By the Grace of the Game by Dan Grunfeld

Author:Dan Grunfeld [Grunfeld, Dan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-10-23T02:09:32+00:00

13. an accident & Larry Bird

The 2006 NBA Draft was held on June 28 at the Theatre at Madison Square Garden in New York City. My family had sat in the first row there every year to see a live performance of A Christmas Carol when my dad was running the Knicks. I watched the draft from my agent’s house in Los Angeles as guys who I’d outplayed the year I got injured became NBA players and millionaires. I dropped the remote on the couch and went to the gym to work out. I knew no one would pick me.

I’d won the mile race and posted 29 points and nine rebounds in the first game of my senior year at Stanford, but my recuperating body couldn’t withstand a full college basketball schedule. My mind couldn’t, either. The brace on my right knee was a constant reminder of the injury, and I was a half-step slow, a dangerous limitation for someone with zero margin for error when it came to speed. As the season wore on, I began to ask Anyu if I could spend a night or two at her apartment during the week just to get a break. I’d eat faschilt and piros krumpli and try not to think about basketball. By the end of the season, my scoring average had plummeted right along with my draft stock.

On the way to the gym on draft night, I called my dad. He told me to keep my head up and keep working. I’d been through something traumatic, he said, and this was just the beginning of a long career for me. He told me to be patient and stay positive. I listened, but it was not supposed to be this way. This was fucking bullshit.

After going undrafted, I accepted an offer to play NBA Summer League with the Indiana Pacers. Summer league was a chance for free agents like me to spend a week playing organized games to prove we belonged in the NBA. It’d been a year and a half since my injury. I was almost fully healed, finally, but my window was still small. I could outwork people, but I wasn’t as naturally gifted of an athlete as my pro competition, especially while recovering from something so severe. I saw limited minutes with the Pacers and was completely unremarkable. A few games into summer league, it became clear that I’d start my pro career in Europe. I’d never been to Europe and didn’t know much about it — aside from my family being from there. The notion of living and playing basketball abroad made my stomach burn. I’d grown up in the NBA. I was an American. Playing in Europe was literally and figuratively a foreign concept.

My only accomplishment during my introduction to the pro ranks at NBA Summer League was that I was once and for all able to prove the profound depths of my love for basketball. It happened off the court and was an appropriate representation of a pro career that was not quite starting off as I’d envisioned.

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