Penny Is Changed, but Not Spent Yet

Whatever happened to the puppet?

So much has happened, it’s difficult to remember that by 23, Anfernee “Penny” Hardaway was a monster, that he and Shaquille O’Neal, also 23, had already been to the NBA finals and were expected to live there in a future that plainly belonged to them.

Nike tailored a new concept for the soft-spoken Hardaway, inventing a wise-cracking alter ego named Li’l Penny to appear with him in a series of commercials. (In what could have been seen as a sign of trouble, O’Neal knocked a chirping puppet off his couch in one of his Reebok spots.)

Big Penny--in those days, you stipulated which Penny was which--even out-gunned Michael Jordan, himself, in a memorable TV game and Indiana Pacer President Donnie Walsh noted, “This kid is going to be a great player. He’s the next Michael, Magic [Johnson], [Larry] Bird.”

It’s funny how things work out, even if no one laughs.

Five years after the young Magic made the finals, nary a starter is left in Orlando. O’Neal is a Laker, expected to win his first most valuable player award and, perhaps, his first title.

There’s only one Penny these days and he’s a Phoenix Sun. You don’t have to stipulate between Big and Li’l now because Nike retired Li’l one to the big woodpile in the sky.

Hardaway didn’t become the next Jordan, Johnson or Bird. You could get a lot of opinions on exactly what he did become--and if it’s worth $9 million--but even those closest to Hardaway concede he’s not what he once was.

“Oh, that’s true,” Hardaway says. “That’s true.

“I mean, everybody knows that Penny Hardaway, when he came to this league, was jumping like Shawn Marion. But after two knee surgeries, I have to admit I don’t have the same leaping ability. It comes and goes.”

Beset by injuries, Hardaway missed 23, 53 and 10 games, respectively, in the three seasons after O’Neal left. Hardaway’s scoring average fell from 20.5 to 16.4 to 15.8.

He was personable, ambitious and hard-working but he was also insecure and arch-sensitive, ill-fitted to be a franchise player, especially in Orlando, where fans had been so spoiled. He had problems with coaches Brian Hill and Chuck Daly, the team’s medical staff, complained the front office didn’t back him up and the press was out to get him.

Last summer, he opted out of a contract that would have paid him $9.4 million, persuading the Magic, which was already shopping him, to take whatever it could get.

His preferred option was the Lakers. He called to pitch himself to O’Neal, who passed the message on, but Executive Vice President Jerry West didn’t like Hardaway’s price tag. Hardaway wound up going to Phoenix for two reserves and two draft picks.

Thus started the comeback . . . slowly.

Through March 22, when Jason Kidd went down, Hardaway had missed 22 games and was averaging 16.5 points, light for the player the Suns had hoped would put them over the top, even if he did everything--defend, rebound, give them a second point guard on the floor.

Since, it has been like old times, especially his last playoff game against the San Antonio Spurs, when he attacked the basket like the old Hardaway, and his first against the Lakers when he was the lone Sun ray, scoring 25 points.

“Now everybody’s jumping on the Penny bandwagon,” Kidd says. “He gets to go back home and have the last laugh.”

Not that it’s over but Hardaway can allow himself a smile, at least, and it has been a long time coming.

Paradise Lost

They should have been the next dynasty.

When the Magic made the ’95 NBA finals, O’Neal and Hardaway were 23, Dennis Scott was 26, Nick Anderson 27, and Horace Grant, the elder statesman of the starters, 29.

In the second round, they eliminated the Bulls and Jordan, returning from his baseball career, winning two games in Chicago.

In Game 1 of the finals, they had a 20-point lead over Houston before halftime . . . before Anderson missed four late free throws . . . and lightly regarded Kenny Smith sidestepped Hardaway with 1.6 seconds left in regulation to make a game-tying three-point shot . . . and the Rockets won, 120-118, on Hakeem Olajuwon’s rebound basket at the end of overtime.

After that, the Magic, finally showing its youth, crumbled and was swept from the finals, never, it turned out, to return.

“You just take a lot of things for granted,” says Hardaway now, sadder and wiser. “You think everybody’s going to stay on the team, everybody’s going to stay healthy, we’re going to win a couple championships--and that’s the way you think. But it doesn’t work that way.”

O’Neal missed the start of the next season because of a broken thumb, courtesy of Miami’s Matt Geiger, playing the Heat’s new manly style under just-arrived Coach Pat Riley. Hardaway, at the top of his game, averaged 28 points the first month, putting him on Jordan’s tail in the scoring race, and the Magic zoomed to a 17-5 start.

Inevitably, talk show callers began saying they didn’t need O’Neal, soon to be a free agent. One of O’Neal’s people says he heard that Hardaway’s people, his agents, the Poston brothers, said it too.

The season was a disappointment, ending in a full-fledged bust, a 4-0 sweep by the Bulls in the East finals.

