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Got to Give the People What They Want: True Stories and Flagrant Opinions from Center Court - Hardcover

Rose, Jalen

 
9780804138901: Got to Give the People What They Want: True Stories and Flagrant Opinions from Center Court
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0804138907 ISBN 13: 9780804138901
Verlag: Crown Archetype, 2015

Inhaltsangabe

“I want to start conversations, and even better, arguments.” – From the Introduction
 
One of the most outspoken and original voices in sports sounds off while revealing his incredible life story.
 
Jalen Rose has never been quiet.  Not as a kid growing up in Detroit in the 70’s and 80’s.  Not as the brash, trash-talking leader of the legendary “Fab Five” at the University of Michigan.  Not as the player under the stewardship of Hall of Famers Larry Bird, Isiah Thomas and others throughout his 13-year NBA career.  And certainly not as a commentator and analyst on ABC/ESPN and Grantland.  
 
In Got to Give the People What They Want, no topic is off limits.
 
Honest, unfiltered, unbiased.  Raw, refreshing, real.  This colorful collection of stories and opinions about basketball and life gives people the kind of insight and understanding they don’t get anywhere else in the sports world. 

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

JALEN ROSE is an ABC/ESPN analyst, executive producer of The Fab Five—the highest-rated documentary in ESPN history—and host of the Jalen Rose Report on Grantland and the Jacoby Podcast. Rose began his sports career at the University of Michigan where he reached two NCAA title games, and then went on to play for six teams in the NBA, most notably the Indiana Pacers when they made three consecutive Eastern Conference finals, including the 2000 NBA Finals. Rose established the Jalen Rose Foundation/Charitable Fund in 2000, personally donating close to $1.5 million to support the development and education of inner-city youths.  His most substantial outreach initiative to date is the establishment of the Jalen Rose Leadership Academy (JRLA) in his hometown of Detroit.

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1.

From a Freezing-Cold Night to a Dusty Film Room, or How I Discovered That I Was Meant to Be an NBA Player

You can still see the bump on my forehead.

It was January 30, 1973, the middle of the night in the middle of winter in Detroit--which means it was damn cold--and my mom started feeling things. She already had three kids, so she knew what those feelings meant. But unlike with those previous kids, she didn't have a husband to get her to the hospital. She'd gotten divorced, and the father of this new baby was nowhere to be found. So she called her brother, my Uncle Len, and told him she needed a ride to the hospital.

Two quick things about my Uncle Len that make him a good person to call in that situation: one, he is as cool as Marvin Gaye under pressure, even if you wake him up in the middle of the night; and, two, he has always had a lot of automobiles. Everyone's into cars in the Motor City--we care about our cars as much as we care about our houses. Len was a mechanic, and for this particular urgent voyage, he chose the 1970 Fiat, which could go for a month on six dollars of gas.

Len lived about ten minutes from us, but the hospital my mom wanted him to go to, Botsford General Hospital, was miles away, in the suburbs. There was a hospital in our neighborhood, but my mom was smart and knew the difference between city hospitals and suburban hospitals. Botsford General was going to be cleaner, with better doctors, better nurses--better everything. Still, there was a problem: I was coming out fast. The Fiat could weave through traffic pretty good, but Uncle Len didn't start actually running reds until after her water broke. When he pulled into the driveway, he was honking his horn nonstop for the emergency room staff to run out. They rushed over with a gurney, but it was just a little too late. When I came out, with my mom still halfway in the car, I basically fell out onto the street, on my head.

It sounds worse than it was, because the only souvenir I have from the adventure is that small bump on my forehead that never went away.

We lived on the west side of Detroit. When I was real little, our house was a two-family home right off 6 Mile and Greenlawn. The room I shared with my brothers Bill and Kev was upstairs, down the hall from my mom, and my sister Tam lived downstairs with my grandmother. Tam was the princess, with her own room, decorated all in pink. Bill, Kev, and I were stuck in the slanted attic. They had the bunk bed; I got the mattress on the floor.

Bill and Kev are both ten years older than me, so when I was little, they were already off at school, doing their own thing. The task of watching me basically fell to whoever was home, which meant my mom and my grandma were like tag-team wrestlers, coming in and out. Mom worked days at Chrysler as a keypunch clerk, and Grammie worked the graveyard shift as a nurse. And the truth was, if they weren't working, they were often sleeping, because when else were they going to do it? So I was left to figure out things for myself, even when I was as young as five or six. That certainly wasn't my mom's or my grandma's fault. They were doing everything they could to make sure we had that roof over our heads.

