Think Storrs, Connecticut, is in the middle of nowhere?
Try Oshkosh, Wisconsin, about 90 miles from Milwaukee, where the Bucks held training camp.
I don’t want to sound petty. I know how many people would have traded places with me in a second, no questions asked. All I’m suggesting is that being in the NBA was not everything it was cracked up to be.
Hotel. Practice. Hotel. Practice. You get the picture.
It went on like that day after day in Oshkosh, and it was no more glamorous when camp ended and the season began. As for those parties and fancy cars and celebrities they tell you about, if that was the life of a professional basketball player, it was the life in other cities, not Milwaukee.
Often, I didn’t feel like I was in the league at all. We didn’t draw big crowds at home, and on the road there was no Milwaukee Bucks Nation that came out to cheer us on. The Green Bay Packers owned the city, and state, and used to play games in Milwaukee into the mid-1990s. I felt I was back in high school, football being the sport that people were passionate about. Whenever my teammates and I ran into folks on our way to practice, the conversations would usually go something like this:
“You guys are tall. You must play basketball.”
“We sure do.”
“So you play for Marquette?”
“No, we play for the Bucks.”
“That’s nice.”
And off they went, unimpressed.
After every game at the Bradley Center, I ordered a pizza and headed home to watch The X-Files. Did I know how to have a good time, or what?
On the road, we were the butt of jokes: all anybody knew of Milwaukee was that it was where Laverne and Shirley lived. We would hear the theme song from that sitcom whenever we ran out onto the court. That got old fast.
I didn’t have much fun when I was playing either. Come to think of it, it was not much different from my early days at UConn when I was trying to find a way to fit in.
Except in one very important respect: in the NBA, you are on your own, unlike in college, where, between classes and hanging out with your buddies, there’s a lot to take your mind away from any struggles you might be going through. Have a tough shooting night? Well, you can’t afford to think about it right now; you have an exam to study for.
The NBA was infinitely more difficult. I didn’t know the system. I didn’t know the offense. I didn’t know the rules. Defense? Forget it. Seriously, how in the world was I going to contain scoring machines such as Reggie Miller and Mitch Richmond and Dell Curry—Steph’s father—and the guy who wore number 23 for the Chicago Bulls?
Seeing Michael Jordan in person blew me away. I had been looking forward to it from the time I checked out the Bucks’ preseason schedule at training camp and noticed an upcoming game with the Bulls at the United Center in Chicago. This is actually happening, I told myself.
The night was surreal. I was doing my normal stretching when the Bulls jogged onto the court, Michael the last to appear. The first thing to strike me was that he was a lot darker than I remembered seeing on TV, like a shadow. Before I could take it all in, the horn sounded and I found myself on the court with him before the jump ball . . . and, my God, he’s headed right toward me!
“Ray,” he said, extending his hand, “welcome to the NBA.”
“Thank you,” I said.
Holy shit, MJ knows my name. Not until later did it hit me that he, like any other opposing player, must have glanced at the scouting report. So of course he’d know my name.
As for the game itself, if my memory is correct, I scored nine points in the first quarter before Chris Ford, our coach, sat me down for the rest of the night. I was upset; I would have played the entire 48 minutes if he had let me.
Chris made sure I always remembered where I stood in the pecking order, referring to me as “rook.” He subscribed to the old-school mentality many coaches believe in: Put the kid in his place. Remind him that he doesn’t know any better.
Every possession, he’d tell me to “shoot the ball” or “dribble” or “bounce it.” All I could think was: Dude, can you please let me do my job? It was hard enough trying to focus on the opponent and learn our schemes without listening to a coach yelling God knows what every other second. I finally wised up, walking to the other side of the floor, simply to get away from his badgering.
That didn’t stop him.
“Go get rook,” he would tell one of my teammates, and then get on my case all over again.
Instead of raising his voice, I wished he would’ve taken the time to calmly teach me. That’s how you bring out the best in your players. In the NBA, or at any level of the game.
There were occasions, to be fair, when Coach Ford did teach me something. Whether he intended to or not.
Such as the time my alarm failed to go off—I had set it for PM instead of AM—causing me to miss a shootaround. He didn’t start me that night against the Washington Bullets, which bothered me to no end. In his mind, if you miss practice, you must pay the consequences. In my 18 years in the league, I am proud to say, I was never late to a shootaround, or a practice, again.
