One game, I was warming up, stretching on the floor during the pregame, and a player from the other team came over to me. This was a guy I had known for years. He was a great character and a great player. Maybe even a Hall of Fame one day. Time will tell. Anyway, this was toward the end of the season, when the playoff seedings had long been decided, and what we were about to embark on was, essentially, a meaningless game. Situations like this can be hard. You're either exhausted and wishing you could rest up for the playoffs or you're already thinking about where you're going to play golf in the off-season. The main thing is you don't want anyone to get hurt in a game like this. You want everyone to keep it cool. But sometimes you get a rookie or two in there playing hard. trying to show their worth off the bench, and now all of a sudden guys are banging around for no reason at all. You have to play. I reached out my hand to dap this guy up and he didn't take it. Instead he leaned in real close to me, opened his mouth and exhaled into my nostrils so I could smell his breath. He smelled, honestly, like an entire frat party had taken place in his mouth.
"What the f*$%?" I said, laughing.
"Yo, I'm drunk as f*$% right now."
I couldn't believe it. This dude was wasted. All I could think of was that I was going to have a good game whenever I ended up guarding him, because we were going to win this one going away.
Tip-off happened and it was a different story entirely. This man turned into Drunken Master. As good as he was sober, he was ridiculous this night. He was lightning the floor entirely up, knocking in threes, scoring from every single direction. Shaking, baking, dunking, really kind of making us look stupid. He torched us plain and simple. I know he's never done anything like that before or since, but if I played that well drunk, I don't know if I'd ever stop. I still laugh when I think about that. Sometimes basketball is a real headache. But after it's all said and done, it's still just a game.
