Character Driven Read online

  I don’t mean to suggest that churchgoing was strictly an obligation, something to be checked off on an invariable and rigid to-do list. What I mean is that I found some comfort in knowing what to expect. It’s funny to think of it now, but one of the most vivid memories I have of my brother Duane was when he jumped out from behind a door and screamed at me. I can still recall that bladder-burning sensation of fright that electrified my system. That current must have flipped the switch at the waterworks, because I burst into tears. I think I was only three or four at the time, still at an age when a chest-heaving, I-want-my-mom spasm of crying could go on for minutes. I still don’t like surprises, still don’t like being caught off guard, but at least I’ve developed better resources to deal with the many things none of us can fully anticipate in the game and in life. Turning around after hearing a teammate yell, “Help!” and coming face-to-chest with someone the size of Shaq bent on getting to the basket might make you want to cry, but you know you have to develop a better strategy than that. I guess I owe Duane a nod of gratitude for helping me realize that lesson early on.

  One of the other lessons I learned at home that translated well when I began playing organized basketball was that hard work and staying focused on a task can take you a long way. My father worked for the U.S. post office as an administrator. My mom worked at Worthen Bank. My father had a late-afternoon starting time, so he was home with us during the day before we entered school and was around before and after classes when we began our formal education at Wilson Elementary School. My dad felt that we should always be doing something—preferably something quiet so that he could get his rest. When my dad started at three and my mom didn’t get off work until four thirty, he’d take DeAndra and me over to the bank so that we would not be left alone.

  We were under strict instructions to behave ourselves and not to draw too much attention to ourselves. My mother’s coworkers thought we were cute and always remarked on that and on how well behaved we were. Of course, being kids, we’d sometimes get restless, and it was fun to wander into the bank’s lobby among what seemed to be velvet ropes used to keep the customers in an orderly line. More than once, I pulled down one of the stands that held up the ropes. The ringing sound of metal on tile startled me and brought my mother out from behind her desk beyond the tellers’ windows. My heart fell each time I saw the look of embarrassed disappointment on her face. Seeing that would have been punishment enough, but her telling me that she couldn’t trust me and that I had to stay by her desk until I could prove I was capable of behaving like a decent young man deflated me even more.

  Having both my parents working and sharing child-rearing instilled in me at an early age the idea that you did whatever you had to do to make a life for your family and for yourself. We weren’t poor—I wasn’t raised in the projects or anything like that—but we certainly weren’t wealthy. I never lacked for any necessity, but that was because of my parents’ hard work. We had a nice brick, split-level, three-bedroom house on a corner lot with a decent-size yard in a neighborhood filled with similar modest-size homes. My neighborhood friends and the kids I went to school with all seemed to be in similar circumstances to mine. I didn’t compare myself to them or the circumstances of my life to theirs, but I don’t remember any notable exceptions to what I would now identify as lower-middle-class lives.

  Not all the mothers in the neighborhood worked, but a lot did. I never thought of myself as a latchkey child or anything like that. I just knew that Mom and Dad both worked, weren’t always home at the same time during the week. I never really heard either of them complain about their jobs or their situation. They devoted a lot of their time to us and to church, but like most kids I never gave much thought to the sacrifices they made, never wondered why they didn’t go out to dinner together, go to the movies, or do any of the things that the adult couples I associate with today do. Their lives seemed to revolve around work, tending to us, and church.

  Even though I wasn’t consciously aware of all these things at the age of six, the message was clear. You have a job and you do it. You get up in the morning (or in the middle of the day in my dad’s case), and you get out the door to do what you’re supposed to do. I don’t remember ever thanking my mom and dad for doing the things they did for us, and I’m sure that they didn’t expect us to fall all over ourselves in gratitude. I’m sad to state that, but like blocking out in a basketball game, the seemingly little things they did for us all produced good results. We had a comfortable home, were well fed, and had clean and neat clothes and a few nicer things to keep us happy and having fun.

  My dad was good with his hands, and in my elementary-school days I saw the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie Conan the Barbarian. I loved that film and in particular the swordplay. This wasn’t the dazzling display of swordsmanship with whippy épées and foils of the Three Musketeers. It was the basic and brutish hefting of a broadsword. I was a fairly thick-shouldered and stout-legged kid, and that kind of battle seemed to suit me. Dad made a sword out of wood for me, just like the one Conan used. Though it was far duller than the steel ones used, it sharpened my imagination. I loved to just wander around in our yard, wielding that sword and twirling it overhead, bringing it down on imagined enemies and the trunk and low-hanging branches of the few trees around.