Then Magic owner Rich DeVos--emboldened by the fast start without O’Neal?--decided to match, but not top, the Lakers’ $118-million offer for O’Neal, noting the Orlando offer was worth more, since it paid more sooner and Florida had no income tax.

O’Neal, unimpressed by the idea of present value, went to the Lakers.

This time, the Magic didn’t get off to a fast start without him. Orlando was 24-25 when Hill was fired, after a players’ revolt, in which Hardaway played a role.

They rallied under easy-riding Richie Adubato, but after a first-round defeat in the playoffs, hired Daly. Hardaway missed all but 19 games of Daly’s first season and both soon decided neither thought much of the other.

The Magic went a surprising 33-17 in the lockout season, finishing first in the Atlantic Division, but even that couldn’t unite Daly and Hardaway. The Magic went out in the first round again, Daly retired and Hardaway opted out of his contract, although he insists he wanted to stay.

In Phoenix before this season, Hardaway, taking the high road, said he held only one person accountable for what had happened, himself.

Since, the list has opened up some.

“You know what,” he says, “the thing is, I learned a long time ago, the media makes you and they break you. If they say that you’re done, then you’re supposed to be done. But it’s not over till I say it’s over. Just because my reputation isn’t where it was when I had Li’l Penny commercials and everybody was on my jock and riding the Penny Hardaway train, when I was averaging 20 points a game, doesn’t mean that I’m not playing the same way or I’m going to stop. . . .

“I just felt like I played for that organization [Orlando] for six years. I gave all I had. It just felt like, to me, toward the end of my career that they gave up on me when I was injured. I was all-everything when I was healthy. Just like with the media--they were all over me and then once I got injured, everybody just kinda pushed me away.

“It’s just harsh reality. That’s what really hurt. I shouldn’t have said a lot of things that I said--even though it was the truth. And I know everything was the truth but you just can’t say it.

“Like I say, once the media has a bead on you and then they want to get you, they’re going to get you. And they came after me. And they got me. . . .

“Once they get ahold of something, they’re going to take it to another level. Like I said, they took myself and the Coach Daly situation to another level--that I never took it to. I thought Coach Daly did, but I never did. They took Shaq and my relationship to another level. They took my injuries to another level when they didn’t know really what was going on. They never asked anybody who had correct X-rays and MRIs, they always wanted to go after the person that didn’t know. They tried to embarrass me and they did embarrass me. They did what they set out to do. But I’m still standing.

“It’s been tough. Nobody said it was going to be fair. I guess when you make as much money as I do, nothing is ever fair. You’re never supposed to be sick, you’re never supposed to be injured, you’re never supposed to miss a shot, you’re never supposed to lose a game.

“That’s the way it is in America and it’s tough.”

Paradise Regained?

Well, that’s not exactly the way, at least for the majority of Americans.

Few will play in the NBA or make $9 million, or be measured day by day, dollar by dollar, point by point against their salaries, but in the salary-cap era, that’s exactly the math that teams must do.

If Hardaway wasn’t exactly a disappointment, if there was more grumbling behind the scenes about the production-per-dollar of Tom Gugliotta and Luc Longley, neither was Hardaway everything the Suns dreamed of.

From Hardaway’s perspective, of course, things looked different. No one came to him and said anything about taking over, so he didn’t.

“In the summertime, honestly, I was thinking I was going to come in and be an 18-20 shot guy for this team,” he says. “But once I came into training camp, all that changed. Once I saw how much talent we had offensively, and how many great athletes we had, I knew that it wasn’t going to take me shooting the ball 20 times a night to help us win. . . .

“I don’t think you can just come in and take over. I don’t think I could have come into this situation and said, ‘Forget about Cliff Robinson, forget about Jason Kidd, forget about Tom Gugliotta, I’m gonna shoot it 25 times a night whether they like it or not.’

“I don’t think you can do that. I think the system has to be set around you if they want you to be their guy. In the beginning, it really wasn’t.”

Then he sat out most of December and January because of a foot injury, which he said was caused by his Nikes. Wince if any of this sounds familiar.

But he did return. He played better and when Kidd went down, better still, and in the two games since Kidd’s return, it has been Hardaway at his best.

This was supposed to be the new start he needed, and it’s looking better.

“I’m surrounded by talent again,” he says. “When Penny Hardaway was at his best, he had talent around him--Shaquille O’Neal, Dennis Scott, Horace Grant, Nick Anderson. When I went sort of on the slide and when I got injured, Shaq was gone, Dennis was gone, Horace had gotten three years older, Nick had gotten three years older. We all had gotten older and it was the same talent around us.

“I mean, you lose a guy like Shaq and there it goes. You take Shaq away from Kobe [Bryant] and then there he goes. I mean, it’s just that simple. You need guys around you to flourish.”

Most important, you need yourself. Hardaway has been a long time looking for that old Penny but he’s closing in.