Killer Crossover, page 25
I like to watch Tim, too, of course. I’m glued to the screen. I want to see how he’s doing and be able to offer critiques (if I’m asked). But I like to do it in silence. That’s just me. I went so far in 2024 during the NBA Finals as to go watch him play. His Dallas Mavericks squad was in the Finals against the Boston Celtics, and while Boston was favored, it began as anybody’s series. The difficult part for me, though, was that Tim wasn’t getting as many minutes as I thought he should. And when he did, his team didn’t work to get him the ball. He’s always been a scorer, whether starting or coming off the bench. But in the Finals, it was all about Luka.
During the summer of 2024, I was covering the playoffs for FOX Sports, but would fly to games to watch my son and do my broadcasts via Zoom for the radio. I’d be going all over the country, but the best part about it was that I could see Tim during 258one of the most pressure-packed times of his career. I played in college, but never made the NCAA Finals. I played in the NBA, but never made the NBA Finals. So being able to watch him in both over the course of his life was a father’s dream. Maybe I would have made the NBA Finals one year if it wasn’t for that fucker Michael Jordan, but that’s neither here nor there.
Yolanda wasn’t able to travel during the summer. Unfortunately, she was recovering from foot surgery, so she couldn’t see him play live. But she and Tim would talk on the phone every day. That just made me want to be with him more on the road, going from series to series. His big 2024 playoff moment came in the second round against the Oklahoma City Thunder. Except for the opening game, which OKC won, every matchup in the series was close. But Tim, wearing No. 10, was a big spark in Game Two. Coming off the bench, he scored 17 points, shooting 6–10 from the floor and 2–4 from three. He was a plus-15 in just 18 minutes, and Dallas won, 119–110. Without him, they might have gone down 0–2 to Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and OKC. In Game Three, he scored eight points in a 105–101 win for the Mavs, but his coach Jason Kidd, who I knew well from my NBA days and winning gold in Sydney, stopped playing him after that. It wasn’t until a Dallas blowout in Game Four of the Finals that he got significant time. In that one, he shot 5–7 from three for 15 points. Doris Burke called him an “igniter” on the TV broadcast, and they even put my mug on the screen from my seat in the stands.
But that was all the action Tim got. As a father, that was tough to watch. Jason and GM Nico Harrison weren’t communicating. I could see on Tim’s face that he was hurting, and there were commentators making him the butt of jokes. I told him to just 259keep doing what he was supposed to be doing in practice. The team just never ran any offensive plays for him. In Dallas, Luka ran the whole show (until he was traded to the Lakers). But I just told Tim there would be new and better days to come. Parenting is not something that ever stops, and I was glad I could be there for him. To console him during a tough time in his career.
After the Finals, once Dallas lost 4–1 in the series, the team cancelled Tim’s scheduled exit meeting, which we knew was fishy. Then, eleven days later, they traded him to the rebuilding Detroit Pistons. At least he was now close to home. I believe Tim will continue to have a bright future in the NBA (maybe one day he’ll even play for the Heat!). My son has a brilliant basketball IQ and has helped every squad he’s been on throughout his time in the league. Shoot, he averaged 17.8 points per game for Dallas during the 2019–20 postseason, and 17 a game in 2020–21. But that’s okay. You got to get in where you fit in.
I’m just glad Tim is living his dream and glad he can do what he loves to do. That’s all that matters to me as his dad. That’s all that’s ever mattered. I learned my lesson years ago not to impose what I want on him or on Nia and Nina. Today, Nina is a successful real estate agent in Atlanta, and Nia is working with animals at a veterinary hospital, which she loves. She also has a three-year-old daughter, Reza, who just melts my heart. Reza brightens up a room and puts giant smiles on her grandparents’ faces. I love spending time with her. Family is so important, and I know that today better than ever.
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Memory Lane: Tim Hardaway Jr.
