Slo mo, p.1
Slo Mo!, page 1
Praise for Slo-Mo!
“Slo-Mo! … is inspired satire, a laugh-a-minute, sometimes bawdy, over-the-top riff on everyone and everything associated with professional basketball. If you don’t find something to laugh at with Slo-Mo!, run out, don’t walk, and find a sense of humor.”
—Denver Post
“Slo-Mo! is a splendid comic device whose literal telling of his NBA career says more about pro sports than he could ever know.”
—Chicago Tribune
“An indescribable amalgam of Dave Barry, Jim Murray, and Lew Grizzard with the timing of Jay Leno and the wit of Johnny Carson. Reilly may well be the funniest sportswriter in America.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Even your nonsports fans will enjoy this one.”
—Library Journal
“It’s a quick read, full of belly laughs, a four-or five-hour dose of escapism.”
—Buffalo News
“Don’t read Slo-Mo! expecting the usual towel-waving histrionics and mouthless platitudes of a pro athlete’s biography. Instead, enjoy its insightfulness, its sharp humor and its insider’s view of a children’s game that has become a rich man’s playground.”
—Josh B. Wardrop
“Reilly’s novels combine Caril Hiassen’s sense of the absurd with Dan Jenkins’s sense of humor and dialect.”
—Winston-Salem Journal
ALSO BY RICK REILLY
Missing Links
Author’s Note
This book is a work of fiction. References to real people and organizations are used solely to lend the fiction a sense of authenticity and irony. All other characters and all actions, events, motivations, thoughts, and conversations portrayed in this story are entirely the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons or events is entirely coincidental.
Coauthor’s Note
When I first inked the pact to cowrite Slo-Mo Finsternick’s life story, I had no idea that this odd, naive, and, frankly, rather dense teenager would fascinate the nation like no athlete since Michael Jordan. If I had, I would’ve negotiated more points on the back end.
I think you’ll agree, Slo-Mo has handled his end of the assignment with courage, grace, and humor, sometimes even intended. From his roots in a bizarre cave cult to his blossoming as a hero in the NBA, from the death of his mother to the search for his father, from his hoops career that began at a small Catholic high school and ended with America glued to its Sylvanias, this is one wild ride, so hop aboard!
Slo-Mo is a remarkable young man. Someday, I even hope to meet him.
—Rick Reilly, June 1999
JAN. 2, ORLANDO
Dear Kind Reader,
Well, I can’t believe I’m writing a book and this is because I’ve hardly ever even read a book much less wrote one before, on account of evil surface trappings like books, TVs, and automobiles weren’t allowed in the Spelunkarium where I grew up.
As you probably know, my name is Maurice Finsternick, although the people at the Spelunkarium always called me “Mo” but the sportswriter gentlemen have given me a nickname which is “Slo-Mo” because they say I have the same speed and agility of the Istanbul Hilton.
But it doesn’t matter anyway because I’m also tall as a hotel! I’m 7 feet 8 inches tall, and 195 pounds, which is pretty skinny I admit and, in fact, Mr. Charles Barkley, one of my teammates on the team, asked me today if I’ll travel with the team or will they just fax me everywhere!
I’ve been big ever since I was little, but I guess it’s a good thing because starting tomorrow I join the long line and great tradition of professional basketball’s most wonderful franchise, the New Jerseys! It’s real great because, like I told the sportswriter gentlemen this morning, even though our record is only 16–13, I really think we have the chemicals on this team to really go somewhere, a comment that they all seemed to like a lot on account of they wrote it down very fast.
But at the same time I’m very scared and lonely because I really don’t have any family and I don’t know anybody on the team and they’re not going to let me keep taking trains like I did to here to Orlando and I’m a little nervous to fly and I miss the Spelunkarium and miss my high school teammates who I got to know for only one season before my agent accidentally turned me pro, which I never really wanted to do at all but I guess that’s another story.
