Killer Crossover, page 5
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Going into my senior season at Carver, everyone knew where I was headed next. Between my junior and senior season, despite not getting any recruitment letters, I was finally invited to a Nike All-American basketball camp. This was a major stepping-stone. It was also at this camp where I changed my jump shot. Those who saw me in the pros likely noticed that, when I shot, I almost curled the ball over my head and let it fly. But as a younger player, my shot started lower, on the side of my head by my right ear with my left hand in front of my forehead. This made my shot easy to block, and I couldn’t have that at the next level.
It wasn’t a problem in lower levels of the game because I was always quick and could get past guys, but when I went to the All-American camp at Princeton University, I knew I had to make an adjustment. The person who helped was Craig Robinson. Back then, Craig was just a ball player I knew from Chicago. But people today know him now as the former men’s basketball coach at Oregon State University and the brother of Michelle Obama. But at the Nike camp, he was just one of the counselors. 33He came up to me one day when I was shooting around and pulled me aside. “Tim,” he said. “I think you should change your jumper. It would be good for you.” I said, “Let me see what you got,” and Craig showed me how to shoot from above my head. “Shoot like this for about twenty minutes and see how it feels.” Well, I did just that … and I never went back. I got comfortable almost immediately and knew it was the change I needed to take my game to the next level (both literally and metaphorically). Later, when I got to UTEP to play for the Miners, I would perfect my shot thanks to a great deal of repetition. But I’d set the foundation then and there at that Nike camp. It’s funny how small the world can be. Little did I know that the man who helped me change my jumper would be the same person whose sister would be the first Black First Lady of the United States.
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My senior year in 1984–85 was my breakout. Even so, I worked hard to stay humble. Whether it was the safety pin jokes or my friends, I kept my feet on the ground and my eyes looking forward. I never wanted “yes men” around me and so that’s how it went. Ever since staying back as an eighth grader, I wanted to be held accountable for everything. Not to mess up. A good teacher can help with that. That was Carver’s assistant principal, Mr. Richie. He lived about 10 minutes away from me in Chicago and would drop me off at home after practice when he could. At times he’d also pick me up and give me a ride to school in the morning.
Mr. Richie passed away from cancer when I got to the NBA, and I miss him dearly. Another favorite teacher was Mr. Sailes. He was the school accountant, and also did the books for a local church. 34He was always a warm, kind-hearted person who treated me like an adult. But my favorite teacher was Ms. Hunter. She was a gym teacher, cheerleading coach, and women’s basketball team coach. And one of her players when I was at Carver was the future WNBA MVP, Yolanda Griffith. When Carver retired my number in 2022, Ms. Hunter was there. She came up to me during the ceremony and laughed, “I still got my safety pin, Tim!” I smiled. “I bet you do!”
As far as the basketball team my senior year, we were ready to go far. The difficult part of the season, though, was that Coach Walters was dealing with cancer. Born and raised in Arkansas, there were seven boys and three girls in his family, and cancer took all of the men. As he coached us that season, he had to wear a colostomy bag. The cancer was eating at his intestines. It was brutal. In the city playoffs, we had a good seed and ended up playing South Shore, led by my former grammar school coach, Mr. Pittman, whose team I’d almost jumped to.
He’d followed me to Carver when I enrolled as a freshman and coached junior varsity. Then he became the varsity coach at South Shore, which was walking distance from where I lived. But since Coach Walters got our schedule straight, I stuck around. Coach Pittman was worried that if I’d left Carver for his program, people would have been upset. “They’re going to kill me if you come here,” he told me. He thought the refs wouldn’t give his teams another call. But it was all moot in the end. When we matched up against his team in the playoffs, Coach Walters advised me not to stay home in the neighborhood the night before the game. “Everyone knows you live around there,” he said. “They won’t let you rest.” He didn’t want folks calling my house all night, didn’t want them messing with me. “You can’t stay home,” he said. But I told him, “Coach, that ain’t nothing. 35That’s just another day for me. People talking shit. If anything, that makes me MORE ready!” But he wouldn’t take no for an answer and took me to his house, where I spent the night. His wife served me breakfast in the morning and then I went to school. That night in the quarterfinal game against South Shore, I scored 45 points. “Told you,” Coach Walters said. But I knew I would have had that no matter where I slept before the game.
