The third in an occasional series of profiles on Southern California athletes who have flourished in their post-playing careers.
Early on a muggy Saturday morning, seven dozen riders lined up five and six abreast and aimed their mountain bikes toward a narrow, rocky trail leading away from the 91 Freeway and into the wilderness of Anaheim’s rugged Gypsum Canyon.
In their white helmets and monotone synthetic racing kits, the riders were more an indistinct mob than a collection of individuals. But in the middle of the pack, perched on a pricey, Santa Cruz Blur XL, one cyclist stood out if for no other reason than, at 6-foot-7, Reggie Miller was a foot taller than most of the people around him.
Miller is also, it should be noted, a basketball hall of famer and five-time NBA All-Star who seamlessly transitioned into a career as one of the sport’s most-respected TV analysts. He has earned fame and riches most will never know and competed at a level few have ever achieved.
Yet on the day before his 60th birthday, he was about to pedal his way along 19 miles of treacherous trails, swallowing the dust kicked up by cyclists a third his age. And he couldn’t have been happier because bike racing has not just given Miller a competitive outlet, it’s provided an avenue for addressing issues of importance to him, among them equality, inclusion and social justice.
“You see so many retired football, baseball, basketball players turn to golf. That’s their vice,” he said. “Mine is cycling.”
Not just any cycling. Miller’s vice is mountain biking, the most dangerous, difficult and demanding branch of the sport.
“The endorphins that are released when I’m riding, I kind of equate it back to when I was in high school and you’re in the backyard and you’re just shooting (basketballs) all by yourself,” he said. “You’re thinking about a whole bunch of things. That’s what you do on the bike.
“You’re out there for two, three, four hours. Your mind wanders and you get a chance to just think about life.”
Miller didn’t climb on a bike hoping to find a oneness with the universe though. The original goal was far less spiritual and far more vain.
“I initially started cycling to look good in my suit on TV,” he said. “And then the passion started once I got into racing,”
“You’re out there for two, three, four hours. Your mind wanders and you get a chance to just think about life,” Reggie Miller said about his experience mountain biking.
(Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)
Much of that happened by accident. When Miller moved to Malibu near the end of his playing days, in part to seek a fresh start after his marriage ended in divorce, he hadn’t been on a bike since grade school, when he parked his Huffy to concentrate on basketball.
What he didn’t know at the time was that his new three-story, 8,400-square-foot hilltop home was surrounded by some of the best mountain bike trails in Southern California. So three neighbors — a musician, a surfer and a 68-year-old fitness entrepreneur — lent him a bike and took him out on the hills.
It wasn’t pretty, but it was life-changing.
“I was still in basketball shape. And they destroyed me,” Miller said. “Being out there on the mountain bike, I was like ‘oh my God this is so fun!’ And that’s what got me hooked.
“I was just a weekend warrior because I was still under contract. But once I retired I started riding all the time.”
Two decades after he sank his last free throw, he’s still pedaling. Only now he’s doing it competitively. And if he’s recognized on the trails at all these days, it’s as often for his work as a broadcaster as it is for playing career.
With every spin of his racing tires, he’s trying to change that perception, too.
“He’s just Reggie Miller the mountain bike racer.” said Tom Spiegel, a friend and three-time member of the U.S. downhill racing team. “People just treat him like a mountain biker and he treats everyone else like a mountain biker.”
The first hill Reggie Miller climbed on a bike was above Promontory Lane in Riverside, where his father, Saul, and mother, Carrie, settled when Saul retired from the Air Force. The hill rose above the backyard and ended at Castle View Elementary School, and in addition to riding his bike up it, Miller and his four siblings would challenge themselves by repeatedly running up the hill every weekend.
“It was just part of our Saturday and Sunday,” he said, “It’s funny looking back on it. It’s just what we did. We were just putting in the extra work, training our mind and body running up that hill.”
Not surprisingly, all five Miller children would go on to distinguish themselves.