Still, my new teammates on the New Jerseys have been real nice to me. Tonight, for instance, after we were narrowly defeated by the Orlandos, 111–79, Mr. Barkley took me into the hotel bar so that we could talk about the exciting life in the NBA. It’s the first bar I’ve ever been in because I’m only seventeen and because I’ve hardly been out of the compound most of my life.
Unfortunately, women kept interrupting us and rubbing his bald head and giggling, although Mr. Barkley didn’t seem mad at these interruptions and, actually, seemed to kinda like it. I kept asking him questions, but finally he said, right into my ear, “Yo, chill, man, get yourself a freak!” And I said, “No, thanks, I don’t drink.” And just then Mr. Barkley must have got something caught in his throat because he spit out his beverage.
JAN. 4, NEWARK
Well, I’m just back from my first airplane ride of my life which I liked a lot, except for the well-known policy on all NBA teams that all supplemental rookies, which I’m one of which, have to serve the drinks and the meals onboard and also clean up but that’s the rich tradition of the NBA for you. Anyway, I’m all settled in for the season here at my very nice hotel, the Newark Airport Ramada Hotel, which I’m very excited about, as I think it is much better than moving into one of those pandemoniums the other guys live in.
I got a collect call tonight from my best little buddy, Microchip, although his real name is Mustafa Unity Smith, and when I say Microchip is little, I don’t mean little compared to me, I mean little compared to a collectible action figure. Microchip stands only 5-4 but he is “faster than rent money” as he always says, kidding.
Microchip played basketball with me at Most Virgin Lady High School in Boulder, Colorado. And I could not have made it to the New Jerseys without him and, really, I wouldn’t have made it and didn’t really want to come at all but I had no choice and Microchip said he’d call me every night since he didn’t have much to do anyway since he got cut the day I turned pro and he’d always wanted to play on the playgrounds of New York. “You just practicin’ till you play Hell’s Kitchen, Stumpy,” which is what he always calls me, kidding, of course.
Microchip doesn’t talk like a professor at all, even though both of his parents are professors at the University of Denver, and both of them do not like one bit his playing basketball, which is fine since they don’t even know he plays basketball. He told his parents that Most Virgin Lady High School didn’t even have a basketball team, much less that it had won four Class 5A titles in the last seven years, and that its specialty was Black Studies and he told them he was living with a man who studied under the great black leader Dick Gregory and taking evening Black Studies classes through the exchange program at the Naropa Institute but really he was only playing basketball every second and sleeping on an old mattress in the basement of our assistant basketball coach, Scooter Chambers.
And it was funny that we became such good pals because he was the shortest player on the team, Microchip was, and I was the tallest and also because his skin was the blackest and mine was the whitest and he’d done so much in his life and I’d done so little. And I’m glad to have at least one true friend in the world.
Actually, I may have two friends now because today I met Mr. Harley Pearce from the local newspaper although everybody calls him Harley the Stain because his shirt usually has something on it from lunch that day or perhaps the day before, and usually there’s also some of it in his teeth, just to the right of the Tootsie Pop stick he’s always chewing on.
Mr. Stain was here in my room this morning before practice, ordering us up a lot of room service and drinks and asking me a lot of questions, which was nice of him, and he asked me if I minded being so tall and large at 7-8. And I replied that people ask me that a lot and also say funny things to me like, “How’s the weather up there, stretch?” and “What time you due back at the lab?” which are very funny except maybe I have heard them a few hundred too many times. I really don’t mind, as I say that it is truly stupendous that I turned out to be 7 foot 8 inches tall when you have considered that my mother, Phyllis, was only 5-4 and 102 pounds when she was living with me at the Spelunkarium, which was until she died in the cave-in at the King Soopers grocery store.
