Updated: Dec. 14, 2005, 5:25 PM ET
Journal No. 9: My NBA money-back guarantee
By Paul Shirley
Special to ESPN.com
Archive
My father would love for me to fire my agent. Maybe he's right, perhaps it would be a good career move. I suppose that few could argue with his logic. As I am a basketball player who does not currently have a job playing basketball, it stands to reason that someone in the network is dropping the ball.
However, I do not think I will be kicking my agent, Keith Glass, to the curb anytime soon. We have too much fun with all of this.
One important aspect of my life, one that I often forget, mainly because I am an ungrateful wretch and a greedy bastard, is that people often call to offer me large sums of money to play a game. It almost goes against all logic. The concept of paying humans to throw balls through hoops is absolutely ludicrous. I'm just glad I was blessed with the correct DNA sequence so that I can take advantage of this fantasy land.
Keith does a good job of reminding me of the absurdity of my life. We all become self-important jackasses at points in our lives. (For some, it happens more often than for others. It happens about twice a day for me -- which is why I have to surround myself with personalities like my agent's.) When considering a new job offer, or lack thereof, I often get caught up in the moment and, suddenly, the decision with which I am faced becomes the most important one I have ever had to make. Whether or not I should accept a job in Shanghai becomes the defining quandary of my life. I extrapolate the repercussions of both options well past what is reasonable to consider and begin to unravel -- mainly because it turns out that my brain is not all that well-formed. Mine definitely has some twists that others' do not.
Keith does not generally tell me about possible jobs until it becomes obvious that the team in question is seriously interested. Of course, this setup does have its downsides, namely that I often have to decide within a 48-hour period whether to take a particular gig. But since I do my best work under the pressure of extreme anxiety and the vast unknown, our system works. If not for Keith's hesitance to discuss theoretical jobs, my unstable mind would forever be wrestling with the future possibilities of my life.
Keith and I had a few interesting encounters with the twisted world of basketball a couple of weeks ago. Within the span of only three days, we discussed four very disparate job opportunities.
First, Keith called to tell me that another team in Russia was seriously interested in my basketball services. (It should be remembered that I did not even play that well in Russia last year, thanks in no small part to the previously discussed misery I was experiencing while there. At any rate, it shocks me that anyone who had the chance to observe how I played there would want to employ me now. Maybe they just liked the shaggy hair.) Keith told me that the new team in question is located in Vladivostok.
AP Photo
Vladivostok is the Far East home of the Russian Navy. But not Paul Shirley. Yet.
It occurred to me that I had heard of Vladivostok, but that whatever conversation in which it had been mentioned had certainly not also included the phrase "close to anything else in Russia," so I scurried over to my trusty atlas to check out the geography. My hunch was correct; Vladivostok is on the Pacific side of Russia, across the Sea of Japan from … Japan. It is also not far from the tourist destination of North Korea. By my rudimentary estimation, the flight time from Vladivostok to Moscow would be about the same as from Moscow to New York. Keith had assumed that I would not be particularly amenable to the suggestion of a trip to Vladivostok, so my negative response was not shocking to him. (It should be mentioned that, money-grubber that I am, I did ask just how much they were offering. It was about the same amount per month as I was paid last year in Kazan, Russia -- not enough to get me on a plane anytime soon.)
The Russian saga does not end there, but before it returned to our consciousness, a couple of other items popped up. While I was at my parents' house one day, Keith called to ask my permission to try out a new idea he had conceived. He told me he was going to call a particular NBA team and make them an offer with what amounted to a money-back guarantee. I told him that I was all for the plan. So last Monday, he called a team (the identity of which will remain concealed until my career-ending car wreck or the next time I have had more than six adult beverages), and told them that if they would sign me for, say, 20 days, he would guarantee that I would be more productive than a particular player currently playing for said team. (Again, I can't really say who. He could be a teammate of mine someday.) If I was not more productive, it would be agreed beforehand that I would return all wages paid me to the team or, if that was not possible, donate them to the team's favorite charity.
Needless to say, I am still without an NBA job. But I really liked the idea.
Next in the parade was a possible return to one of my old haunts -- Greece. (Along the way, Keith also told me of some vague interest from a high-powered team in Rome. But that seed never really germinated … and I am beginning to bore myself, so I will discuss it no further.)
I spent seven months in Greece during my first year out of college. It was an amazing experience … from a life perspective. From a pocketbook perspective, it was not as strong.
I really enjoyed the Greek lifestyle. I liked my coach and my teammates, and I met some really fun people along the way. I even dated a girl named -- no kidding -- Electra (easily the best-named girl around whom I have spent any time). There was one rather large drawback to my time in Athens. I was paid only half of what I was owed.
