I am no match for her. After a long day going one-on-one with my 10-month-old
phenom, I am flagging like Michael Jordan in the fourth quarter of a grueling
game against the upstart Orlando Magic. I used to be somebody – I used to be
the champ – but none of that matters. She doesn’t have my brains or
experience, but she has drive and the hunger to win and she will wait all day
for an unguarded moment. Right now, she is eyeing a glass of water in the middle of the coffee table.
She circles warily, frustrated, unable to penetrate. She’s quick, but at only
27″ tall, she has no height and a limited reach. But I look away for a split
second and she finds her opening. The next thing I know, the glass is
overturned. She is immensely pleased with herself, pumping her arms and
grinning from ear to ear like some midget Shaquille O’Neal after a particularly
audacious drive to the basket.
How did I get here? One day I’m a workaday PR flack in Chicago, tailgating my
way down the expressway every morning to a job I hate. The next day I’m a
suburban housewife in Atlanta, giving up easy shots to this punk rookie. I have
no friends, I’m working 10 hours a week at a job where the “veterans” have been
on the payroll for two months, and I’m holding my marriage together with safety
pins. But, to paraphrase the patron saint of my new home, I’ll think about all
that next month. After the NBA playoffs.
If you were to see me wheeling my baby down the produce aisle, indignantly
calling her attention to the price of cauliflower, you would never imagine me
driving all over town looking for that Sports Illustrated for the
privilege of bringing home Dennis Rodman in a rhinestone-studded dog collar.
That’s exactly why I’m into it. Being a basketball fan has given me something
to hang my personality on, something other than this harried mom shtick that’s
becoming way too comfortable – oy, this child, if I’m not wiping her tokus,
it’s her schnoz. It plays well with the other mothers, but the rest of the
world is a tougher crowd.
My discovery of basketball actually predates my motherhood, coming about as an
accident of having moved from Austin to my native Chicago in 1991, as the Bulls
started on their three-championship roll. By the time of the 1993 finals, to
live and work in the city – and I just happened to work in the shadow of
Chicago Stadium – and not to know what was going on in the Chicago-Phoenix
series then was like not knowing the significance of O.J. Simpson’s socks
today. In the larger scheme of things it wasn’t important, but nobody in
Chicago knew from the larger scheme in the spring of 1993. Anyone who couldn’t
give an appreciative murmur of assent during discussions of Michael Jordan’s
latest attempt to flout the laws of gravity was cut off from the small talk
that forms the basis of discourse in modern society.
So I watched. Ironically, I cut myself out of the small talk loop anyway
when I started to root in secret for Phoenix. Say what you will about
basketball as a team sport, for me it came down to a choice between two
superstars. There was Jordan, knocking down one impossible shot after another:
cocky, self-assured, and inhumanly gifted. And then there was Charles Barkley,
mugging at the free throw line: If his considerable talent was slightly more
earthbound, he was eminently more likeable and a lot more fun. Since then –
after 30-odd years of wearing my disdain for sports like a badge of honor –
I’ve been hooked.
I wish I could say that I’ve developed an understanding of the finer points of
the game after sitting, glassy-eyed, two feet in front of my 13″ television
screen during three seasons of playoffs. But I still wouldn’t know the
pick-and-roll if I square-danced through it with Patrick Ewing. What I have
developed, it seems, is an uncanny ability to pick the losers. There’s no great
art to it, really. Just pick a contest where the team you like has a better
than even chance of winning, grab a beer, get comfy, and prepare to be
disappointed.
This year it started with the Phoenix Suns’ improbable loss to Houston in game
seven of the second round after being up three games to one. It broke my heart
to watch Phoenix guard Kevin Johnson – hot hot hot with a career-high 46 points
– blow a chance to put the Suns up one measly point by missing a crucial free
throw after hitting 21 in a row.
And the Knicks – don’t get me started. I love them with the fierce devotion of
a mother who likes her bad child best. I love their stolid, bone-breaking style
of play, their flashes of brilliance, their heart. I love how they bicker like
junior high school girls one minute, then jump into a group hug the next. I
love the sage Derek Harper, the always-struggling Hubert Davis, even the
snot-faced John Starks.
I played hooky from work the night the Knicks faced the Indiana Pacers in the
seventh game of their second-round series, only to see them knocked out of the
playoffs in a theatrical finish that had the noble Patrick Ewing missing a
lay-up that would have tied the game with seconds to go. Afterward, it seemed
as if the rest of the country – even Indiana’s head coach Larry Brown – would
have given Ewing the shot if they could have done it without letting New York
win the series. But I wanted the victory for all of the Knicks, every last
chest-bumping thug among them.
