September 30, 1992
"Ree-lax," said the X Man. "C'mon baby, ree-lax."
He was dribbling the ball between his legs. Was that supposed to make Carey Rich relax? How do you relax when you are trying to stop the X Man? How do you relax when the X Man is playing you with a toothpick in his mouth?
"I don't know why I played him," Rich muttered. "He's too damn mean."
They were dueling at the University of South Carolina, where Carey Rich will play his home games this season.
Yet it's Xavier McDaniel who owns this arena. After his morning workout across town, he saunters up to campus and challenges the boys to some one-on-one. He taunts them, tests them, goads them, beats them.
"C'mon baby," said the X Man, grinning. "Take some of this."
He spots up for the jumper. Bang. He spots up again. Bang. The third time he drives the lane. Slam.
"C'mon baby," said the X Man, his smile widening. "Ree-lax."
Now, Carey Rich has pride, and though he's young, he's not a bad player. So while the X Man has his head turned, talking trash to the next victim on the sidelines, Rich lines up and buries a 15-footer.
The swish of the ball snaps the X Man's head around. The smile is gone. The toothpick soon follows.
Suddenly, the X Man is so close that Carey Rich can count his fillings. Suddenly, the X Man is bumping him and poking him and talking real fast.
"Put it up, baby," said the X Man. "I dare you. Put it up again."
The shot is rushed, frantic. The X Man rips down the board and heads for the hoop.
"Try and stop me," he growls.
He is like a runaway locomotive, huffing and puffing and snorting, charging ahead at breakneck speed until . . . whoa! He screeches on the brakes. Stop and pop.
"You hit me," the X Man screamed. "You did. That's three. Three-point play!"
The smile is back.
Carey Rich does not score another basket the rest of the afternoon.
They say Xavier McDaniel has a temper.
"Sometimes I play better when I'm mad," he acknowledged.
How do you get the X Man mad?
"Just score on him," said his childhood friend, Larry Lane. "That usually does it."
McDaniel was angry for most of the Eastern Conference Finals last season. Chicago's Scottie Pippen was getting too much ink, and the X Man could feel smoke collecting in his nostrils.
"Scottie Pippen," he said. "If I came out and played like he did, he'd kick my butt. But if I come out and play him physical, then he's thinking about me. He's thinking about me instead of thinking about the game."
The Bulls won the series, beating McDaniel's Knicks, but the X Man held his own. Aside from harassing Pippen, he averaged 18.8 points a game and redeemed himself from a late regular-season slide.
Before McDaniel exercised his contract option last Jan. 15, he was averaging 16.8 points and 6.5 rebounds and shooting 49.2 percent from the floor. After, his numbers dipped to 11.5 points, 4.9 rebounds and 46.4 percent. His playing time dropped from 32.9 minutes a game to 25.5. The critics carved the X Man up, but Knicks coach Pat Riley said the decline in minutes was not from dissatisfaction.
"I knew X wouldn't score for us the way he did in Seattle and Phoenix, because we were looking for more balance," said Riley. "But the reasons I didn't play him down the stretch were not because he wasn't playing well.
"I never had any doubts about X. When others were critical of him, I didn't see that. I loved him as a leader.
"But when we got to the final month of the season, the whole team slumped, the Celtics caught us, and that compounded a whole bunch of things."
With one regular-season game left, Riley decided it was time for him and the X Man to talk.
Riley said he considered McDaniel a vital part of the team, but he wanted more. In issuing that challenge, he struck a nerve.
"I never coast in a game," said McDaniel. "I take that personally. Pat Riley told me he didn't think I was playing hard. He was the first coach ever to tell me that."
The X Man said Riley didn't know him well enough to make that judgment. Riley countered: Show me I'm wrong.
That made the X Man mad. Scottie Pippen paid the price.
"For a while, I couldn't understand why Pat wasn't using X in the fourth quarter," said David Falk, who negotiated McDaniel's new deal. "But then I realized he was just being smart. He kept X out so he was pent up like a caged animal. Then he released him for the playoffs."
You want to get the X Man mad? Ask him about his knees.
"Everyone has concerns about my knees," he said. "That's another thing I took personally with the Knicks. I practiced every day except two. I didn't miss a single game.
"It's not like I had a Ron Harper injury (torn anterior cruciate ligament). I had cartilage damage.
"Charles Smith had knee problems. When they sit down and renegotiate with him, do you think it will come up?"
The X Man is sensitive about a few things. Don't talk to him about Charles Smith, the player the Knicks traded for last week. Don't talk to him about Harvey Grant, the forward the Knicks offered a lucrative contract to before Washington matched it.
It bothers X that these players were offered a place in New York before his deal was settled. It rankles him further to think his knees might have anything to do with that.
In seven years, he has missed a total of 18 games. In the last two seasons, he has missed one game.