We never struggled to the point where we didn't have a roof, but we sometimes had to eat popcorn for dinner or mayonnaise sandwiches for lunch. And sometimes we didn't have hot water for showers, or couldn't pay for our heat in the winter, so we had to sleep in hoodies and skullies and socks. And at one point, my mom had a car that had a hole in the floor--if you removed the mat, you could see the street going past. Looking back, it wasn't exactly pleasant. But at the time, as a young kid, how did I know any better? I still have a Thanksgiving card that I made in school for my family when I was young. I glued a family portrait to the paper, and in crayon I wrote, "From Jay. To My Pretty Family." And I meant it.

Furthermore, my mom wasn't the kind of person who complained about what we didn't have. She had far too much pride, and far too much confidence in herself that she would figure something out. When she could, she worked a second job as a waitress at a bar called the Chez Beau over on Livernois Avenue. When no one else could watch me, I'd have to go over there with her. I'd play pinball, drink some Shirley Temples, even try and help my mom by making jukebox runs. Customers drinking cocktails and smoking cigars would give me a coin to play the Spinners, the Four Tops, the Isley Brothers, whatever. It's how I first got into music, and it was a good way to hustle a few extra dollars in tips. The Chez Beau wasn't exactly a club in South Beach, but it was a popular place for a while, and at some point or other, it became clear to me that it was where my mom had met my dad.

I guess technically, Kev and Bill and Tam are my half siblings, but I've never thought of it that way. Even though I knew I had a different father than they did, it's not like their dad was ever really around much either. My mom's ex-husband is actually where we all got the name Rose. With no dads around, I think we all just became hardened by the situation. My brothers didn't talk about it, I didn't talk about it, and my mom made clear those men were not worth talking about. Honestly, I don't even think I ever asked her about my dad until middle school. Not one question.

I had plenty of adults in my life setting me straight anyway. My grandma is ninety-seven years old, and I'm still afraid of her. Grammie's philosophy has always been simple: You own the things that don't cost anything. You own your pride, your dignity, your self-esteem. Those things, no one can take away from you. She's the kind of neat freak who always covers her sofas in plastic, saves her food in the refrigerator in ziplock bags (once you open something--it goes in a bag), always makes sure there's a napkin under the glass on the coffee table. And growing up, you knew not to mess with that. With her working nights, she'd usually sleep during the day when I was at school and take me on errands with her in the afternoons.

I remember one time she went into a store and left me in her car, and I got thirsty. There was no water in the car, so I went into her purse and took a bunch of pieces of Clorets gum. When she came back, I freaked out, nervous she'd get mad at me with a mouth full of her gum. So I quickly rolled down the window and tossed it out. Well, a few minutes later I stuck my hand out the window, and I'll never forget the feeling of that gum, stuck on the side of the car, right where it left my hand. I tried to rub it off, peel it off, do whatever I could. We got home, I got out and took a look, and that gum was still all over the side of that car. I tried to stand there and block her view, but she was waiting for my help with the grocery bags, and about ten seconds later I got busted. She marched right past me into the house to her room to grab "the strap," which she always kept wrapped around the doorknob of her room. And with Grammie, the neat freak, it was always sort of a sloppy, wild whipping--anywhere she could get you: head, face, body. And you'd get it in the exact spot wherever the crime had taken place. So that time she just came back out and whipped me right there next to the car, and kids from the whole neighborhood could see me getting it as they were walking home from school. I remember my sister coming home and yelling, "Leave him alone, Grammie!" and me hollering like she was killing me. Because she was.

Bill and Kev were characters, too. We used to say Kev was like J.J. from Good Times, always finding things. He'd come home with these random stray dogs that would become pets for a few weeks or months. I remember we had a German shepherd named Champ, and a Doberman named Capone. I also distinctly remember the garage being stacked...

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Verlag
Crown Archetype
Erscheinungsdatum
2015
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0804138907
ISBN 13 
9780804138901
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
288
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
gpsr@libri.de
gpsr@libri.de

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