Cancer gives Tisdale strength

Getting cancer has been a blessing, seeing his right leg turn into some high school geometry project of angled slashes a positive, needing knee-replacement surgery because so much of the original joint was ravaged a good thing.

Wayman Tisdale says it in a way that seems strangely plausible. But, then again, he says most things that way, man, with mellow, assuring tones and an Oklahoman's strolling cadence capped by a convincing smile.

So, yeah. Cancer.

"I'm better now than before I went into it," Tisdale said. "I'm a better person."

A few minutes before the sound check on stage with the rest of the band in a working visit to Sacramento, a few hours before the concert in the Radisson ballroom as part of his second career as a jazz musician, the former Kings forward was discussing his second life.

He speaks about the glory of God and the Christian faith in his life long before disease struck; how he doesn't take days for granted like before; how his first grandchild is turning 1 in a couple days; how basketball taught him the resolve that would help save his life.

And he pulls up the right leg of the baggy jeans.

The scar starts near the inside of the right ankle, crosses over to the outside of the knee, then zags back over to the inside of the thigh. A separate circular incision is at the top of the shin, where the piece of titanium was inserted as the new knee. So much work was done and so much pain medication administered, Tisdale said, that he couldn't feel anything below his waist for three days after the operation.

That was last summer. July 2, 2007, in Oklahoma City, about 100 miles from Tulsa, his home growing up and today, now on a 20-acre ranch with his wife of 20 years.

The cancerous cyst at the top of the shin and bottom of the knee had been detected a few months earlier in a fluke, when Tisdale broke the right leg in a fall at his home in suburban Los Angeles. He underwent chemotherapy in Tulsa that blasted the strength right out of him, "like I had the flu or just got finished playing the Celtics. Same thing."

With no energy and no appetite, he dropped 30 or 40 pounds, down to the 285 of his 12-year NBA career with the Pacers, Kings and Suns, only not the way he wanted to get there.

The right leg was in a cast for four months after the surgery. He was on crutches for eight and now uses a cane, which he will for the foreseeable future. Tisdale takes slow, halting steps, aided by the maple-colored stick with a brass handle. Nearly nine months after the operation, walking is an awkward-looking accomplishment.

"Had I not been in sports, I probably would not have come through," he said. "I remember my time with Bobby Knight and the Olympic team in 1984. That's what I think about a lot. I didn't think I could push through that. Had I quit then, I probably would have quit now. But I remember the punishment I put myself through then. 'C'mon, man. If I can handle that, I can do this.' "

"I don't see any pain when he walks," said Michael Mims, Tisdale's coach at Booker T. Washington High School in Tulsa and still a close friend. "There may be some. But every time he's around me, he doesn't complain. That's just not his personality. I've never seen his leg. I'm always too busy looking at his smile. That smile draws you in."

Mims is making a point. He actually has seen the leg many times. "I'm taken aback," he said of the sight.

Doctors continue to offer promising updates that the cancer has been fully removed, Tisdale said. He's back to about 320 pounds – being pudgy has never been so welcome – and he reports there is every reason to be encouraged about a healthy future, even while conceding, "I haven't rehabbed like I should."

He wanted to get back to work. There was a hectic holiday tour, with 23 or 24 cities in 28 days, so many that he can't remember for sure, and the so-called slowing down of the spring and early summer is traveling a couple weekends a month. A pairing of Sacramento and Fresno. Dallas, Tulsa, Santa Rosa Beach, Fla., and Oklahoma City on consecutive nights. Phoenix. Newport Beach. Pleasanton.

"Wayman, his father was a preacher, his mother was in the church," said former Kings teammate Mitch Richmond, a longtime friend. "He's always been on the Lord's side. He feels like he can overcome this. It's not a cockiness. It's just a special feeling he has with his faith that everything will work out like it's supposed to."

Health will have to fit somewhere in there. An eighth CD is scheduled to be out in June, "Rebound" with Tisdale on guitar and bass, just like several of the previous releases are titled with references to his past life: "Power Forward" (1995), "In The Zone" (1996), "Hang Time" (2004) and "Way Up!" (2006). While playing some keyboard, too, It's a busy time.

"I'm back out, doing great, man," he said with assurance in his voice. "Recovering."

Moments later, the 43-year-old man who never had surgery during a lengthy athletic career, who never had so much as a broken bone, pushed his body up from a padded bench outside the Radisson ballroom and went inside for the sound check in preparation for the concert.

Tisdale worked his way to the front of the room, past dozens of rows of chairs arranged for the event, went through a side door and quickly re-emerged on stage, taking his place on a large wooden stool in the center. Jumping in with the band in mid-song, he immediately began to tap the left foot to the beat and squeeze the neck of the bass to draw out the thumping notes. He was smiling.

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