Eating the Dinosaur

  3 “I think, first of all, he was the victim of overstatement.” This is Bill Fitch talking about Sampson in 1989, when the twenty-nine-year-old Ralph was having both his knees drained of fluid on a regular basis. Fitch was Sampson’s coach when he was a Houston Rocket. They had gone to the NBA championship just three years before Fitch delivered this dark diagnosis; three years after Fitch’s statement was printed, Sampson’s career would end uneventfully in Spain. “He never had that one thing to go to in the pro game,” Fitch continued. “He never had that one shot. Two weeks, three weeks after he came to us, you could see that. We had Elvin Hayes, who was an aging superstar. Elvin had that one shot. That turnaround. Ralph never had anything. People would say he wasn’t trying, but that wasn’t the case. If anything, he tried too hard. He just didn’t have the bullets for the gun. And he needed a tank after what everyone had predicted for him.”2

  This, somehow, became the post-1985, pre-1990 consensus as to why Sampson was such a letdown: Suddenly, everyone seemed to agree that he had never been that good to begin with. Even McGuire, the TV analyst who advanced the “Sampson as aircraft carrier” mythos more than anyone, now viewed him differently. “He never got the wrinkles, the rub for the pro game,” McGuire told journalist Leigh Montville. “He came from a good home in a place [Harrisonburg, Virginia] that is one of those towns where all the kids drive their cars around the square on Friday night beeping their horns. He went to Virginia, a gentleman’s school. He never had to get tough. Plus, he never developed physically. He never developed those pop-out muscles. The pro game, if you’re svelte, they push you around.”

  Similar attacks on Sampson’s svelteness were less straightforward but still based around class and masculinity: He was sometimes criticized for wearing knit sweaters. In that aforementioned ’86 championship series against a superior Celtics squad, Sampson made the mistake of throwing a punch at Boston guard Jerry Sichting, an act of toughness that made him look like a pussy. What kind of giant hits a six-foot-one white guy? When the Rockets landed Hakeem Olajuwon in the ’84 draft, the strategy was to play the seven-foot Olajuwon and the seven-four Sampson at the same time, and it worked almost immediately—but it required the much taller Sampson to play power forward, often facing the basket from the wing. This seemed to validate everything critics had always disliked about Ralph. He was the professional incarnation of that oversized, mustachioed kid in middle school who won’t join the team unless he gets to play point guard. Sampson didn’t initiate contact. He aspired to elegance. It was like he refused to be the person he actually was. Which is curious, because that is the person Ralph Sampson actually was: He was a good, tall, soft player. People thought he was this amazing seven-four stud with the skills of someone six foot eight, but it was really the opposite—he was just a better-than-average six-foot-eight small forward, trapped in a body that offered eight more inches than necessary. “I really would like to be a seven-foot-four guard,” Sampson said as a college freshman, seemingly unaware that this would sound both arrogant and wrongheaded to everyone who understood basketball. He never claimed to be dominant. He never even implied that he wanted to dominate. That was what everybody else suggested. He was nothing more than a good pro with a world-class body. So this is the first part of the two-pronged explanation as to why Ralph Sampson busted: It was because other people were wrong about him. And this happens to athletes (and nonathletes) all the time. But it’s the second part that’s more complicated; the second part has to do with why certain minor athletic failures are totally unacceptable, even while other athletic failures are mildly desirable.

  3A In the unwritten Wikipedia of world basketball history, Benny Anders is little more than a footnote. On his first day as a Houston Cougar freshman in 1982, Anders showed up at the gym wearing a T-shirt that said outlaw. He claimed this was his high school nickname in Louisiana, and he said he got it because he killed people. His era with the Cougars would end less than four years later, partially because he brought a handgun to practice. But I don’t think Benny Anders ever shot anybody. He did not become a stick-up artist or a Mossad assassin or a Central American terrorist. He did not join the CIA, or even the CBA. He was not that type of outlaw. In fact, as of 2009, no one knows where Benny Anders is, what he’s doing, or if he’s alive. He was that type of outlaw.

