Stephen A. Smith: Phil Jasner Will Never Be Forgotten
It was the Fall of 2000 following a game against the Pistons at the Palace of Auburn Hills, the beginning of a season that would culminate with the 76ers’ return to the NBA Finals for the first time since 1983. On this particular night, instead of being back in my hotel room, I was inside a jail cell in Troy, Michigan – courtesy of a late-paid speeding ticket that, unbeknownst to me, had resulted in a suspended license – something local law enforcement officials were in no mood to ignore.
The sportswriters riding in the car with me at the time I was pulled over appeared clueless, simply dialing numbers I had given them trying to find someone willing to either bail me out or convince the officers to let me go. I recall my very last instructions to them amounting to one simple request: “Call Phil.”
Yes! Philip Mark Jasner.
I was an idiot, too tardy to pay a penalty on time that landed me behind bars, now in need of assistance. I was just another sportswriter on the Sixers beat. Not family. Not kin. And certainly not Phil Jasner’s friendly neighborhood competitor.
But if you knew Phil Jasner – the true voice and pulse of the Sixers since 1981 – you knew that wouldn’t matter at a time like this. That the time for jokes, to stick it to anyone, especially a colleague, would come after he came to the rescue to lend a helping hand. Not before.
If you needed assistance, Jasner was there.
He knew you. There was nothing else he needed to know.
Over the course of the next few days, in the aftermath of Jasner’s lost battle to cancer at age 68 last Friday, there will be the appropriate celebration of a life and career that spanned decades, touched countless lives and elevated our appreciation for the National Basketball Association in ways Commissioner David Stern could only dream.
We will reminisce about the number of stories he was willing to write on deadline. How no assignment was too little, too menial for him. If you were a member of press row, then you know we’re all incapable of counting the amount of times he had to “Shhhhhsh” one sportswriter after another, silencing their conversation in the media room just minutes removed from deadline. We’ll also hear about a competitive fervor that was simply unmatched.
Even at 25 years his junior, one couldn’t help but marvel at Jasner’s commitment to his craft, his insatiable appetite to get the story, get it first and get it right. But aside from that, along with the relationships too long and profound to chronicle in these pages, what we marveled at most – what we should remember most of all – was Jasner’s unparalled, incomparable character.
When we cry today and tomorrow and the next day, there will be no gratuitous shedding of tears for yet another one that has left us all. We’ll cry because we remembered the man who stood by his wife valiantly all those years before ultimately losing her battle with lupus in 2006. We’ll cry because we recall his devotion to his family’s well-being – while he worked every single day through it all.
We’ll shed tears imagining what life must be like at this moment in time for his wonderful son, Andy, always recognized as Phil Jasner’s son – something he wears proudly. And then we’ll save the extra tears for ourselves, wondering what our lives would be like now that he’s gone.
“(Jasner) had been involved with the NBA for so long,” former Sixers’ coach Larry Brown told reporters the other night when his Charlotte Bobcats visited the Sixers. “He loved the game. He was a real reporter. He just talked about the game, and didn’t get caught up in a lot of stuff that really doesn’t mean anything. He’s been through a lot in the last few years, and he’ll be missed. (Philly) fans love their basketball here, and a lot of that is because of the people who have written about it and cared about it. He was way at the head of that list.”
There’s no doubt about that.
Jasner called former Sixers owner Harold Katz a friend, along with names guys Billy Cunningham and Julius “Dr. J” Erving. The list of names he could add to that list wasn’t even the amazing part. The amazing thing was that all of them returned the favor.
“Phil will always be my friend,” Erving once told me.
I heard former Sixers president Billy King was rendered speechless. Garry Howard, the former deputy sports editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer, now the new editor of Sporting News Magazine, had to hang up the phone because he couldn’t stop crying. No doubt, there are countless others with similar feelings, absorbing the significance of their loss.
Please feel free to count me among them.
For the better part of a decade, dating to 1997 when I began covering the Sixers for the Philadelphia Inquirer, so many had speculated that I had a rocky relationship with Jasner.
This could not be farther from the truth.
We competed. We went after stories. We cultivated sources, dug deep for information, always tried to beat one another.
As reporters. As writers. Always. It never stopped.
But as men, there was never any competition! I simply was not in Phil Jasner’s class.
Beyond the stories, the accomplishments and awards Jasner received existed a core decency, worthy of emulation. To be like Phil Jasner – the man – was to be fiercely loyal, committed and tenacious in pursuit of excellence. And a protector of family, extended and otherwise.
We know Jasner’s gone now. We also know he’ll never be forgotten. Perhaps the most beautiful part of it all, however, is reminiscing about what he took the time to leave behind: A community grateful for his contribution to his profession, celebrating his life because of it, and wishing we all had a lot more of him in us.
Goodbye Buddy. I love you. I’ll miss you.
And most of all, I’m hardly alone.
Hope to see you in heaven someday.
Read more from Stephen A. Smith at StephenA.com.
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