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By Scoop Jackson, SLAM, August 1997 Once upon a time on a basketball court in Lake Geneva, WI, an eight-year-old child shot hoops alone. His small hands barely covered one panel of the lopsided orange piece of rubber. From his shoulder he hoisted the ball in the air. Over and over, he repeated the same routine. Aim, set, hoist. Some connected; others didn’t. From a distance, an older gentleman watched. He watched the child attempt to perfect something few before him were able to perfect. Whether or not the man saw something of himself in the child, or just promise and determination, will never be known. Whatever the reason, the man stepped to the child and shared his wisdom: “Don’t push the ball, shoot it. Here, let me show you.” Twenty-five years
later, Oscar Robertson meets the child he helped that day. I tell
him that even though I never perfected what he gave me, I’ve
never forgotten the experience. My shots never fell like his—then
again, whose did? Oscar himself was eight years old when he received
his first In 14 years of playing basketball in the NBA, Oscar Robertson set standards. Some raised the stakes, others created illusions. Not the Big O. Notorious for bringing completeness to the floor every night, Robertson became the one man who made Penny Hardaway and Magic Johnson believe basketball was their outlet. He, my friends, was the revolution before it got televised. Beyond the over-hyped triple-double season, beyond the ’71 NBA Championship, beyond the media-induced racial rivalry between him and Jerry West, lived an agent of change. Forget the 14 NCAA records he set at Cincinnati, forget the two Indiana state high school championships he won at Crispus Attucks, forget the nine first-team all-NBA selections and the three All-Star game MVP’s. What Oscar injected was deeper. Much deeper. His revolution was a quiet one, similar to Hank Aaron’s. It was more about definition than glamour. Substance over notoriety. On the day after ESPN’s town meeting on race and sports, I called Mr. Robertson’s office. The time had come. I told him about Lake Geneva, he told me about “Hoosiers” and the economics of life for a black businessman. Again, I learned. After an hour on the phone with the man my father once called “the smartest basketball player that’s ever going to live,” I learned that it may be a disservice to limit his knowledge and history to just basketball. He may be the smartest person ever; he just happened to play ball for a living. SLAM: What separated you from all of the others? The one thing I’ve always heard about you is that you are honest, sometimes too honest [laugh]. So be honest with me and tell me what made what you did on the basketball court so special? ROBERTSON:
I just think I was fundamentally sound. Growing up and playing in
Indiana as a high school kid, I had the opportunity to play against
some great, great athletes—and I learned how to play. It wasn’t
about my shooting, it was more about defensive play and other phases
of SLAM: Do you think that some of that is being passed on now, or do you see a lot of that missing in the way the game is being taught and approached today? ROBERTSON: I think what you have going on now is, one, players not celebrating the fundamentals, and two, coaches getting too involved in the game. It’s gotten to the point where they are taking away from the athletes. Trying to control the game, then breaking it down to a one-minute game. The bottom line is, if the athletes don’t play then you don’t become a good coach, no matter who you are. If you don’t have the kids on the floor who have the ability to perform, you get nothing accomplished. Today you have guys in college that may average 18 points a game, and they are considered great players. Years ago, if you averaged 18 points a game, you’d be considered an average player. That’s what has changed a lot over the years. Those are the things that are different. SLAM: In high school, you went to Crispus Attucks, right? ROBERTSON: [excited] Crispus Attucks! SLAM: Wasn’t the movie “Hoosiers” kind of based on your all-black team losing to a small all-white team for the state championship? ROBERTSON: No. Let me tell you something about that. That is the hype of the movie moguls that run…[pause]. That’s what’s wrong with the country today. They play the race card at every opportunity. You can’t tell me that there are not racists or racism in this country. [The squad “Hoosiers” was based on] did not play against an all-black team. They played against a team that was actually ranked as the best team in the state that year. There were only two black guys on that team. Two! In the movie they had an all-black team, black coach and everything. Black against white sells in America. SLAM: Since we’re on the subject of racism, what did you think of the town meeting last night on ESPN? ROBERTSON: I thought it was a good meeting; the concept was very good. But I felt they had too many people addressing too many individual issues. It got down to a selfish thing and an individual thing. People started talking only about things that affected them personally. But the overall picture…let me give you an example: coaching. Why do we have to worry about hiring a coach? That’s just one small position when there are VP’s of operations and president positions that need to be addressed. Look at all of these new leagues opening up now. Most of the athletes are black. Except for hockey [laughs]. But you look around, look at sports, look at corporate America, and they talk about minorities? Most of the minorities are white women. But what do we say about it? Nothing. I ask you a question, and you can write this down if you want: Has affirmative action helped black people? I say no. SLAM: Then answer this for me: how does the business and finance situation in America relate to professional basketball right now? I mean, is there really a difference between the way a major company is run and the way the NBA is run? ROBERTSON:
