Not Everyone Gets a Dwayne Wade Retiring Tour — A Pro Athlete’s Last Game
By: Trevor Huffman
Tags: Sports, Basketball, Athletes, Letting Go, NBA

Photo credit: rotenburger

3–2–1. The buzzer sounds. The thousands of faces and applause blur. I will never hear or see them again, not like this at least. No one will ever pour beer on their friend when I hit a three. No one will make out when I hit a game winner. No one will cry when I miss the shot for the championship.

I flip the leather ball behind my back like a pinball pedal.

“Merci.”

“Merci Huffman,” the ref says back.

We win by 10. There was no need to foul. No need to nail the clutch free throw. No need to pray and find my breath. No need for any of that anymore. I can just relax. I can let go.

Coach Toupane has bashed me in the papers. Gone to the president. The GM. But not once has this coach said anything to me. I just keep doing my job, well, until now. This is the last day of the best job in the world. This is the moment you take stock for your life and stand grateful at the gates of basketball heaven.

This is an athlete’s frozen moment in time, when the memories amplify into crystallized emotions, whether it’s magnified grief, rage, joy, sadness, apathy, or bliss. It’s these puzzling events you’ll never get back to, or feel again. Maybe not until you hold the birth of your child, or sell a company for a million dollars, or travel the world with a lover on edible brownies with a paycheck that comes again next month. The pure ecstasy of doing what you love and performing in front of people that pay you to do what you love doing is truly amazing.

But no one likes to talk about the curtain calls of the millions of athletes out there that play their final game. A businessman can keep working. A mother can call her kids and keep mothering. An actor can keep acting. A coach can keep coaching.

But sorry Dwayne and Dirk, you will wish you could keep going, even if you tell yourself it’s time to retire.

Most coaches or former players don’t dream about coaching, or working at their office, or doing their nine to five jobs — they dream about that one heartbreaking shot they missed in the district finals or that two-handed cram they had in traffic back in the day.

I’ll remember this day, my final moment with a ball in my hands watching a city of fans that gave me just as much as I gave them.

The challenge is these ending moments can become a mental blot clots, replaying in your subconscious, recreating what I call the “athlete effect.” This happens because we love to play so much, we can’t let go of our identity. This is really the cumulative effect of years and years of living, working, and battling with a band of brothers that fight through the mortar shells of a season — either in their bunkers and or sprinting up the hill with their bayonets. Every season ends and we come out scarred, injured, or gloriously victorious, until the last game.

I’m not a hero. I didn’t serve my country. But I’ve served my teams since I was 15 — blood, sweat, and tears.

Today, I’m 39. And losing a brotherhood that relies on victories to get paid so they can feed their families, support their lives, and pay their mortgage is just half the struggle of dealing with the last game. The other problem is it feels like someone was tearing my limbs off my body, stuffing them with grenades, blowing them up, and then handing them back to me saying, “It will get better with time.”

No, not necessarily. In my profession, things don’t get better unless you deal with it, fast.

I take a deep breath and take in the final popcorn scent of this gym. The line of opposing players is leaving their bench. I’m first in line. I think about getting all the wins I’ve had, all the championships I’ve won. I think about my dad rebounding for me. I think about my mom driving me to AAU. I think about my little brother D2 shooting hoops before school. I think about my brother Jeremy beating me in one on one in our driveway. I must have lost to him a thousand times. Then I look up into new, multimillion-dollar Antibes Sharks arena. There is one banner that will always be mine:

Antibes Pro B Champion 2012–2013

I envision the history and scope of my career. From Hagen, Germany as a rookie, to Ostrow, Poland, to the CBA in Flint, to Caracas, Venezuela, to Porto, Portugal, to Aalst, Belgium, to Oostende, to Charleroi, to Antibes, France. I will never be the same. The cultures changed me. I think back to Petoskey High with High School legend Dennis Starkey, playing AAU with Jeff McDonald, to my NCAA career with Gary Waters and Stan Heath, playing with to the NBA with Frank Johnson and Mike D’Antoni, and to my European careers with Brad Dean, Bozzi, Jean-Marc, Tom Johnson, or Julian Espinosa.

I am a winner. I am a winner. I am a winner.

I choke on emotion trying to spew out of me. My career is over — 20 fucking years.

It’s finally over.

I get closer to the end of the line. I will turn and face my coach and head to the locker room. I will walk with my head high, but the rage is bubbling inside me like a pot of boiling water. My knees are weak. I’m going to faint.

Just as I’m about to walk past the Coach, I hear, “Hey Huff, great game man.”

It’s Tim Blue. He is 6'10 and had started in Finland a few years making $1,500 a month and now was easily making six figures. We had won together, even fit seamlessly on pick and rolls like a poor man’s Stockton-Malone.

“Thanks, Timmy.”

I see him. Coach Toupane. He is smiling, shaking the hands of the other team. This is the man that wants me gone. I want to walk over to him and sock him in the face. He looks at me, “Good game Huff. Thank you.”

I nod, incredulously.

Toupane seems relieved. When coaches smile after a game, at least in the pros, it means they are relieved. Relieved to keep their job. Relieved to stay. Relieved to win a close game. Relieved to fight another day. I get it. Coaches and players in Europe can get fired in the huddle. It’s a business and we all have to make decisions to defend what we believe in.

I keep my feet moving slowly until I reach my locker. I try to keep my head up, as I throttle back the sadness, but the grief rises up my chest as I sit with a towel over my head inside the safety of my cubby hole. I take off my shoes, my McDavid padded tights, slice through my ankle tape, pre-wrap, and slide off my number four jersey for the last time.

A silent tear slides off my face onto the floor between my legs — it’s over, but what a good run, what a good fucking run, Huff.