TD and T.O.:What Is and What Could Have Been

Watching Spurs forward Tim Duncan playing on his way to a possible fifth NBA title is very personal to me in a lot of ways.  Tim and I are contemporaries, men of the same age but the connection doesn’t end there.  You see, Tim Duncan and I both attended Wake Forest University from 1993-1997.  Now I won’t claim to be an expert on the man simply because we happened to play some pick up ball together on occasion (Tim liked to play the point) or spent at Saturday night or two in his off campus digs having a good time with a number of my fellow Deacs.  I can tell you this, however.  Everything you need to know about Timothy Theodore Duncan the basketball player, all of us at Wake Forest learned by the end of his freshman year.

The story is legend now, but to quickly recap: Tim arrived on campus as the least heralded of the freshmen recruits that fall behind Makhtar Ndiaye and Ricardo Peral.  Wake Forest already had one of the best scorers in the nation in Randolph Childress and a pretty veteran squad behind him.  The first chance any of us got to see him play was at our Midnight Madness.  Now Midnight Madness at WFU wasn’t a giant production with lights and dunk contests or any of that.  It was held in the Reynolda Gym where the team practiced.  But I made sure that as a freshman getting my first taste of big-time college basketball that I was in the stands.  I don’t remember much from that night except for two things; a really geeky kid keeping stats at a scrimmage and Tim being the best player on the floor.

Once the team started playing for real, it became evident pretty quickly that while Childress was a star, Tim was a force. By his sophomore year there were already people touting him as a potential number one pick.  At the same time there was debate if he was even the best big man in the conference where he played against Joe Smith and Rasheed Wallace among others (How stupid does that question seem now?)  Even as his fame grew Tim was still the same.  He was very reserved, measured in his speech in public but just as goofy and occassionally awkward as the rest of his fellow students.  He never talked about himself or asked for people to like him.  If you did, he was cool with that.  If you didn’t, well, he was cool with that too.  The same face that he makes today when he gets called for a foul was about as emotional as you’d see him get then.  His game was simple and beautiful all at once.  He didn’t waste a lot of motion.  He had the softest hands and just always seemed to be where he was supposed to be.  And even as I got to see that greatness up close more than 30 times a year for 4 years, I underestimated it.

I thought Tim would be a really good pro, but not a dominant, Hall of Fame caliber talent.  I mean, where was the fire?  He wasn’t Shaq or Ewing or Olajuwon.  He didn’t have a “thing” that really made his game stand out.  But if I had really been paying attention I would have realized that what I was missing was precisely the reason Tim has been able to dominate for so long.  Tim plays “his” game.  Every night, Tim plays his game.  Tim never tried to be anything other than Tim Duncan.  Why run faster than you have to?  Why jump higher than you have to?  Why send the shot into the stands when you can start the break?  Why try to blow by a guy when you can knock one down off of the glass?  Why fight for position when the other guy already has it?  Tim may have been a psychology major at Wake but he’s really a philosopher.  Phil Jackson may be the Zen Master, but no one thinks the game any better than TD.  What he is is what he has always been.  Consistent.  A winner.  And most importantly completely self-assured.

Sadly, while one future Hall of Famer finds new summits to reach, another plummets into new valleys.  The Terrell Owens story is easy to mock.  The man who strode the sidelines once yelling “I love me some me!” is looking for one more team to love him.  He’s 38 years old and by numbers alone he’s inarguably one of the 10 greatest ever to play reciever in the NFL.   He is also nearly broke, an absentee father and was recently cut from a team in the Indoor Football League.

Now some people would view this as a just ending for an egomaniacal, selfish and surly primadonna athlete.  But it’s not so simple.  You see, just like with Tim Duncan everything you needed to know about Terrell Owens we learned very early in his career.  In 1998 Terrell Owens was a third round draft pick of the San Francisco 49ers entering his third season.  Jerry Rice was still with the team and Steve Young was the quarterback.  Owens had a breakout season catching 67 balls for more than 1000 yards and 14 touchdowns.  In the Wild Card game against the Green Bay Packers T.O. dropped several balls. But with the game on the line and time expiring Steve Young went to Owens for one of the most famous plays in 49ers history…

Watch what transpires after Owens makes that amazing grab.  He is uncontrollably sobbing and hugging anyone who will hug him.  His embrace of Coach Mariucci is (at the 2:30 mark) particularly striking.  Right there it’s clear that the guy who made that catch isn’t T.O.  That was Terrell Owens.  And Terrell Owens is a fractured human being who still really hasn’t figured out how to turn some personal tragedies in to success and determination rather than kindling for an inferno that seems destined to consume him.

Some athletes like Hines Ward or Kevin Garnett or Dwyane Wade take painful childhoods and find ways to ease that pain through success.  The process of achieving the success almost becomes a salve for whatever wounds they have been scarred by.  But not Terrell Owens.  He was raised first by an alcoholic mother and then an abusive alcoholic grandmother who kept him in the dark and away from other children.  He was isolated.  Who else could love him but him?

