On a game day I get to the practice gym (in Angel Guardian parochial school on the North Side) about 8 a.m. I get stuff ready and treat any injuries. I go to the Stadium about 3 p.m. and set up both training rooms, ours and the visiting team`s. The players come down about 5:30, and I tape them and start getting them ready. About 6:45 I run my stretching program, which is one of the ways I feel I can prevent injuries. I feel inflexibility is a major cause of muscle pulls.
At about 7 p.m. the coaches take the players for a meeting, then it`s game time. After the game, when my work is done, I get home about 11:30 p.m. Yet I`ve had people actually write me letters asking how they can get a job where they just watch somebody play basketball.
My main concern is the health of the athletes. My job is the prevention, treatment, and rehabilitation of injuries. I`m big on prevention. I really try to push the players into off-season as well as pre-season conditioning.
I handle all the taping and strapping of protective pads before practice and take care of any injuries. Because we have only 12 athletes to take care of, I`m also in charge of all the equipment and get to do the laundry and vacuuming, too. I try not to let my wife know that so I don`t have to do it at home.
A lot of people will say, ”Well, I didn`t go to college for six years to pick up these guys` jockstraps.” I don`t look at it that way. While you`re in there cleaning up their locker room, you`re listening to their moaning and groaning. I feel it gives me a chance to understand my athletes even better. You find out who tends to be a bit lazy and who has real complaints.
You`re with these guys all the time. It`s been fun and exciting for me. Heck, it`s something the people back in my hometown (Wausa, Nebraska) watch on television. In a town of 700, you never see a professional athlete.
What I do might seem more glamorous, but where you find the real athletic trainers is in the high schools. They put up with 1,700 students. They have five levels of basketball and football, swimming, baseball, track, and cross- country. That`s where your true athletic trainers are. You`re starting to see trainers all over in high schools and colleges now, and it`s helping make better athletes. A high-jumper who can work on a weight program designed specifically for him is going to develop from the time he`s a high-school freshman. He`s going to be your Olympic hero 10 years down the road.
One of the things that frustrates me in working with professional athletes is that there could be so much more conditioning. You see much better conditioning programs in high schools and colleges than in the pros. In the schools they have fantastic facilities that the pros don`t have. I have no training facilities in Chicago because there`s no way you can expect the management to set up something that expensive for 12 guys who are only going to use it five months out of the year.
Basketball is a deconditioning sport. Our athletes` conditions decline from the day they finish training camp. They play about 35 minutes, maximum, in a 2 1/2-hour game, and a lot of that 35 minutes is spent standing around at the free-throw line, in time-outs, and waiting for the inbounds pass. That`s why I think it`s so important aerobically for them to do some running and weight lifting in the off-season. If they did it, you`d have certain athletes who wouldn`t get tired, who could play the entire 48 minutes. If you pay some guy like Larry Bird $2 million a year, you want him to play 40 minutes. A lot of guys who jog four miles a day along the lakefront are in better condition than our players.
I know what I`m talking about when I tell people that they can push themselves past a certain point, because I`ve done it. When I took this job, Jerry Sloan was the one who got me started on my own physical fitness. He was the coach at the time, and I was way overweight. He told me, ”If you`re going to tell an athlete he`s got to do something to get into shape, you can`t be standing there weighing 225 pounds.” I dieted, started running and lifting weights. I used to be so embarrassed running with him. He`d take off ahead of me, then he`d watch me slow down because he knew I was about ready to throw up. I thought he`d run ahead and not notice, but he`d stop and watch me. Eventually I got down to 165 and have stayed around there.
You can see the seeds of what you`re preaching to these guys about conditioning finally take root. There were several years from an aerobics standpoint when none of our athletes could beat me on a treadmill test. Now some of them are doing some of the off-season things I`ve wanted them to do, and they`re coming into training camp trying to beat me on the treadmill. It`s become a bit of a game. We had three or four guys in camp this year go way beyond what they did a year ago. Next year, if they do the same thing and you bring in a couple of other guys willing to do the off-season stuff, all of a sudden you have an entire team that is conscious of training.
I have thoroughly enjoyed being around every player that I`ve been associated with. The thing about it is that you know you are going to have to be in the training room every day with them, so it is just as well not to have any arguments with them. It`s just like a marriage; you don`t want to drag an argument out. If there is a problem between me and an athlete, with the salaries they make, I can tell you which one of us is going to go. There are only 23 professional-basketball trainers and the average salary in the NBA for them is $38,400. Trainers are a dime a dozen.
I`ve never had any problem with these guys. As far as jealousies go, I drive a Dodge Omni, while these guys drive Mercedeses. We`re in different worlds. If I were jealous of what they have, it would drive me nuts. I have a lot of respect for the people I`ve been involved with, people who are going to do well in life far beyond their basketball careers.