When I think of growing up with my dad, a lot comes to mind. First off, it was hard-nosed. He always kept me humble. He never let me have the perks, the glam, or anything that resembled something flashy as a kid back then. He always kept me in my lane, appreciative of everything we had. I think that’s because that’s the way he grew up in Chicago. That was the only way he knew. He wanted to make sure I never got too high or cocky or spoiled, given the lifestyle that my siblings and I had growing up. It was a way of him making sure that we were always grounded.
As a dad, there were lots of phases. He loved us dearly as kids. He was a great father. Knowing what I know now as an adult, I know that it’s hard to juggle your job and your life and your family and coming back home, getting the proper rest to go out there and perform. So now I can see why he was the way he was when my sisters and I were younger. He was great, but it also got to a point where he was tough on me. Not toward my sisters, but to me. Now I understand why but, back then, I didn’t really get it. I’m pretty sure he was like that because his dad was the same way.
I later realized he had to understand that I wasn’t brought up like he was. He didn’t live in a big house with a huge backyard that could fit a full basketball court and a swimming pool and a playground and trees to climb on and friends with boats and a beach that you could drive to. He never had that. So, I had more options than he did. He saw basketball as a way out. I never really saw it that way. I didn’t have to. I saw basketball as more of a hobby and something that I was good at. But don’t get me wrong, to grow up in an NBA environment was incredible. It was cool to be around the guys.
261 You don’t really know what’s going on—all you know as a kid is that you’re with your pops. You don’t know any better, just that you’re going to a game and they’re rooting for your dad, then you get to go back home. But then you start getting older and when you’re in elementary school and middle school you realize, Oh shit, my dad is a big effing deal! He’s a huge deal. He’s an All-Star. He’s the guy in the city that all the kids run up to and want autographs. You start to see that. And then you really are excited about it. But then when you get to middle school and high school and you try to follow in your dad’s footsteps, it can be tough.
Then it’s a lot of people trying to bully you, trying to get under your skin. Some people just don’t know how to take it. It’s a pros and cons thing. The pros are that you’re growing up in a privileged lifestyle with successful parents—because my mom had to take care of us, and she did a hell of a job. So I always give my mom credit for that. You grow up in a big house with everything you need. But the cons are that when you go outside that gate and you’re following in your dad’s footsteps, and you’re performing how you perform, you have kids bullying you. Kids tell you you’re not as good as your dad. Your dad sucks. You suck. You’ll never be this, you’ll never be that, you’ll never make it. You’re only doing this because your dad did it, but you’ll never get anywhere. You’re constantly hearing that. It’s a gift and a curse. That’s something I had to deal with in school. Then you’re trying to defend yourself and you get in trouble or detention or suspended from school for a couple of days for fighting. It’s hard, but I don’t think there’s anything I would have changed because you don’t get to where I’m at by backing down. You would probably hear the same from any son following in his father’s big footsteps in any job.
262 There are kids that grow up who want to be their father or want to be something and the only way to get through that is sacrifice, determination, and having integrity in yourself. Just having that all-out mindset of I’m going to make it. Whether someone is bashing me or not. But when I think of my dad, if there was one picture I would want to get of him, it would be a “before and after” photo. The “before” is where he’s sitting down on the court in the front row, yelling at me and bashing me, trying to get me to do things and not see how hard I was trying to make him happy. Then the “after” picture would be where he is sitting high in the stands and keeping his mouth shut and watching me play. And seeing me do all the things that he has taught me and told me to do throughout the years. When he saw the amount of spirit and passion and energy and focus I had to do everything I could do to make him happy that day. The reason why I say all that is because the before picture was when he was, for me, at his worst. It was a dark time for me as a basketball player trying to find myself. And that’s why I feel I’m in the position I’m in right now, because I had to try to fight through that. To make him happy.
