The eye of the Glenbrook North locker-room whirlwind is anything but calm. No. 5 has not collected his warmups.
As he spins around, searching with frantic energy for the truant owner, Jordan Gaffen’s baritone voice swiftly scales octaves, as if a motorized pulley is whisking it upward.
“No. Five!” the team manager yells. Seconds later, the player in demand arrives. But not without consequences.
“I called `Five’ like 10 times!” Gaffen says, admonishing guard Matt Shamis. After handing over the gear, Gaffen hastens to retrieve his coat and cell phone from the locker he shares with Shamis.
“Shamis, you have to help me with my stuff!” Gaffen says.
The top-ranked, defending Class AA state champion Spartans have won again, drubbing Niles North by 41 points. The victory, as usual, has set off a nuclear reaction in Gaffen’s soul.
For nearly seven seasons, he has served as manager for the Glenbrook North basketball team. At first, it was a way to involve a learning-disabled teenager socially, to provide a purpose that would occupy an eager but impaired mind.
Now Gaffen is woven permanently into the fabric of the program as a friend, a team aide and, perhaps most importantly, an unfailingly loyal caretaker for a certain gifted, Duke-bound guard who would be lost without him.
On this Friday night in Skokie, with the gear collected and the bus warming outside, Gaffen slings his equipment bag over his shoulder.
“This way, boys!” he declares, heading toward the exit doors, and the Spartans fall in line behind him.
`The kid is just priceless’
When their son was 2 years old and still couldn’t talk, Barb and Arnold Gaffen recognized a deeper problem. Their pediatrician recommended taking Jordan to Northwestern University’s Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders. There, his issues with speech and language processing were diagnosed.
Jordan Gaffen always has had therapy, tutors, special education classes. But he was mainstreamed for subjects such as art and gym, for social exposure to other children.
Watching him now–nearly 21 years old–recognizing referee Bob Wilheim in the Niles North gym before the sophomore game, leaping up to say hello, then returning to his seat and saying of the bearded Wilheim, “He needs a shave”–it stretches the boundaries of imagination to picture Jordan Gaffen isolated from anyone.
“We feel really fortunate, given his limitations, that he’s blessed with social skills and can be successful,” Barb Gaffen says. “If you asked me 15 years ago, would I think he’d be like this? No, probably not. We really worked hard to maximize his strengths.”
As he reached high school, Jordan became involved in two activities neatly juxtaposed to cover his free time.
He began working as a caddie and in the bag room at Sunset Ridge Country Club in Northbrook and he became the basketball team’s manager at Glenbrook North.
Gaffen quickly immersed and endeared himself. He entered the caddie shack at Sunset Ridge for the first time wearing a fancy Bulls jacket–not the ideal choice on a day when rain fell by the tub. Caddiemaster Greg Kunkel, unaware of his new employee’s condition or demeanor, suggested a rain jacket to avoid ruining the coat.
“Don’t worry,” Gaffen told Kunkel, “my dad is rich. He’ll buy me another one.”
“I can only work him 40 hours a week, but on his day off he can’t stay away from the place,” Kunkel says. “When he’s not there, the place is really dull. When he’s in the caddie shack, he just lights up the room. He goes to the young kids, `You better do a good job today, got to get better every time out.’ . . .
“The kid is just priceless.”
This is evident in his social instincts and in a fearlessly sincere charm that takes a sledgehammer to walls built up by the rich and famous.
At Glenbrook North practices, he has conversed at animated length with Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski, Illinois coach Bruce Weber and Michigan State coach Tom Izzo. Attending a charity event as the guest of Bears long snapper Patrick Mannelly, Gaffen asked for coach Lovie Smith’s autograph–and then promptly rubbed Smith’s bald scalp.
Once at Sunset Ridge, Kunkel drove Gaffen to the first tee to meet a well-known guest.
“Hey, we got the same name,” Gaffen said.
To which Michael Jordan replied, “Oh, nice to meet you, Michael.”
“No,” Gaffen retorted, “my name is Jordan.”
Part of the landscape
“You go to that gym, and the first face I look for is Jordan,” says Deerfield coach Greg Kapsimalis, who had one restaurant dinner interrupted when Gaffen saw him and walked over to discuss the Spartans. “It’s about kids like that, who are there because they love it.”
“You think people who have a disability, they might be a little self-conscious about it, a little insecure,” Glenbrook North senior Zach Kelly says. “My God, he doesn’t even think about it. He goes into everything headfirst.”
And with a keen, fanatically meticulous nature that belies his disabilities. He can locate immediately any of 700 bags at Sunset Ridge. He gets annoyed when the cleaning lady moves items in his bedroom ever so slightly. And gone are the days when Spartans coach Dave Weber asked him not to nap during practices; Gaffen adheres to a strict game-day regimen.
To wit, his rundown of the equipment bag he lugs along:
“Twelve water bottles, towels and one ball,” Gaffen says. “One ball.”
Why not two?
“Don’t need it,” Gaffen replies.
The force of his personality eclipses his services rendered, though. Gaffen will chime in to second Weber’s coaching reminders to the team, and he will chastise players to get home and get some sleep before early Saturday games.
