As much as I like to fancy myself an expert in all things basketball — among the sport’s cognoscenti — there are lacunae, areas of ignorance my son made me aware of as he morphed from being my (forgive me) beautifully instructed phenom into a college player, and I receded into the ranks of high school assistant coaches.
Those lacunae were all related to my compulsion to wage war against technology, “the technocracy” as I dubbed it in my memoir about my son’s high school years, and my love-hate relationship—or fixation, to be more accurate–with his high school coach, a fellow Easterner who played college ball at Harvard for Satch Sanders. Just four years Satch’s junior, I had known of him from his days at Seward Park High School and later NYU, when the then “Violets” became a Final Four team in 1960, my last year in high school.
When I coached, at summer camp during my college years, and later when my son was learning the game, my teams played only symmetrically numerated zones (1-3-1, 2-1-2), because I never learned whether the counting started from inside or out. No 1-2-2 or 2-2-1 for my squads! I still cannot fathom the precise meaning of a “match up zone,” any more than I can comprehend how the euro step differs from travelling.
From whence came whatever expertise I could claim? My father, of course. He taught me to shoot in the park. He used to take me to the old Garden: at age ten, for the seminal NBA All-Star game of 1954; even, before I turned eight, to the 69th Regiment Armory (where the Knicks had to use to host playoff games, as the Garden had booked the Circus for those dates, not knowing whether the Knicks would still be alive) for the 1951 NBA Finals against the Rochester Royals.
For my first college double-header in the Garden, somehow I got to enter the NYU locker-room at halftime, and listen to legendary coach Howard Cann declaim, though I felt mortified by what I now suspect was only gentle teasing from NYU’s massive 6’4” power forward Mark “Tank” Solomon (which didn’t feel so gentle in the moment).
When I was not quite twelve, in 1955, Pops took me to see Wilt Chamberlain play in a New York-Philadelphia high school all-star game in Sunnyside Gardens in Queens: Chamberlain, as a high school senior, was allowed to do many things that were soon to prompt rules changes to stop him from making a mockery of the game as conceived by Dr. James Naismith for vigorous white Christians needing a physical outlet to get them through New England winters, between the football and baseball seasons. Dr. Naismith did not have Wilt in mind.
Chamberlain was perhaps even more amazing as a high school senior than we remember him from his days as a professional, when at least there were other — though lesser — big men to guard him. But this game, won by an otherwise overmatched Philadelphia squad 91-86, behind Wilt’s 51, was played before there were rules changes to keep him from changing the game. For one, if the ball went out of bounds and belonged to the team on offense, it was legal to in-bound the ball from directly underneath the basket, instead of from a point on the baseline that is outside the three second lane. The rule was changed in order to keep Wilt from simply — and gently — gently guiding out of bounds play passes lofted over the backboard from underneath the hoop, thereby making the out of bounds play a 100% probability basket.
Similarly, it took a rule change on free throws for Wilt not to be a 100% free throw shooter. Under current rules, the free throw shooter may not cross the imaginary plane extending upward from the free throw line before the shot hits the rim, whereas pre-Wilt rules only prohibited the shooter’s foot from “touching down” on the floor. The reason for the change was that, under the old rules, Wilt would take a running start and leap from just behind the free throw line and dunk, before touching down. He was also fond of leaping skyward to snatch opponents’ twenty foot outside shots with one hand, and looking challengingly at the confused referee, who had no idea of whether what he had just witnessed was or was not a goal-tending, before playing on.
Pops had chops, too. An average New York City high school player, he’d hoped to crack the varsity line-up at DeWitt Clinton, but instead ended up transported to London, where his father summarily moved his import-export business. As Stanley, my father, told the story, the British basketball was smaller, more like a soccer ball, and he took to shooting it with one hand, at about the same time that Hank Luisetti was revolutionizing the game by pioneering the one-handed shot at Stanford. Only a knee injury kept him from representing England in the 1936 Olympics.
II
Except for the times I went to Chicago’s United Center (with my good friend Dave on my 67th birthday in 2010 to see Lebron James in person before he left the Cleveland Cavaliers for the first time) and a trip to Brooklyn in 2012 (with my old buddy Hank for an exhibition game — meaning the seats were affordable) to see the new Barclay Center in 2012 (2), I hadn’t been to a pro game in many years. Not since I stopped accepting tickets from Al Attles (3) to the then-refurbished and now-abandoned Oakland Coliseum Arena.
At the old Coliseum, Dave, as Bay Area Associated Press sports editor, had made me a stringer to do the University of San Francisco home games. He also had me accompany him to occasional Warrior games, and assist him by going into the locker room for post-game quotes after we watched games from right behind the bench. So I got to hear 76’er coach Jimmy Lynam call Charles Barkley “Cholly,” and Barkley (stat sheet in hand) scream across the locker room to Rick Mahorn: “Nice shooting, Ricky: 2-13,” prompting Mahorn to shout back: “Fuck you Cholly.” My eyes meantime took an inadvertent but irresistible peek at the length of 7’4” Ralph Sampson’s penis. “Memories are made of this,” the lyric went, as Dean Martin crooned.
By contrast, I was made miserable by the newer Oracle Arena, a refusenik of its putative joys, most notably the luxury boxes that effectively shielded its occupants from both the action and the crowd. Accompanied by my pre-adolescent son, I grumbled away at being stuck in what I felt was like an airport; at best, perhaps a bardo. When I tried to explain to Attles why I didn’t really enjoy games in person unless I was sitting right near the floor, he remarked “Oh, you remember when it used to be about basketball.” Thank you, Coach Attles!