The playoffs went well for us. We were supposed to play King next, but they were upset in the semifinals by Simeon, a team that we’d played twice a year in our conference and were familiar with. When the cards are in your favor, you go with ’em! We made it all the way to the 1985 Chicago public league championship and would face off against Simeon. Heading into the finals, I came in averaging 23 points. Simeon had future NBA star Nick Anderson, too. He was one of the great talents in the city. But not everyone makes it like we eventually did. Take Simeon, which was without its 6-foot-8 star Ben Wilson, who’d been a top recruit but was murdered the same day the team’s season was to begin. Another victim of the city. (Anderson actually wore Wilson’s No. 25 jersey during his collegiate and NBA career to honor his fallen teammate.)
My team had good players like Jerry Smith, Caleb Davis, Wade Jenkins, and Rodrick Hudson. Simeon had guys like David Knight, Eric David, Erving Small, Allen Gordon, and Deion Butler. They were coached by Bob Hambric, who’d never had a losing season. Wearing my No. 10 jersey, I opened the championship game with an assist from about half court to Wade. Then I scored the second bucket for our team. I was directing traffic from the jump, and we were going back and forth with the highly favored Simeon. The game’s TV announcers called 36me one of the best guards in the city. “When you’re short, you’ve got to be smart,” they said of me. “And this kid is smart.”
The fresh-faced Nick Anderson, a future star for the Orlando Magic, came off the bench for Simeon. He was a junior and one of the team’s top scorers, their extra punch. Much of the game was played inside and the rail-thin, 6-foot-5 Anderson could rebound with the best. After the first quarter we led 13–12, but then Simeon went on a run and we fell behind, 29–17. Then 33–23. They just kept adding a point here and a point there to their lead. With seven minutes left in the fourth quarter, they were up by ten, 50–40. They were double- and triple-teaming me, trying to take the ball from my hand after I passed halfcourt.
We cut the score to 50–45 with 4:37 left after I got us a bucket, but Nick answered to increase their lead to 52–45. I got a layup on the other end to make it 52–47 with four minutes left. “He’s taking over the ballgame!” the announcer said. Nick hit two free throws, and I responded with an assist to my teammate Wade Jenkins. The score was 53–49 with 3:30 left. Simeon got a bucket and then I answered again, scoring my 20th point of the game. It was 55–51. Simeon got the lead to 57–51 with 2:18 left and then we cut it to 58–53 with 1:40 to go. I got a steal and took it down the court but missed a layup. With a minute left, Simeon was up six and we couldn’t get any closer.
* * *
It was disappointing to lose the city championship, but making the game was an honor. I’d averaged 20-plus points as a senior, and now I had the rest of my career in front of me. But first came a rite of passage. Up until this time, I’d never dunked. I was 37feeling good about myself and, in the gym one day, I thought, You know what? Let me try and dunk this damn ball. I was playing pickup, but during a break I set my sights on the rim. I decided I would try it like Spud Webb in the NBA’s Slam Dunk Contest. So I bounced the ball up off the court and it went high in the air. Then I leapt up and got it and as I came back down toward the rim, I slammed the thing home.
The other guys in the gym said, “Man, we never seen you dunk before!” It was actually the first time I’d ever tried it. Turns out I could have been doing it long before! I was checking boxes left and right, but before I went to UTEP, I got to experience my biggest dream. I couldn’t play in the Chicago State pro-am until after high school, that was the rule. But after I graduated, I made sure to sign up. The pro-am began around July 1 and I couldn’t wait. My first team in the pro-am boasted NBA shooting guard Eddie Johnson, a 20-point scorer who was from the city. But he wasn’t the only guy there from the league. Doc Rivers and Mo Cheeks came, too.
