What is Reggie Miller thinking?
Posted: Wednesday, August 22, 2007 11:28 AM
Two years ago, he retired at the age of 40 from the Indiana Pacers and went on to a life of genteel retirement as a paid mouth on basketball broadcasts, a movie producer and a sometime television host. He’d given the game everything he had, cemented his reputation as one of the most cold-blooded gunners in NBA history, saw his jersey hoisted into the rafters in Indianapolis. And now he’s thinking of coming back?
I’m pretty sure he’s going to wake up sometime during the next week or three and ask the same question I just did: “What in the name of afternoon naps am I thinking?” But for him to even admit to thinking about coming out of retirement is just plain nuts.
You can understand why he would have been flattered from shaved head to toe when Danny Ainge, who’s calling the shots for the Boston Celtics, got in touch with him a couple of weeks ago inquire as to his availability in the coming season. Ainge had just swung the deal that brought Kevin Garnett to the Celts and boosted Boston into the favorite’s role in the NBA East. Looking for every edge he could get, Ainge figured it wouldn’t hurt to have somebody on the bench who could come in and hit a spot-up three when the situation called for it.
Robert Horry, who isn’t half the shooter miller is, has made a pretty good career out of doing just that for championship teams. Reggie wouldn’t even be asked to play anything more that perfunctory defense. Just spot up and hoist ‘em.
But Horry isn’t 42, nor has he been retired for two years. And while I have no doubt Miller could hit a three-pointer in his sleep while wearing drop-seat bunny pajamas, I also have no doubt he’ll realize after the second or third practice that his body has no desire to put itself through another 82-games of basketball.
It’s hard to take two years off from any sport at any age and return at an elite level. To do it at the age of 42 might be possible in baseball – for a designated hitter or first baseman who didn’t have to run around a lot. But in basketball, a sport in which very few players who aren’t centers last even as long as 40, is unthinkable.
Miller said he’s in “bowling shape.” He may also be in cart-golf shape and walking-to-the-limo shape. But he’s not in basketball shape and hasn’t been in that kind of finely honed condition for two years.
He tries to play now, and it’s pulled hammies, strained calves, aching feet, shinsplints and other assorted pains he didn’t know existed. Even if he decides to go to camp, the odds are slim he’d even make it to the opening of the season, and the odds that he’d get through the entire year are pretty much nonexistent.
Yes, it’s flattering to be asked, the kind of ego boost every one of us would like to have. But this isn’t Harrison Ford coming back to do one more Indiana Jones film. There are no stunt doubles and camera tricks in basketball. If he comes back, Miller’s got to do all his own stunts.
Forty-two is no age to do it.