  It’s virtually impossible to find clips of Benny Anders on You-Tube, but that does not matter. They continue to exist in my mind. He was the greatest in-game dunker I’ve ever seen. Unlike his more heralded teammate Clyde Drexler, Anders did not hang poetically in midair; his dunks were fast and violent. Everything would happen at once: He’d cuff the rock, splay his legs, arch the spine, and thwack. It was a midair shark attack. His greatest jam happened against Louisville in the ’83 Final Four, a contest many claim was the greatest dunking exhibition in NCAA history. Trailing the Cards by four points in the second half, the six-five sophomore stole the ball in the open court and crucified Charles Jones at the rim. It almost appeared as if Anders let Jones get into defensive position on purpose in order to humiliate him more effectively. He was that type of outlaw.

  Houston proceeded to crush Louisville and face North Carolina State in the championship. That game was played closer to the ground and the undermatched Wolfpack pulled the upset. Anders was involved in the title game’s final sequence—he tipped the ball away from NC State guard Dereck Whittenburg, who recovered the loose ball on one bounce and heaved a thirty-six-foot prayer that was memorably answered by teammate Lorenzo Charles. That April weekend was the pinnacle of Anders’s career: By the time Houston returned to the NCAA finals twelve months later, he had been relegated to the deep end of the bench. Anders’s main contribution in ’84 was more aesthetic than athletic—Anders arrived in Seattle wearing a tuxedo with a pink bow tie. For reasons that remain unclear, a rival fan from Kentucky named John Gambill held up signs that read BENNY ANDERS for president. After Houston lost to Georgetown in Monday’s final, Anders found Gambill and partied with him all night, driving around Seattle in a Jaguar. He was that type of outlaw.

  So what does one make of this version of nostalgia? Anders was, by all technical accounts, a failure. He was devoid of humility (on a team filled with undisciplined personalities, he was the only player head coach Guy Lewis had to kick off the team). He started only one game in three years and never averaged more than six points a night. His espoused philosophy defined the context of no context: “Take it to the rack and stick it.” For Benny, basketball never became more complicated than that: He came, he jammed, and he was gone. And now he’s really gone. Benny Anders is off the grid. He is a Jheri-curled apparition. In a Final Four anniversary article for ESPN, writer Robert Weintraub reported various rumors about Anders’s current whereabouts. Some claimed he was last seen in South America. Others said Chicago. Still others insisted he continues to play ball on the streets of Louisiana, eating glass as a three-hundred-pound not-so-small forward. Whatever he is, the specifics don’t matter. Benny Anders is not coming back. But he doesn’t need to. When you have unlimited potential and an unwillingness to pursue that potential, greatness doesn’t need to be achieved; as fans, we only require glimpses of a theoretical reality that’s more interesting than the one we’re in.

  On balance, Benny Anders’s destruction of Charles Jones isn’t better than the worst year of Ralph Sampson’s life. It was one play in one game. But that dunk is enough to warrant a positive recollection twenty-five years after the fact. It does not matter that Anders accomplished nothing else. He will live forever, if only for all the things he never did. Ask any basketball fan who remembers who Benny Anders was, and he will almost certainly say great things about his ability. He is retrospectively beloved, expressly because he failed in totality. He’s an example of blown potential, but people remain envious of the man he never became. He’s like Syd Barrett after The Madcap Laughs. And that is very different than what happened to Sampson; he’s an example of blown potential that makes average people
feel better about themselves. He’s like Mickey Rourke before The Wrestler.

  3B So here is the question: Why did people feel good about Sampson’s bust? Why was being “merely” a four-time all-star such a pleasurable catastrophe to fans who had no investment in his career? It doesn’t make any sense—he wasn’t a jerk, he wasn’t terrible, and there was no social upside to his relative failures. It’s not like people got a tax break when Sampson retired. Trying to understand why unrelated fans get personal joy from an athlete’s brilliance is confusing enough, but at least it feels like a reasonable reaction to have; one could argue that it’s akin to why people enjoy looking at beautiful art. But trying to understand why those same consumers might be equally happy about the opposite situation seems unfathomable and cruel; it’s akin to looking at a bad painting and feeling happy that the artist failed. Although I suppose there are people who do that, too.