Eddie was a scorer, so it was maybe for that reason that our coach in the pro-am made the team all about him. “Get the ball to Eddie,” he told me over and over. To Eddie? I thought. Shit, I want to work on MY game, too! Eddie was going to get his shots, but I wasn’t there to be his sidekick! Some coaches just can’t get out of their players’ way. What they should be doing is seeing who needs help. But if a guy can ball, let him do it. Oh well, I’d do what I needed to do. That first game in the pro-am came against Darren Brickman, a skilled high school player who never made the pros.
People called him “Ali Baba” because he was such a thief on the court. Darren could just snatch the ball right from you. He would pick you up in the backcourt, 94 feet from the basket. 38You had to shake him. I’d played him before in many hot gyms in pickup games that sometimes went to 150 points. Played him in places like Robichaux, Fernwood, LeClaire, and other spots. As I brought the ball up on the Chicago State court, at first I didn’t get past the free-throw line before he picked me up and stripped the ball. Damn! The crowd oohed and aahed. They were always up for a show. Okay, then!
When I got it back, he picked me up at full court again. But without a pick from a teammate, I shook him and went the distance and scored a basket of my own, drawing a foul. The crowd went wild again—this time for me. That’s when I knew I belonged. The rest of the season went well despite my coach always telling me to “Get Eddie the ball.” And while I played in the pro-am in later years, I didn’t suit up for that coach again. I knew everything that I did had to be about getting better. I had a career ahead of me and if I played my cards right, it could last several decades. After the pro-am finished, it was time to head down to UTEP.
Memory Lane: Rus Bradburd
Tim Hardaway arrived in El Paso in 1985 with an already-impressive skill set: polished dribbling, imagination when leading a fast break, and uncanny anticipation on defense. What would separate Tim from the more highly recruited— and what powered his dramatic rise—was his determination to keep improving. Through sheer sweat, smarts, and humility, Tim made himself into an accurate three-point shooter, someone who could slow down to direct Coach Don Haskins’s half-court offense and also grow into a shrewd man-to-man 39defender. This humility and eagerness to improve has carried over into every area of his life.
I think a lot about the first time I saw Tim play—outdoors, in the wind, at South Shore Park, in a 3-on-3 half-court setting. In a funny way, what stood out to me was what he did not do that day. Coach Haskins insisted on rabid and relentless effort, and that day Tim hardly broke a sweat. What got my attention, though, was his vision—it was like everyone else was on beginners level Pac Man, level one, and Tim was an expert, toying with them as they plodded around as though playing in galoshes in the Chicago snow.
Years later, after he exploded onto the NBA scene, captivating fans, media, and Spike Lee, I started to think about a stark contrast in Tim’s life. Yes, he revolutionized the game, due to his cutting edge crossover dribble and breathtaking ball skills. He popularized dribbling wizardry, spawned a generation of copycats, and brought the game into the modern era. Yet, in many ways, Tim has always been “old school,” a throwback to a bygone era—and not just in his dedication to practice, his work ethic.
Carver High School wasn’t close to his home, but he traveled there most days with his grade school coach, Don Pittman, who’d gone to Carver when Tim did. Yet, when Pittman left for his own head job—at nearby South Shore High School—Tim was true to his school and he stayed behind. At UTEP, after starting on a Top 20 team as a sophomore, he had chances to transfer, go to bigger conference. Instead, he remained loyal to the crusty and gruff Haskins. To this day, he’s still married to his high school sweetheart. That’s Tim Hardaway, to me: he’s the old school revolutionary.
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3 Growing Up at UTEP
El Paso is a long way from Chicago—around 1,500 miles. I officially enrolled in 1985. To play my position well, I’d always studied the mannerisms of my opponents like I studied those of the people around me growing up in Chicago. When you come from a tough place, it becomes a sixth sense. You watch how a person moves. On the court, you watch how they play. What their dribble looks like, where they like to shoot. I’m a people person, but that works both ways. When it’s good, I have chemistry. When it’s bad, I’m a detective.
