Donyell Marshall

Posted on January 24, 2023 by Steinmetz

This one isn’t going to be about anything Donyell Marshall did on the basketball court. It’s not going to be about when he went up against Kerry Collins back in high school, not going to be about playing under Jim Calhoun at UConn, not going to be about however many points he scored or rebounds he got from however many teams in the NBA.

This one is about how Donyell Marshall gets it.

It’s all Donyell after this sentence, I promise, but I overlapped with him over the years — as a reporter for the Reading Times after I graduated from college and when he played for the Warriors early in his career. My dad reffed a bunch of his games in high school.

Anyway, lo and behold, Donyell becomes a Warrior and I’m covering the team he’s playing for. It’s early in his career. Real early … like his second year in the NBA. That puts Donyell at 21 or 22 years old. I was 30 at the time, but Donyell was older than me. You’ll see what I mean.

So we’re in Dallas one night, it’s the night before a game, and I’m coming back from dinner at, I don’t know about 10:30-ish. I walk through this nice lobby at the fancy hotel (The Anatole), and begin searching for my room key — or whatever it was at the time — as I make my way to the elevator. When I look up, I see Donyell on the payphone. I mean, if you’re 25, maybe you don’t know what a payphone is. Cant help you.

So Donyell is on this payphone, but he’s also in this confined space. Hard to describe. He wasn’t in a phone booth, but he only had so much room where he was making the call. Donyell is about 6-foot-9, and put it this way, his body was contorted. He couldn’t have been at his most comfortable.

We made eye contact, but I didn’t want to interrupt his call. I clearly looked confounded. I was perplexed as to why Donyell Marshall was having a conversation on a pay phone in the lobby of this five-star hotel … when just 18 floors above he had a double-king sized bed, phone to his right, TV on with no volume in front of him.

Donyell saw my consternation, put the phone down to his chest and said: “What’s up?”

I said: “Why are you here in the lobby, all uncomfortable, talking on the phone when you can just be doing it in your room?”

Donyell looked at me, perplexed himself. He didn’t get why I was even asking that question. “Man,” he said. “Do you realize that every time I make a call from my room, the hotel charges me 50 cents?”

I said … “Yeah, so?”

Donyell Marshall was only 22 years old, and he’d already signed a nine-year, $42 million contract. GUARANTEED! And he was not paying an extra 50 cents if he didn’t have to, even if it meant he could stretch out on his double-wide. This ain’t about Donyell Marshall being cheap, either; it’s about Donyell Marshall being responsible. I’ll never forgotten how grown up he was at his age.

I was probably making $42,000 at the time and I probably wouldn’t have made a call from the lobby of a hotel if you gave me 50 cents for every call I made. I don’t have that perfect wrap-up sentence. Just that memory, which always tells me Donyell “gets it.”

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Bobby Sura

Posted on January 23, 2023 by Steinmetz

Came home tonight thinking of Bobby Sura. I think of Bobby Sura more than you, I promise.

Let’s be honest, “load management” is an embarrassment to current NBA players, the league itself and all those hard-nosed, play-through-injury guys of the past. John Stockton and Karl Malone must be appalled; Michael Jordan completely annoyed; and lord knows what A.C. Green thinks of it all.

But what about a player like Bobby Sura? My main man from Wilkes-Barre, PA! Bobby is about 10 years younger than me, maybe more, but he was from Eastern Pennsylvania, which means I paid attention to him. I always pay attention to Pennsylvania.

Bobby wasn’t just from Wilkes-Barre, he went to Wilkes-Barre G.A.R., which meant he went to school where Larry Koretz went. Koretz ended up playing at La Salle, but I want to say we beat an all-star team of his at Rockne Hall in Allentown when he was in high school. Can’t prove it, though.

Koretz was a little younger than me, and boy was he good. Yes, he reminded me of Larry Bird, but you’ve got to understand: Every introspective and self-respecting white player 6-foot-5 or over was patterning after Bird.

Bobby Sura didn’t emulate Bird. He was “only” 6-foot-4, and besides, Bobby could jump out of the gym — which Bird never did. Sura just happened to go to G.A.R., after Koretz. No, I didn’t know Sura back then. Didn’t know him when he was at Florda State, either, when he played alongside Sam Cassell and Charlie Ward during his days there.

