Houston, Texas Clyde Drexler insists that he will make me lunch. We are in the kitchen of his roomy house, which lies off the seventh fairway (a long par-4) of a beautiful suburban golf course. Living under such trying circumstances has turned Drexler into a low-handicapper who plays from time to time with a neighbor, Jim Nantz, a buddy from the University of Houston. Lunch is good—chicken salad and fruit; Clyde is a careful eater who has always taken care of himself—and we talk of many things, including kids, the aggravation of aging knee joints (he has a little, I have a lot), and our mutual butchering past (both of our fathers were meat cutters). But being the eleventh man on the Dream Team nags at him, and I open up that conversational box. He does not close it. “I learned I was on the team from [Trail Blazers general manager] Harry Glickman,” says Drexler. “Harry was all excited about it, but I was … melancholy.” I thought that a strange and interesting word to use.
