Pardon John Amaechi, but he seems tired, and he has the hiccups, and the waiter is taking forever to serve his preferred Earl Grey tea.
The Jazz checked in to their latest hotel, in Toronto, at some ungodly hour, and the after-effects of that Philly cheesesteak sandwich eaten on the bus the night before in New Jersey might be lingering, and Amaechi was up early because he really isn't a sleeper anyway, and where in the world is that fellow with the tea?
Which brings us to . . . the life story of this new Jazz big man, a Brit born in Boston who went to high school in Toledo, of all places, and college in Pennsylvania, but only after he was given the heave-ho from a university in Tennessee that supposedly is Harvard of the South.
He is a man with only one good hand, a mother whose death drives him, detractors he detests, and finances that would raise the eyebrow of any loan officer worth his pencil-pushing, calculator-crunching salt.
Shooting animals — a passion for at least a couple of his Utah teammates — is beyond him, and he is not shy to share why.
The Earl Grey still hasn't arrived, so while we wait, please permit Amaechi to start at — what better place? — the beginning.
Mother, a Brit, was a medical professional. She came to America, Boston specifically, to be with father, a Nigerian whose history Amaechi calls "really sketchy."
Here, she was a psychiatrist. There, where she returned after about four years and the birth of John and his two younger sisters, she was a general practitioner, a family doctor who made her own house calls.
"My memories of Boston are limited," said Amaechi, changed now from the T-shirt he wore just a few hours earlier, the one that said "Made in America with British Parts." "I really don't remember very much. (YAWN). I think I know the address that I lived at, and that's about it as far as memories go."
Home for Amaechi was, and still is, Manchester, which swallowed the town of Stockport, where he lived until returning to the States at the age of 18 to become, he had no doubts, an NBA player.
He played some lacrosse, and rugby only because the private grammar school he attended required it. Basketball? Amaechi didn't touch one until he was 17, and that was before he stuck his hand through the glass that numbed its nerves.
"I was just approached on the street and asked if I wanted to play, and I wanted to do something else other than rugby, so there it was," said Amaechi, who left Orlando — not by choice — and signed with the Jazz as a free agent last July. "It seemed like a logical (option)."
But it doesn't mean he was very good, at least not initially.
"It was awful. I was terrible. I only really kept playing because the people I played with were so nice," he said. "It was just a good bunch of people — a lot more diverse than I had necessarily been involved with before. Rugby (HICCUP) is kind of an elitist sport, and basketball is different than that."
Outdoor courts in England then were a rarity, limiting opportunities to play.
"It created a close community, because if you wanted to play ba-(HICCUP)-sketball there were only so many places you can go," said Amaechi, 30. "You'll see the same people, every day. It's like a neighborhood park thing, on a national scale.
(HICCUP)
"My time there there was one place in Manchester, a city of 2 million people, to play outdoor (basketball)."
Still, Amaechi could play. He could shoot. Oh, could he shoot. And he could see the game taking him places.
Which is why he went to . . . Toledo?
"I reverse-recruited schools. My coach at the time sent out letters saying he had a kid on his team who was inexperienced but keen, and 6-foot-9, and big — were you interested? We got replies back from all over the country — Virginia . . . California . . . Ohio . . . (HICCUP) . . . Detroit."
In the end, Amaechi chose St. John's, a Toledo high school that was "the least exotic, by any accounts, of all the locations." It was a world away from Manchester, but one year there got him where he desired to be next.
"I was thinking ahead (HICCUP) to college," he said, "but only insomuch that I could play college basketball."
College was the road he knew he must take to get where he really wanted.
"I would have never come to be (just) 'a college athlete,' " he said. "That would have been a complete waste of time, because you don't pay for college in England, so there's no real gain to coming here."
Not unless your plan is to play in the NBA.
Amaechi enrolled at Vanderbilt University, the Nashville school known more for academics than athletics. But he did not last long there, as then-Commodores coach Eddie Fogler — ironically, now a part-time Jazz scout — gave him the boot.