  Having that sword helped ground my “Derek the Barbarian” fantasies in the real world. Truth be told, that sword was an exception in my life. I wasn’t often carried away by flights of imaginative escapism. I was a down-to-earth kid even in my play. I think that was why I was drawn to sports. They were played by an established set of rules, conducted on spaces with defined boundaries, and you kept score so that you knew where you stood at all times. Within the confines of those games, I did allow my imagination some freedom; I frequently imagined as I shot baskets at my friend Clarence’s hoop that I was playing in some imagined championship game in either the NBA or the NCAA. Like most kids, I narrated the game’s progress in my mind, heard the imagined roar or groan of the crowd at each critical turn of fortune. Most frequently, we won. Despite my Conan infatuation, I did not imagine myself to be the tragic figure, the wounded warrior who stepped out of the hospital room and onto the court to pull out a last-second victory. Instead, I was the steady if sometimes spectacular player who could always be counted on to produce good results. When the game was on the line, I was the one who everyone in my imagined games would turn to. I won time after time, coming through in the clutch, with no chest-humping, trash-talking, in-your-face reactions. I’d just calmly walk off the court after another buzzer beater, pick up my lunch pail, and head home after another day at work.

  When I began playing organized basketball, a lot of what I’d learned worked to my advantage. I’d been hanging out with Duane’s friends at the gym for a while. I knew that I couldn’t act out and give him a reason he could use with my parents so that he wouldn’t have to take me with him. I wanted to be at the gym, as much as I wanted to be with him, and I really wanted a chance to play basketball. I didn’t whine or cry or run around. I had some skills, and a lot of Duane’s friends and teammates liked, or at least tolerated, my presence to a greater degree than Duane did. In time, I won him over. I knew my place. Just as my mother and father told me how to behave in church, at my mother’s workplace, and at home, I knew how to conduct myself early on while on the basketball court.

  I didn’t enjoy being my brother and his crew’s gofer, but if running down errant shots or passes, and helping rebound and return the ball to someone practicing his free throws, earned me some goodwill and a chance later on to work on my dribbling or to put up a few shots, then I would do it. Paying my dues didn’t bother me, but not being treated fairly did. If I did all the things that I was supposed to do, then those other guys had to hold up their end of the unspoken bargain we’d entered into. I could tag along, do my duty, and earn my reward. That was how the world was supposed to work, and I had a strong sense of that necessary and equal exchange of effort
and reward instilled in me from my earliest days. In seeing my parents collectively working long hours, rising early on Saturday mornings to get me to my games, and doing the same on Sunday to get us all to church, regardless of the weather, their mood, or what had to be their collective exhaustion, then I should do the same thing. In a way, what I saw as their reward was that Sunday dinner.

  I don’t mean to suggest that my parents lived a life of unending drudgery and walked around like automatons doing one task after another. But for some reason, they really came to life on the weekends or at one of Duane’s high school games. My mother was an energetic and vocal fan, and she cheered her children on during whatever game she attended with a kind of ease and joyful purity that I didn’t witness much at other times. My dad was a bit more reserved, but he often volunteered to be one of our coaches, and I saw a light in his eye, and an intensity and energy in his every movement on and around the basketball court, that I didn’t see in him elsewhere. For my mom, singing was the other great joy in her life, and seeing her swaying and clapping with the rest of the choir filled me with a similar kind of spirited energy. But I took more of my cues from my dad and sat or stood more or less impassively, not letting much of my emotion show. That was how a Fisher man was supposed to behave. Don’t let yourself get too worked up over things. Keep it steady.

  My father would sometimes get wrapped up in watching games on television, but he was also a close observer of teams’ tendencies, and he watched the ebb and flow of the game with more of a studied seriousness than a fan’s emotional involvement. I’d hear him say more often, “Do you see that? Look at what he’s doing there,” than I would any other exclamation of joy or dismay. I knew he enjoyed watching the game, and I enjoyed being with him, but I can’t really say that his watching games was fun in the same sense that most people might use the term. They were learning experiences and a bit of a bonding experience, but what we did had to have some purpose beyond its being just a source of entertainment or a way to fill up some idle time.

  All those observations and picking up on some subtle and not so subtle cues (my dad was not averse to using his belt on our behinds when we seriously violated a rule) put me in a good spot when it came time to play for the 76ers in my first year of Penick Boys Club basketball. I was of course excited to get out on the court and play. I’d witnessed up close and personal the adrenaline rush of a basketball game. I was one of the ball boys for the varsity basketball team when Duane was playing. That meant that I did what I was used to doing when I was in tag-along mode—gather the balls that got loose during warm-ups, assist with some rebounding, and distribute balls to the shooters. In addition, I was handed a towel, and whenever a sweat-coated player fell to the floor, one of my fellow ball boys and I rushed out onto the court and mopped up the spot the referee pointed out.

  Even in that limited capacity, I sensed the energy in the gym, and I’d sometimes charge out there with such vigor that I’d overshoot my mark a bit and come to a screeching halt. You would have thought that I was polishing one of the floors in the White House in advance of a visiting dignitary’s arrival the way I attacked those wet spots. I’d dash back off the court and kneel along the sideline, not so secretly hoping that it wouldn’t be too long before I was called upon to do my duty again. I don’t remember thinking that I wanted to be out on the court to be the center of attention. I just wanted to be of use. Sitting in the stands and watching the game take place in front of me was okay, but being involved, even tangentially, in those high school games was important to me. Being just a passive, or even an active, spectator was not something I sensed my family did. We were doers and not just watchers.

