|
 |   |
|
EVENTS Fantasy Central Inside Game Multimedia Central Statitudes Your Turn Message Boards Email Newsletters Golf Guide Cities Work in Sports
CNNSI.com GROUP
COMMERCE |  |
Changing teams Hornacek will trade NBA for family
Posted: Wednesday April 26, 2000 04:09 PM
SALT LAKE CITY -- The NBA has become a league of athletes soaring ever higher. Of massive bodies pounding the ball down low. And of back-court magicians penetrating in a flash. And then there's Jeff Hornacek. "He wasn't the most God-given talent kind of guy, jumping higher, running faster," says superstar teammate Karl Malone. "But I tell you what, there's not a smarter guy that has ever played this game than him." Hornacek has averaged 14.5 points throughout his 14 years in the league. And he says this experience has served him well. "I feel like I know how to play the game," he said. "How to do the little things [and] can compensate for not having the speed or quickness of other guys." Hornacek learned early in his basketball life that such obstacles can be overcome. Take the hoop court behind the house where he grew up outside Chicago.
"We did have a [power] wire going through the yard," Hornacek remembers. Actually, the line extended from behind the backboard down the middle of the "court" to the rear of the house. "It was kind of on the side of our driveway, and you learn to shoot under it and sometimes over it. The normal arc would put you right in the middle of the wire. So that helped with learning to put arc on the shot." He would perfect that arc and shoot his way on to Chicago area high school all-star teams. But in trying to secure a major college scholarship, he encountered another obstacle. There were no suitors. "Jeff wasn't the fastest kid in the world," recalls his father, John. "But he had good hands and good balance on the floor and everything. But he wasn't the type of kid they were looking for." As a favor to his father's friend, Jeff would walk on to Johnny Orr's Iowa State Cyclones. "To be honest with you, the first semester, he wasn't terrific, you know?" said Orr who coached in Ames from 1981-1994. "He never appeared to me like he was going to play in the NBA. I worried if he could play for me at Iowa State."
Orr's worries soon ceased, as Hornacek became Iowa State's playmaker, leading the Cyclones to the NCAA Sweet 16 in his senior year. "Good coaches kind of pick out the guys who know how to play the game," Hornacek said, "and figure that there might be a use for them at some point." Orr says that ultimately, this future NBA star could do it all. "He was coach, player, he was a leader. He was everything that you want a guy to be, and he was all in one." Fourteen years ago, Hornacek entered the NBA having already fought and won the battle. For all the things that he wasn't, it is the things that he was that have made him special. Malone and Hornacek have been together with the Jazz for seven years. And the Mailman knows his teammate is one player he can count on to always deliver. "A kid will tell you in high school or grade school, 'I can't do that.' And I'd like for every kid in America to get a Jeff Hornacek poster and put it in his bedroom and say, 'How did this guy do all these things in this league?' And you won't say you can't do it anymore." Despite the fame, Hornacek has always recognized his role on the grand stage that is the NBA. "Obviously I came up around the same time Michael Jordan did. Everyone can look and say, 'I want to be like Mike,' you know? The old saying that everyone went by. Yet there's not going to be anybody like Mike. Yet there could be millions like me." Hornacek has become one of the NBA's all-time great shooters. This season he led the league in free-throw shooting at an astounding 95 percent. Yet it is not what he does statistically at the line, but what he does symbolically, that has mattered the most. "My kids have said to me, 'Wave, wave to us when you are on TV.' I said, 'I can't sit there and go up to the camera and do this number [he looks in to the camera and waves]. But at free throws, I'll give this," and he rubs the side of his face with his hand. "And this means, 'Hi, I love you, guys.' It was our secret wave back in the days. It's not a secret anymore." And it's no secret to Jeff that now at 36, his wife Tracy and the kids are looking forward to the day when the family can spend more time together. "And they [the children] always say, 'Well, keep playing.' Yet when there comes a time when I'm on the road and I miss one of their plays or their events, it's like, 'Well how come you are playing? Can't you come home and watch us?'" Oldest son Ryan, 12, has good reason to see more of dad.
"I think the most important thing is all of our school stuff," he says. "Like I know we had our science fair last Saturday and he wasn't able to make it." And it is because he is missing such events in his children's Lives that Hornacek wants back in their lives before it is too late. "Everybody says how fast your kids are," he said. "They're five years old one day, and then all of a sudden, they are out of high school." During a pregame warm-up at a recent home game, Hornacek's three children got to sit courtside and watch their father drain some 3-pointers. It was one of those rare moments, the kind Hornacek longs for that allows him to spend some invaluable time with his family. Tyler, who is 10, calls his father over to the bench as asks, "What are you doing talking to the ref?" The 6-foot-4 inch Hornacek leans over his son and replies, "Trying to talk to him so I can get some calls tonight." Tyler isn't biting. "Yeah, right," he answers. But his son does realize that retirement will mean that his father will be watching him from the sidelines for a change. "I'm happy that my dad is retiring, because he'll make it to all my basketball, soccer and baseball games," he said. And like her older brothers, six-year-old Abbie is also well aware what her father's post-league career will mean to her. "I'm glad my dad is retiring, because he can come to my recitals," she says. So it is not surprising that these are the things that have become important to this father and husband. "Time goes by fast," he says. "To miss those opportunities that you'll never get back, I think it's a relatively easy decision to see the things that I have missed over the years." And just the way that Jeff Hornacek walked on to his college team, he will now walk away from the NBA.
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
