9101020418
DETROIT FREE PRESS
910111
Friday, January 11, 1991
METRO FINAL
1C
MITCH ALBOM
Copyright (c) 1991, Detroit Free Press
AFRAID OF THE BLAZERS? NOT WITH GOOD FELLOWS
Alot of Detroit fans are worried about these Portland Trail Blazers. They
see the second-best record in basketball, the longest winning streak of the
season -- they see all this and they begin to sweat. They figure maybe these
mopes from Portland are ready to overtake the Pistons as kings of the NBA.
And I say: HA!
Have you met assistant coach Brendan Malone?
Let me tell you why I say that. On Thursday, I dropped by the Pistons'
practice, just to see how they were doing. Football season had kept me away
for a while, and I thought, well, who knows? Maybe they have lost a little
of the old magic. Maybe they really should be worried about these guys from
lumber land.
So I walk into the gym, the Oakland University gym, and there's the team
finishing up, boisterous as ever. I see Isiah Thomas turn to Mark Aguirre
and, with a smile, square off in a make-believe boxing match. I see Bill
Laimbeer, plastic mask on his face, give a group of reporters his belligerent
stare.
(REPORTER: "Bill, what does breaking the all-time Pistons rebounding mark
mean to you?"
LAIMBEER (glaring): "It means I've been around a long time.")
This would be enough to intimidate most people. As would the sight of
long, tall James Edwards and Tree Rollins, ducking under the door frame
together. Or Joe Dumars, injured, still out there.
But then, a few minutes later, comes the kicker. I find myself in a
conversation with Malone and Scott Hastings. Just your basic, small talk
conversation. And this is when I realize that maybe Detroit fans ought to stop
worrying.
It went, more or less, like this:
It's not bull -- they can be tough
ME: You guys see the movie "GoodFellas"?
MALONE: Great movie.
HASTINGS: Great movie.
MALONE: You know, I grew up with those guys.
ME: You did?
HASTINGS: Get out.
MALONE: Yeah. In New York. The guy that movie is about, Henry Hill? He
lived two blocks from me. I remember that stuff. Guys passing guns in paper
bags. Dead men floating in the river.
ME: You do?
HASTINGS: Get out.
MALONE: Yeah. For a while, I worked as a longshoreman. I saw all sorts of
stuff. Later on, I coached high school ball. One of my players, a few years
after he graduated, the mafia had him killed. He was running rackets. They
found his body in the river.
ME: They did?
HASTINGS: Get out.
MALONE: It's true. It floated to the surface two months after they popped
him. See, that mafia group, they just killed you and tossed you in the river.
The Westies, who they wrote that other book about? They would slice you open,
let your insides come out, then throw you in the river, so you would sink to
the bottom and stay there.
ME: They did?
MALONE: It's true.
HASTINGS: You know, we never had stuff like that where I grew up.
MALONE: Sure. You grew up in Kansas. Your idea of big news was when one of
the neighbors got a new heifer.
HASTINGS: Naw, a bull. I swear, someone would say, 'We got a new bull!'
And after school, five or six kids would go and sit on the fence, chew on
weeds, and just stare at this bull, and not say nothing. Just stare at it, for
like, hours.
ME: They did?
MALONE: Get out.
HASTINGS: But none of my friends ever got killed and thrown in the river.
One time, I did help slice open a cow.
ME: You did?
MALONE: Get out.
HASTINGS: I'm not kidding. It was a common thing on the farms. First you
shot it in the head with a .22. Let the blood drain out. You had to do it in
the morning, before the flies were around. Then you cut like this, and then
this way, up, like this, then you spread it apart, and took the hide off and
everything. It was kind of gross, but I did it.
ME: You did?
MALONE: Unbelievable.
HASTINGS: Whatdaya mean? You're the one from New York. You'd have made a
good gangster.
MALONE: (Laughing, makes a gun shape with his finger.) Yeah. Bad-da-bing,
ba-da boom! You're dead.
HASTINGS: (Making a gun shape.) Ba-da-bing, ba-da-boom!
MALONE: Hahahaha!
HASTINGS: Hahahaha!
ME: Well, gotta go, fellas.
Now, I am not making this up. And remember: Malone is only the second
assistant coach. And Hastings is maybe the 11th or 12th man on the team. We
haven't even begun to talk about Isiah and Aguirre's younger days on the
mean streets of Chicago. Or Vinnie Johnson and John Salley and the things
they learned in Brooklyn.
So, I see it this way. When people around me fret over the Portland Trail
Blazers and their wonderful record, I figure, hey, here we have an assistant
coach who remembers the bad old days and a bench player who once ripped open
a cow with his bare hands.
And what does Portland have?
Rick Adelman?
Ba-da-bing, ba-da-boom.
I'm not worried.
BRENDAN MALONE