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Business News/ Mint-lounge / Mint-on-sunday/  Sporting tributes from the bottom of the heart
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Sporting tributes from the bottom of the heart

Charles Barkley's eulogy for Moses Malone shows stars often get to know fellow players far more intimately than we can imagine

Moses Malone. Photo: AFPPremium
Moses Malone. Photo: AFP

When I first visited the US in the early 1980s, I knew very little about basketball. I knew even less about the National Basketball Assocation (NBA), that country’s professional league for the sport. Not how it worked, none of its teams, none of the players.

But when my friend Mike sat me down to watch a few games, I was hooked.

And from those days, one of the names I heard the most about was Moses Malone, the league’s top rebounder between 1981 and 1985. Even a rookie follower like me understood that this spoke of a rare and fierce competitor; rebounding is one of the game’s most vital and yet toughest skills. To do it well, you need an acute court and ball sense, coupled with a willingness to fight relentlessly for position under the basket. Malone had it all, which is why he was a three-time winner of the league’s Most Valuable Player award.

Malone was also famed for an outrageous prediction he made before the 1983 NBA play-offs, when he was with the Philadephia 76ers. The 76ers, he said, would go “fo, fo, fo" to win the championship; meaning they would sweep all three seven-game series, winning in four games (“fo") each time. As it turned out, he was nearly right: they lost just one play-off game en route to the NBA title. (They went “fo, fi, fo").

All in all, Malone was one of the sport’s all-time greats.

Malone died on 13 September, at 60. As you can imagine, that triggered a flood of tributes and any number of stories about him. And one of them—a simple, heartfelt eulogy—has stuck in my mind all this week.

More on that in a bit.

Tributes from one sports star to another can be banal, but are often truly compelling. For whether as teammates or competitors for sky-high stakes, such stars must get to know fellow players in ways far more intimate than the rest of us can imagine, even perhaps more intimate than we non-players ever get to know each other. Not that this means they always like each other. But when they speak about these relationships, it’s often like a window deep into their souls.

In his autobiography, You Cannot Be Serious, John McEnroe writes with admirable frankness about his battles with Bjorn Borg. Borg won five Wimbledon titles in a row and was the undisputed king of tennis through the late 1970s. But by 1980, he could see McEnroe in his rear-view mirror, closing in on him. Theirs was already the greatest rivalry in tennis, but the tide was turning. Borg beat McEnroe for his final Wimbledon title that year, but lost the US Open final to him and then lost Wimbledon to McEnroe in 1981. He was still one of the world’s best players, but he could see the writing on the wall.

So, he quit.

And McEnroe writes: “Borg’s leaving was … a huge blow for the sport, and for me personally. … It took the wind out of my sails: I had a very tough time motivating myself and getting back on track. It took me a couple of years to start improving again." Later, he refers to Borg in a language you might use to talk about losing a loved one: “I was in a strange state of mind, a kind of continuing mourning for Borg."

More than 30 years later, I heard words that reminded me of McEnroe’s, and this time actually about the loss of a loved one. The young Australian cricketer Philip Hughes died last year, after a ball hit him in the back of his head while he was batting. The tragedy shook all those who play, watch and love the game. It clearly affected Hughes’s Aussie teammates a great deal, and one of them stood up to speak at the funeral for Hughes.

Through his tears, this is what Australia’s captain, Michael Clarke, had to say: “I stood there at the wicket (where Hughes was hit). I knelt down and touched the grass. I swear he was with me. Picking me up off my feet to check if I was OK. Telling me we just needed to dig in and get through to tea. Telling me off for that loose shot I played. Chatting about what movie we might watch that night. And then passing on a useless fact about cows. … The heart of a man who lived his life for this wonderful game we play, and whose soul enriched not just our sport, but all of our lives. … So, rest in peace my little brother. I will see you out in the middle."

You know from those words—even the joke about cows—what Hughes meant to Clarke.

Back to Moses Malone. At his memorial in Houston on 19 September, Malone’s family asked Charles Barkley—himself one of the NBA’s greatest ever players—to speak. Barkley joined the 76ers in 1984, and in a team of superb players, Malone became a mentor to the rookie. When Barkley told Malone that he was struggling on court, Malone minced no words: “Li’l fella, you’re lazy and you’re fat." They began practising and working out together, Barkley lost 22kg and as he said, “the rest is history". In particular, Barkley became a superb rebounder himself.

Malone grew to mean so much to him, said Barkley, that he always called Malone “Dad".

Then Barkley spoke about another of his heroes, the earlier basketball superstar Bill Russell. He would ask Russell what his greatest accomplishment was, expecting to hear about Russell’s multiple championships. But Russell said, “Oh dude, that’s just basketball! … The only thing that mattered to me in my life was pleasing my dad. The number one thing a man should want to do is please his father."

So, Barkley says: “When (Malone’s) family asked me to speak today, it meant, to me, that my dad was proud of me. … Moses had told them he was proud of me."

The rest? That’s just basketball.

Once a computer scientist, Dilip D’Souza now lives in Mumbai and writes for his dinners. His latest book is Final Test: Exit Sachin Tendulkar.

Twitter: @DeathEndsFun

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Published: 27 Sep 2015, 08:44 AM IST
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