basketball player
Personal Information
Born Timothy Duane Hardaway September 1, 1966; son of Donald and Gwendalyn Hardaway; mother a postal worker; married Yolanda; children: Tim Jr., Nia.
Education: University of Texas at El Paso, bachelor's degree in criminal justice, 1989.
Career
Chosen in first round of 1989 draft by Golden State Warriors; played for Warriors, 1989-95; played for Miami Heat, 1996-01; named to U.S. Olympic basketball team, 2000; played for Dallas Mavericks, 2001; traded to Denver Nuggets, 2001.
Life's Work
Point guard Tim Hardaway was one of the National Basketball Association's most exciting players for much of the 1990s. It wasn't that he was a superstar, a household name; other players placed higher in statistical rankings and grabbed headlines with slam dunks and wild antics. Yet in his prime, with the Golden State Warriors and the Miami Heat, Hardaway had speed and a sheer intensity that made him, quite simply, a thrill to watch. His trademark drive to the basket recalled for Sport magazine a quip in which comedian Bill Cosby marveled at the skills of football running back Gale Sayers: "There oughta be a law against a man splitting himself in two." Hardaway, whose talents as a team player matched his purely individual skills, reached totals of 5,000 points and 2,500 assists faster than any other player in NBA history except for Oscar Robertson.
Timothy Duane Hardaway was born on September 1, 1966, and raised on Chicago's South Side. His mother, Gwendalyn, a postal worker, was only four feet, eleven inches tall, and Hardaway, at five feet eleven, was small by the standards of the NBA. When Hardaway was six months old, his mother put a toy car in his crib, and his father added a basketball. Hardaway chose the basketball, and in childhood gained the lifelong nickname Tim Bug for his agility on the court. Hardaway came up on Chicago's playgrounds, where his father, Donald, had excelled before him.
Escaped Childhood Problems Through Basketball
"Growing up in Chicago, you're going to be tough," Hardaway told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. "You had to fight to get to school. You had to fight to get back home from school." Yet the violence in Hardaway's life came as often at home as on the streets. His father, an alcohol addict (who later reformed after his son began to succeed on the court), behaved abusively toward Hardaway and his mother, and Hardaway responded by focusing on his game. "It was always my release," he told Sports Illustrated. When I was going through stuff with my dad, I could get my frustrations worked out just by playing hard--drills, shooting, playing against people. Just taking it out on them."
Donald Hardaway made things worse for his son by showing up drunk at games, and Hardaway took out his frustrations on opponents at Chicago's Carver High School and at the University of Texas at El Paso, from which Hardaway graduated in 1989 with a criminal justice degree. It was during his college career that Hardaway first developed his trademark move, a between-the-legs dribble-and-drive that was at first dubbed the "UTEP Two-Step." Hardaway admits that he was inspired to develop the technique by Syracuse University guard Pearl Washington, whom he saw on television. By the time Hardaway reached the pros, he had perfected the move. "It can't be stopped," superstar Magic Johnson told Sports Illustrated. "It's bang, bang, and you're dead."
Averaging 22 points per game in his senior year and returning to Chicago every summer to play in off-season leagues against NBA players, Hardaway attracted the attention of NBA scouts. He was selected in the first round of the 1989 draft by the Golden State Warriors and immediately given a starting slot--a less-than-popular move among some Warriors fans. Their doubts intensified after Hardaway contracted tonsillitis in the days before his Warriors debut and suffered poor outings in his first half-dozen games. "Everybody was booing me, and I was making a lot of turnovers," he told Sports Illustrated. "I'd go home and not want to show my face." But he bounced back, averaging 14.9 points per game, winning a place on the NBA's All-Rookie First Team, and receiving an award from his teammates as the most inspirational Warriors player of the year.
