The NBA is celebrating players from the NBA 75 list almost daily from now until the end of the season. Today's honoree is Gary Payton, the perennial All-Star, primarily with the Seattle SuperSonic. This column, by NBA Insider Dave D’Alessandro, appeared in the Feb. 4, 2000, issue of The Sporting News and noted that Payton’s mercurial personality was just part of the package.
One cannot question Gary Payton's greatness, one cannot question Gary Payton's desire, but even his most ardent admirers must admit this: Gary Payton ain't hooked up right.
Usually, superstars have a pretty good reason to start an insurrection, but Payton's tiff with Paul Westphal last week was so pointless that it scampered along the borders of the surreal. You probably were given the broad strokes, though many of the finer points were lost because Seattle was in its first day of a newspaper strike — not the smallest of breaks for this dysfunctional basketball family.
The insanity here is in the details.
It all began during last week's victory over Dallas, when Westphal decided to match down with the Mavericks' smaller lineup, benching both Patrick Ewing and Vin Baker early in the fourth period. During a timeout, Payton made the suggestion that Westphal get the big men back in the game. The coach made his own suggestion at that point, which everyone agrees was delivered as peaceably as he could make it sound as he addressed a player who wouldn't shut up.
"You play,” Westphal told him, “I coach."
So Payton, whose conversational tone in the heat of battle is as soft as a loan shark's, left the huddle and started cursing his coach. Nothing new there. He has done that even with coaches he liked. And nobody really gives it much credence: That's G.P., they all say. And when G.P. feels as though he had some part of himself exposed, a part that was vulnerable or weak-which in his mind is usually the same thing — he can't handle it.
The Great Payton Paradox: There is a furious aura of strength about him as if he equates yielding with dying.
Of course, the Payton camp later tried to spin it and suggest Westphal said, "Shut up and play." Uh-huh. That, at least, would justify Payton's temper tantrum — and maybe even Payton's threat to hit Westphal, which is something he has done before (against the Lakers last season).
The amazing thing is Westphal — clearly the adult in this story, promoting no agenda but winning — put the point guard back in the game a few minutes later, and Payton helped win it. That didn't stop Payton from going off on Westphal after the game, uttering the usual rubbish about how his coach tried to make him look foolish, and how "he said something bad to me — that I think is bad — and he will not disrespect me like that."
The next day, Westphal decided to suspend Payton for a game, a decision made with the blessing of G.M. Wally Walker. Westphal told the tearn in the strangest of places: on the bus, just before it pulled away from the team's hotel in San Antonio on its way to the Alamodome for the morning shootaround.
Challenging Payton in an enclosed space isn't the best way to preserve your life expectancy. Usually, you are best served if you put a small continent between yourself and the guy, if you're planning on insulting him twice in 12 hours. So Payton got loud again, refused to leave the bus and was talked into leaving by some teammates and assistant coaches.
That's where this tale takes its sharpest twist. Payton asked Westphal if they could meet after he returned from the shootaround, the coach complied and the one-hour chat went so well that Westphal immediately reinstated him.
"I told Gary the last thing I was going to do going into that meeting was lift the suspension, there was no option," Westphal says. "But I thought the meeting was so productive that there was really no issue left to justify the suspension, so that's why I lifted it. Punishment is not the issue to me. The issue is to have things be the way they ought to be."
Slick move, huh?
It was almost as slick as the one he pulled on November 6, minutes after a loss at Orlando. Westphal overheard a cacophony of Sonic voices (mostly Payton and Vin Baker) cursing him just as he was standing outside the locker room. Westphal walked in and announced — “as serious as a heart attack," he said later — that he would resign immediately if his players thought he was the problem. "Now go have a meeting and decide," he told them.
Payton, like the neighborhood bully whose bluff had just been called, refused to call for such a vote. "Nobody will ever say that Gary Payton fired a coach," he harrumphed, vowing he'd play hard for Westphal until management (oh, please, please) pulls the switch.
After this latest pow-wow, Payton was even more conciliatory. "There were a lot of things that were misunderstood, and we solved a lot of things," he says. "I just want to win basketball games. So from now on, I am just going to come out here and play basketball and let Coach do the coaching."
"Just a blip on the radar screen,” says Westphal, radiating contentment.
Just a blip in Payton's brain, actually. For G.P., basketball is more fun — heck, life is more fun — when you treat it as a series of impulses. Payton always has advocated this philosophy. Sometimes, it is his impulse to hurl free weights at a teammate he doesn't particularly like. Sometimes, he likes to stroll into practices late, or he will bash a coach or a referee or a teammate. He concluded a long time ago that it was his world, and those in his orbit must tread lightly.
Barring a miracle, Westphal won't last the year — actually, it's surprising he lasted last week, given that the Sonics were rocked by 27 against the Spurs the night of the near-suspension.
Dwane Casey or Nate McMillan will take over and inherit the constant bickering and insubordination that define the team Gary Payton has molded in his image.