The simple two-beat pattern came courtesy of Gaye and his guitarist and musical director, Gordon Banks, who created it in Banks's studio — a 4-by-4 closet. This is kind of groovy, kind of funky, Marques Johnson thought, as the performance started. OK, I like that. Then Gaye opened his mouth.
The players looked at each other, Johnson recalls, and their expressions said the same thing: Oh, shyt, here we go.
"If you are listening, and if you have any ear for music at all, you hear something that should have taken precedent at that moment," Reggie Theus says. "It was that new, that different, that unique, and that good. If you didn't take a moment to reflect, shame on you."
Western Conference coach Pat Riley did. "When he took off," Riley says, "I morphed into an American."
As Gaye neared the climax of the performance, the song started to seem personal; he was working through what Ritz calls his "emotional shyt." By "wave," the crowd was his. They were clapping to the beat. After an elongated "brave," Gaye exhaled a breathy "Oh, Lord. Woo!" There was a slight pause. Not even a second, Robert Parish says, "like nobody could believe what they just heard." And then, from the stands — an eruption, according to Parish.3 On the court, players high-fived each other.