Another time, we’d just lost and Vin Baker, our best player, was so disgusted that he dressed in a hurry and bolted from the locker room without a word to the press. Not interested in dealing with any questions myself, I took off too, and didn’t give the matter a second thought. Chris would make sure I did.
“Rook,” he told me after he heard complaints from reporters a few days later, “you don’t want to be locked in as having a bad reputation in this league. You’re a nice, well-meaning kid, and the media is going to have your back, or they’re not. So, whenever you lose, you have to be man enough to own up to your faults. You have to speak on behalf of your team, if you ever want to be a leader.”
From that moment on, I never ran from the media again, no matter how gut-wrenching any defeats were, and believe me, there were plenty.
“I could have played better,” I would admit, or, “I turned the ball over too many times,” or, “We didn’t match the other team’s sense of urgency.” It didn’t matter what I said, as long as I said something. A leader, I came to understand, is not just the player who scores the most points. A leader is also the one who accepts the blame even when—especially when—he doesn’t deserve it. I played with a lot of guys who saw themselves as leaders. That’s the last thing they were. They were willing to take the credit whenever the team was doing well, but when the team struggled, they vanished.
As a rookie, assuming that kind of responsibility wasn’t my concern. You can’t lead if you’re still trying to find your way. Shannon was a tremendous help in those early months, with a bluntness I would come to rely on. She visited me in Milwaukee quite a bit, and having her around was something I looked forward to more than you can imagine.
“What would you say if I asked you to marry me?” I said.
“We barely know each other,” she responded.
As it would end up, marriage was a ways off, which was the best thing for both of us. We had careers to build first. The fact that Shannon wanted to be successful in her own right was something else I admired about her.
There were things to admire about our team too—Vin and small forward Glenn Robinson, the number 1 overall pick from the 1994 draft, come to mind—but we still could not fare better than 33-49, finishing 36 games behind the Bulls. Yikes. Coach Calhoun taught me to hate losing, but I really didn’t know what it felt like to lose until I got to the NBA. I lost a lot in those early years, and I never got used to it. The fans didn’t either.
They had every right to boo, no doubt, but I thought they went over the top on more than a few occasions. Though, later on, I realized that they had a point, that some players didn’t give 100 percent night after night. Which was the norm, sadly, in the NBA, unlike college. In college, with far fewer games, each one is an event. Conversely, a game between two teams in the NBA with losing records on a cold evening in January is not an event.
Even so, that’s no excuse for a letdown. You’re a professional athlete, getting paid a ridiculous amount of money, and every night someone is coming to see you for the first, and quite possibly, only time. To give them anything less than your absolute best is unforgivable.
Off the court, I was slowly adjusting to my surroundings. I stayed in Vin’s home for a few months. He was like a big brother to me. I knew nothing about the city when I first got there: I didn’t know where to eat, where to shop, where to see a movie. Nothing. So not having to find somewhere to live was one less task to worry about. By the time I moved into a place of my own, I was ready, thanks to Vin.
I also bought a house in Connecticut for my mother. She’d done everything for me, and I don’t mean just the usual things that moms do for their kids. To see her in a home she owned, not an apartment she rented, made me happier than anything. Otherwise, I didn’t spend much the first year. I drove a rental car a friend at a local dealership let me use, and because it snowed constantly, I never had to wash it.
Milwaukee, for all my griping those first few months, turned out to be the right place for me, like South Carolina was. And Storrs, for that matter.
I grew as a player and as a person. I’m not suggesting it wouldn’t have happened somewhere else, but, in Milwaukee, because of the weather and lack of nightlife, I wasn’t enticed to buy a fancier car or spend time in the clubs. Which wouldn’t have helped me better prepare for Reggie Miller or Michael Jordan.
Nor would it have helped me better cope with whatever the press may say about me. Which could be anything, as I found out before I had even appeared in my first game.
SLAM magazine covered the highly touted 1996 draft class—“Ready or not . . . here they come!”—and predicted that Stephon Marbury was the most likely to be Rookie of the Year, and Shareef Abdur-Rahim the most likely to average 20 points per game. Fair enough. I, on the other hand, was deemed the most likely to “fade into obscurity.”