Part of my investigations included my handle with the ball. You can guide your defenders based on your dribbling. And it was a skill I’d perfected—even before shooting and passing— when I was young. I went outside in the Chicago cold by myself to work on it. That’s all there was when the gyms were closed from the blizzards. Or if there was too much snow or rain I’d go down into my family’s unfinished basement. There were two seven-foot beams holding up the ceiling five feet apart. The walls were about eight feet apart. So I would practice by dribbling 41around those beams. In and out, crossovers. I’d use them like picks. I’d make bounce passes to the walls. For hours.
My imagination was my defender. Other times I’d be in a group of my friends on the sidewalk. Grass would be on either side and we called that space out of bounds. There would be four or five kids and they’d all be trying to steal the ball from me. And I’d dribble on the concrete with nowhere to go, just fending them off. Holding one kid back with my arm, switching hands, dribbling between my legs. That was the game we played. Sometimes we didn’t have anything else to do because our parents would tell us not to step off the block and we didn’t want to play Atari or read anymore. “Can’t go off the block today, Tim,” Mom would tell me. I’d ask why and she’d say, “What I tell you?”
It was the same on an outdoor court. I’d put my own nets up on the hoops (if you left yours there, they’d get stolen). Without a net, if a ball went through without hitting the rim, it could bounce 100 yards before you could chase it down. I pretended Isiah Thomas was guarding me and I’d go at him. I didn’t need a coach, cones, or anything else. If you want to get better, you can get better with next to nothing. That’s the beauty of basketball. I’d do stutter-steps, jump stops. I’d run up and down full court, full speed, stop and pop. Left hand, right hand. I’d switch on a dime, shoot. Run fast breaks. All I wanted to do was be like Isiah.
From the moment my coach said I played like him, it’s all I could think about. I wanted to emulate him. I wanted to push myself to be better than him. I studied his moves from college to the pros, how he finger-rolled his layups just over the rim, how he shot the ball off the glass, how tough he could be on defense. 42I even studied his feet, how he positioned himself against an offense player. I never told anyone that’s what I was doing, but I even started moving my feet like him. Like a young musician covering songs from a master, I worked to be just like Isiah. More than anything, I loved how he gave his teammates confidence. You could see it in their eyes.
This is what prepared me, sharpened me. I wanted to be that motherfucker. So when I got to UTEP, going through the coach’s drills wasn’t an issue. They made me better. I’m so proud that I signed with UTEP. After my senior year and the Chicago proams, people were trying to get me to transfer to other schools. But I told them to kiss my ass. I’m loyal to the people who are loyal to me. So for those guys who didn’t believe in me at first to ask me to diss those who were, that was some ignorant shit. My thought was, You didn’t want me then, why should I want you now? I saw them look past me, rather than at me. But now I was a D-I player.
* * *
After Yolanda and I had met that snowy day my junior year, we began to date. We talked on the phone often and went out on dates around Chicago. Since she was a year older than me, during my senior season at Carver, she was already in her first year at Olive-Harvey Community College on the south side of the city. Yolanda lived in the Golden Gates neighborhood of the city, which was close to the Altgeld Gardens homes and Carver. It was an exciting time for me as a senior in high school. Love was in the air. As such, when we’d hang out, we’d have to take the bus and meet each other in different spots around the city.
43 Neither of us owned a car. Our first date was dinner and a movie, though for the life of me I can’t remember which movie it was (though she probably does). Everything flowed well with her. We had immediate chemistry and our communication was fluid, the conversations fun and engaging. A few months into the summer of 1984, after we’d met and started dating, she asked me, “So what do you do all day?” I told her I played basketball. “It’s impossible to play basketball all day,” she said. “No, it’s not,” I told her. She wanted to come see me. The issue was that there’s an unwritten rule in the city: no bringing your girl to the courts.
They can come see a school game, but they can’t be there during pickup runs. But she kept pushing. “I want to see you play!” If you get into a heated game, guys can start talking major trash. They can talk shit about you in front of your girl or even pick her out and start clowning on her. I wanted to avoid that, but she insisted. So I relented, and she came with me to one of my summer runs. We met at one of the bus stops by the courts and she sat to watch as I began to play. It was a good game for me that day, I must have won four or five in a row. In between, I’d go over and talk to her. But the guys started to call me out.
