"Ben Gordon didn't imagine this part. The games and the intensity and the crowds and the lights - he imagined all that. But not this part of the NBA. Not the worrying and the wondering and waiting. Not the stress.
Gordon, who starred at Mount Vernon and then at UConn, is in the final year of his contract with the Chicago Bulls and will become an unrestricted free agent this summer. "That's supposed to be a good thing, right?" he said earlier this week. "Right?" It is. And it will be for Gordon, who has developed into one of the NBA's top shooters and should be in line for a massive deal on the open market. As long as he doesn't lose his touch. Or get hurt. Or go crazy from the stream of people asking him about what his future will look like.
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"The business side - it's difficult," Gordon said. "It shouldn't be like this."
The questions about New York come all the time. He hears them from family, friends, old coaches, old teammates. He's played more games at Madison Square Garden than he can count and has always loved the history of the arena. So would he consider signing with the Knicks?
"Who wouldn't be interested in playing here full time?" he said. "I think the changes they've made have been really good. (New president of basketball operations) Donnie Walsh has been good for them. It's good for the city, too, and the league. New York is one of those teams that should be in the playoffs every year."
Gordon also praised new coach Mike D'Antoni, who runs a wide-open offensive style that appeals to him. "He's a great coach," Gordon said, "and he has a unique way of pushing that style. Some guys might be afraid of it but he does it and he makes it work."
Gordon has maintained his ties to the area, even as he's made a life in the Midwest. His grandmother had lived in her Mount Vernon house "basically forever," he said, so he helped her fix up the place, and she has stayed there. Some of his family though, has moved north, to Mahopac. And when Gordon is in New York during the offseason, he will often stay in Manhattan. "I love New York, always have," he said.
He has been in Chicago for nearly five years, going third to the Bulls in the 2004 NBA draft. Sitting on a bench in the visitors' locker room at Madison Square Garden on Monday, Gordon rolled a blue rubber ball under his feet to loosen up his arches and said, "You definitely don't think about this side of the business when you're younger. When you're just a kid and wanting to play in the NBA, you think about the games. About how you can play every day and it's fun. But then it becomes a job and there is the business side to it. You don't think about that because you don't know.""
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