On Adam Morrison and His Importance to the 509 Area Code

If you’re not from Spokane, you’ll never understand why Gonzaga’s Adam Morrison is more to us than just a college basketball player. With every teardrop runner, with every stepback jumper, he makes my generation proud to be from Spokane.

To fully understand the glory of this local boy from Mead High School, one must first understand the city he grew up in and why Gonzaga basketball is so infused in the local identity.

Although it is 280 miles away, Spokane lies directly in the shadow of the Space Needle. Even Spokane’s greatest claim to fame, being the biggest city in between Minneapolis and Seattle, in part defers us to our big brother to the west.

Consequently, we grow up thinking that we need to leave the city to make something of our lives – staying in Spokane after high school is synonymous with failure. When asking what an old friend is up to, the reply “he’s still in Spokane” is said with downcast eyes and a sense of pity.

So with that in our minds, the youth of Spokane set their sights on leaving this one-horse town right after they get their senior yearbooks. The most common destination? Seattle.

The deluge of young people from Spokane to Seattle rivals the Oregon Trail. Spokane’s high schools act as a direct pipeline to the large state universities in Seattle and Bellingham (although some unfortunate souls go to Washington State University, where they receive 15 extra pounds and a bottle of grain alcohol along with their welcome packet).

But Gonzaga’s magical run to the Elite Eight in 1999 started to change all that. Spokane, previously known only as the set of Johnny Depp’s “Benny and Joon”, started to garner some national recognition. Strangers responded with a flicker of recognition when you said you were from Spokane. That magical March, people around the country began to pronounce the names of both the school and the city correctly.

We began to embrace Gonzaga basketball. Where before there was only a small hockey team to chase away the winter blues, Gonzaga basketball filled the void. One day the newspaper included a blue “Go Zags” insert, and within 24 hours that sign was plastered in the windows of cars and houses all over the county. Finally we had something to call our own.

And Morrison, with his unabashed confidence and homeless sense of style, is the Jungian archetype of a Spokane man. He’s ugly, runs like a goon, plays cheap, and not remotely apologetic about any of it. Unlike a Seattleite, he’s not out there to look good. He doesn’t care what you think of his mustache.

He’s a through-and-through Spokanite and he wears that badge with honor. We love him because we all knew people like Adam Morrison in high school – he’s the product of a town where kids teach themselves basketball in the driveway because there’s nothing else to do.

He gives us something uniquely unmistakable. His game couldn’t be any different from the glamorous styles of some of Seattle’s best – Nate Robinson, Jamal Crawford, and Jason Terry. Instead, he’s taken and orange ball and 84 feet of hardwood and constructed a visual piece of art that is as much Spokane as a Dale Chihuly sculpture is Seattle.

As a graduate of Mead High School, he’s the first basketball player to make good in this town since local legend John Stockton.

Sure, previous Zag heroes captured our hearts, but they were all outsiders we welcomed into the community. Although we loved Dan Dickau, his highlighted hair and slick smile marked him as more West Side than North Face jackets and Nalgene water bottles.

With Adam Morrison, we have a mirror in which he can see ourselves.

When I look at Adam Morrison, I see my teammates from the 1998 Lewis & Clark Tigers – undefeated GSL Champions. I see my friends and I shooting hoops every day after school until it got dark. I see Louden Swain gliding over Monroe Street Bridge. I see Hastings, Riverfront Park, and Joe Albi Stadium. I see my buddy Malone, who rocked the ridiculous mustache and mop-top a full three years before Morrison did.

Urban legend has it that one night Morrison responded to the challenge of a rival dorm by strapping on the boxing gloves and laying the smack down. When I heard that, I thought about my friends and I doing the exact same thing at my buddy Justin’s barn. That’s true Spokane, all the way down to the roots.

To put it frankly, no one from Spokane has done anything since Sports Illustrated profiled our three athletic stars from the 80s (Mark Rypien, John Stockton, and Ryne Sandberg). But they were last generation’s stars, all retired.

The only Spokane area athlete to do much lately is New York Jets’ safety Erik Coleman (who, incidentally, was an integral cog of the 1998 GSL Champion Lewis and Clark Tigers). Aside from him, we have had an MLS player, some NFL kickers, a backup tight end for the Broncos, the guy who played “Coach” and the bassist from Everclear.

Now we have Adam.

Adam Morrison is so much more than a basketball player. He fills a cultural void in Spokane and gives its citizens something to take pride in. He’s the funkiest diabetic since Phife from A Tribe Called Quest. Every time he steps on the court, Adam Morrison helps my generation realize we don’t have to look to Seattle to find our identity.

(Adam Morrison playing for Mead in the State Tournament)