I get emotional talking about this even today. Sometimes tears come to my eyes. There would be times when he wouldn’t understand the amount of fight that I had to go through with everyone in my life. There would be times when he wouldn’t understand that I had to fight not only him, but my peers. And I don’t think he got that at first. It was like I was fighting him, my friends, and my teammates in order to make everyone happy, and sometimes it just felt like too much. That was the case from middle school until my freshman year of high school. Then the summer going into my sophomore year, everything changed.
It took someone else, my school’s athletic director at the time, Miss Yvette McKinney (who sadly passed away several 263years ago), but it took her to tell him, “You can’t be putting that much pressure on your son because it’s affecting him and what he’s going through in school.” It took someone like her to tell him, “Sit up in the stands and see how hard he’s trying to play to make you happy.” And then when he did that, he finally saw me for me. Right after the game, he apologized and said, “I’m sorry for destroying the family, I’m sorry for putting you through all this bullshit, and I’m sorry for not letting you flourish.”
He let me be the player I was always going to be, the one I was trying to be from early on. He told me he was going to be there for me and that he saw everything I was doing, everything that he’d asked of me. And he said, “I love you and I’m happy for you.” I was smiling in my head, but I was also like, What the hell’s going on here? while we were driving home in the car. Why’s he doing this right now? But I was smiling inside—like, finally. And after that, it was just so much weight off my shoulders, so much weight, that it allowed me to flourish on and off the court. And now I’m here. I made it.
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15 Taking Responsibility
Valentine’s Day. February 14, 2007. I’ll remember it forever and regret what I said out of ignorance that day for the rest of my life. I’ll also be making amends for it just as long. During my career, I talked a lot. I was known for it on the court. But the dumbest thing I said was in an interview with sports journalist and Miami radio host, Dan Le Batard. It wasn’t just bad for the result it had on my career, but it was stupid for the impact it had on others—many of whom I’d never even met. It began like this: in February of 2007, the former 6-foot-10 NBA center John Amaechi came out as gay. With that, he became the first former player to make such a public statement.
Not long after that, I was in Las Vegas for the NBA All-Star Game doing camps and other stuff for the league. Someone from the PR department pulled me aside and asked if I wanted to talk to Dan for his radio show. I said sure, no problem. I knew Dan from Miami, and he’d always been a good guy and a fair journalist. Then at the end of our talk, Dan asked me, “Tim Hardaway, last question before we let you go. How do you deal with a gay 265teammate?” He was asking me, like any journalist would, about the topic because of Amaechi’s recent revelation. And I could have said anything, including that I just live and let live.
But instead I said, “Whew. First of all, I wouldn’t want him on my team. And second of all, if he was on my team, I would really distance myself from him because I don’t think that’s right and I don’t think he should be in the locker room while we’re in the locker room. And just a whole lot of other things. So I wouldn’t even be a part of that. But stuff like that is going on and there’s a lot of other people I hear like that that are still in the closet and don’t want to come out of the closet. So, I just leave that alone.” Dan then responded, “You know that what you’re saying there, Timmy, is flatly homophobic, right? It’s bigotry.”
Then I doubled or even tripled down. “Well, you know, I hate gay people. So, I let it be known. I don’t like gay people. I don’t like to be around gay people. Yeah, I’m homophobic. I don’t like it. It shouldn’t be in the world or in the United States and I don’t like it.”
Ugh.
After that, my world came crashing down. The NBA pulled me from all my All-Star Weekend activities. My job with Trinity Sports dismissed me and I endured an avalanche of public ridicule and criticism from news outlets and television shows like ESPN’s Pardon the Interruption. Now I’m talking about it all here because I’m not afraid to address anything I’ve done, dumb or not.
Why? Because my story may still be able to help other people. I don’t want to leave anything out just because I’m ashamed of it or it’s hard to relive. What I said to Dan haunts me every day, and I’m so sorry for it. But I’ve also grown a great deal. A lot of 266people since that 2007 interview told me that they thought Dan baited me into the conversation or that it was a trick question. A lot of people said they thought he was doing me wrong. But that’s just not the case. I was the one who was wrong. It’s not an excuse for my behavior, but my beliefs then about gay people had been seared into me as a child. And I spoke to Dan thoughtlessly based on them.
