At one point in his itinerant seven-year pro basketball career, Paul Shirley found himself playing with Steve Nash. OK, maybe playing is putting too fine a point on it, because Shirley seldom actually played for the 2004-05 Phoenix Suns. That was, after all, when they were at the beginning of the Nash-quarterbacked seven-seconds-or-less era, playing the sort of free-flowing style that served as antecedent for the current-day Warriors.
But every now and then Shirley — a 6-10 forward who was with the Suns in training camp, then returned to them late that season, after an ill-fated stint in Russia — found himself on Nash’s team in a scrimmage or pickup game. And yes, it was precisely as much fun to play with the future two-time MVP as it might have looked to the rest of us from our couches. It was, in fact, “pretty great,” as Shirley put it to me over the phone recently.
“It wasn’t just that he would always find you with the ball,” he said. “It would be that the ball would be right where you needed it to be to shoot. People don’t coach it or they just don’t think about how important those details are. And it was so pleasant to know, like, ‘Oh the ball’s gonna be right where I need it, and I don’t have to think about any of the other shit.’ ”
It led Shirley to an interesting conclusion.
“Weirdly to me, playing in the NBA was easier than playing in college because you have fewer decisions, especially if you’re marginally talented like I was,” he said.
When he played at Iowa State — first under Tim Floyd (who he loved), then under Larry Eustachy (who he did not) — there were more opportunities, more options, more decisions … but also a greater likelihood that something might go wrong.
“And now that we’re talking about thinking about this,” he said, “I’m thinking about how refreshing it was that (Nash) took some of the guesswork out, because he had figured out some of these details.”
Funny thing about circumstances and opportunities. How you can create them for yourself to some degree, but how there are always outside forces at work. Shirley found that again and again while playing in four foreign countries (Greece, Spain and China, in addition to Russia) and getting cups of coffee with not only the Suns but also the Bulls and Hawks; in all his career stretched from 2001-08 and included exactly 121 minutes over 18 NBA games. (He also earned training-camp looks from the ‘01 Lakers and ‘06 Timberwolves, meaning that besides Nash he was at various times a teammate of Shaquille O’Neal, Kobe Bryant, Kevin Garnett and Scottie Pippen. Not for nothing does Shirley say that he had a “Forrest Gumpian” career.)
And the same thing has remained true of circumstances/opportunities since the 42-year-old Shirley settled into the writing life. He is a gifted memoirist, as he showed in detailing his life and career in the books “Can I Keep My Jersey?” (2007) and “Stories I Tell on Dates” (2017). Now he is seeking to make his mark elsewhere in the field — as a novelist (he hopes) and as the driving force behind the Writers Blok, a gathering place for scribes in Los Angeles. Whether in a physical space or (as has been the case during the coronavirus pandemic) in an online capacity, writers of all stripes come together not only to work, but to discuss what they’re doing and how they’re progressing. There are critique sessions. There are guest speakers on occasion.
“But at the core of it,” Shirley said, “it’s really about that idea of building a habit or a routine.”
The idea grew out of his own realization, some seven years ago, that he didn’t like to write by himself. Nor did he believe he was treating the craft with the same seriousness he had once treated basketball. So he started this endeavor in a friend’s coffee shop, after the place had closed down for the day. Then he graduated to the grounds of a church, and finally to a permanent space, all the while drawing novelists, poets, script writers, academics, etc.
The physical space is, he said, not unlike a yoga studio for writers, where everyone can work out for a finite amount of time and the progress is obvious.
“Online,” he said, “I think we’re like the Peloton of writing.”
Not a bad analogy, that. Like the folks using those pricey stationary bikes, everybody keeps grinding away, fully aware that there are others out there doing the same thing. And that there are always Alpian climbs ahead.
For his part, he admits to discarding three novels over the last several years — one of which was in its early stages and was in his estimation “unreadable,” the other two having advanced further into the publishing process but never seeing the light of day. He’s also working on a Young Adult novel that has shown promise, a work that’s about a kid who moves with his single mom from LA to a small town in Kansas and discovers basketball as a way to fit in. Shirley, who hails from Meriden, Kansas (pop. 784) said the tome is “sort of like a reverse ‘Karate Kid,’” and is reasonably hopeful that it will resonate with a publisher.
Again, it’s a matter of circumstance, a matter of an opportunity coming to fruition.
He said he is uniquely equipped to deal with the rejection he has faced in the publishing realm, having already dealt with so much of it in hoops. In his estimation, it’s not unlike working through the stages of grief.
“I feel like one thing people don’t sometimes allow themselves is to really find the bottom of how they’re feeling about something awful,” he said. “And because basketball causes you such vivid and public failures, it seems like it was not some conscious habit, but I had to, almost as a survival mechanism, be good at self-soothing and solace — so letting myself just go to, ‘I’m a complete failure; this is never gonna work,’ but not staying there forever.”
His degree from Iowa State was actually in mechanical engineering, but he was drawn to writing early in his pro career, when he began sending long emails to friends about the strangeness of overseas hoops. They would forward them to others, and the chain grew and grew. Then, later in his career, the Suns asked him to blog about the team, which led to a book deal with Random House.
His books are alternately funny, painful and poignant. I found myself literally laughing out loud when he described how he gained admittance to the VIP area at a party because the rapper MC Hammer, confusing Shirley with former NFL quarterback Matt Leinart, told the security guard to let him in. And I found myself squirming when Shirley described the life-threatening internal injuries he suffered when he drew a charge from Indiana’s Austin Croshere while a member of the Bulls in 2004.
That’s all behind him now. Shirley said that physically, he feels as good as he has in over a decade — that he hasn’t picked up a basketball in years, but keeps fit by lifting and playing beach volleyball. And beyond that he is forever pursuing the next opportunity, forever looking to improve his circumstances, while knowing that other obstacles will surely present themselves.
As with those on a Peloton, there is always another mountain ahead … and another … and another. You’ve just got to do the best you can.