I knew what “obscurity” meant, but wanting to be sure, I looked it up anyway, and man, was I pissed off. What would ever possess them to write that? I never bothered to find out, but like Kenny and those others who doubted me, I didn’t forget. I still spoke to their writers as the years went on, but I always reminded them how angry I was about that article. As usual, being put down like that made me more motivated. I wasn’t sure that was possible.
In year two with the Bucks, we struggled once again. There was at least a sense that the future would be better than the past. It couldn’t be much worse.
In September, we had sent Vin Baker to Seattle in a three-team deal that included the Cavaliers, and while I looked up to Vin, it meant a bigger role for me in the offense, similar to when Donyell Marshall left for the NBA after my freshman year at UConn. I went from averaging 13.4 points per game to 19.5, second behind Glenn Robinson’s 23.4.
That season I had another memorable chat with Coach Ford.
“You don’t have a routine,” he explained. “You just go out and do whatever and believe that will be enough. You need to find a routine and stick to it every night. You can’t just run around.”
He was right. I didn’t have a routine because I didn’t think I needed one. In college, the coaches created a routine for you, day after day. There was a set time for meetings, for watching film, for being on the floor, for stretching with the trainer, for joining the layup line, for study hall, and for eating meals. I think that covers everything.
That isn’t the situation once you turn pro. Except for practices, shootarounds, traveling, and the games themselves, what you do with your time is up to you. Sounds pretty good, doesn’t it?
It is, if you spend your time wisely, which I did. And, for a while in Milwaukee, I had company.
Each morning, two teammates, Michael Curry and Elliot Perry, both guards, and I met for breakfast at the hotel, taking turns on who picked up the check. Then we took a taxi to the arena, arriving roughly three hours prior to tip-off to get our shots up before the bigs showed up. Nothing personal against the bigs, but being in the paint, they get in your way and slow down your rhythm. Midrange, long range, free throws, we worked our way around the perimeter, with a rebounder tossing the ball to keep us in sync.
I was happy to have Michael and Elliot with me, as I would be later in my career when other players came to my workouts. Provided that they were in it for the long haul.
Some teammates, every so often, would ask: “Ray, can I shoot with you?”
“Sure,” I told them, “but you can’t just be here today. You have to be here every day.” That was because, once you join me, you become part of my routine, and it would throw me off if you are in the gym one day and gone the next.
Michael and Elliot both left the Bucks in 1999, but I stuck to my routine, through my last game in 2014.
At times, my teammates could not figure out why I put in the extra effort, but there was no mystery. You get such a small window to make it as a professional athlete, you owe it to yourself to give it everything you have until age, the one opponent you cannot overcome, takes you down. I thought of my father, who may have been able to advance further in his career, and how I promised myself I would work as hard as I could.
Lots of players won’t make the commitment simply because they don’t want to be held to the same high standard for the rest of their careers. I get it. There were countless mornings I woke up in freezing, snowy Milwaukee, my back still aching from the game the night before, and asked myself: Why not, just this one time, give yourself a break and stay in bed for another hour? What’s the harm? No one will ever know.
Only I would know, and if I skipped one time, I might skip another, and another, and would soon feel the difference come the fourth quarter, when my team needed me the most and the usual lift in my legs wouldn’t be there. It’s one thing to miss a free throw or a jump shot because, well, you miss; that happens. It’s another to miss because you don’t put in the work. That should never happen.
Each time I worked out for 30 minutes I felt like a new person, so when the game began, and other guys worried about making their shots and having enough stamina down the stretch, I was as relaxed as I could be. As strange as it may sound, I’d already played the game.
That doesn’t mean I would automatically come through—the player guarding you is also a professional, with pride and talent—but whenever I didn’t, it was not for lack of preparation.
A writer once asked me: “You had a bad game. How are you going to respond?”
“I didn’t have a bad game,” I said. “The ball just didn’t go in the basket.”
A bad game isn’t necessarily when you shoot three for 15 or throw a few errant passes. That’s because you can still contribute in numerous other ways to help the team.
To me, a bad game is when you come in unprepared, with little energy—and shoot poorly and commit turnovers.
At the same time, a good game isn’t necessarily when you shoot 11 of 15. The “experts” on TV will rave about a player who scores a lot of points, but is he helping out on defense? Is he taking the proper shot at the proper time in the flow of the offense? Is he bringing out the best in his teammates?
