A Team That Was Blessed

"Hey, Wilt," Kearns said in protest. "That's enough nostalgia. I don't want to live back there 25 years ago, and we won."

"No," Chamberlain said, "maybe losing that one, and some of the others, maybe that was to my advantage. I think, in the long run, it gave me more insight. If you're a winner all the time, you'll never see the other side of the coin, you'll never understand other people's troubles."

He paused at that, and he examined Kearns for a moment. "Still, still," he said, and then, for some reason, Chamberlain momentarily lapsed into a Southern accent: "Still, Tommy, y'all were blessed."

And nobody on the team, nobody anywhere ever summed it up quite so well.

THE FRIENDS

Chamberlain took a corn beef on rye and half a cheesecake to go, as a postmeal snack. That is, not a half-piece of cheesecake, but half a cheesecake. Then he and Kearns went outside to their limousine, and the little white guy and the huge black man who had jumped center 25 years ago in as big a college game as there ever was, got in the back, and the driver closed the door.

You couldn't see them because of the tinted glass; at last, Wilt had found a pair of sunglasses capable of concealing him. But the two old players were in there together, and not that far, either, from the playgrounds and kitchens of Tommy Kearns's youth. The limo turned the corner, and it was warming to think that after all these years, after a quarter of a century, Chamberlain and Kearns were riding along together. It wasn't a simple matter of nostalgia. No, at least for a moment it restored some faith in the fool system, in the games.

And then the limousine passed out of sight, carrying with it 1957, and 1982 as well.

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