| | This is Alonzo Mourning's year, his time, and it just seems the strangest
moment for this grim chapter in his life to be unfolding. As he waits to tell
the public the details of his apparent kidney disorder, there has to be a
part of Mourning wondering not just, "Why me?" but "Why now?"
|  | | Mourning now isn't fighting opposing centers, but a different opponent. |
There are no proper candidates for this crises to come calling on, no
right moments, but Mourning was dancing on stars until these troubles hurled
his life into an uncertain dark abyss. He had an Olympic gold medal, the
birth of his baby girl and a season, a team, waiting to take him to the NBA
Finals.
Most of all, Mourning had peace of mind. For so long, he was desperate
for the world to see the good man beyond the scowling face, to see the
gentle, generous giant trapped too long within the walls of the bravado. He
had to break free of the Georgetown mold, the Hoya paranoia and over time
Mourning did it. Off the court, Mourning finally understood he didn't have to
play the part.
Long before the Heat's center had come home from the Olympics, had a blood
test and started down this frightening road, he had come to a most
important crossroads in his life. Finally, he let go. He stopped the sulking,
the brooding and offered a different face. He let people see him laugh,
listen to his thoughtful way and Mourning worked relentlessly to shed the
image that chased him to the Heat five years ago.
It was a long, hard journey to peace of mind for Mourning. Just now,
Mourning had started to reap the rewards. Even his most embittered rivals,
the New York Knicks, had come to understand they had misjudged him. At the
2000 All-Star Game in Oakland, Jeff Van Gundy approached Mourning to tell him
he was sorry for the wild melee two years ago in the playoffs, when the
coach clung to Mourning's ankle in Madison Square Garden.
"Forget it," Mourning said, and the two of them proceeded to laugh long
and hard.
Just this summer, Allan Houston was a member of the Dream Team at the
Sydney Games. When it was over, Houston was asked: Which USA teammate
surprised him the most? This was easy. It was Mourning. Houston had him all
wrong. He wasn't so hard on the edges. As hard as it was for a Knick to say,
Houston actually liked him.
As hard as it was, actually, for a Knick outside of Patrick Ewing to say.
Of course, Ewing is gone to Seattle now. And for Mourning, this is a good
thing. He needed him out of his basketball life, anyway. He needed him out of
New York, out of the East, out of his way to the NBA Finals. Now, the Heat
are the favorites in the Eastern Conference. Now, the Knicks no longer seem
such a legitimate challenge.
|
|
For so long, he was desperate
for the world to see the good man beyond the scowling face, to see the
gentle, generous giant trapped too long within the walls of the bravado. |
|
|
|
For Mourning, this has to be so strange. His whole life has been about
chasing him. As a kid, Mourning was mesmerized over those long arms of Ewing
reaching for the rafters of the Superdome, smacking shots out of a Carolina
blue sky. For the first few minutes of the 1982 national championship game,
Georgetown's Ewing made an art of the blocked shot and inspired a 12-year-old
kid to gather his earnings from a part-time job and purchase a Hoyas T-shirt
after his Chesapeake, Va., school let out the next day.
All over the country, kids cleaned out shelves of those blue-and-gray
models, as close as they could get to living the life of a Hoya Destroya. As
his seventh grade gym teacher, Fred Spellman, remembers, it was unwise to
bring the ball into Mourning in Phys Ed class unless you wanted to bring your
eyeglasses to seventh-period study hall in a clump of shattered pieces.
Within a year, Mourning was 6-4, an eighth grader insisting on
wearing No. 33 for the junior varsity team Spellman coached at Indian River
High School.
"All we did was watch a lot of Georgetown at the time," Spellman said.
"Particularly, we watched Patrick. During that time, Alonzo learned how to
block shots. A lot of big kids, they just swung down and fouled the man. But
Alonzo watched Patrick and learned to tap a shot, to catch it even, anything
but knocking it up in the stands."
Three years later, Mourning was the most treasured recruit in the nation,
"the next Moses Malone," according to one ACC coach. To be sure, this was
flattering, but Mourning didn't want to be Moses. He wanted to be Patrick,
the Georgetown alum who befriended him on campus in the summer before
Mourning started classes there.
"Just working with (Ewing), and him being my idol, gives me so much
inspiration," Mourning said then.
His whole basketball life, Mourning has charted a basketball course using
a compass belonging to Ewing. He was a No. 1 overall pick playing under the
paranoia of Thompson and Pat Riley, spending his summers sweating with Ewing
on the practice floor of Georgetown's McDonough Gymnasium, and his springs
losing to him in the NBA playoffs.
Riley was incredibly uneasy with the parameters of the Mourning-Ewing
relationship. He heard about the summer trips together, the in-season
telephone calls, the dinners on the eve of Knicks-Heat series and wonders if
Ewing hadn't lured Mourning into a web of manipulation.
"If you were to say to Alonzo that Patrick is your big brother and Patrick is
your mentor and Patrick is the guy that watches over you, then the
connotation to that is that somewhere that Patrick can get to
him," Riley warned last season.
"Can that truly be separated in competition?"
This year, it was going to be different. Yes, this was his time. Even so,
Mourning had done the right things over the years and shed the paranoia
inbred to him within that rigid Georgetown culture. Unlike John Thompson and
Ewing, Mourning never seemed so paranoid of everyone. He smiled. He relaxed.
He trusted people. In so many ways, Mourning was past Ewing. This season, he
was supposed to take the final step. He was supposed to go to the NBA Finals.
Ewing was out of his way, and now, Mourning prays it isn't this kidney that's
blocking the path.
Adrian Wojnarowski is a columnist for the Bergen Record and a regular
contributor to ESPN.com. | |
ALSO SEE
Riley chides media for handling of Zo's illness
Lawrence: Dealing with Zo's situation
|
