So the act of retiring was simple: Go to your hotel in Eugene, Ore., take off your sweats and your sneakers, leave them behind. Don’t even shower. Change into street clothes, cab to the airport, call the wife and say, “Baby, I’m coming home.” Don’t even tell those folks from the tryout for that Chinese basketball league, the ones who didn’t even know who you were or what you have done in this game, that you were packing it in. And by all means, don’t look back.

But retirement — the noun, the state of being? That was dark. That didn’t go so well. 

It was great at first. Who wouldn’t want the life of leisure? But there were a lot of hours to kill between the time when he would send his wife Rosa off to her job and haul the kids off to school, and the time when everyone got back home. There were too many afternoon beer-buzzes, too many self-pitying viewings of the 1995 NCAA championship game, when nobody could stop Ed O’Bannon and those UCLA Bruins.

There was an angry admonishment from Rosa — “Get a job . . . or else” — and there was a business card with a name and a phone number on it, jammed in his hand weeks earlier and sitting out now on top of the dresser, in plain view, as if O’Bannon knew someday he’d have to call the number.

He called the number.

He interviewed the next day, got hired right away, and started work the day after that.

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