One day during Gaffen’s senior year in 2003 best demonstrates what makes him an irreplaceable node in Glenbrook North’s wiring. The word leaked during the school week: Jordan Gaffen was to play in a junior-varsity game. He scored one point on a free throw.
And when he left the court, he left to hundreds chanting his name. The Glenbrook North community had overflowed its side of the stands for a Saturday morning junior-varsity game, starring Jordan Gaffen.
“If he wasn’t with us, it’d be such a different experience,” says Shamis. “I know it would be for me. He’s such a special part of this team now. You look forward to coming to the gym, to see him and hear what he has to say.”
But there is one individual about whom Jordan Gaffen can’t stop talking.
`A special connection’
Asked to name his favorite college basketball team, Gaffen answers instantly: Duke.
Told this, Jon Scheyer–who just happens to be Glenbrook North’s All-American lodestar, and who just happens to be headed to Duke next season–shakes his head.
“He says he has been a Duke fan all his life,” Scheyer says, smiling. “I don’t believe him. I don’t remember him liking Duke last year. Last year, I swear he was an Illinois fan.”
The easy explanation for this is the magnetism of stardom, not to mention Gaffen’s well-known tendency to buy a ticket for the next bandwagon out of town.
But that is indeed too easy, too imprecise. It ignores the fact Jordan Gaffen discovered a wiry but exceptional junior high player years ago, the anticipation churning and bubbling in him like volcanic magma even then, well before Jon Scheyer became the Jon Scheyer.
In fact, if anyone has earned his first-class cabin on the S.S. Scheyer, it is the stocky, wide-eyed chaperone who has been handing the Spartans standout water bottles and clean towels every game, four years running.
“Without him, it’s not normal to me,” Scheyer says. “He’s one of the teammates, one of the guys. I feel a special connection with Jordan. . . . He just cares about me a lot.”
Gaffen is coy about the relationship, almost as if he fears his place in Scheyer’s orbit will be dislodged by describing the friendship as anything but “pretty good.” But Scheyer is, as Barb Gaffen says, her son’s “special guy.”
“When Jon started as a freshman, that gave [Gaffen] more of a purpose,” says Dave Weber. “Everyone knew Jon was going to be a great player. Everyone knew Jon had a tendency to forget his shoes or leave his warm-ups on the floor. When Jordan started taking care of Jon, it was the time when he started to mature a lot. He had a specific thing to do. Then I said, `This is really, really worth it.'”
To be clear, it’s a two-way street, and Gaffen often is the one who keeps the traffic flowing.
Scheyer once brought two left sneakers to a game, once forgot his snap pants, another time forgot his jersey. Now Gaffen confronts him the night before games with reminders.
It is Gaffen who attends to Scheyer’s idiosyncrasies: collecting warmups he discards just before tipoff, the fresh undershirt at halftime. It is Gaffen who hurries Scheyer past throngs of autograph-seekers.
“Without Jordan,” Scheyer says, “honestly, I’d be lost.”
And not just for clean laundry.
“High school basketball, the only constants through my years have been me, the coaches and Jordan,” Scheyer says. “I’ve had different teammates the whole time. But one consistent thing I’ve always had is Jordan.
“I feel like I’ve been through battles in games, hard situations. Anything I think about, any game I’m in, I see Jordan’s face next to me in the locker room and I know he has been through it with me. That’s comforting to know.”
The comfort may carry on. Gaffen has stuck around as Glenbrook North’s manager since graduating in 2003, but he might not return next season. He thinks his schedule could be full.
He already has a Duke T-shirt, a Duke long-sleeve shirt, Duke warmup pants and a Duke sweatshirt. Now he’s looking for the same view of Scheyer he has had for four seasons, but from the Duke bleachers.
“I’m trying to go to every [game],” Gaffen says. “I’m trying to get tickets, for when he goes there.”
A match made in Gatorade
During December’s Proviso West Holiday Tournament, severe dehydration put Scheyer in the hospital. The paramedics offered this advice: Drink a mixture that is half-water and half-Gatorade to maintain ideal levels of hydration.
So Scheyer turned to the obvious help. The only help, really. And now, in that mostly empty Niles North gym, a plastic bag containing two bottles rests atop Jordan Gaffen’s large equipment sack.
“I bring one 32-ounce bottle,” Gaffen says. “Fruit punch only, ’cause fruit punch goes with water–a little water he likes in it. The whole thing is fruit punch, and at the end, a little water. Just a little bit.”
Roughly 30 minutes before tipoff against Niles North, the Spartans finish stretching in a classroom and the ritual begins. Scheyer hands Gaffen a half-emptied bottle of Gatorade. Gaffen takes the bottle and heads to his duffel, pulling out a water bottle with “SCHEYER” written on it.
He crouches in the corner, pouring in the leftover Gatorade. Scheyer adds a dollop more from the other bottle. Gaffen then walks to the water jug in the gym. He fills the rest of the bottle, shaking it up as he returns to the team.
Scheyer cannot properly mix the formula. It never tastes right when he tries.
Jordan Gaffen, however, has the touch. Fruit punch, then a little water. A little bit. He taps Scheyer on the left shoulder and hands the Spartans’ star his water bottle. Scheyer takes a sip, nods, and returns the bottle to Jordan Gaffen.
Once again, it’s the perfect mix.
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bchamilton@tribune.com
