BASKETBALL
Macker never gets old for Heinolds
Daughter Taylor follows father
Every once in a while Chris Heinold needs to restrain his inner Brett Favre. Part of him still wants to play in the Gus Macker because part of him knows he could still body up these guys.
As Heinold meanders through the mass of humanity at this weekend’s tournament, people still recognize him as the 6-foot-8 center who dominated the open men’s division for so long.
But now, at age 45, Heinold has passed the Macker torch to his daughter, Taylor.
“I’d love to still be playing, but it’s about Taylor now,” Heinold said. “There’s part of me that says I’d still like to play. But watching her is very close.”
On Saturday, he stood by as his 13-year-old daughter played for the AAU squad, Team Revolution. With Taylor’s game emerging over the past year—and a growth spurt surely on tap—Heinold decided to cut back. His last Macker was in 2002. And now, all men’s leagues will play second fiddle to his daughter, who will attend Immaculata Academy in the fall.
Bill Gorman, a national Gus Macker staffer, played on Heinold’s team. Having worn both the player and administrator hats, Gorman has seen more than two decades worth of basketball players sweep through downtown Buffalo. Heinold tops them all, he said.
“Chris is probably the best player who has ever played in this,” Gorman said. “When I watch Taylor and see how well she’s done, I think it’s because she came down and watched all of us play.”
This is one reason the Gus Macker has inflated to what Gorman calls “cult” status. He says it’s like Notre Dame football or New York Yankees baseball. The tournament matriculates through every branch of the family tree.
“I’ve had some great memories playing in the Macker, so when she decided to play, I said that’s awesome,” said Heinold, who went to high school at North Collins. “Now she’ll have the same opportunity to play against great players and build memories.”
In the mid-80s, Heinold played at Canisius College. He scored 901 points (33rd in school history), had 96 blocks (sixth) and shot .769 at the foul line (sixth). After graduating, he played semi-professionally in Germany. As the calendar kept flipping, Heinold’s game never regressed. He dove into the Gus Macker tournaments and joined Gorman to lead an unstoppable team.
Heinold and Gorman have trouble remembering how many Gus Macker tournaments they’ve won together. Twelve? Thirteen? After squinting while mulling the figure for a moment, Gorman finally decided on “well into double-figures” and the two high-fived each other. During that reign, they accumulated countless memories — the dunk contest in Dayton, Ohio where a player jumped over eight guys for a slam, the time a player won a car by jumping over it for a dunk, and the time 1,200 spectators crowded the court for their game.
“Some people were climbing trees to get a good view,” Gorman said. “We’ve seen a lot of interesting things.”
The number of titles may escape them, but not the number of second-place finishes — three. Each time, they handed their silver trophy to a kid in the crowd on their way out. It wasn’t an act of bitterness, Gorman said. Rather, anything less than best was unacceptable. This competitive fire may be the trait that passed down best to Taylor.
“She kind of has that fire that her father had,” Gorman said. “She’s going to be a special player, that’s for sure.”
Probably because Taylor treated each of her father’s Macker games like a science class, not a trip to the grocery store. When Heinold played, his two daughters came to watch. The youngest, Jordan, wasn’t overly interested in the games. After all, day-long basking on side streets doesn’t exactly appeal to the attention spans of 5 year olds. But Taylor was different. She paid close attention to the madness on the court, hungry for a piece of the action.
Sometimes she’d join the team during warm-ups.
“At an early age, you could see that she really wanted to do this,” Gorman said. “As a player, you see a lot of kids at your games, but it’s very rare that you see kids pay attention to what’s going on.”
Taylor remembers her dad’s ultra-physical games, too. The rabid elbows and hard fouls didn’t intimidate her.
“It was like jail ball,” she said. “It was fun to watch.”
Now she’s beginning to carve her own Macker legacy. Last year, her team won its division and on Saturday it cruised to a pair of wins. A calm, at-peace Heinold soaked it in as Team Revolution’s assistant coach.
Still, letting go isn’t easy. Heinold admits he “always, always” gets that Favre-like itch to play again. When he walked downtown Saturday, a handful of former opponents approached him.
“They asked me if I was playing and I have to say, ‘No,’ ” Heinold said. “They say, ‘We are!’ And for about three seconds I wish I was playing. Then, that [feeling] goes away.”
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