I don’t think there is a connection. The guys that are playing
basketball, football and baseball are making money, and they’re
happy about it, and they are being told, “Don’t say this,
don’t do that, because it will affect the general public and
their opinions of you.” SLAM: I agree, but at the same time I don’t see a difference between the NBA and other companies. You’ve got black workers, low-level workers—not necessarily in income but in power—and when you look at the hierarchies of these organizations, you don’t see anything there that represents. There’s nothing there. ROBERTSON: Let’s be honest, if you are making so many millions of dollars, you want somebody with you you can trust. It happens. Let’s take baseball—they’ve hired a lot of baseball players right off the playing fields to be managers, but whenever it comes down to somebody black, they always say, “Oh, he’s not ready. Oh, he’s gotta pay his dues.” Or, “He can’t do this.” Don’t criticize me just because you don’t like me as a person. Judge me on what have I done for your company. What have I done for you socially, as a moral human being, a citizen? I go around and make contacts, go to a lot of these shows, make public appearances, talk to the kids, do all of these things. But when it comes to financing and real money and position, it’s a different story. All of a sudden it’s, “Oh, we can’t do this,” and “We can’t do that.” [Sarcastically] I wonder why. SLAM: Back to basketball, talk to me about the triple-double. Everybody makes a great deal about you going almost two seasons averaging it. It’s almost come to the point where it’s defining you. One, is the triple-double overrated, and two, if it isn’t, how come nobody is able to do now what you were able to do back then? ROBERTSON: I think the whole thing is, when people start to talk about greatness they cannot understand how I did that. This is the problem. I think it is grossly unfair, [ital] grossly [roman] unfair, to match my stats against any of these guys. Because the real terminology of what an assist is has been totally changed. What they talk about as an assist today is different. It really doesn’t matter to me, because I think the way the game is today, they are trying to create fan appeal, fan closeness. And I understand that, but if you talk about these guys today that put up big assist numbers…I’ll say this, if they counted all my assists the way they count them today, I might have had 115,000. I’m telling you right now. [I’m laughing; he’s not.] I mean, you look at some guys today, and they’ll get 20-24 assists in a game. How are you…come on, 20 assists, you know? They’re throwing the ball to guys that are dribbling the ball four and five times up the court before they score. Now that was not an assist when I played. But I understand why it has changed and I have no qualms about that, but at the same time I think it is sometimes demeaning when they say these guys have an assist record. But that’s the nature of the game today. The value is in how difficult it was to get an assist years ago. It’s like the three-point shot. Of course the guys today are going to score a lot of points; they are going to score many more points than the guys who played yesteryear. Now, is that a true analysis of who’s a better scorer? I think not. Because those guys that played yers ago didn’t play with the three-point shot. It’s not unjust, it’s just the nature of the game today. SLAM: Is there any one aspect of those three areas of the game [points, rebounds and assists] that was most important to you? ROBERTSON: Not for me. Because from where I came as a basketball player, that’s the way I learned to play. There wasn’t any importance placed on any particular area for me: shooting versus assists versus rebounding. My game was just to go out and start playing. If you play hard enough, you’re going to get your shots, you’re going to get your rebounds, you’re going to get your assists. I never put an emphasis on one area of the game. Naturally you’ve got to score, but in order to play successfully and win you have to do two things: rebound and play defense. And that has never changed throughout the history of the game of basketball. SLAM: Speaking about different eras, could your ’60 Olympic Team beat the original Dream Team? I’ve heard some people say that you could have—easily. ROBERTSON: Again, we’re talking about different times in the game of basketball. When we went out, we were just out of college, we didn’t have the experience of playing years and years in the NBA. We didn’t have the experience of being picked collectively by a group of four or five guys. Now, let’s take all of the players that played on that team: Bellamy, Lucas, myself, West, Havlicek—let them have eight or nine years in the league and let’s play! I mean, what did [the Dream Team] do as a group of players that we didn’t? They couldn’t guard any better than we could, they couldn’t shoot any better than we could, couldn’t rebound any better. The Dream Team played against countries and beat them; we beat everybody ourselves—even at that time. Once again, let’s be honest. The Dream Team is a concept developed by someone to sell stuff. It has nothing to do with playing basketball. SLAM: If you were playing ball today, with the way the salaries are, how much do you think you’d be worth? ROBERTSON: Oh, I have no idea. I don’t even think about that. It would be a lot of money, but who cares? I played my years. The game of basketball today, man, I don’t know how they are going to pay all of these guys in the future. You know? What can a team afford? I guess the Bulls can afford to pay Michael [Jordan] $25-30 million; the key is, what are they going to pay Scottie Pippen? That’s going to be interesting. SLAM: I know you are extremely successful with Orchem [Robertson