A tale of a tricky month - Adonal's Diary - basketball narrative - Column

Basketball Digest, Feb, 2002 by Adonal Foyle, Irwin Soonachan

Tolstoy once wrote that all happy families are alike, but that an unhappy family is unhappy after its own fashion. Tolstoy would have loved the Golden State Warriors in November. The team began its season 5-3, an encouraging start following a 17-65 campaign in 2000-01. By December, after a string of embarrassing losses, the heretofore-happy Warriors had slid to 7-10 and even Leo Buscaglia wouldn't have found much love in the team's locker room. Coach Dave Cowens (who was later fired) was under fire from both his players and the media for his everchanging player rotations, the team looked flat, and Warriors star Antawn Jamison was making the rim look like a moving target.

October 28

I came into this league as one of the "smart" people. There is a feeling from some others that because of that, I'm not as good a player as I could be, because I have alternatives off the court and I could choose not to play basketball.

People seem to think of that as negative. I hear things like, "The reason he's not doing as well as he could is because he is doing all of that extracurricular stuff with Democracy Matters and going back to school." That's just a load of crap. I have made a conscious choice to be a basketball player, and I'm not afraid of that commitment. When a person has nothing else but basketball and they're desperate, that doesn't necessarily make them a better basketball player.

Democracy Matters is a national student organization I founded to help college students participate more fully in our democracy. It is run by my mom, who retired from being a college professor at Colgate to manage the organization full-time. To say reading a book or taking a class or writing a paper will have a negative impact on my game is to say that I can't hold two thoughts in my head at the same time. It's like saying that if you are a father, you have to be a horrible parent to be a good basketball player. It is a completely ridiculous notion.

This has been bugging me for a while because I have heard some insinuations. It is very insulting to me to hear that having other interests means I am not taking my profession seriously.

November 7

Keon Clark of the Toronto Raptors blindsides Warriors rookie forward Troy Murphy with an elbow to the head. Murphy stays in the game, and Clark later receives a $7,500 fine and a one-game unpaid suspension by the NBA. It is the latest in a series of incidents in which opponents have tried to bully Murphy.

November 11

The atmosphere around the team is excellent. We're starting to believe that we're good. That belief has been built and sustained on this road trip. I don't know why, but for some reason when a team is on the road, perhaps because they're out of their routine, it's very difficult to win. For us to go on such a long road trip and to persevere reinforced to us what a good team we are. Even at our worst, we've been able to stay in games, and for the first time, win. That is truly awesome. We haven't had that before.

The first game of the road trip in Toronto was tough. I only played four minutes. I was pissed, to say the least. I try never to worry about substitution patterns, but there were 46 family members and close friends in the stands who came to see me play. There is a large Caribbean population in Toronto, and after the game the local Caribbean association had a big event for me with a huge cake. It was fun. I got to see all of my family.

We lost the game against the Raptors, but we've grown a lot on this road trip. We understood, for the first time, what it means to have a deep team. On any given night, it is possible that somebody different will be the player who defines that game and determines, to some degree, the outcome. In one game on the trip, Jason Richardson had a huge game. In another, Chris Mills had a big game. And we all played well in New York vs. the Knicks.

November 14

The flight in from Memphis was horrible. We were all aware of the plane crash in New York that day. The guy next to me threw a bunch of towels over his head and screamed at every bump the plane hit. I told him I was going to kill him if he didn't stop. Another guy was almost on all fours and was basically freaking out. He was grabbing flight attendants right and left. Someone was holding onto the guy next to him so hard the guy's arm probably turned black and blue. His arm was basically being squeezed in a vice.

It was really nutty. It's normally a little bit like that, but this trip was even more intense. Everyone was on edge. When the plane hit turbulence, everything was magnified 20 million times. I passed the time watching "The Sopranos" on my laptop.

Tonight's game is going to be interesting, especially in light of what happened to Troy in Toronto. Hopefully we're going to go out and think of this game in terms of payback. We have to take it personally when a team hurts one of our players. I would like to take out our vengeance with wins, as opposed to fighting or scuffling--that's wasted energy. But clearly, there is a time when you have to defend yourself. Troy will have to decide to fight back at some point, because a lot of people have been going at him.