IGOR Larionov always had been a quiet man, but this was a different silence. Here, in the year he would turn 40, he was playing out the final days of his contract. An offer he once deemed "insulting" had been pulled off the table with nothing offered in its place. He was facing an ugly truth, one all athletes face sooner or later. His reputation was exceeding his productivity.
TO: Grant Hill The Deliberating Superstar c/o The Detroit PistonsDear Grant,I trust this letter finds you well, at least as well as a man can be three days after ankle surgery. While you were in the hospital, did you remember to avoid the Jell-O? I'm sure you did. You've always been smart.Which brings me to your future, where you must also be smart. It is not my place, as an aging sportswriter who can barely make a lay-up, to advise a sleek young NBA superstar about his prospects.But I'll do it anyhow.
FOR A FEW DAYS there, George Irvine was my favorite guy in sports.He was a head coach who didn't want to be head coach. A guy in the corner office who dreamt of returning to the office pool.The Pistons asked him to take the reins after Alvin Gentry was fired in March. Most assistant coaches would be wiping the drool from their ties. Not George. His response was more like that of a first-grader being asked to eat broccoli. "Aw, do I have to?"
WHAT WOULD you do for one more day on the job? Would you suffer ungodly pain? Go under a surgeon's knife? Take a needle in your private parts? Live on a training machine? Would you sweat, gasp, howl, yowl, lift weights, do ultrasound, stretch your muscles for so many hours, they seemed ready to slide off the bone?Would you do all this without break, endure an everyday hell for nearly two years, with no promise, no assurance, not even a ray of light at the end of the tunnel, only the belief that maybe, if the gods were so inclined, you could someday get to work one more day?
Mitch Albom writes about running an orphanage in impoverished Port-au-Prince, Haiti, his kids, their hardships, laughs and challenges, and the life lessons he’s learned there every day.