"He pulled me into his office with Matt Maloney and told us that if we really wanted to play, we should probably go to a Division II or III school," Amaechi said. "I believe if you look at the books at Vanderbilt, we're the only two NBA players of current record."
A crushing blow?
"I loved Vanderbilt. I picked it because of its academic reputation, and in fact its basketball was strong. But, no, it wasn't crushing," Amaechi said. "I spent my life with people telling me I can't do things, so it's not a huge factor anymore."
Maloney transferred to Penn, an Ivy League school. Amaechi choose . . . Penn State?
"Because they didn't lie," Amaechi said. "The coach at the time (Bruce Parker) sat me in the bleachers . . . and said, 'You know what? We think you can be quite good if you work hard. If you want to work hard, we'll do our very best to improve your skills and give you the chance to do the things you want to do with basketball.'
"He didn't say, 'You're gonna start,' he didn't say, 'You'll be an all-American,' he didn't say, 'You'll love your college career.' He said I'd probably love the school, which was right. And that was it, really. He was just the first guy who didn't b.s., didn't lie. I was never a very naïve person, because of my mother. I wasn't in to being told what I wanted to hear, and I could tell (when I was) instantly."
When Amaechi left for Toledo, his mother's cancer was in remission. By the time he received a psychology degree from Penn State, she was gone.
Her death left Amaechi with "regrets that I had to be away.
"But it puts pressure on you to achieve," he said. "You don't sacrifice your mother for nothing."
It's why he still plays.
It's why he didn't retire, something he seriously contemplated, after toiling one season with the Cleveland Cavaliers, then being relegated to teams in Greece (Panathinaikos), Italy (Kinder Bologna), England (Sheffield) and France (Limoges) before returning to the NBA.
It's why he still does what he does, despite the fact he is not particularly athletic, admittedly is not very skilled, and doesn't necessarily love the game.
"I do it because I am good at what I do and I shouldn't be (HICCUP), and I enjoy the fact I am good at it," he said. "And, plus, I sacrificed a lot to be here. I left my family, and my mother when she was sick and dying, and the life that I could have had in England."
He left it all because he knew what he wanted to do and because so many insisted he could not.
"I'm not saying I'm the only person with that story. But when I look around the league, and I hear peoples' stories about where they came from, I (have had) just as much of a difficult journey to get here," Amaechi said. "I may not be as high upon the mountain as some of my peers, but I started a lot further away. I couldn't even see the mountain when I started."
The mountain was a mere molehill when Amaechi looked at his bleeding hand and saw parts of it no one ever should.
He was still in school, shortly after learning to play basketball, and on a weeklong biology-class field trip at a remote location far from home. He put his hand through the plate glass, then pulled it out quickly, only for the window pane to fall downward as he did.
"Every tendon, every nerve, every artery (torn)," Amaechi said. "I still have no feeling in my right hand . . . I can't use it if it's cold, and I can't feel pain or heat.
"One of the nurses . . . asked me what I did, and I said, 'I used to play basketball.' Because you're not supposed to recover from this. . . . But I did."
A surgeon back in Manchester somehow sewed it all together, though it delayed Amaechi's hoops hopes by about eight months.
"The plan had not been to chop my hand off," he said.
A definite kink in the plan, then.
"As good of a shooter as I am when I'm shooting well now, I was a great natural shooter when I was younger," Amaechi said. "A great natural shooter."
Now . . .
"It pushed back my basketball, because I had to start all over again. That's why I shoot mostly with my left hand inside. I'm not naturally ambidextrous."
No wonder Amaechi sounds so convincing when he says, "I shouldn't be here. . . . I shouldn't be here." But he is, because he knew what he wanted — check, what he intended — to do.
"I'm not interested in 'giving things a shot.' I only do things that I can do," Amaechi said. "Like I said, I know my limitations. There are many things I can't do. To play in the NBA wasn't one."