I guess I should have told Mr. Stain that my dad is very tall, too, except that I don’t know his real name. Although I do know that his fake name was Genghis Korn, the 7-foot-tall giant who drives to supermarkets all over America and promotes Krispy Korn imitation-corn frozen food products. Of course, Phyllis told me that “Genghis Korn” is not really even his real name though she didn’t know what his real name was.
Unfortunately, after their one night together, he went on to another city to display his imitation-corn frozen food products and Phyllis never got an address or anything for him and, besides, I guess they couldn’t really have been together because how would he have liked spelunking, which is, of course, cave exploring, as much as she liked it, being as tall as he is. When you are as tall as he and me are, you can’t really spelunk very well on account of you’re constantly knocking down million-year-old stalactites and stalagmites. Which is really sad because you don’t get close to the true God, which is what we believe at the Inner D
JAN. 5, NEWARK
Tonight will be my first game with the New Jerseys! I’m a little nervous and everything is so new. Like, I have a secret admirer, I think, because this secret admirer has been doing nice little things for me like leaving little mints on my pillow and newspapers outside my hotel room and I looked through it and there was my picture talking about how I was selected by the New Jerseys in the special midseason supplemental draft, but what I don’t get is how they got my picture because I’ve never in my life been in New Jersey before.
I wanted to look my best because I knew some of the fellas from the TV stations would be there so I wore my best (well, only) suit. And I hate to be a braggart but I must have looked pretty good because everybody stared like crazy when I walked in. And then Mr. Barkley said that Wal-Mart called and said they wanted their suit back but I went to the phone and there wasn’t anybody there so I think maybe he was kidding me the way pro athletes are so well known to do.
It did not go all the way good, though. I was late to the morning shootaround but I still don’t think it was my fault. Coach Phil Jackson said the shootaround would be ten to eleven. So I showed up and he was mad at me and asked where I’d been.
And I said, “Well, I’m sorry, but I thought you said the practice was ten to eleven and that’s what time it is now.”
And he looked at his watch and that’s what time it was, ten to eleven, and I guess he felt bad for yelling at me when it was actually him who messed up and so he started laughing and didn’t stop for five minutes.
Afterward, Mr. Barkley said it is tradition that any first-round pick of the year has to buy McDonald’s for everybody on the team after his first shootaround and I said that there were sure a lot of historic traditions in the NBA. But they began saying things which made no sense, like “Big Mac” and “Double McCheese” and “Supersize my ass” and I had to tell them these things made no sense to me, were they people at this McDonald’s or what exactly. And Mr. Death Dedman, who is one of our power forwards, said, “Well, what the (word for intimate sexual relations) do you order at Mickey D’s?”
And I said, “I’m sorry?”
And he said, very slowly and clearly, “What (pause) the (pause) (intimate sexual relations) (pause) do (pause) you (pause) order (pause) at (pause) Mc (pause) Don (pause) ald’s (pause)?”
And I said I had never been to McDonald’s in my life and I think that is the quietest I have heard a room since Meditation Month at the Spelunkarium.
I’m writing this part now after the game from my room here at the Newark Airport Ramada Hotel and I think some of the players and administration officers are a little confused why I don’t play near the basket at 7 feet 8 inches tall. In fact, in the first quarter, I heard our owner, Mr. Trump, say that he did not pay $4.5 million over three years for a 7-foot-8-inch point guard that cannot dribble a water glass. But, see, I don’t like to play under the basket because I only like to shoot the standing hook the way my basketball hero, the fearful NBA scorer Bob “Bobby Hoops” Houbregs, did in the 1940s. Only I can shoot the hook with either hand because I’m amphibious, and also I like to hook my shot from way, way outside, especially from the top of the key about three feet outside the 3-point circle. And I think when I took my first Bobby Hoops hook shot and swished it through to the delight of our home crowd, they were not so worried. Because, as I say, I don’t wanna brag, but that is my shot.
I guess everybody thought it was kinda of a fluke, even though that’s all I shot in high school, because I never got the ball again to shoot it but I’m sure I’ll get it plenty very soon or why would they have drafted me?