I spent an earlier paragraph discussing how lucky I am that people ever want to pay me to play basketball. One interpretation of that line of reasoning would be that I should have been happy with whatever I got from the Greeks. However, while I am thankful for the opportunity I had in Greece, I will never forgive those responsible for breaking the contract I signed. I cannot justify that in my mind. (I won't go into exactly how they got away with it. It's too long of a story. Perhaps at another time.) So, regardless of the fact that I would love to play for my old coach again, or the fact that Athens is a really interesting place, or the fact that I already know how to say "hello" in Greek (Yassu), I would not be able to justify returning to the scene of the crime. Literally.
Once we had dispatched with the Greeks and the Russians, I thought I was going to be able to return to the task of pondering my own insignificance in the world in peace. But then I got a strange call. On the line was a man named Steppas who, it turns out, was the agent who brought the Khimky, Russia, job to the attention of Keith and me about six weeks ago (see Journal No. 2). I was a bit shocked that Steppas would have the nerve to call me after the debacle that had transpired earlier this fall (see further fragmentation of my emotional state). I told him as much, which caused him to apologize profusely … and then to call the coaches at Khimky both stupid and dishonest. He then informed me that he had a new job in Russia, in a little place called Vladivostok, and asked how much money would it take to get me … I stopped him before he started trying to weasel something out of me and told him to call Keith. (It works that foreign agents have to split their commission with American agents, so if he could have gotten me to freeze out my agent, he would have then been able to keep the entire commission for himself. To combat this, Keith brainwashes all of his clients into thinking that he is an omniscient genius and that our lives would be nothing without him. It worked on me.)
A little while later, I got a call from Keith. Steppas had just called him and said, "Keith, it's your old friend Steppas." Keith had been discussing the Vladivostok job all week, but with a man whose name he thought was Stavros. When Steppas got on the line, he realized that he had actually been talking to Steppas all along. Now obviously, he would never have considered the situation to be a viable one if he had known that the man who had completely dropped the ball with regard to our negotiations with Khimky had been back in the fray. Keith is unsure if Steppas had given him a false name on purpose, or if he had merely misunderstood his Lithu-English. Either way, Steppas is not a name held in high esteem between the two of us.
Needless to say, I am still without a job in Vladivostok.
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Journal No. 9: My NBA money-back guarantee
By Paul Shirley
Special to ESPN.com
Archive
My father would love for me to fire my agent. Maybe he's right, perhaps it would be a good career move. I suppose that few could argue with his logic. As I am a basketball player who does not currently have a job playing basketball, it stands to reason that someone in the network is dropping the ball.
However, I do not think I will be kicking my agent, Keith Glass, to the curb anytime soon. We have too much fun with all of this.
One important aspect of my life, one that I often forget, mainly because I am an ungrateful wretch and a greedy bastard, is that people often call to offer me large sums of money to play a game. It almost goes against all logic. The concept of paying humans to throw balls through hoops is absolutely ludicrous. I'm just glad I was blessed with the correct DNA sequence so that I can take advantage of this fantasy land.
Keith does a good job of reminding me of the absurdity of my life. We all become self-important jackasses at points in our lives. (For some, it happens more often than for others. It happens about twice a day for me -- which is why I have to surround myself with personalities like my agent's.) When considering a new job offer, or lack thereof, I often get caught up in the moment and, suddenly, the decision with which I am faced becomes the most important one I have ever had to make. Whether or not I should accept a job in Shanghai becomes the defining quandary of my life. I extrapolate the repercussions of both options well past what is reasonable to consider and begin to unravel -- mainly because it turns out that my brain is not all that well-formed. Mine definitely has some twists that others' do not.
Keith does not generally tell me about possible jobs until it becomes obvious that the team in question is seriously interested. Of course, this setup does have its downsides, namely that I often have to decide within a 48-hour period whether to take a particular gig. But since I do my best work under the pressure of extreme anxiety and the vast unknown, our system works. If not for Keith's hesitance to discuss theoretical jobs, my unstable mind would forever be wrestling with the future possibilities of my life.
Keith and I had a few interesting encounters with the twisted world of basketball a couple of weeks ago. Within the span of only three days, we discussed four very disparate job opportunities.
First, Keith called to tell me that another team in Russia was seriously interested in my basketball services. (It should be remembered that I did not even play that well in Russia last year, thanks in no small part to the previously discussed misery I was experiencing while there. At any rate, it shocks me that anyone who had the chance to observe how I played there would want to employ me now. Maybe they just liked the shaggy hair.) Keith told me that the new team in question is located in Vladivostok.
