Overcoming obstacles is NBA champ’s game
Iguodala, in new memoir, tells how he confronts challenges
Toward the end of Andre Iguodala’s first Bay Area appearance to talk about his new book Friday night, June 28, the threetime NBA champion with the Warriors was asked whether he has experienced more good or bad in his playing career and life.
There was an easy press tour answer to that existential question, but Iguodala didn’t go for it.
“I try to embrace the bad,” the veteran player said. “I seek the pain. I seek the hard way. … There’s just something to having an obstacle and overcoming it.”
In his new book, “The Sixth Man,” Iguodala rarely takes the predictable path. The approach is reflected both in the pages and in the first week of his media tour, when Iguodala made headlinegrabbing statements about the pressure to play through NBA injuries, and Kevin Durant’s chances of signing with the New York Knicks. (“Nobody’s going to the Knicks. Sorry.”) He was right; Durant announced Sunday he is going to the Brooklyn Nets. And two days after the interview, reports emerged that Iguodala himself would be traded to the Memphis Grizzlies.
At his soldout appearance at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco, in conversation with his coauthor Carvell Wallace, Iguodala made it clear that the breakingnewson“SportsCenter” portion of the tour is over.
“I’ve learned this week to keep some things to myself,” Iguodala told the crowd.
Instead he focused on the parts of the book that have gotten lost in the controversy from his first interviews, including Tuesday, June 25, appearance on national radio program “The Breakfast Club,” where Iguodala asserted that his 2018 injury listed as a bone bruise was actually a fractured leg.
“The Sixth Man” doesn’t cover that revelation. Instead of dishing on his team or teammates, the book focuses on Iguodala’s upbringing, feelings about social justice, his interests in business and Silicon Valley, and personal struggles as he negotiated different roles in the NBA.
“It wasn’t a tellall,” Iguodala said. “I took all the blame for everything.”
Iguodala gives some lukewarm reviews to coaches in “The Sixth Man,” but he loves both of his Warriors coaches, Mark Jackson and Steve Kerr. And he salutes the Warriors’ fan base over a threepage section, one of several passages that describes the pro basketball experience in poetic terms.
“Some nights I would look up at 76ers games and there’d be no one there, but Oracle (Arena) was always on fire” he writes in the book, referring to his time with the Philadel
“I just felt like I had accomplished enough to tell my story.” NBA player Andre Iguodala, on why he decided to write a book after he was named Most Valuable Player of the 2015 NBA Finals
phia 76ers, the team that drafted him out of college. “And there was a specific chant that the fans would do: ‘WAAAARRRIOORS WAAAAAARRRIOOORS!’ It was a long hollow chant, swelling up from the seats, filling up the ceiling, and raining down on you like an echo. It sounded like someone was coming for you in the dead of night. I loved it.”
In separate interviews before the event, Iguodala and Wallace were ready to focus on the book.
Iguodala took honors English classes during his childhood in Springfield, Ill., and read the newspaper regularly as a young child. But he didn’t think about writing his own book until well after his high point as an athlete came in 2015, when he won the NBA Finals Most Valuable Player trophy, despite playing most of the season coming off the bench. “The Sixth Man” refers to Iguodala’s sacrifice to give up his place in the Warriors’ starting five for the good of the team; one of those “the hard way” career obstacles he had to overcome.
“I just felt like I had accomplished enough to tell my story,” Iguodala said. “And what I didn’t want to do was make it a story about the Warriors. More so using the success of the Warriors to be able to tell my story.”
Beyond the interview on “The Breakfast Club,” Iguodala has appeared on “MarketWatch” to talk about his tech investments, and was profiled in Forbes.
Wallace, an Oakland writer and podcaster who contributes to Slate and New York Magazine, said the writing vibes with Iguodala were good from the beginning.
“I think people understand how smart he is. They talk a lot about basketball IQ for him,” Wallace said. “I think what I was most impressed by is how fundamentally curious he is.”
The conversation at the Jewish Community Center flowed nicely, with little controversy. Iguodala revealed that he had talked with Warriors president of basketball operations Bob Myers that day, but offered few details. He said he feels great physically, and could imagine playing another “four or five years.”
And he suggested he might have another book or two in his future as well, perhaps one about leadership. That’s the thing about writing a memoir at age 35. There’s plenty of time for a sequel.
“It seemed like a good time to reflect on this first stage,” Iguodala said of “The Sixth Man.” “There are more stages to come.”