I don’t mean to put down how important shooting is. I thought about shooting more than you can imagine. I dreamed about it. And, by the way, in those dreams, I always shot zero for something like 1,000, which meant I would have to leave for the gym earlier than usual in the morning—or the lab, as I called it. The idea was to get any negative thoughts out of my head as fast as possible. Once I got the work in and saw the ball fall through the net I could relax, knowing that I would be fine. For the next game at least.
Being prepared isn’t just about getting your shots up and running on the treadmill; it’s also about keeping track of your sleep and diet.
You can lie to yourself, but you cannot lie to your body. Your body remembers what you ate and how much sleep you got. Sure, you may get away with it for a game or two, or a whole season, if you’re lucky, but it will catch up to you. It catches up to everyone. That goes for those who had outstanding, even borderline Hall of Fame careers.
I could always tell whenever the guys I played against weren’t as prepared as they should have been. I’d be kicking it into another gear, or rare air, as I referred to it, while they’d be running out of gas chasing me from one side of the court to the other. And by sticking to a routine, I got to the point after a few years in the league where I knew any shot I took in the fourth quarter had a good chance of going in.
It’s convenient to come up with excuses, and not just in basketball, and ignore the fact that the potential for your greatness is always in your control. I can’t tell you how many players said they would join me for a workout, only to complain that their alarm did not go off or the traffic was bad. I don’t want to hear it. You should know the traffic is bad at that time of day. Next time, leave a little earlier. Because, in the end, you show up or you don’t.
And any time someone said: “God blessed you with this gift but he hasn’t blessed me,” it felt like a slap in the face. The gift, I told them, is the work I put in, day after day. I didn’t grow up with a basketball in my hand given to me by God. God doesn’t care if I can shoot a basketball. That’s not what he has in store for me. He wants me to work as hard as I can to make myself, and everyone around me, better. He wants that for all of us.
People talk about who is blessed, and who isn’t, to take themselves off the hook. Why should I work harder? It won’t do me any good. I even heard players in the NBA say that. I was never surprised when they were out of the game within a year or two.
On the other hand, I saw guys who worked extremely hard, and that’s why they stuck around the league for years. A prime example is Ben Wallace, the undersized center who played for the Pistons in the early to mid-2000s. Ben was not a real scoring threat, but by giving a total effort, night after night, he became one of the premier defensive players in the game. He accepted his role: clear the boards and get the ball to the playmakers. No wonder he earned the respect of his peers—and a ring, in 2004.
At times, I would show up to the gym too early, before the locker room was open. I’d have to find a security guard who would track down the ball kid, who had the key to the joint. Whatever it took.
Once, in Chicago, because the bus had yet to arrive with our workout clothes, it appeared I would have to wait a while. A locker room attendant then came up with a suggestion.
“Michael Jordan’s in there,” he said. “Maybe you could use some of his stuff. He’s got a ton.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, but you got to ask him.”
I somehow got up the nerve, although I expected him to say no. I would not have blamed him. I was, last time I checked, a member of the opposing team.
How wrong I was. Michael couldn’t have been more gracious, showing me a closet filled with nothing but shoes. The attendant was not exaggerating. There must have been 200, maybe 300, pairs in there. Funny, but I’d been in the league more than a year by then, and I was still amazed he knew who I was.
Sometimes, if I was aware that our opponent was planning to have a shootaround, I showed up even earlier, although that didn’t always go over very well. It didn’t matter that I had every right to be there. They treated me like I was a kid off the streets, not a player in the NBA.
“Hey, you can’t be on the floor,” somebody who worked for another team told me once. “We’re going to have practice.”
“I’ll be here for 20 minutes and then I’ll be gone,” I pleaded.
He wouldn’t budge.
Another time, when I was on the Heat and we were in Milwaukee for a playoff game, a Bucks representative kicked me and several teammates off the floor, though no one else was around. I argued, to no avail, and then it occurred to me: Why weren’t any of their players on the court to prepare for such an important game?
Nothing put me more at ease than having the floor to myself. It gave me time to think. Not about the team we’d be facing that night, or the player I would be guarding—that would come later—but about my routine:
Was I getting enough lift in my legs? Should I shoot more? Run more? Was I missing anything?
