Basketball.org

A week ago Tuesday, two basketball loving men were elected as the first African-American to their respective offices.  The first, of course, was Barrack Obama, who will be our nation’s first African- American president.  The second man is the former Phoenix Suns great point guard, Kevin Johnson, who will be the first black mayor of the city of Sacramento.  Our congratulations to both men.  Very historic times.

I’m not sure how good a player Obama was or is, though I did see a short video of him playing for his high school team, a team that won the state championship his senior year.  Since that game was televised and his video was a very short clip, I would suspect he did not get a lot of playing time.  Kind of ironic that both Sarah Palin and Barack Obama played on state champions in high school.  We saw Governor Palin in action, and read about her stats; I would suspect that if Obama’s stats were great, we would have heard more about them, too.

Kevin Johnson, on the other hand, is well documented for his playing prowess.  Kevin, quite frankly, was a great player.  While recognized as a terrific player, I do not think he always received his just dues.  Highly athletic, who could dunk on anyone at any time, he was a complete player.  He could score, averaging over 17 per game for his career; could pass, averaging  over 9 assists.  However, what I liked him best for when he was in college, was his defense.  

I have never met president-elect Obama, but I do know Kevin Johnson.  In fact, Kevin was a huge factor in one of the best decisions we ever made when I was with the Indiana Pacers.  We were approaching the 1987 NBA draft.  The Pacers had the 11th pick.  A few nights before the draft we brought in two of the players that we were interested in drafting, Kevin Johnson and Reggie Miller. 

I really liked Kevin right off.  Very open and honest, he wasn’t trying to con anyone.  You could tell he was a natural leader.  Confident, but not obnoxious.  Easy to get to know, I really enjoyed him.

Reggie was a different story.  I will admit I had a little bias against Reggie.  There were some incidents with opposing fans when he was at UCLA.  I wondered if he was one of those soft UCLA guys, who were more about Hollywood than substance.  I really loved his game, but I was wondering about him.  It didn’t help that he was really quiet when we were first getting to know him.  Was he arrogant, or just quiet?  What was he really about?  It was hard to imagine he was bashful.

We went to dinner that night with the both of them.  Up until then, we didn’t do that a lot, having two players together.   We didn’t think it would be a problem even though we knew they knew each other well, having been rivals at UCLA and California.  Shortly into dinner, Kevin started getting on Reggie and teasing him about UCLA, something about prima donnas.  Well, Reggie came out of his shell.  Great jabs went back and forth, but in a good way.  Nobody pouted or got angry, just had a good time.  We really got to know both players as people.  Their guards went down, though Kevin never really had much of one.  I remember  thinking afterwards, that Reggie wasn’t some Hollywood type prima donna; instead, he was a small town guy who was for real.

Kevin went 7th in the draft.  We knew it was a long shot he would be there at 11, but we had contemplated trying to move up in the draft.  We ended up, of course, drafting Reggie, despite huge pressure, including death threats, to draft Steve Alford.  Reggie went on to have a great career and he has remained a life long friend.  Most people still do not know what a truly good person Reggie Miller is.  Just ask one of my sons about him and how he has treated them. 

Post draft, we faced a hostile press.  When asked about the spitting incident Reggie had in college, Donnie Walsh, the Pacers’ president, had one of my all-time favorite quotes.  Donnie answered, ”we would rather have the spitter than the spittee.”

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