Purple, Gold but Mostly Blue

Lindsey Hunter’s brother, Tommie, was going to be 20 today.

He was going to be halfway through his freshman year at Jackson State, halfway through his first collegiate basketball season.

He was going to call today, as he did on Lindsey’s game days, and he was going to talk about his life and Lindsey’s game. And Lindsey was going to tell him how proud he was, how it was getting to be Tommie’s time now. And they were going to laugh, because that’s how it always went.

Tommie died six months ago, though, and not only does Lindsey want Tommie back, he wants himself back.

The telephone rang in Raymond, Miss., at 2 o’clock one Saturday morning, hours after the last of Armenta Hunter’s barbecue was gone. Lindsey slept upstairs. Armenta, Lindsey’s mother, and Ivy, his wife, were downstairs.

Tommie had lost control of the car on a curve, the caller said. He’d hit a tree. An hour later, Lindsey was at the hospital, and it was really true, and he couldn’t stop vomiting.

Lindsey and Tommie had spent that last day together, shopping for a Father’s Day gift for Lindsey Sr. Instead, they bought Tommie a basketball and, after running the stairs at Memorial Stadium, they shot that new basketball almost smooth in the gym at Jackson State. They were home by 8, in time for dinner, but Tommie went to see his girlfriend, borrowing some of Lindsey’s clothes before he dashed out the front door.

“I’ll be right back,” he told them all.

Lindsey Hunter Sr., 52, sat in Section 103, Row 19, Seat 7 at Staples Center, two hours before the Lakers were to play the Philadelphia 76ers. It was Christmas Day. He wore a new blue warmup suit. Lindsey Jr. got his features from Armenta, but his father gave him his eyes, deep and a little sad.

Some days, Lindsey Sr. can hardly breathe, so suffocating is his sadness. Tommie arrived 11 years after Lindsey--”An accident,” he said, smiling--and Lindsey had practically raised his only brother. Lindsey Sr., a supervisor, and Armenta, a tool and die maker, worked long days at the local General Motors plant, leaving the parenting to Lindsey, a habit he took through four years at Jackson State.

Below Lindsey Sr., who sat in the pregame darkness, his son made jump shots on a crowded gym floor, all alone. It has been that way for Lindsey since Tommie died, but especially lately, during the holidays. Lindsey had been the strongest in the early days, especially during the funeral. Lately, though, his father worries that Lindsey has grown distant, that his grief is not diminishing but expanding, that his family, his three children and his career are suffering.

‘That’s why I’m here,” Lindsey Sr. said. “I want to put it all back into him. I tell him that this is his life here. This is still his life.”

A day later, at a sandwich shop in Oakland, Lindsey pushed aside his lunch, most of the chicken burger left.

Nothing tastes good, anymore. Not like it did. Nothing looks as good or smells as good or feels as good, not like when he could tell Tommie about it, or when they could feel it together. Traded from Milwaukee in the summer, he is a Laker, a key figure in the NBA’s most powerful organization, one expected to win a third consecutive championship. And that’s OK.

It’s just not what it should be.

Tommie should be wearing Laker hand-me-downs. He should have been at Christmas dinner, played with Lindsey III and Caleb and Cydney, driven from Palos Verdes to Staples Center on a sunny Christmas afternoon.

“I think it affects my wife more than anybody, because she knows how I was,” Lindsey said. “Now I’m different. It’s not like I want to be different. But, it’s a struggle. Eventually, I’ll get better. But there’s nothing I can do about it. Of course, I talked to counselors, to other people, trying to get some perspective about it. I can’t understand it. That helps a little, but they all tell me the same thing, that you’ve got to go through what you’ve got to go through.”

So he waits for the dull to become vivid again. He waits for the joy to return to his life and his game, sure it will come the next morning, the next game day. And then he sees a pair of sneakers Tommie would have loved. And then it is Tommie’s birthday. And his phone won’t ring.

“I’ll just try to get back to being Lindsey,” he said. “Like Ivy has told me, ‘Look, we still need you.’ And that’s so true. She realizes it’s hard for me, sometimes. I don’t want to talk. Deep down inside, I want her to talk to me, want her to pull stuff out of me. But, it’s such a struggle. I just pray to God he helps us get through it, is all.”

The worst part is, he believed he had been through the worst part. He figured it couldn’t be more terrible than the night of the accident, and then it couldn’t be harder than the funeral, when he stood and eulogized his parents’ son, their baby.

He kept being wrong about that. The grieving became even more raw. He looked at his children and remembered Tommie doing the same things, asking the same silly, wonderful questions, moving with the same fluidity. It stops him.

“I’ve got those constant reminders,” he said. “Hopefully, one day, I won’t feel the same way. It’ll be different. Maybe, hopefully, it won’t pull me down. Maybe it’ll cheer me up.”

He has missed some shots lately, and hasn’t played as much as he did early in the season, when Derek Fisher was injured and the team needed a point guard.

He is always among the first to the arena. On practice days, he returns to El Segundo after dinner and shoots for two hours, sometimes with a friend, sometimes alone.

It can feel like therapy. But, eventually, he has to stop shooting.

“I go into states where I don’t want to talk, I don’t want to be around nobody, I could care less what happens,” he said. “I hate to feel that way, but it’s the reality of it. For so long, basketball was my natural high. I just now realize there’s a lot more to life. I love it. It’s my job. It gave me an opportunity to make lots of money.

“I mean, it’s great. I’ve always been a hard worker and I’ll never stop doing that. But, it’s like I had something taken from me, and that won’t go away.”