People all around me in Chicago had shitty nicknames for gay people when I was growing up. They said gay people would try to grab you and even pull you into the shadows. People made me scared of them. Growing up in the church didn’t help either. The church instilled in me that to be gay was wrong. But the only thing wrong was me and my thinking. In the wake of what I said to Dan, people reached out to me. I heard from friends, my parents, and my wife about it. While they expressed support for me as a person, they told me in no uncertain terms that I had to change my thinking. They rightly suggested I seek counseling.
But the hardest part for me, personally, was seeing how much my actions had upset my kids. You could just see it on their faces. Disappointment. How much I’d hurt them. Not only did they see their dad now on the wrong side of something important, but they had gay friends and knew how upset they would be when they’d have to face them at school or work. I was so sorry to disappoint them. My first public apology came a few hours after my interview in a phone interview with FOX affiliate WSVN in Miami. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I shouldn’t have said I hate gay people or anything like that.” I also released a statement with my agent the next day, on February 15.
I talked more about what I’d said, admitting I had no idea how much I hurt people. A lot of people. I quickly realized my 267comments were the biggest mistake I’d made in my life—and I admitted that I was going to do anything and everything I could to make it right. To correct what I’d done. I knew I couldn’t change what some people thought of me. It’s all you can do to change yourself. Even Oprah wanted me to go on her show to talk about that, but I knew I wasn’t ready for that kind of public scrutiny. So I just made sure that I said something publicly to clear the air, to let the world know how wrong I was, and that I would get help.
But, at the same time, I knew that just saying I was sorry wasn’t enough for me or anyone else. As the saying goes, it’s about action not words. It’s easy for people in trouble to play “apology bingo” and then hope everything blows over. But I didn’t want that. I wanted to use this as a learning experience. To be a better person. So I set out to put one foot in front of the other and do the work needed to make amends. I knew I had to do some soul-searching. And after my conversation with Dan, I began to educate myself. That was the first step for me. I learned that what gay folks go through on a daily basis can be horrible. As a kid, I’d walked through Chicago scared of gangs, but many gay folks have to go through life scared of everyone around them, even people in their own homes. Their own parents may not accept them, let alone let them live under the same roof. I realized that the LGBTQ community often went through hell, and the last thing they were trying to do was harm me. One of the worst parts about the whole experience was that I have gay people in my family and now I was one of those people hurting them. Cousins, nephews, and friends of mine are gay. I knew they were gay, but it had never come up in conversation between us—now I know why. But when I realized what 268I’d said, I thought about them, and it made me sick. Not only did I hurt myself, but I hurt people in my family, people I cared about. What I said hurt all of us.
I really don’t know why I wasn’t thinking about them when Dan asked me his question. I really don’t. But I wish I had. I know I’m not the only person who has dealt with unhealthy thoughts about gay folks, too. Even Magic Johnson had to overcome his own issues. That started with his son, EJ, who is gay. For a long time, Magic struggled with that fact. But through education and understanding, he sorted out his issues and now Magic and EJ love one another deeply. For my part, it was about two weeks after the interview with Dan when I went to counseling. It came after a conversation I had with NBA commissioner David Stern.
I’d had a few interactions with Stern before in my career. Shaking hands, talking here and there. I had a lot of respect for him, but we didn’t know each other all that well. He was a good man and all the players could talk to him like a friend for the most part. But that wasn’t exactly the case on this occasion. My agent and I went to his office a week or two after my conversation with Dan, and Stern … well, he ripped me a new one. He cussed me out—and I deserved it. “What the fuck were you thinking?!” “Why did you say some bullshit like that?!” I’d heard about him cussing people out, but now I knew what it was like firsthand.
