and team employees alike.
