By: Mike Bianchi

By: Mike Bianchi

By: Mike Bianchi

For our photo gallery of Nick Anderson's return to C-U in September, click here

LOS ANGELES — Just a few days ago, after the Magic beat the Cleveland Cavaliers to advance to NBA Finals, former Illini Nick Anderson heard it again.

Fourteen years later and for the ten-millionth time, he heard it again.

This time, it was an obnoxious fan at Amway Arena who blurted it out:

"Hey, Nick, this team's going to do something y'all never could because you missed those free throws!"

Anderson, now an executive in the Magic's community-relations office, just shrugs and shakes his head.

"What can you do?" he says. "I can't change what people think or how they feel. I'm always going to be associated with those four free throws."

Four free throws. Four lousy free throws.

All the points he scored, all the highlight-reel dunks he recorded, all the excitement he generated - and his NBA career is defined by four stinking free throws.

It's not fair.

It's not right.

But it's the Finals.

This is where legends come to be born. And where reputations come to die.

Nick was the team's very first draft pick and played 10 years for the Magic. He's still the franchise's all-time leading scorer. He once scored 50 points in a game. His famous steal from Michael Jordan was a catalyst for the Magic making their first Finals appearance in 1995.

But then came the opening game of the championship round at Orlando Arena. It was June 7. Euphoria everywhere. The Magic were on the verge of beating Hakeem Olajuwon and the Rockets in Game 1. Everybody could sense it.

There were 11 seconds left and the Magic had squandered a 20-point lead. But, still, they led by three with Nick at the line ready to seal it. He was a 70-percent free-throw shooter. All he had to do was make one.

"I was confident," he says now. "I'd always had supreme confidence on the basketball court."

But he stepped to the line and missed the first one. . . . And then the second.
As fate would have it, he got his own rebound and was fouled again.

Clang. Clang. He missed two more.

Houston's Kenny Smith nailed a three-pointer to send the game into overtime and the Rockets won, 120-118, on Olajuwon's buzzer-beating tip-in. The Rockets would go on to win the next three games and sweep the series 4-0.

Nick Anderson suddenly became "Nick the Brick." It didn't matter that his free throws only cost the Magic one game. It didn't matter that the Rockets were clearly the better team in the series. It didn't matter that Olajuwon dominated the series by averaging 32.8 points per game.

All anybody remembered is that Nick Anderson missed four free throws.
Some Magic observers say he was never the same player after that. Nick says he wasn't even the same person.

"It affected the way I played," Nick says. "It affected the way I lived."

Off the court, there were crank calls and verbal altercations with fans. On the court, it was worse.

There was a little voice inside him that kept saying, "How could you miss those four free throws? . . . How could you miss those four free throws?"

"It played in my head like a recorder - over and over again," Nick says.
"I had never doubted myself in any way on the basketball court, but the following year I lost my confidence; I lost my aggression. I started telling myself I was going to miss shots instead of thinking I was going to make them."

Two seasons later, Anderson averaged only 40.4 percent from the free-throw line. Eventually, he was benched.

It was only after extensive pep talks from new coach Chuck Daly and GM John Gabriel that he began to recover from his psychological funk.

He remembers Gabriel telling him once, "I know you better than anyone and this is not you. Where's the old Nick?"

Here we are 14 years later and the old Nick is sitting at a picnic table outside the RDV sports complex where the Magic are practicing inside. The sun is shining. And so is Nick.

He works in community relations, but on this day he is talking almost as if he is still playing. Even though Stan Van Gundy, Dwight Howard and the Magic are playing for the 2009 title, in Nick's mind they are playing for the 1995 championship, too.

"I'm living my dream through these guys," Nick says, "and I want the dream to come true so bad. I want this championship to happen. I want it to happen for the team, the organization, the city and the fans."

And, maybe, too, he wants it to happen for himself.

"Maybe a little," he says.

Maybe a lot. And who can blame him?
Those 11 seconds have lasted 14 years. That's a long time to carry the burden of a championship lost.

Too long.

The Orlando Sentinel (Fla.).