  Whenever a high-profile player busts—Ryan Leaf,3 Anna Kournikova,4 Chris Washburn,5 Brien Taylor,6 whoever—there inevitably comes the question of Asking for It: Did the player who busted deserve to bust? Did they consciously put themselves in a position where a reasonable person might be justified in enjoying their collapse? The easiest example of Asking for It is Tony Mandarich, an offensive tackle for the Michigan State Spartans who openly begged people to despise him.

  Before the 1989 NFL draft, Mandarich was considered the greatest offensive line prospect in the history of the college game. “In the 20 years I’ve been in this business,” New York Giants player personnel director Tom Boisture told writer Peter King, “he’s the best college football player I’ve ever seen.” At a then-unthinkable 315 pounds, Mandarich ran the forty in 4.65 seconds. “Maybe the fastest offensive tackle in history,” San Diego Chargers GM Steve Ortmayer said in the same article, “and just maybe the best.” He was selected by the Green Bay Packers ahead of Barry Sanders, a decision that historians often use as an example of how comically wrong football scouts can be; in truth, not picking Mandarich would have been a wholly irrational act. There was not one football person in America who did not believe Mandarich would crush people in the NFL. They were all wrong. We were all wrong. As it turns out, Mandarich was a steroid creation and a technically inept pass blocker. He was an embarrassment with the Packers; defensive opponents openly mocked him. Everyone questioned his attitude. He would eventually become a serviceable lineman for the Indianapolis Colts, but even that was somewhat humiliating in light of how Mandarich had sold himself a decade before.

  “I don’t want to be a fat fuck like 90 percent of the NFL,” he said before the Packers had even selected him. “I want to be a football player who looks like a body builder. I want to look like a defensive end. For self-esteem. If I look like a slob, I’ll play like one … why can’t I do what Arnold [Schwarzenegger] did? Bodybuilding. Movies. All of it. I want to be Cyborg III.” These quotes come from an iconic 1989 Sports Illustrated issue7 showcasing Mandarich on the cover, shirtless and balding. Elsewhere in the interview he (a) fixates on hanging out with Axl Rose, (b) refuses to answer the telephone when the Packers call, (c) continually lies about taking steroids in an unconvincing manner, and (d) needlessly brags about stealing his girlfriend from a former teammate he described as “not real big, slow, a normal kind of guy.” He once referred to the city of Green Bay as a village. Mandarich went out of his way to make people recognize and hate him, and for the worst possible motive—his obnoxiousness was a calculated, careerist move. Years later, he would admit this to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: “I wanted to create as much hype as I could for many different reasons—exposure, negotiation leverage, you name it. And it all worked, except the performance wasn’t there when it was time to play football.” Mandarich was a perfect storm of Asking for It. People enjoyed his failure because he was the specific person failing. It was personal, and one could even argue it was moral. And that makes it 180 degrees different from what happened with Sampson. The appreciation of Ralph’s bust had nothing to do with anything he asked for; his problem was that people looked at him in a way that wasn’t personal at all. He was only a symbol, and that’s what makes it sadder.

  1A Most of the time, Ralph Sampson was a fortress of solitude. Aloof and detached, he spent his collegiate years insulated by members of the Virginia Cavaliers football team who served as de facto bodyguards. When he did express emotion, it was delivered in awkward ways. The punch thrown at Sichting is the incident most people remember, but there were others. He once hit a Denver Nugget role player named Bill Hanzlik before flipping off the Denver crowd with both hands. When discussing a collegiate opponent from Georgia Tech named Lee Goza, Sampson dispassionately remarked, “If I had a gun, I would have shot him.” However, his most revealing moments were more existential than angry: His final game at Virginia was a loss in the West Regional final of the NCAA tournament, a 63–62 defeat at the hands of NC State (the same team that would upset Benny Anders and the Houston Cougars one week later). In the game’s closing seconds, the Cavaliers were unable to get the ball to Sampson; he didn’t touch the rock until after the buzzer had already sounded. In an act of stoic frustration, Sampson flipped the ball nonchalantly toward the basket, underhand. It sailed straight through the twine, touching no rim—perfect, but pointless. It was an illustration of how easy the game came to him and of how hopeless his plight seemed to be. He never won an important game after high school. The most historically noteworthy contest in Sampson’s college career was an unseen loss against an NAIA school no one had ever heard of (more on that later). His second-most noteworthy game came early in his senior year, when Virginia played Georgetown in December and Sampson faced seven-foot Hoya sophomore Patrick Ewing. Despite a gastric illness, the dehydrated Sampson outplayed Ewing as Virginia won by five. He was taller and more polished than Ewing— more civilized and nuanced and complete. He was better. But (once again) there was something allegorical about how these titans clashed, and (once again) it did not work in Ralph’s favor. Sampson made things look easy. Ewing made things look hard. You could just tell that Ewing wanted it so fucking bad; you could see it in the sweat that poured off his nose and soaked his superfluous gray T-shirt. He was a gladiator. But how much did Sampson want it? No one really knew, and you certainly couldn’t tell by watching him.