"I'll play hurt," McDaniel said. "I played a whole season (1989-90) with torn cartilage. After a while it was so bad it locked up on me in the middle of games. I'd jiggle it around, get it moving again and stay in the game. I didn't stop until finally it locked up five times in one half."
His critics say he's lost his best asset -- the ability to leap above everyone to snare rebounds. The X Man is reminded of a post-surgery press conference three years ago when he candidly told those assembled he could jump only half as high as before the operation.
"Any time you have surgery, it takes a little out of you," he said. "But I'm still a fairly good jumper. I can still dunk on you. Try me."
Xavier McDaniel is not a model citizen spewing the party line. His teammates love him for his brutal honesty, but it tends to make management squeamish.
"We took a long, hard look at X as a person," said Celtics CEO Dave Gavitt. "Would he fit? We talked to an awful lot of people, and what kept coming back was that, while on the court he could give you the impression of being a thug, he was a really good guy in the locker room, a good teammate."
McDaniel rarely criticizes those playing alongside him, but he didn't hesitate to take a swipe at the Seattle front office upon his departure for not sticking with a nucleus of players. When he left Phoenix, he ripped the Suns for blaming him for their playoff woes. And, after leaving New York, he charged general manager Dave Checketts with being dishonest.
Can the conservative Celtics live with a guy whose stream-of-consciousness approach reminds some of Charles Barkley?
"The problem with Charles," said Gavitt, "is while he's very entertaining, he ultimately can wear at the fabric of a team.
"We don't see X in the same way. We see a guy who brings feistiness to the team. We need an intimidator, not a retaliator. So once in a while he speaks his mind. We can live with that. We don't need all our guys to be vanilla."
The X Man promises to be as tough on himself as anyone else.
"If I stink up the joint, I'll be the first to say so," he said. "In New York, I'd tell the reporters, 'I played like a $2 player tonight. I don't deserve to get paid.' I ripped myself. I did their work for them."
The X Man is admittedly not well versed in Celtic history, yet he is intrigued by his new franchise.
"When I visited Boston, I was thinking I wasn't going to sign," he said. "But then Red (Auerbach) started telling me how he keeps in touch with his old players. He told me how he just had dinner with John Thompson a few nights before. Hell, Thompson played 20 years ago and he wasn't even that good."
The New York brain trust feared the X Man would be swayed by the "Celtic family" party line. Riley admits he was "shell shocked" by news of McDaniel's signing with Boston.
"I told him right after the season that if (negotiations) ever got bad to call me," said Riley. "I said that back in May, and he probably forgot.
"I have great confidence in Dave (Checketts). He's done tremendous things for us. But the worst thing that happened was somehow this all became personal to X.
"I do know this: if I had known how bothered he was, and I had the chance to talk with him, X would not be in Boston. I'll never let a situation like this ever happen again. I thought everything was fine, and it wasn't.
"I thought we had made it clear we'd try to enhance the team with him on it, but to do that we needed to keep him on the shelf for a while.
"I can understand why he did what he did. I don't blame him. But I'll tell you what -- the Celtics got themselves a prize."
McDaniel hopes his newest team will serve as a permanent home. He has a deal that could keep him in Boston for five seasons, providing both parties want it that way.
"I look at this the same way it was for DJ when he got traded from Phoenix to Boston," McDaniel said. "He had been on a roller coaster until that point.
"So have I. I keep getting on, getting thrown off again. This time I want to stay on."
He promises to bring enthusiasm to the parquet. He promises to find his own niche in the Celtic history books.
"Boston Garden has been hell to me," he said. "Everyone knows it's a terrible floor. When I was a young player, they used to tell me, 'Don't worry about what's going on in Boston Garden, or you'll be lost.'
"Now I'll be at the Garden, and I'll be in the good locker room. And maybe one of the guys can point out all the dead spots for me."
Troy McKoy stands before the X Man, tapping his sneaker nervously. No wonder. Before McDaniel arrived at the South Carolina arena, McKoy was boasting he had burned the X Man the day before, and how McDaniel was a guy with bad knees who can't jump.
Naturally, as soon as the X Man arrived, the other guys repeated every word.
So the X Man doesn't even bother to tell Troy McKoy to ree-lax. He just flips him the ball and stares him down.
McKoy can't shoot, so he backs his way in, bumping closer and closer to the hole, until he sees an opening . . .
Swat! The X Man lets out a shrill laugh as he sends the ball into the stands, "Get that (expletive) out of here!
"He says I can't jump. Did you hear him? He says I can't jump.
"Seven (expletive) years in the NBA and he's telling me I can't jump.
"Well, brother, you got zero (expletive) years in the NBA and you can't jump, either."
The smile was intact, the swagger in place. And, as the next victim shuffled forward, the X Man went searching for a new toothpick.
No comments:
Post a Comment