For the rest of his life he’s spent his time trying to be bigger, stronger, faster, better so he could hide that frailty that lived beneath the bravado.  He destroyed his relationship with the 49ers because they didn’t love him enough to throw him the ball.  He destroyed his relationship with the Eagles because Donovan McNabb didn’t love him enough to stand up for him when he wanted a contract extension.  He tried to love the Cowboys and Tony Romo but Romo just loved Jason Whitten more.  Buffalo and Cincinnati wanted him, but they didn’t love him either.  It starts to become clear what the end zone dances and sit-ups in the driveway were all about.  Terrell Owens wasn’t having fun, he was begging for our attention.  And he’s begging right now.  Because he has no earthly idea what he’ll do without it.  You see, Prime Time and Deion Sanders are not that different and Michael Irvin is The Playmaker every day; but Terrell Owens had to be T.O. because it meant he didn’t have to be Terrell Owens and deal with the pain he’s never really gotten over.  And we saw that 13 years ago on a misty day in San Francisco.

We automatically assume that great athletes have to be confident and some, like Tim Duncan, seem to really be confident in themselves and their abilities.  But others, like Terrell Owens seem to be driven to beat their insecurities as much as their opponents.  With Tim Duncan we can see what greatness truly is and with Terrell Owens we wonder how much greater he could have been if he had just let that pain go.

He will not go gentle…

Full disclosure…Right up front I have to admit that I am a Kobe Bryant fan.  I always have been, I always will be.  I believe that there is a compelling argument to count him among the 10 greatest players of all time.  I think that his contributions when Shaq was around have been overly discounted.  And finally I think that most of the bias against Kobe is that he arrived too soon.  Jordan was still around and the world wasn’t ready for someone so similar in many ways, but to me so different in the best ways.

Having said that, its tough to be a Kobe Bryant fan these days.  There was a time when I believed that he would win a 6th ring, placing him in rarefied company with men like Russell, Abdul-Jabbar and Jordan.  The first month of this season, it looked like he had found the fountain of youth.  Kobe was electric.  And then the greatness came more and more infrequently.  The shot attempts stayed high but the field goal percentage got lower and lower.  As pundits asked for Kobe to defer to the developing Andrew Bynum and the solid if unspectacular Pau Gasol, Kobe Bean Bryant stayed as defiant and confident in himself as he was as an eighteen year old rookie.

Somehow this season the Lakers fought their way to the 3rd best record in the Western Conference.  And in the First Round, for 2 games anyway, Kobe was back.  Consecutive 30 point games led to big Lakers wins.  He even tried for his own version of “The Flu Game” but the Lakers weren’t able to pull off a game 6 victory.

Now, in the second round, the more you watch the Lakers the more you feel that this team is just too old and too slow on the perimeter to compete in today’s NBA.  And you realize that Kobe’s best effort isn’t enough to carry a team anymore.  Not on a night to night basis anyway.

When you take a close look at this season it starts to become clear that Kobe Bryant, though still better than 99% of the players in the world, is in decline.  While his scoring average was good enough for 2nd in the league behind Kevin Durant, his shooting percentage was his lowest in eight years.  He had the second highest turnover rate of his career.  His 3 pt percentage was his lowest in a decade and his field goal attempts were higher than the year he won his second scoring title.

Even the mythology of Kobe as the greatest closer in the league has begun to take a hit.  More last minute turnovers and missed shots especially when his teammates were open have led to a flood of criticism.  And sadly, I must say, it is justified.

But Kobe remains ever defiant.  He will have the ball.  He will take the shot.  Who around him will tell him otherwise?  Mike Brown?  He couldn’t handle LeBron James and James in nowhere near the dominant personality that Kobe is.  Pau Gasol?  Please.  Andrew Bynum?  Amazing talent, but where’s HIS head?

The great ones are usually the last to know that they need help to stay great.  Kareem needed Magic to extend his career. Doc needed Moses.  Paul Pierce needed Ray Allen, Kevin Garnett and Rajon Rondo (I hate the Celtics!  Okay!)  It seemed for a moment that Pau would be that guy.  But Gasol is very good, not great.  The coach he respected is gone.  The guy with the cajones big enough to tell Scottie Pippen, who had only filled the vacancy left by the retirement of Michael Jordan well enough to lead the Bulls to 50 wins and be an MVP candidate, that he was going to be a decoy.  There’s no one in the front office he respects or who understands him.  Kobe may be more alone now than he felt when the Lakers were first round fodder.  At least then he had Phil.

So now without trust in anyone around him, Kobe does what Kobe knows he can.  He rages against the dying of the light with jump shot after jump shot.  He plows through double teams when he should pass.  Kobe said earlier this year that he would leave the game when he couldn’t keep up with “these young boys”.  But Kobe won’t ever believe that anyone has caught him.  He’s not built that way.  Basketball has consumed him.  He doesn’t gamble or party or do reality TV.  Kobe Bryant plays basketball.  Just not like he used to.  But that’s okay with me.  I’ve gotten 15 years of enjoyment out of him so far, 5 championships, 7 Finals appearances, an MVP award and more AAAAH plays then I can remember.  That’s enough for me.  But it isn’t for Kobe and it will never be.