It’s now two iterations later, with the Warriors a thoroughly revamped and reborn itinerant franchise (Philadelphia to San Francisco to Oakland and back to a San Francisco hardly recognizable to any Rip Van Winkle who’d been asleep since they crossed the bridge and renamed themselves in 1971), under expert Silicon Valley driven management, and relocated as of last season back to San Francisco, in their new home: The Chase Center.
I had not anticipated ever making the short pilgrimage (4) to Chase, but my son surprised me with a Christmas present of tickets to catch the Knicks in what would be their sole visit.
The Warriors’ return from grittier Oakland, with a new arena named for a bank, did not bode well for my capacity to enjoy the evening. Even the anthropologist/sociologist in me (that side that had led me to sample The Barclay Center) told me to stay away. The noise would be unbearable, I imagined, and the fans would be on top of us at all times. The triumphalist Warrior fan base would be that much more obnoxious to me in person. What use would it be to try out this place when I already knew the upshot? My best hope for that the evening was that it might make me appreciate my father that much more.
Instead, in this most pagan of settings to Old Garden loyalists, I found myself basking in a renewed appreciation for my son. To my amazement, the setting was–how shall I put it?–quite pleasant. For starters, the anthem was sung tastefully and soulfully, befitting February’s being Black History Month. The noise level was surprisingly tolerable, and the seats were nicely cushioned, with comfortable armrests, and at an unusually steep angle that made viewing unencumbered. Maybe it helped that everyone was masked, contributing to a shared level of decorum that would not otherwise have been imaginable.
To get food and drink, you had to get up and walk to the refreshment stands. The chow was over-priced and trendy (after all, this was the Bay Area), but that meant you weren’t bothered by vendors hawking their ware, and didn’t have to put up with other customers flagging them down (5). The Warrior Girls seemed more athletic than I had recalled, their sexiness more appropriately submerged in their co-ordinated movements.
The crowd was non-descript in its appearance, rather than the sea of yellow (6) that I had recalled from watching televised playoff games of recent years. One family of Knick fans sported their Julius Randle jerseys without apparent fear of retaliation, as Big Jules pretty much took over the game, capitalizing on the absence of Draymond Green. Fans were surprisingly low-keyed and respectful: except for the last three minutes, when the Warriors were erasing a thirteen-point Knick lead. Then it became obligatory to stand in order to see over the people directly in front, as they themselves adamantly stood. I recalled futilely screaming “down in front” in the upper deck at New York Giant football games with my father, when our binoculars were rendered useless by the fans in front of us. So I just stood and watched.
And the scoreboard: a highly choreographed production of special effects, but placed high enough that it was relatively unobtrusive (at least for those of us sitting on the side of the court), and highly informative (whenever I looked), giving a full statistical line for all ten players on the court at any given time. Its pyrotechnics were more modest than I’d anticipated and feared. Occasionally, I found myself checking an instant replay and a stat line, and — to my surprise — choosing to watch a minute or two of live action on the board, rather than shift my attention back to the actual playing floor. Was I unknowingly a participant in a simulation? If so, I really didn’t much mind.
It’s been decades since an unmuffled Charles Barkley mainstreamed the notion that there was something irresistible about the marriage of sports and entertainment by baldly proclaiming that “we’re all in the entertainment business (7).“ Management was slow on the draw. Charles needed to be quashed quickly, because if he wasn’t, he might well morph into what he is today (8).
That thirteen point Knick lead shrank to just one, with the Warriors having the ball with just five seconds left. A contested call provided them with time to huddle and set up a play. Instead of Curry, they went to newly returned Klay Thompson, who sprung free round the foul line for a short jumper that he usually makes. It bounced off the rim. Was Pops watching up there? I went home happy.
NOTES
- This was the then-struggling NBA’s fourth All-Star Game, for which Jack Molinas was the only rookie selected, only to be replaced when he was banned for life for making book on his team’s games. For Molinas, this was a way of life, beginning in or before college at Columbia, and climaxing in his becoming Mr. Big in the 1960 scandals, after which he became a lawyer, a brilliantly crooked gambler, and a target for the Mob, which finally erased him. Molinas’s fascinating life is beautifully chronicled by Charley Rosen in his 2001 book The Wizard of Odds: How Jack Molinas Almost Destroyed the Game of Basketball. To comprehend Molinas, picture — if you can — Donald Trump with looks, brains, and talent!
- We left at the half, having seen the place, and feeling no interest in the game’s outcome. I still think of The Nets as the New Jersey team, but recently have taken to calling them “the Brooklyns.”
- whom I had known and later interviewed for a feature story, after attending an Adult Fantasy Camp Weekend.
- I still can’t get used to not getting off the subway at 50th Street to go to the Garden, which ain’t there no more. Oh, well, it’s not such a long walk from 50th to 34th
- This last part is probably true for all arenas now, but how would I know?
- David explained that what I recalled seeing and expected to see again was a function of special give-away promotional nights.
- Liss, R. “’We’re All In The Entertainment Biz.”” WELCOMAT, 1992.
- Not to in any way to imply that I don’t absolutely love Sir Charles! For any nay-sayers, Charles should quote what Stokely Carmichael said when he introduced his successor H. Rap Brown to the press. “They’ll miss me when I’m gone.