Anyway, I’m afraid we were narrowly defeated again, 101–82, and I only played seven minutes, but it was still quite a thrill.
JAN. 6, CLEVELAND
Well, we flew to Cleveland tonight and I tried again to talk to our shooting forward, Mr. Justin Dominic from Arizona State, and he is a nice person although Mr. Barkley says he is a person who thinks all the time about sex. Everybody calls him “Woody” but I’m not sure how they get “Woody” out of “Justin.”
I have so many questions about this amazing new electronic world I’m suddenly living in and these airplane rides and all these hotel rooms and how am I going to pay for them but Mr. Woody couldn’t help me because he was very busy with a young woman named Miss Silver. I think she was an actress, because she kept asking me would I like to engage in a “three-way scene” sometime, and I said no, because how stupid would I look, not knowing any of my lines?
And so I said goodbye and went up to my room, which is where I am now, only I think they ended going into Mr. Woody’s room because I can hear them in there, engaging in that scene Ms. Silver talked about because I keep hearing Mr. Woody saying, “Who’s the king?” And Ms. Silver keeps going, “You, baby!”
I had no idea NBA players would like Shakespeare so much.
Tonight is my first night with my road roommate and teammate, Mr. Mockmood Rahim-Abdur, our starting point guard and a very serious believer in Muslim, and I mean serious. He doesn’t allow us to have on the television or the radio and five times a day he must set down his little cloth and face toward Mecca and pray.
And he doesn’t say much besides the praying because I think he’s listening for people outside in the hall because he seems very nervous about them coming in to get us. For this reason, I guess, he has a complicated alarm system for when we’re in the room, in which he hangs a whole lot of hangers from the chain that locks our doors and stacks about fifteen empty Supersize cans in front of the door in case anybody opens it.
“America is a nation of killers, thieves, and pagans,” he says. “It was foretold by Mohammed, peace be on him.”
It’s for that reason that Mr. Mockmood doesn’t like me to come and go from the room very much, but that’s okay because it gives me more time to stare at the picture of my dad, Genghis Korn, that I bring everywhere with me. Phyllis told me it’s the picture he hands out to kids at his promotional stops at grocery stores. It’s of him standing up next to his special Kornmobile (which was really only an old 1966 Corvair painted bright yellow in the Krispy Korn label), with the front seat pulled out and the steering wheel with the top half cut off and the whole thing extended so that he could drive it from the backseat.
Sometimes it hurts for me to look at the picture because I want to know him so bad because he looks just like me and is very, very tall like me and he seems to have such a nice smile. But then, just when I wished Phyllis had never shown me that picture, I think that then I wouldn’t know what he looks like at all, I decide that I’m glad that she did.
JAN. 7, CLEVELAND
Tonight before the game I had my first conversation with Mr. Big County, our center, and it was very unusual. He and I had lockers next to each other and we were getting ready for the game and I hadn’t got up the nerve to say hello to him yet and he turned to me and said, just casually, “Do you mind igwaddes tonight?”
And I didn’t quite hear him so I said, “I’m sorry?”
And he said, “What’d you decide on that gwallesore?”
And maybe it was his Texas accent or maybe my hearing isn’t very good but again, I said, “I’m sorry. What did you say?”
And he got a little perturbed and he said, “You know! That dee ana fore. Don’t you think?”
And he was just looking at me in such a way that I knew I couldn’t say “What?” and so I said, “Yes, I guess.”
And he said, “Why?”
And I knew that whatever I said yes to had completely made it worse and I was now in a kind of word trap and I was so confused I didn’t know what to do and he was looking at me like my answer meant somebody’s life or death and then all of a sudden he broke out laughing and so did everybody in the whole locker room and, in fact, they were laughing so hard they were laying on the carpet and beating on their lockers, as it turns out they were listening to the whole thing.