  To that end, Mom didn’t just go to church and attend services, she was a part of the services. She also performed other functions within the church community. My brother was on the basketball team, a valuable and contributing member of the squad and not just someone who bought a ticket or rode the pine and was lucky to see a few minutes of on-court action during what some people refer to derogatorily as “garbage time.” We were active. We were doers.

  And just as you conducted yourself a certain way in public while at your mother’s workplace, in church, at Sunday school, and in the neighborhood, you understood certain expectations governed your conduct and performance on and around the basketball court. I was told that as a ball boy I had certain responsibilities. My dad stressed that I shouldn’t look around and make faces or scan the stands for friends. I should watch the game so that when called on, I could go into action immediately and without being asked twice. I wasn’t to dash out there of my own volition either. I could anticipate when I would be called on, but not make those decisions myself.

  I don’t want to make too much of those early experiences on the basketball court, but they were formative, and the lessons I learned as a ball boy, while watching the game on TV with my father, and while hanging out with the older kids have never left me. My dad stressed that my mopping up the floor wasn’t just for cosmetic reasons. Someone could slip on that wet spot and be injured. That injured player could have made the difference between winning and losing. My dad wasn’t trying to burden me with worry. He was trying to make clear something that I know a lot of young people struggle with: the relationship between cause and effect. My mother’s yanking me by the arm and tugging me out of the bank lobby and telling me to sit still was just one of many lessons I learned about consequences. Right action earned you a reward. Wrong action earned you a punishment.

  That didn’t mean that I was immune from childhood acts of rebellion and indifference to cause and effect. With my friends I built ramps and jumps out of scrap lumber we salvaged from one another’s garages, discard piles, and garbage-day derelicts. I suffered more than my share of scraped knees and scabbed elbows when one of my attempts at turning my regular old bicycle into a BMX or stunt bike went awry and I spilled to the ground while practicing my daring jumps. I was learning lessons about risk and reward in those moments, and they were kinds of extra-credit, outside-the-curriculum activities that supplemented my education. What I learned was something like equations: Ground = hard. Boy = fragile. Pavement = rough. Skin = shreddable. Stupidity = painful.

  However much I might have acted out away from my parents’ watchful eyes or away from the basketball court, I can’t recall a time when I didn’t listen to my coaches, act sensibly, and try to put into practice their instructions. I can still remember my first practice with the 76ers and being amazed at how incapable many of my teammates were of even getting into a straight line and performing a simple layup drill. Many of them had to be reprimanded or reminded that they needed to focus. I didn’t. I was intent on learning more about the game and refining my skills. Maybe that early photo of me with the fundamentally sound follow-through is an indication of the genetic link that connected me to my father and mother. More likely it was also a product of osmosis. I was picking up on the current of athleticism and performance and execution that permeated the air.

  Parents frequently instruct their children, “Do as you’re told.” In most houses, the emphasis is on the told. In mine, it seems to me now, the emphasis was on the do. I wasn’t very different from most children in one regard. I wanted to please my parents. Much of the pleasure we took in our family revolved around basketball, so naturally I wanted to excel at it, earn my parents’ attention and praise. That’s not to say that they withheld those things from me; far from it. Neither did they pressure me into playing the game. I developed a passion for the game, but I was also involved in a lot of other activities and sports. Experts tell us that we don’t really choose whom we fall in love with, but that some kind of chemical attraction brings two people together. I can believe that when it comes to basketball; on some subconscious and perhaps chemical level I must have felt a magnetic attraction. The hollow ringing sound of a ball being dribbled on a hardwood floor, the squeak of basketball shoes on a highly polished court, the feel of the pebbled grain of the ball in the grasp
of my fingers, and the sight of the ball arcing in the air, its backspin seeming to pull me toward a simpler time in the past, still entice and enthrall me.

  I didn’t think about those things then. I’m not even sure I felt them. I had a lot to learn and was an eager and willing student, but I wasn’t ready to fully commit to the game, to declare my abiding love. A sturdy foundation was being laid, but it wasn’t as if my family and I had a blueprint for what the structure would be like. My parents were great believers in our doing things, as I said, and much of that belief was founded in the old line about idle hands being the devil’s workshop. More than that though, my parents believed in the value of sports and how they could contribute to a young person’s development as a human being, a well-rounded and respectful human being who understood sportsmanship and the benefits of hard work and the reliance on self and others. Sounds pretty basic and by the book, but that was our reality back then.

  Even if I hadn’t demonstrated any real competency in the game, I’m pretty certain my parents would have still encouraged me to participate. They wouldn’t have pushed me in a direction I clearly didn’t want to go, but they would have made certain that I found something else to do with my time. I know this next point: my parents had no desire to live out their dreams through me. Even when I was in college, we didn’t really discuss a possible NBA career for me. I was in college to get a degree, to do well in the game, and to learn something about how the world operated and how to get along with a wide variety of people. Basketball was a means to an end, not an end in itself. That was true when I first laced up my shoes in a league game in 1980, and it’s just as true today. Fundamentals are fundamentals because they are less likely to change than anything else.