is president of the Orchem Chemical Company in Cincinnati] but do you have any interest in getting involved in any corporate or management aspect of basketball or sports? ROBERTSON: Naw, they don’t want me in there. SLAM: Not your thing, huh? I hear you. How do you feel about Magic Johnson as a ballplayer? I mean, he and Penny Hardaway are the ones everyone compares to you. ROBERTSON: Magic was a great basketball player, an exciting basketball player. He loved the game of basketball. He had very good control of the game. I think he made a lot of average ballplayers great. He was in the right place at the right time for that team. Because if he would’ve gotten drafted by Utah, we wouldn’t have heard that much about Magic. Well, we would have heard about him, but not like you did in L.A. Do you remember [Utah’s] Darrell Griffith? Now there was a great college and high school basketball player who never got the exposure when he got to the pros, partially because of where he played. SLAM: What about Penny? ROBERTSON: I think the greatest thing to happen to him was for Shaq to leave. I think his game slowed down when Shaq was there. He was still a great player, but I think now the guy can be devastating. I like to see him push the ball, make the passes and really attack. Put pressure on the defense. Which is all Jordan does. That’s what makes him great. When Jordan gets the ball, he’s going. He has that confidence. He’s not afraid to take that shot and he knows it’s going in. Hardaway, with his size, I think he can be just as effective. SLAM: After years in Cincinnati, you were traded to the Milwaukee Bucks where, with Kareem, Bobby Dandridge, Lucius Allen, you won a championship. People said that you were on the downside of your career. Between one and 10, how do you rate your game when you got to the Bucks? ROBERTSON: Scoop, don’t let these white reporters fool you. I was playing great basketball then. Even my last year, when I was averaging 12-15 points a game—that’s not because I couldn’t average more. But we were winning and we were winning great, and we had a lot of known players. I knew my role was to move the ball. See, the press, then and sometimes now, will do anything to discredit the black athlete. Will do anything. Don’t get me wrong, it is warranted sometimes because some black athletes are just the pits! But who wrote the articles that you read? That’s the key to the whole thing. SLAM: I heard your older brother was nice, too. ROBERTSON: My brother Bailey was very intense, talked a lot of trash. He could play. He played guard in high school and was pretty successful. We had a middle brother, and we all played together. We competed all of the time. All we had was sports, because we didn’t have any money. SLAM: Was he better than you? ROBERTSON: He had a better shot, but I outgrew him. He was part of the first all-black basketball team that played in the state finals in Indiana. As a matter of fact, I think he still holds the state scoring record for Indiana from when he attended Indiana Central College [now the University of Indianapolis]. Because of race relations at the time, he didn’t get the opportunity to go to a lot of the big schools. I came out three years after him, so I was able to take advantage of some of the things he was unable to. SLAM: My father used to say that you were the smartest player who is ever going to play the game of basketball. When I was growing up, that’s all I heard from the older cats. All they talked about was how smart you were. How does it make you feel when you hear something like that? ROBERTSON: Well, I was a smart player. But for many years, in every sport, everyone would say that blacks were irresponsible, that only the white guys were smart. If you go back a little bit in time, you’ll see that. They’d say, “Oh, he’s smart,” but this is a tag that was never put on the black athlete. And it was done by the press, it was done on a deliberate basis. They just didn’t want to say that the black athlete was smart. It’s that racism thing again that we have to go through. [When] I was in high school in ’55 or ’56, we just had athletic ability. I wasn’t considered smart then. We could just out-jump and outrun all of the white kids. But we played smart basketball. We played ’em slow when we had to, we ran when we had to. We knew when to slow the ball up, when to speed the game up. I knew who to get the ball to. I was not a predictable player on the floor. Yeah, I was a smart player, but so were a lot of other players that I played with. I wasn’t smart just because I got into the pro ranks; I was smart when I was in high school. Basketball players don’t become smart all at once; it takes years and years of playing the game. SLAM: OK, last thing. What about the rivalry between you and Jerry West? That was real, wasn’t it? ROBERTSON: That was only because one of us was white and one of us was black. We had two totally different games. It was unfair. It was unfair to Jerry and also to myself, because we didn’t play the same type of game. Jerry was the shooting guard, and I was just the opposite: ball-handling, setting up everything. But, you know, when you grow up in that atmosphere, you become used to that [racism]; those things don’t bother you. I grew up as a young person born in the south [Tennessee] and went to school in Indiana, which I’ve been told is the home of the KKK, so a lot of things don’t bother me. They don’t bother me and they didn’t bother me. SLAM: Well, they shouldn’t, because if they did you wouldn’t be effective in doing what you have to do. ROBERTSON: Exactly. You cannot let hating people get to you. You can’t be vindictive and you can’t have that “get even” thought in your head and be a good athlete. But I will say this, you should never forget. Never forget what happened to you. (c) 1997 Scoop Jackson. Reprinted by permission.
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