Hard Labor: The Battle That Birthed the Billion-Dollar NBA by Sam Smith

Author:Sam Smith [Smith, Sam]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Triumph Books
Published: 2017-10-31T16:00:00+00:00

8. The Mad Russian Warrior Poet

If only I’d known

I didn’t have to throw that elbow

at LaRusso or stalk Chet Walker

to his locker room spoiling for a fight,

or take a swing at Wilt,

while my breathless teammates

feared for my life.

All I had to do was breathe

my way out of anger.

Lungs instead of fists.

— Tom Meschery

Any NBA discussion about Tom Meschery usually includes the mention of him being a poet, the unofficial poet laureate of the NBA. No one else ever competed for the position. But if the NBA players’ efforts to form a union, gain recognition, and finally achieve free agency were talked about in pugilistic terms, then it was better to have Tom Meschery on their side as a plaintiff in the Robertson suit.

Player rep? No problem. Tom Meschery was not about to fear some NBA businessmen when he survived a Japanese concentration camp and the bombing of Tokyo in World War II. This guy had the fighting American spirit. Certainly for someone born in China whose family worked for and was loyal to Czar Nicholas II before the start of the Russian Revolution.

“Elgin Baylor used to say the game really hadn’t started until Rudy LaRusso and I were in a fight,” says Meschery. “And Rudy was a friend.”

Are there other angry poets?

Well, actually the great Russian ones were pretty dark, and a lot of the blood Meschery spilled over the years as one of the NBA’s premier pugilists was Russian through and through, because he is. Tom Meschery’s story is one of the more remarkable in a history of amazing stories that is pro basketball. And that it wound its way to the NBA through Russia, China, and Japan only shows the richness of our diversity, as Meschery not only became an NBA All-Star and the first Warriors player to have his jersey retired, but a teacher and advisor to so many young people through his writing and decades of high school teaching in Nevada, where he was inducted into the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame.

“I have a great affinity for the underdog, for immigrants, for Mexican Americans, the Hispanic guy who comes up from the border,” says Meschery. “They didn’t speak English. I didn’t speak English. So I learned. And you become part of the American experience, the fabric of life here. I’m sure the reason I played basketball at first had very little to do initially with the love of the game, though I did come to love it and not believe I could earn a living that way. I was an immigrant and playing basketball was crucial to me. Once it was Jewish kids, and then African American kids, a way for a foreigner to say, ‘Hey, I’m an American, too.’ But it was an intense experience because I needed to succeed. The more I did, the more American I was.”

Meschery became a fighter and a fighter for America. He was headed to a Peace Corps program after his playing career when then-president Nixon cut the program.

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