Mama's Boys

Then I got in a fight with a girl who wanted Allen Broughton. Still pregnant. My 38th fight and I'd lost only once—to twin boys. But that was it for my grandma. She packed that house up in one week and moved us to Hampton, Virginia, where she came from.

That's where Allen was born. When the nurse brought him to me, I looked at his little body and saw those long arms and said, Lord, he's gonna be a basketball player! His uncles, Bubba and Chuck, wanted me to nickname him after them, so I nicknamed him after both. All his family and friends call him Bubba Chuck.

My cousins moved in with us, six of 'em and their mom. That made 13 of us in a two-bedroom house—six teenagers, the rest under 10. Bubba Chuck was more like a little brother to me than a son. Here I was a 15-year-old worryin' each mornin' about a baby and gettin' my sister and two brothers off to school. I'd wake up at night and feel Allen's chest, make sure his heart was beatin', and think, dag, this is my baby. He's relyin' on me. If I don't do right, he won't do right.

He had a picture in his mind. In its foreground sat Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen, appearing year after year at all those playoff press conferences against a backdrop bearing the NBA logo, wearing $2,000 suits with pressed shirts and silk ties. Pure class, thought Larry, who himself has been known to order 10 suits, 15 ties and 20 shirts on a stroll through a custom clothing store.

He knew one picture like that could begin to relax all the white people made tense by Allen's tattoos and cornrows and 'do rag. That's what Larry wanted to do for Allen when the Sixers finally made the playoffs. So in April 1999, Larry required coats and ties for the first-round trip to Orlando. Allen removed his untied boots, his floor-sweeping jeans, his untucked T-shirt and double-sized leather jacket. He wore a grey pin-striped Versace suit into the locker room. "See how good you look?" said Larry. Allen took the suit off and left it in a ball on the locker room floor.

My father was the baker for the czar of Russia. My mother's family was in the junk business. I was one of eight. We came to Brooklyn from Minsk in 1910, but I can't tell you anything about it. I was three when we left Russia and I don't remember it, and my parents never talked about it—they were too busy in the bakery. Everyone was too busy. I grew up on my own. I started at about 12, washing dishes, then working the counter. My father kept selling bakeries and buying new ones. He made money that way, I guess. We moved like gypsies.

My father had a heart attack when he was 50. After that, he sat in a chair near the front door and kissed the women as they came in, and gave out samples of rugelach. That's a pastry with cream cheese, nuts and raisins, rolled into twists. Everyone loved him—he was like the mayor. My mother took over running the business, but she died of walking pneumonia when she was 57. So my brothers, who were supposed to get an education, ended up staying in the bakery too. We were always there for each other. Never thought I'd end up in a bakery all those years. But who ever thought Milton....

What happened was this: Milton got a new job, a promotion, traveling all over Pennsylvania as a sales representative for his furniture company. Used to worry me sick, him driving hundreds of miles back to Brooklyn every Friday night to be with me and the boys for the weekend. How those boys loved him. He'd take them to games, play ball with them. I'd sit on the stoop and tie a rope around Larry's waist while he'd play around with a ball.

I couldn't stand Milton having to drive that far, so we moved to Pittsburgh when Larry was six. Milton insisted on buying our first house. We were just about to move into it when Milton came home on a Friday from work. He said he didn't feel well....

Allen woke up feeling like hell. The shootaround was scheduled for 11 a.m. late last season in Miami. Sure, he'd been out till 1:30 at the All-Star Cafe in South Beach, but that wasn't a late night for him. His body ached from slamming into men a foot taller and a hundred pounds heavier every game, and his ankles and feet hurt so much he had to wear slippers around the hotel. If only they would do away with practice. If only he could just hole up all day and recover, he'd be ready to go to war again by game time that night. He picked up the phone, but he didn't call Larry. He called the trainer and said he had a headache.