Named to All-Star Team
In the 1990-91 season Hardaway hit the level of intensity that would make him an NBA star. Early in the season, in a game against Sacramento, he scored Golden State's last 13 points, and over and over again he played brilliantly in clutch situations. "He's made more big plays, taken over more games and led more runs than anybody we have," then-Warriors coach Don Nelson told Sports Illustrated late in the season. "He won three games this year that we were out of. When the hour is bleakest, he saves the day. I think he's Mighty Mouse." Hardaway was named to the Western Conference starting team for the NBA All-Star Game and ended the year with a 22.9 points-per-game average, touching off a string of three seasons when he scored over 20 points per game.
What stopped that run was a bout of knee problems that would trouble Hardaway for the rest of his career. His left knee collapsed during the Warriors' 1993 training camp, and he missed the entire 1993-94 season with a torn anterior cruciate ligament. The following year, dreaming of returning to his former level, Hardaway was instead taken off the starting squad by new Warriors coach Rick Adelman. Always a dramatic, streaky player, Hardaway struggled and began to feud with the similarly mercurial guard Latrell Sprewell. Midway through the 1995-96 season, Hardaway reacted badly and demanded to new coach Rick Adelman that he be released from his contract. The Warriors obliged, and Hardaway ended up with the Miami Heat for the season's final 28 games. Warriors general manager Dave Twardzik, as quoted in Sports Illustrated, called Hardaway "the most disruptive person I've ever been around."
Expectations did not run high for Hardaway in Miami, for he had reached the age at which NBA players usually nurse their pensions to come and make way for the next wave of fearless youngsters. But, dropping from 210 to 197 pounds to keep pressure off his knees, Hardaway found his old intensity once again. He returned to the startling lineup, finished strong in 1996, and once again topped 20 points per game in the 1996-97 season. Hardaway led the Heat to the NBA Eastern Conference playoff finals and was named to the All-NBA first team that year. He seemed to enjoy his veteran status, and his game benefited. "Young players will try to do a move on you just to get even with something you did to them," he observed to Sport. "I've been there, done that. But you love to see 'em try 'cause you know what they're already thinking."
Flew Children to San Diego
Hardaway remained with the Heat until the end of the 2000-2001 season, performing consistently throughout; he was named to the All-NBA second team after the 1997-98 season, leading the Heat in assists that year and ranking sixth in the entire league. He played on the U.S. Olympic basketball team in 2000 and became known for charitable endeavors in the later stages of his career; in 1997 he arranged for fifty cancer-stricken children to be flown to San Diego and gave $20 per assist to the American Cancer Society. He has been active in supporting Chicago's Windy City Youth group.
The sole major hurdle left for Hardaway to surmount at the end of his career was an NBA championship ring, and in his final playing years he angled for a spot on a team that could help him win it. He played 54 games of the 2001-2001 season with the Dallas Mavericks, again becoming discouraged when asked to come off the bench, and in 2002 was traded to the Denver Nuggets. His temper once again flared in the spring of 2002 when he was suspended for two games after throwing a television monitor across the court. At the end of the 2002 season Hardaway, was expected to become a free agent and to seek a deal with a championship-caliber squad. "Time is a great example for our young kids," Nuggets general manager Kiki Vandeweghe told the Rocky Mountain News, "and I love having him around, but I understand that he's kind of at the twilight of his career and wants to win a championship."
Awards
Selected: Named to NBA All-Rookie First Team, 1989-90; All-NBA first team, 1996-97; named to All-NBA second team, 1997-98, 1998-99.
Further Reading
Periodicals
- Denver Post, February 22, 2002, p. D1.
- Jet, September 20, 1999, p. 53.
- New York Times, August 29, 2000, p. D2.
- Rocky Mountain News, March 21, 2002, p. C14.
- San Francisco Chronicle, November 24, 1989, p. E1; January 20, 1996, p. B1.
- Sport, May 1992, p. 44; June 1998, p. 48.
- Sports Illustrated, February 11, 1991, p. 52; May 5, 1997, p. 28.
- St. Louis Post-Dispatch, September 10, 1989, p. D12.
- http://www.nba.com
— James M. Manheim