Bobby was doing fine in the NBA, and then he came to the Warriors. He did fine with Golden State, too, but it was on some real lousy teams. His first year with the Warriors they won 17 games. In year two at Golden State the Warriors won 21 games. His third year, Sura started feeling the effects of some back issues. He played for Detroit, then Atlanta before winding up his career in Houston. He was out of the NBA before his 32nd birthday.

Bobby Sura played too hard; he dove on the floor too much; he took too many charges; he jumped too high and landed too hard. Bobby played when he was healthy or hurt; he didn’t skip games to be more ready for the next one. And don’t ever forget he was such a great athlete that he was a slam dunk participant in 1997. I remember catching up with Sura in Houston, when the end was in sight, circa 2005.

“Sometimes, I think about” … Bobby Sura started. … “What if I’d paced myself a little bit when I was younger? What if I didn’t dive a million times, get knocked down a few hundred? What if I didn’t take on every defensive challenge even though sometimes I knew I was overmatched? Maybe I could have played longer.”

“Or, maybe you never make it to the NBA in the first place,” I responded.

He agreed. Bobby Sura was tough as hell, stuck his nose into places it didn’t belong and earned the respect of every coach he played for. He’d compete when others wouldn’t. Here’s to Bobby Sura, one tough SOB and the opposite of a “load manager.”

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Rocky Colavito Jr.

Posted on January 22, 2023 by Steinmetz

There were five masses at Holy Guardian Angels Church on Sundays when I was a kid: 6 a.m., 7:30 a.m., 9 a.m., 10:30 a.m. and noon. We always tried to go as a family but only because mom and dad would make us. We were a 9 a.m. family when we were one.

But as my brother got into high school and beyond, he began to weasel out of those family masses and go on his own — to the mass with a noon kickoff, if you will. It made sense. He was a teen-ager and he used weekends to sleep in. I’d find out, though, it wasn’t all about my brother’s beauty sleep.

So now I had a choice. I could go to mass with mom, dad and Gretchen, my sister. Or I could go with Bob later. It was such a no-brainer. The 9 a.m. masses were terrible; they were about Jesus, the blood of Christ, forgiveness … that stuff. But the noon mass was so different. The noon mass was about baseball! That’s right, baseball!

Little did mom or dad know at the time, but Bob went to the noon mass for one reason and one reason only: Rocky Colavito Jr. See, Rocky’s dad was the great Rocky Colavito Sr., a true legend of baseball in the 1950s and 1960s. Rocky Sr. played minor-league baseball in Reading, PA, and he fell in love with my mom’s best friend, Carmen Perotti. Rocky Sr. and Carmen are still alive and married, and my mom is both their best friends now.

After Rocky Sr. retired from playing, he became a coach for the Cleveland Indians and also the Kansas City Royals. That puts me at 11-years-old in 1975-ish, which makes my brother 18 or 19. My brother went to noon mass so he could see Rocky Jr., roughly the same age. There were open pews all over Holy Guardian Angels but Rocky Jr. and my brother never sat. They stood in the back, in the corner, and they talked baseball for an hour. Check that: They whispered about baseball. Go ask my brother what the homily was about during any of these masses and he’s got no chance. He and Rocky Jr. missed it all — the entrance hymn, the gospel, the collection, you name it.

Rocky Jr. told my older brother everything — because Rocky Sr., was still so tapped into the game and its players. I’d stand beside my brother, picking up parts of the conversation … a Bobby Murcer here, an Oscar Gamble there. It was like Rocky Jr. was on the inside: Freddy and Jimmy were Fred Lynn and Jim Rice. Stuff like that. While it was frustrating not getting the whole story, it would only be temporary. Bob would tell me everything on the way home.

“Uncle Rock thinks there’s big trouble in New York,” I remember my brother saying once. I was a huge Yankees fan growing up; my brother liked Boston. “Why?” I said. “He said that every time Thurman Munson and Reggie Jackson pass each other in the clubhouse or hallway, the whole team shudders.”

I thank Rocky Jr. for the Bronx Zoo foreshadowing; I thank my brother for the rides and info; and I thank god I got out of that 9 a.m. mass.

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