You must be registered for see images
AP Photo
Vladivostok is the Far East home of the Russian Navy. But not Paul Shirley. Yet.
It occurred to me that I had heard of Vladivostok, but that whatever conversation in which it had been mentioned had certainly not also included the phrase "close to anything else in Russia," so I scurried over to my trusty atlas to check out the geography. My hunch was correct; Vladivostok is on the Pacific side of Russia, across the Sea of Japan from … Japan. It is also not far from the tourist destination of North Korea. By my rudimentary estimation, the flight time from Vladivostok to Moscow would be about the same as from Moscow to New York. Keith had assumed that I would not be particularly amenable to the suggestion of a trip to Vladivostok, so my negative response was not shocking to him. (It should be mentioned that, money-grubber that I am, I did ask just how much they were offering. It was about the same amount per month as I was paid last year in Kazan, Russia -- not enough to get me on a plane anytime soon.)
The Russian saga does not end there, but before it returned to our consciousness, a couple of other items popped up. While I was at my parents' house one day, Keith called to ask my permission to try out a new idea he had conceived. He told me he was going to call a particular NBA team and make them an offer with what amounted to a money-back guarantee. I told him that I was all for the plan. So last Monday, he called a team (the identity of which will remain concealed until my career-ending car wreck or the next time I have had more than six adult beverages), and told them that if they would sign me for, say, 20 days, he would guarantee that I would be more productive than a particular player currently playing for said team. (Again, I can't really say who. He could be a teammate of mine someday.) If I was not more productive, it would be agreed beforehand that I would return all wages paid me to the team or, if that was not possible, donate them to the team's favorite charity.
Needless to say, I am still without an NBA job. But I really liked the idea.
Next in the parade was a possible return to one of my old haunts -- Greece. (Along the way, Keith also told me of some vague interest from a high-powered team in Rome. But that seed never really germinated … and I am beginning to bore myself, so I will discuss it no further.)
I spent seven months in Greece during my first year out of college. It was an amazing experience … from a life perspective. From a pocketbook perspective, it was not as strong.
I really enjoyed the Greek lifestyle. I liked my coach and my teammates, and I met some really fun people along the way. I even dated a girl named -- no kidding -- Electra (easily the best-named girl around whom I have spent any time). There was one rather large drawback to my time in Athens. I was paid only half of what I was owed.
I spent an earlier paragraph discussing how lucky I am that people ever want to pay me to play basketball. One interpretation of that line of reasoning would be that I should have been happy with whatever I got from the Greeks. However, while I am thankful for the opportunity I had in Greece, I will never forgive those responsible for breaking the contract I signed. I cannot justify that in my mind. (I won't go into exactly how they got away with it. It's too long of a story. Perhaps at another time.) So, regardless of the fact that I would love to play for my old coach again, or the fact that Athens is a really interesting place, or the fact that I already know how to say "hello" in Greek (Yassu), I would not be able to justify returning to the scene of the crime. Literally.
Once we had dispatched with the Greeks and the Russians, I thought I was going to be able to return to the task of pondering my own insignificance in the world in peace. But then I got a strange call. On the line was a man named Steppas who, it turns out, was the agent who brought the Khimky, Russia, job to the attention of Keith and me about six weeks ago (see Journal No. 2). I was a bit shocked that Steppas would have the nerve to call me after the debacle that had transpired earlier this fall (see further fragmentation of my emotional state). I told him as much, which caused him to apologize profusely … and then to call the coaches at Khimky both stupid and dishonest. He then informed me that he had a new job in Russia, in a little place called Vladivostok, and asked how much money would it take to get me … I stopped him before he started trying to weasel something out of me and told him to call Keith. (It works that foreign agents have to split their commission with American agents, so if he could have gotten me to freeze out my agent, he would have then been able to keep the entire commission for himself. To combat this, Keith brainwashes all of his clients into thinking that he is an omniscient genius and that our lives would be nothing without him. It worked on me.)
A little while later, I got a call from Keith. Steppas had just called him and said, "Keith, it's your old friend Steppas." Keith had been discussing the Vladivostok job all week, but with a man whose name he thought was Stavros. When Steppas got on the line, he realized that he had actually been talking to Steppas all along. Now obviously, he would never have considered the situation to be a viable one if he had known that the man who had completely dropped the ball with regard to our negotiations with Khimky had been back in the fray. Keith is unsure if Steppas had given him a false name on purpose, or if he had merely misunderstood his Lithu-English. Either way, Steppas is not a name held in high esteem between the two of us.
Needless to say, I am still without a job in Vladivostok.