  This is a ridiculous statement, but it’s true: Sampson was too good. He was too big to be that skilled. His superiority seemed natural and therefore unearned. And while people don’t necessarily hate that kind of greatness, they inevitably find it annoying. It plays into their insecurities about themselves and the inescapable unfairness of being human. Sampson’s unobtrusive facade only made this phenomenon worse—his cool, quiet demeanor made him seem uninterested in his own aptitude. Unlike Mandarich, he did nothing to make anyone dislike him. But when you’re naturally better than everyone else, and when that talent is so utterly obvious, being quiet doesn’t translate as humble. It translates as boredom. He seemed like a bored genius.

  This, ultimately, is what Sampson came to symbolize: supremacy coated in apathy. He looked like a player who was supposed to be the best, even if he wasn’t; it did not matter how his team fared or how pedestrian his statistics were or if his final basket didn’t come until after the final buzzer. It would still be self-evident that Sampson was better than everyone else on the floor. It was circular logic: He was better because he was better. He didn’t need to prove anything. He didn’t even need to try, and we didn’t even need to question if that made sense. And the moment that stopped feeling true was the moment he collapsed into a black hole.

  4 “I don’t want to hear anybody say Ralph Sampson wasn’t a great pro basketball player.” This is the opinion of Terry Holland, Sampson’s college coach at Virginia. “They actually invented the lottery in the NBA because of Ralph Sampson. He was a great pro basketball player until he injured his knee.”

  This is the positive retrospective spin on Ralph’s legacy, advocated by Sampson himself: It can be argued that
his inability to become a legend was mostly the fault of his knees. He had three surgeries over the course of his career and was essentially ruined after the first one. As is so often the case with athletic post players, his own supernatural prowess accelerated his erosion—there’s certainly never been a seven-four player who jumped higher than Ralph Sampson. Most people don’t remember that Sampson participated in the inaugural NBA Slam Dunk contest; had someone designed a contest to see who could dunk on the highest possible rim, he’d probably still be the world record holder. As a rookie, Sampson could have effortlessly jammed on a twelve-foot basket. He lived in the tropopause. And coming down from all that elevation pounded his gangly cartilage into mush. “He’d have been a Top 50 [all-time] player if not for his knees,” said the sporadically rational Kenny Smith in 2006. “When it comes to Sampson, everybody seems to want to go for the easy negative instead of looking for the truth.”

  But what is the truth? Is the truth that Sampson could have posted ten excellent years with better knees? Sure (although—if we concede that those injuries were at least partially due to his combination of size and jumping ability—it stands to reason that a less injury-prone Ralph would have been a less physically gifted Ralph). But that seems less like the truth and more like the “easy positive.” It doesn’t explain anything about how he was perceived. Connie Hawkins lost most of his career to knee problems, but that makes everybody love him more. David Thompson had only five great years and Bill Walton had less than four, but they’re both in the Hall of Fame. From a historical viewpoint, injuries tend to improve the way basketball players are remembered. It exaggerates their potential. But this didn’t happen to Sampson. Without directly saying it, average people seem to blame Ralph for having bad knees. He needed to have a weakness, and it was reassuring to know that Sampson’s body contained that weakness. He was hyped as invincible and inevitable, but he was just another guy.