Mama's Boys

At the shootaround Larry looked at his watch. To ensure that he was never late, Larry set his clocks at home so far ahead that he often arrived at places 20 minutes early. He looked at the trainer. Wasn't aspirin invented for headaches? What was this, the 40th or 45th time this season Allen had been late or hadn't shown up? Not to mention all the times he had hidden in the bathroom and gorged on tacos while the rest of the team lifted weights.

That night Allen sat slumped in the locker room. He couldn't believe that he'd been suspended and that his coach had criticized him in front of the media. "I've been here four years," he said. "They know who I am as a competitor. So don't question my heart."

When Bubba Chuck was three, I told him, "You're the man of the house. You gotta do whatever you gotta do to become a man." I'd just moved out of Grandma's and moved in with Michael Freeman. He was a welder at the shipyard. I moved out two months later to be on my own, but he'd come over and visit after work most days, stay a few hours. He's the father of Allen's two sisters and he's a good man—the drugs he sold and went to prison for weren't for buyin' fancy cars and jewelry; they were for puttin' food in our refrigerator. But Bubba Chuck was the man of the house.

We moved to the ghetto, and five kids jumped Allen. Lie ran to get his fishin' rod to fight with. I took him back and told him he had to fight one-on-one with fists. He beat two of 'em. Rest backed off. Bubba Chuck was—what?—seven? He played football in my grandmother's backyard with my brothers and the kids next door. They were all much older. They'd pick him up and throw him against the house, and he'd come in ciyin'. I'd send him right back out. I wanted him to play basketball, but he said basketball was too soft. Michael Freeman took him to the court to let his ass get hammered. He was 10. Look how he gets beat down today and keeps gettin' back up.

I worked for Amway, and they taught me to set goals so I could realize my dreams. Can you believe that—bunch of white people tellin' me to set goals—but that was the best thing I could've had. 'Cause all I had in the 'hood was people tellin' me how to sell drugs. I'll be honest, it was white people who lifted me up. Not black people.

Had to do lots of things to get us by. Can't tell you everything, gotta save some things for when I do my book. I drove a forklift. I was a secretary at Langley Air Force Base. Was a welder at the shipyard. Worked the counter at a convenience store, watched men walk right in and steal beer. Made the money I needed to bury Grandma playin' bingo. Men would lend me money till my SSI check came for my daughter—she was disabled with seizures. Bubba Chuck? He never worked a job—no! It was my job to take care of him. Only chore he ever had to do was take out the garbage. I cleaned his room my daggone self.

One day I came back to the projects from visitin' relatives in Hartford. All of a sudden, they're tellin' me I owed $32 and had to leave my house. I had $360 in my pocket but they wouldn't let me pay—they evicted us! My daughter and I went into a shelter for homeless mothers, but Bubba Chuck wouldn't go; he couldn't bear it. He moved in with his old football coach Gary Moore. He was 14 years old.

I didn't hide none of it from him. Whenever I took a bump, he was right there with me. He knows everything there is to know about me. But my kids didn't wake up every mornin' and see a different nigga in my bed or a different pair of shoes under it. I taught Bubba Chuck to go straight at a problem. Call me a top-dog bitch. If I gotta be one, that's the way I carry.

"It's about f—-in' time," snarled Allen, when Larry sent him back into a game two years ago against the Cleveland Cavaliers, after he'd been out for two minutes and three seconds. He often cursed when Larry pulled him out of games, then sat on the far end of the bench with a towel over his head, the way his mother used to do with a sheet when she needed to be alone in a crowded house. In five decades of basketball, Larry had never seen or heard anything like it, so he knew it wouldn't go down well the following season when he yanked Allen and four other starters with 8:15 left in the third quarter and the Sixers trailing the Detroit Pistons by 23 points, and never put Allen back in. "I've never been done like that in my career," Allen seethed in the locker room. "If that's the way it is, something needs to happen. Something's got to give. I mean every word I'm saying. Every single word."

Larry was standing 10 feet away. He didn't say a word. He just walked away.