Now that the conference finals are here and the Knicks are gone, what’s a girl
to do? Well, there’s always that plucky Indiana team. Call me fickle, but if I
don’t forgive them for beating New York I’d have to root for Orlando – and it
would just kill me to see Madison Avenue’s fantasy fulfilled in a never-ending
Shaq attaque.
As a matter of fact, Indiana got a sort of vote of confidence from one of the
vanquished Knickerbockers a couple of weeks ago. A world-weary Derek Harper,
filling a guest commentator spot on TNT, said the Pacers shouldn’t be able to
beat the Magic but, he offered ruefully, “I think they’ll find a way to do
it.”
He should know, I suppose, but with my record I’d hate to bet on that Hoosier
charm holding out. Still, I could just about believe it would, watching the
dramatic finish of game four of the Eastern Conference finals on Memorial Day,
when the Pacers tied up the series.
Who writes this stuff, anyway? Indiana steals the lead when Reggie Miller hits
a three-pointer with five seconds to go, gives it up again when Orlando’s Penny
Hardaway answers with three of his own, then squeaks by with the lead after a
two-pointer courtesy of the big Dutchman, Rik Smits, with one and a smidgen
seconds left to play. I should add that the challenge of watching basketball
with an infant under foot is “being there” for the big plays. I was there this
time, all right, scaring myself and my daughter with a screech of joy that
probably broke a few champagne flutes in Indianapolis.
As of this writing, the all-Texas match up in the Western Conference finals –
pitting the defending champion Houston Rockets against the San Antonio Spurs –
hasn’t offered anything like this kind of excitement, unless you count the
surreal soap opera that is Dennis Rodman. At first, I counted Rodman and his
head of many colors as a plus in the series, but, you know, nothing against
Rodman – hang loose if you must, my lemonheaded friend – it doesn’t make for
such great basketball.
That being said, my favorite Rodman moment came when he got all existential
with Ahmad or Hannah or whomever after the Spurs’ one-point loss in game one,
mumbling something about how ridiculous it was that guys making millions of
dollars a year – himself included, I guess – couldn’t get it up for the big
game.
That’s obviously the crux of the problem for the Spurs and, also obviously,
it’s not all Rodman’s fault. It would serve everyone right if Houston, with the
magisterial Hakeem Olajuwon at the helm, went all the way again. But I’d hate
to see San Antonio give up without the good fight. In my na�vet�,
before the whole shooting match started, I told a friend I thought the Spurs
would take it all. She snorted, “Yeah, if they want to.” It never occurred to
me that they could want anything else. But after watching San Antonio play game
five – which they lost by a whopping 21 points – like it was a pick-up game,
and after seeing David Robinson congratulate Olajuwon on a good show before the
game was even over, I’m not so sure. Where are we, England? Hey, man, is this
basketball or bloody cricket?
Maybe – probably – both teams will come back and surprise me. Meanwhile, it’s
late at night, and I’m trying to finish this article in time to watch the final
minutes of Orlando and Indiana in game five. I go out to the living room to
claim control of the TV, only to find my husband watching some fool show on
PBS. As I grab the remote control, I can see he’s working up a head of steam
for a tirade about how basketball is running our lives. Then he relents, and
tries valiantly to stay awake for the last couple of minutes of game time,
which – gloriously, nail-bitingly, annoyingly, depending on your perspective –
stretch out to about a half hour.
It doesn’t look good for Indiana, but I keep thinking a miracle will happen.
And as I sit here with my husband, I imagine our own game clock running out.
Are we running out of time to get it right? Parenthood, the new town, his new
job, my new joblessness – they’re formidable opponents, and I, at least, keep
flubbing the clutch play. I look to my man Reggie for a lesson that will carry
me through, but he misses a crucial three-pointer. Then, as the game clock
ticks down to its final seconds and I’m starting to doubt the wisdom of using
basketball as a metaphor for life, he makes three with a couple of seconds to
play. It’s not for the win, but two points down is better than five. And
tomorrow is another day. n
[Ed. note: We respectfully disagree about the Western Conference, especially
the third quarter of game six. Orlando Magic and Houston Rockets were in the
finals, scheduled for the Chronicle‘s press night. We’re rooting for
Houston, natch.]
This article appears in June 9 • 1995 and June 9 • 1995 (Cover).