Some in England will not accept that Amaechi does play in the NBA. He calls them his detractors.
"There's a lot of people . . . who just don't want to believe. They think it's all hype — that I'm really not any good, and I didn't really start for Orlando for a couple of years, and it's just a fluke, or circumstances, or whatever," Amaechi said. "And then there are people who actually are officers in the basketball association, and officers in the British basketball league, and those people think I'm a pain in the ass, because when the newspapers, or David Frost, asks me, 'What do you think of basketball in this country?' . . . I say, 'I think it's a sham.' "
And why is that? "Because they misappropriate funds," he said, "and they're narcissistic. . . . It's just embarrassing the way it's run."
The allegation is not a new one from Amaechi, once co-captain of Great Britain's World University Games team. But it in no way diminishes his love for England, and most things British.
"I miss home," he said. "I miss hearing the news when people talk like me, and coming home and having people ask me if I want 'a brew' — and knowing that means I want some tea (HICCUP), as opposed to beer. You know, simple things."
When Amaechi was off at college in America, his sisters weren't so sure of that.
One even called him on it.
"I am more British now than I used to be. It's more important," he said. "When I left Vanderbilt and came home for the first time (since leaving England), my sister was really disappointed. Muriel said, 'You sound different.' She just was so disappointed.
"That was distressing. Because . . . it's a weakness if you change yourself for convenience. It's a great character flaw. Not just in terms of how you speak, but people do it all the time. Under pressure of ridicule, they decide they'll change.
"I got so tired of saying 'water' and getting orange juice, or saying 'water' and getting ginger ale, or saying water and getting 'what?' that I changed, and I would say it how you say it — with a 'd' in the middle. I would stop . . . asking for tea — even though that's what I like."
The Earl Grey has finally arrived, and the hiccups are gone.
There are no interruptions as Amaechi illustrates clearly that his heart really is in Manchester, where he spearheaded, and largely supplied, funding for a multi-court, multi-purpose gymnasium at a school in the demographically depressed central part of the city.
He did that despite the fact that in the summer of 2000 he spurned a six-year, $17 million contract proposal from the NBA-champion Los Angeles Lakers. Amaechi passed on it in favor of a one-year, $600,000 deal in Orlando because he wanted to be loyal to the Magic, who apparently led him to believe his loyalty would be rewarded this past offseason.
Instead, after a season in which he became less and less a focal point of the Magic lineup, he was hung out to dry.
"I only got three telephone calls from them the whole summer," he said, "and none of them were unsolicited."
It hurt.
"I'm bitterly disappointed," Amaechi said. "I consider myself a good judge of character, and I misjudged.
"I was honorable," he added. "But the thing is, you can't be honorable only when you know you will receive honor in return. That's ridiculous. To be honorable all the time, sometimes you get screwed, and sometimes you don't."
This time, Amaechi felt . . . used.
"There is absolutely no reason why business cannot be conducted with honor, and still be very successful. That is utter nonsense," he said. "The whole 'treading on people in order to achieve success' is a complete lie. It is simply easier to step on people to achieve success. And, again, if you bend to what's easier, then that's a character flaw. I have many flaws. That's not one of them."
Meanwhile, loans on the Manchester gym came due about the same time Amaechi's checking account balance stood at less than $10,000. Besides that, there was still a mortgage on his being-sold house in Orlando, and there is the home he built in his Arizona training base with money he made in Greece.
Even after signing a four-year contract worth about $10 million with the Jazz, Amaechi said, "I'm still in debt.
"I had a lot in England that I had to do," he said. "Last year, again under the premise that I would be staying in Orlando, I built a gym in England that cost just over 2 million pounds — that's $4 million. I've not made that my entire career, cumulatively."
Still, he pressed on, "because it had to be done . . . There was a huge need."
Use by 600-plus kids per week confirms that.
