Tilting at Windmills

Wayman Tisdale is Oklahoma basketball.

It’s not an understatement and it’s not overselling the impact of a recently-deceased, beloved player to say that without Wayman’s contributions to the Sooners in the early 80s, the OU basketball program would not be where it is today. Certainly, the entire landscape of OU’s great run from ’84 to ’91 would be different.

Former OU All-American Stacey “Sky” King came out and said flatly yesterday that he went to OU because of Wayman:

“Wayman’s one of the biggest reasons why I chose Oklahoma. I wanted to be part of something special and it made logical sense to go to OU because I wanted to pattern my game after him. I wanted to be like him. People used to talk about ‘Be like Mike (Michael Jordan),’ but I wanted to be like Wayman. We’ve lost a special person. I don’t think there will ever be another Wayman Tisdale.”

His last point is the biggest one: there will never be another Wayman. It’s not that we won’t see a player like him again just because some of his records (namely, the scoring and rebounding) at OU might not ever be broken. It’s because of the impact Wayman had as a man on so many lives.

CNN.com, NPR, NBA.com, ESPN … there was hardly a media outlet yesterday that didn’t have the passing of one of basketball’s brightest stars as their lead story. We wouldn’t see this if he were just the greatest player to ever wear a Sooner basketball uniform, though … it’s not like NPR does a story on every basketball player who passes.

Wayman’s #23 was the first number ever retired at the University of Oklahoma, regardless of the sport. He personally gave Blake Griffin permission to wear it and, ironically, Wayman passed just before seeing Griffin become the first Sooner to go #1 in the NBA draft, one slot higher than Wayman went in ’85.

Another bittersweet piece of irony is that Wayman was just elected to the College Basketball Hall of Fame and, although it should have happened years ago, will be posthumously inducted later this year alongside people like Magic Johnson and Larry Bird (why aren’t these three guys already in?!?).

Kansas coach and ex-aggie point guard Bill Self, who played on Tisdale’s AAU team, correctly pointed out how Wayman single-handedly brought Oklahoma basketball into the national scope:

“He changed the whole landscape for basketball in our state, from a fun standpoint and from a production standpoint. We were a football state until Wayman came on the scene.”

The son of a preacher, Wayman was a devout man who would attend service in Tulsa on Sunday morning, then head back to Norman for practice Sunday evening, thanks to Billy Tubbs timing practices around the Tiz’s church schedule. Wayman continued giving to charities throughout his life, using his celebrity as both a basketball star and a musician to help forward causes.
You’d be hard-pressed to find anybody say a bad word about Wayman. Even rivals would not only acknowledge his basketball greatness, but his gentle personality and charisma. Tubbs’ 80s Sooners weren’t interested in making friends with you and they weren’t liked by a lot of people outside of the Sooner nation. Everybody liked Tisdale, though. After he dropped 30 and 15 on you, he’d flash that big smile, put those huge arms around you and make you feel like you two were best friends.

After being the first true freshman All-American in NCAA history, becoming a three-time, first-team All-American (he’s on short list of people who’ve done that, like Pistol Pete, Ewing, Jerry Lucas, Alcindor, Walton, Ralph Sampson and the Big O), leading the 1984 gold medal-winning Olympic team in rebounds (playing alongside Patrick Ewing, Michael Jordan, Chris Mullin and Sam Perkins) and going second in the 1985 draft after Ewing, Tisdale launched a 12-year NBA career that would see him go to three different teams and average 15 ppg over that span. He could have quit right there and had a great story to tell. Wayman wasn’t done, though. Basketball seemed to be just a gateway to doing what he really loved: music.

I’ll admit, when Wayman released his first album Power Forward in 1995, I thought it was just a novelty act by a former athlete. Seven albums and several awards later, we all know different. Watch Wayman play bass and you know this wasn’t some celebrity-turned-musician-wannabe, Dennis Quaid crap going on. Wayman could frickin play. His 2001 release Face to Face reached #1 on the contemporary (read: smooth) jazz Billboard chart.

Now, it’s one thing to be such a great athlete that you start for a dozen years in the NBA. It’s another to be a chart-topping musician. Neither of those careers really leads into the other, nor will either profession give you any benefit of the doubt for having done the other. The music industry isn’t just going to hand you a gold record because you have a sweet, left-handed jumper. The fact he was able to rise to the top of two such diverse industries is an incredible achievement.

Most of us found out about Wayman’s cancer last year in a moving story on ESPN. The 6’9” power forward bassist, who made you wish you had a DVR in 1985 because he was so quick you almost missed his moves, had his right leg amputated just above the knee to try and stop the spread of his painful bone cancer.

I, just as I’m sure most people, thought that this was just another challenge that Wayman would quickly blockout, grab the offensive board and putback the lay in. Surely something like this wasn’t going to take out the Great Wayman Tisdale.

In true Wayman fashion, he quickly showed everyone his courage and willingness to fight.

The horrible news came yesterday morning and hit the entire Sooner nation like a sledgehammer. For me personally, I’m devastated. Just as my dad’s childhood sports hero was Mickey Mantle, mine was Wayman Tisdale. I know a lot of people who feel the same way. I remember Wayman making OU basketball relevant. I remember Wayman dropping 61 points on UTSA in the All-College tournament. I remember Wayman’s unstoppable 12-foot turnaround jumper (if he missed that twice in his career, I’d be surprised).

What I’ll remember most about him, though, is that huge, toothy smile he always flashed. It’s just impossible to think of Wayman and not smile yourself a little. He had the kind of charisma that just made your day better by talking about him or watching his YouTube clips or checking out one of his old games on ESPN Classic. Those of us from Oklahoma feel a special kinship with Wayman as he was one of our own, a homegrown Tulsa Booker T. Washington product.

I lost one of my all-time sports heroes yesterday. The University of Oklahoma lost one of its finest ambassadors. The music world lost a great bass player and musician. The human race lost one of the kindest, most genuine people who has ever walked the planet.

As a memorial, I hope it’s being proposed to rename the floor of Lloyd Noble Center after Wayman. I don’t think you would hear a single argument against it. For a man who gave so much to the university, to the sport of basketball and to people everywhere, it’s the least we can do to honor and thank him for everything he did for all of us.