The Breaks of the Game

by David Halberstam

But basketball was far more vulnerable to the change caused by the arrival of big money, Inman and his colleagues thought. For basketball demanded that though the players be talented, they also subordinate their individual talents to the idea of team and to each other. A truly great basketball player was not necessarily someone who scored a lot of points; a truly great basketball player was someone of exceptional talent and self-discipline who could make his teammates better. Basketball was a sport where under optimal conditions a great player with considerable ego disciplined himself and became unselfish.

IF THERE WAS one thing which buoyed the Portland coaches, it was the knowledge that whatever afflicted their team afflicted any team that had been successful. It was the special burden of success in the NBA. The moment a team reached the top, the very mechanism that had worked to pull the players together began to work to pull them apart.

What most people did not see was the grace, the agility so rare in any man, but truly astonishing in a man of his height; they saw only the height, which was greater than their own. Failing to see the grace, they also failed to see the passion, which was brilliantly concealed, hidden behind two layers of masks, first a protective eyepiece which was a mask to the face, and then the face itself which was a mask to the soul. They saw the lack of emotion and decided that Kareem did not care as they cared. In a comic movie he appeared in as, of all things, an airline pilot, a young boy accused him of loafing on the court. Not only little boys in movies, or fans, did this—sometimes it was professional basketball men. Players never did. They revered him as they did few others—perhaps Julius Erving for his natural ability and Paul Silas for his intelligence and character. But they were in genuine awe of Kareem and what he did every night, and the burden which,