No longer a coincidence…suicide, football and Junior Seau.

Former NFL star found dead of self-inflicted gun shot wound.  Reading that headline once was odd.   Reading that a second time was saddening.  Now, with today’s news of the apparent suicide of former NFL star and certain Hall of Famer Junior Seau, I just get chills.  Seau’s death comes just weeks after former Atlanta Falcons safety Ray Easterling took his own life and months after the suicide of Chicago Bears stalwart Dave Duerson.  Sadly this has been a growing trend.  According to the website Gamesover.org, which is dedicated to helping players make the transition to life after football, the suicide rate for NFL players is six times the national average. 

I remember the first time I heard of a player taking his own life.  Andre Waters, a hard-hitting safety for the dominant Philadelphia Eagles teams of the late 80’s and early 90’s killed himself in 2006.  After his autopsy, it was discovered that the 44 year old Waters’ brain had degenerated to that of an 85 year old.  That same year Terry Long, a retired offensive lineman drank died after drinking antifreeze.  Doctors again discovered significant trauma to the brain of the 45 year old.      Each of these deaths were very similar, bouts of depression combined with decreased ability to make decisions, increased violence and ultimately death.  Even players like Chris Henry, the Bengals receiver who died in a strange auto accident have been discovered to have brain damage at the time of their deaths.

With each passing year more and more information is gathered surrounding football, head injuries and their long term impact.  In 2000 it was discovered that 60 percent of players had suffered at least one concussion and that more than a quarter of all players had suffered 3 or more.  Acccording to the New York Times:

Those who had had concussions reported more problems with memory, concentration, speech impediments, headaches and other neurological problems than those who had not…

According to a St. Petersburg Times report in 2006, the average lifespan of the typical American is 77.6 years, for the average NFL player…55, 52 for lineman.   If that doesn’t make you look at Friday, Saturday and Sundays each fall a little differently, I’m not sure what will.

The league is full of hypocrites, talking out one side of its face about player safety all the while pushing for an 18 game season and  increasing the number of Thursday night games which give players less time for their bodies to recover.  Much of its recent action seems to be an effort to stave off the surging tidal wave of lawsuits alleging that the league didn’t do all that it could to protect the players.

The owners and coaches depend on these men for their profits and their livelihoods placing their profits and won-loss records above their concern for their employees.

As fans we demand more football, our appetites are almost insatiable.  We worship the weekend warriors, until they no longer are of use to our teams.  We ask  Earl Campbell to tote the rock 40 times a game and then pity him when we see his mangled and beaten frame today.  We hail  John Mackey for his toughness, his unwillingness to go down and then are moved to tears as we see him in his final days.

The players tell us that they know what they are getting themselves into, but who among us at 22 is smart enough to truly know what the decisions of our youth will really mean as we age?   Didn’t we all believe that we were invincible when we were young and think that bad outcomes would happen to the other guy?

Football is a sport described primarily in terms of war.  Battles in the trenches, the long bomb, the blitz.  We treat these men as if they are our gladiators, the last true warriors.  As the NFL pats itself on the back for its new found focus on player safety and the players and fans decry the softening of their game, have we reached the point where Maximus stands in the center of the arena and yells “Are you not entertained?”  What are we willing to give in human life for sport? Does every hero have to leave on his shield?  Shouldn’t we be relieved when a Barry Sanders or Jim Brown walks away with their health intact, even though their exits came before we were ready for them to leave?

Today Junior Seau left before any of us were ready to let him leave.  By all accounts Seau was a model NFL citizen.  He was the consummate professional on the field and a charitable and philanthropic presence in the community off of it.  But in the last years of his life he began to show the signs of instability just as he fallen brethren had.  And so our final memory of him won’t be of his passion, his steely gaze as he sized up the unfortunate running back or receiver who crossed his path; it will be of an idol, alone with a pain he couldn’t share or defeat.  It is maddeningly ironic that Seau’s death comes on the same day that 4 current and former New Orleans Saints players received their punishments for their roles in a bounty program designed to target and injure specific members of the opposition, injuries that could lead to the same outcome that befell Junior Seau.

I don’t want football to go away.  I’ve been a fan as long as I can remember.  Like millions of other kids one of my favorite Christmases was when “Santa” gave me a football, a helmet and a jersey.  I played in my yard, in the street and in youth leagues.  But now I am a father, and my son played just one year of football, and I am so glad he never went back.  Does that make me a hypocrite because I still enjoy watching other parents’ sons hurl themselves at each other at amazing speed and with incredible violence?  I don’t know.  Maybe it does.  I do know that with each successive death, with each lawsuit and with each scandal like “Bountygate”, football is dying of its own self-inflicted wounds.  If we don’t demand a safer game, parents will stop letting their kids play and the talent pool will wither and die, taking the sport of football along with it.