Tim Hardaway

Hardaway grew up on the South Side of Chicago, playing schoolyard ball with kids who called him "Bug" because of his small size. (Even today Hardaway, at a broad, muscular six feet, is short for an NBA player.) Wanting to win respect from them helped to propel him into the NBA. As he explained to Jeff Weinstock of Sport magazine, "I just wanted to prove to them that I could…. I wasn't going to be one of the guys who gooff on drugs or drinking or doing some stupid stuff in school where I wouldn't be able to get myself in this position, playing in the NBA."

Basketball has been Hardaway's love for as long as he can remember. As one family story goes, his parents put two toys in his crib for him when he was six months old: a toy car and a basketball. He tossed the car out of the crib and curled up with the basketball, put there by his father.

A shared love for basketball has been one of the few things that have kept Hardaway and his father close over the years. His parents had a rocky relationship, in large part because of his father's struggle with alcoholism, and they divorced when Hardaway was twelve. During those times, "[basketball] was always my release," Hardaway

Tim Hardaway

told Sports Illustrated interviewer S. L. Price in 1997. "When I was going through stuff with my dad, I could get my frustrations worked out just by playing hard."