KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- The respect the basketball world had for Wayman Tisdale as a player was so enduring, Bill Wall, the former executive director of USA Basketball, once asked him to play for the U.S. in the next Paralympic Games -- this, after Wall's fellow National Collegiate Basketball Hall of Fame inductee had part of his right leg amputated in 2008."He just laughed,'' Wall recalled at the pre-induction press conference Sunday night at the College Basketball Experience in Kansas City. "He said, 'I'll be out recording.'''
As those close to him knew all along, basketball was just something Tisdale did well -- at the level of the greatest who ever played, as proven by his enshrinement in Kansas City in a class with Magic Johnson and Larry Bird. His heart was in music, as proven by his retirement from the NBA in 1997, at age 33, when he still could have played ball somewhere in the league or elsewhere in the world.
But by then Tisdale had already released Power Forward, the first of his eight albums of his smooth-jazz, gospel-inflected bass playing. He had no reason to hang on an extra year in basketball when he had what he had expected would be a long life in music. He died last May, at 44, after fighting for two years against the cancer that contributed to the amputation, but he passed with no apparent regrets about trimming a hallowed basketball career by a few years.
"No, no,'' said his older brother William as he stood with the middle brother, Weldon, in the entrance of the downtown theater hosting Wayman's induction ceremony. "He left on his own terms. A lot of guys wanted him to keep playing. Patrick Ewing called him and asked, 'Why are you going?' And [Tisdale] said, 'I have another love.'''
"He left on his own terms. A lot of guys wanted him to keep playing. Patrick Ewing called him and asked, 'Why are you going?' And [Tisdale] said, 'I have another love.'"
-- William Tisdale
"There's no denying he had both gifts, for basketball and music, within him,'' Weldon said. "He liked basketball, and he did everything he could with it, but music was always his passion.''
That came largely from their father, a pastor in Tulsa. Basketball entered the picture as he grew to 6-feet-9 and 260 pounds. "Basketball was not difficult for him; he had the size and the body and the athletic ability,'' William Tisdale said, adding that later making a path in music was a far greater challenge.
Not to say that he didn't pour himself completely into the game, however; he just chose to channel one passion before the other.
When his former coach at Oklahoma, Billy Tubbs, said at the induction that Tisdale not only lifted his own program up, but also "really made the Big 8 Conference,'' he was not exaggerating. Without Tisdale's absolute dominance of the league from 1982-85 -- three-time conference player of the year, two conference championships, three NCAA tournament appearances, including a No. 1 seed and a trip to the Elite Eight, 2,661 points and 1,048 rebounds -- during one of the sport's golden eras, the Big 8 might not have been worthy of being merged into what is now the Big 12.
The groundwork would not have been laid for the appearance, three years after Tisdale's departure, by Oklahoma in the national championship game after a season of being frequently ranked No. 1. Later, Blake Griffin, eventually the national player of the year and first overall pick in the NBA draft, would not have had the legacy to uphold that he did when he asked Tisdale for permission to wear his retired number 23.
Every time a player becomes an All-American more than once, Tisdale's name resurfaces -- to this day, no player has been a first-team selection in each of his first three seasons (his only three seasons), and as players continue to go pro early, the odds are slim that another ever will be.
And before anyone thought of forming a "Dream Team'' of pros for the Olympics, Tisdale joined Ewing, Michael Jordan, Chris Mullin and others on the last gold medal-winning group of collegians, in the 1984 Games in Los Angeles.
That Tisdale's phenomenal college achievements weren't discussed as often as those of even his contemporaries -- except in Big 8/Big 12 country -- is both a tribute to the success of his subsequent music career and an example of how memories aren't as long as they should be."We, of course, had thought he'd accomplished quite a bit,'' his widow, Regina, said after Tubbs hung her husband's Hall of Fame medal around her neck. "And quite honestly, we didn't think he had been recognized enough for it.''
But that didn't dampen Tisdale's enthusiasm when he was informed of his selection to the college hall of fame in April -- a month before his sudden, unexpected death. (No definitive cause has been determined.) "He was excited,'' said his brother Weldon, pausing, then adding, "Yeah, he would have loved to be here.''
And, on second thought, he might not have rejected the idea of playing paralympic basketball out of hand, William Tisdale said. After all, when he first was diagnosed with cancer in 2007, he called his next album Rebound, and gave it a theme of inspiration for those struggling as he was. He set up a charitable foundation and spun part of his promotional website off from it. When he had to have his leg amputated, he was fitted for a prosthesis -- in Sooner red with the school logo.
Had he wanted to return to the court, William said, "he could have given hope to a whole new area of people.''
In every other way, Wayman Tisdale managed to leave his mark in two distinct worlds.