By the time my teammates would show up for the shootaround I was ready, and by no longer focusing on myself, I could focus on them. Any team, and it doesn’t matter which sport, succeeds to the degree that each member helps the others.
As the 1997–98 season unfolded, we were looking forward to getting help from Terrell Brandon, the All-Star point guard we acquired from the Cavaliers in the Vin Baker trade. He didn’t let us down.
The season before, we had ranked near the bottom of the league in assists. With his skill at finding the open man, we became better in that area. In the end, though, we won only three more games—in large part because Terrell sprained his ankle in early February and appeared in just 50 games. If Terrell hadn’t been hurt, we might have made the playoffs. Before losing nine in a row in March, we were a respectable 29-29. It didn’t help that Glenn, our top scorer, and Tyrone Hill, our top rebounder, who we also got in the Baker deal, missed a bunch of games as well.
Nonetheless, someone had to go. That someone turned out to be, as it often is in these situations, our coach.
I felt bad for Chris, despite how tough he was on me early on. He had been given just two years to turn around a franchise that hadn’t reached the postseason since 1991. As soon as I heard the news, I thought to myself, The NBA sure is cutthroat. I had never seen anyone fired before, from anything.
The new coach would be George Karl, who had parted ways with the Seattle Sonics a couple of months before. He was the man I wanted from the moment I learned Chris was out.
The Sonics won at least 55 games in each of his six full seasons. Only the Bulls, which beat them in six games in the 1996 Finals, won more during that stretch. George had apparently gotten on the wrong side of the owner, Barry Ackerley, and the general manager, Wally Walker. So what? Frankly, it’s a wonder coaches and the people above them coexist as long as they do. I felt so strongly about George that I flew to DC to make the case in person to Senator Kohl.
Meeting with the senator was memorable, it being my first visit to the Capitol building. He and I had gotten along wonderfully from the beginning. As a matter of fact, whenever he was in Milwaukee, we met for lunch at a hotel downtown. I was 100 percent honest with him about any issues with the team, and he appreciated that.
No, he wasn’t an expert in the nuances and subtleties of the game but being such an astute businessman and politician, he surrounded himself with the best people and always asked the appropriate questions. That’s why it always seemed odd to me whenever other players in the league saw their owner as the enemy. I never felt that way about Senator Kohl.
I told him George was the coach we needed if we were serious about becoming one of the elite teams. The senator didn’t say much, although I got the impression that George’s name had come up before. I was certain that, if we didn’t hire him, someone else would.
Shortly afterward, George was brought on, and I couldn’t wait to work with him. Except I would have to.
In the summer of 1998, the players and owners were at war once again, and no one would get on the court until it was resolved. The conflict was over the almighty dollar—is there ever anything else?—the owners trying to increase their share of the basketball-related income (gate receipts, broadcast rights, etc.), the players trying to keep their share at the current level.
It was more complicated than that, obviously, but when July 1 arrived and there was still no clear end in sight, the owners imposed a lockout. They were waging another war, for public opinion, which they won without much trouble. They cast us as the bad guys, knowing that fans wouldn’t see any difference between a strike and a lockout. We came to the arena one day to show people we were ready to get to work, that it was the owners who were keeping us out.
Some good that did. If only social media had been around back then. We could have taken our case directly to the fans, instead of relying on the mainstream press. I have no doubt we would have received a lot more support. Did racism play a role? How could it not? When owners, who are white, seek more money, they are “shrewd.” When players, who are predominantly black, seek more money, they are “greedy.” Words tell you a lot.
While both sides stubbornly dug in, fall turning into winter, I remained in Connecticut, working out with my college buddies Donny Marshall and Kevin Ollie. It felt like old times.
Finally, in January 1999, the two sides reached an agreement. The season was cut to 50 games, with every team forced to play on a number of back-to-back-to-back nights. I can’t overstate how tiring that is, especially for the older players. Hey, at least we would have a season, and before I knew it I was back in Milwaukee. So much about the place would be the same: the sense of isolation, the snow, the Bucks overshadowed by Brett Favre and the Packers.
But there was hope. The George Karl era—when drama, on and off the court, was something you could count on—was about to get under way.
Say what you want about the man. He was never boring.