"I said last year, when I stayed with Orlando, 'you can't be a part-time man of conviction.' I firmly believe that," Amaechi said. "And if kids need a gym, and you said you'll get them a gym, then you get them a gym, because you said you would."
Amaechi was there, too, when two at-risk Orlando teens had a need.
He became legal guardian to Chris and Eric, who both lived with him for two-plus years. Now they attend the University of Central Florida, and Chris plays basketball there.
At the same time, Amaechi opened his Orlando home to one of his sisters and a friend of hers.
"Because of my nature, I need space," he said. "So I had my own little kitchen area, a bathroom, a bedroom — a separate area of the house. It meant that when I needed to, I could be alone. When I came back at 4 in the morning, I could make tea."
But don't be misled. "It's not a mansion by any means," Amaechi said. And it is not located in one of those ritzy real-estate developments with worldwide renown.
"I would never live in any place that is presumed. I don't need that," Amaechi said. "My status is not dependent on how big my house is. I don't need my ego-stroking in that way."
Nor does Amaechi sense an overwhelming need to 'belong' with new teammates, as so many athletes do.
"Fitting in is like the domain of adolescence. I'd like to consider that I passed that a while ago. I don't have to 'fit in,' " he said. "I'm a professional, and these guys are professionals. And they know where my heart is in terms of this team, and that is helping it win.
"So my views, quirky and as unorthodox as they may be, shouldn't really be a factor."
It figures, then, that even as the newest member of a team whose most vocal star, Karl Malone, lives to hunt, Amaechi isn't afraid to rehash his stand on gun control — one that garnered him national newspaper attention when he was with Orlando.
"I don't have a soft-and-fuzzy problem," he said.
"It's not those images of seals being hacked to death on the beach, or a little deer lying on the ground, or . . . pheasants getting their wings blown off. That is not my problem. My problem is 12 kids a day. In America, 12 children a day die . . . Plus, I don't understand that whole self-defense thing. I don't get it."
When some Jazz teammates asked his thoughts on hunting just recently, he told the truth.
"I was like, 'I would be fascinated to go bow-hunting — for people,' " Amaechi said. "You know, I'm interested in hunting something that has to hunt me back. Now that would be a challenge."
A bigger challenge for Amaechi, perhaps, is simply playing the way he does.
He gets by not with athleticism, he says, but rather "by learning tricks, mostly. Being in the right place at the right time and relying on other people's arrogance."
Example: "They see me, they'll always want to block my shot. They'll always want to do the out-muscling thing — the macho."
Amaechi realized early on he could not make it that way.
"I've not really ever played a game against somebody who is not a better athlete than I am, which is unusual. Most people can't say that," he said. "But I've always played against better athletes. I'm good because I've always known my limitations and not let that be a huge burden psychologically."
What does mess with his mind, however, is processing why, even as a professional athlete, he is viewed as someone who stands out from the rest.
"If I was a 'regular person' . . . that's terribly pompous . . . if I had a job that had less cachet associated with it, would I really be that unusual?" he asked. "I read a book every once in a while. I'm interested in being educated. I'm interested in my community not being crap . . . I like computers a little bit. I fancy myself as a bad poet, and I like to paint pictures every once in a while.
"I mean, I have a few interests outside of sports. That really wouldn't make me that unusual."
What does, though, is that he is an athlete who wears "$40 worth of jewelry," and he has "one suit, which I don't wear, because I don't like suits," and he readily admits he doesn't even "like sports.
"It's just not my interest area," he said. "I like basketball. I think it has a lot of things to offer. But it's not the be-all, end-all. I put a ball in a hole for a living. Let's put that into perspective."
He puts a ball in a hole. And before he does, he prefers sipping some Earl Grey.
Unusual?
Not to John Amaechi, who leaves you with this thought as he drains his cup: "People make too much fuss about that whole tea thing. I mean, I don't do it with the ceremony, and the white gloves, and all that. It's just a regular part of my life."
E-MAIL: tbuckley@desnews.com