The eldest, Saul Jr., 68, who may have been the best athlete of the lot, became a jazz saxophonist good enough to play for U.S. presidents; Darrell, 67, played five big-league seasons with the Angels and has overseen the construction of youth baseball academies all over the country; sister Cheryl, 61, is an Olympic gold medalist in basketball who scored 105 points in a high school game and twice coached USC into the women’s NCAA tournament before becoming a broadcaster; and Tammy, 57, the youngest, was a volleyball star at Cal State Fullerton.
Reggie Miller celebrates with his daughters Lennox Miller, center left, Remi Miller, 4, center, and his brother Darrell Miller, right, after a race at Gypsum Canyon last month. Darrell Miller played five seasons with the Angels.
(Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)
Reggie and Cheryl, the only siblings to be enshrined in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, learned to play on the concrete court their father built in the backyard. Those games are also where Reggie learned the unorthodox shooting style — one that featured a quick release, a high arc and unique sideways arm motion — he used to become the 26th most-prolific scorer in NBA history.
“Cheryl was really athletic and so he had to shoot a high arc to get the ball over her,” Darrell Miller said. “So, yeah, that’s where that came from.”
The five siblings, it probably goes without saying, were competitive. Really competitive — and not just on the basketball court or while racing up the hill behind their home.
“Iron sharpens iron,” Reggie Miller said. “Monopoly, Clue, Yahtzee, Uno. We had every game. That’s all we did. Having brothers and sisters who pushed you and who were — let’s face it, Cheryl’s the best I’ve ever seen.
“I’ll go to my grave with that. And to have her as a mentor, a sister, someone right down the hall that pushed you to be great? That just made it a great atmosphere to breed success.”
However the most important skills the Millers learned from parents were discipline, routine and attention to detail.
“Rooms had to be clean. Up at a certain time. House was spotless,” Reggie Miller said. “That’s kind of how I’ve lived my life. God bless both of them. Those guardian angels are guiding me on two wheels, too.”
Those traits weren’t the only things their father — a high school all-American in basketball and a talented saxophone player who played with the likes of B.B. King and John Coltrane — passed on to his children. Saul, who died in 2022. at age 92, also blessed them with great genes. That’s why Darrell, who played his last game in 1988, still has the rock-solid body he had when he caught for the Angels while Reggie, at 60, is 15 pounds under his playing weight.
Both also look a decade or more younger than their birth certificates say they are.
Cheryl Miller jokes with her brother, inductee Reggie Miller, during the enshrinement ceremony for the 2012 class of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame at Symphony Hall in Springfield, Mass. Cheryl and Reggie Miller are the only siblings enshrined in this hall of fame.
(Elise Amendola / Associated Press)
“They exposed us to a lot of things,” Miller said of his parents. “All you can do for your kids is expose them and introduce them (to things) and the rest really is up to them. That’s what mom and pops did for us. They introduced a lot of things for us.”
Those introductions took Reggie Miller to UCLA, where his 750 points in 1985-86 is second only to Kareem Abdul-Jabber’s school single-season record and his 2,095 career points trail only Abdul-Jabber and Don MacLean. Those achievements led the school to retire his number 31 in 2013.
The Pacers’ Reggie Miller is stopped by the Lakers’ Shaquille O’Neal during Game 6 of the 2000 NBA Finals.
(Lori Shepler / Los Angeles Times)
The Pacers used their first-round pick in the 1987 draft on Miller and it proved a bargain since he went on to make five All-Star teams and earn a spot on the NBA’s 75th anniversary team, becoming one of just seven players to spend a career of at least 18 seasons with the same team.
Miller, one of basketball greatest clutch players, also helped revolutionize the NBA with his accuracy from three-point range and led the league in free-throw percentage five times. He ranked 12th all-time in scoring — 87 points ahead of Jerry West — and first in three-pointers when he retired in 2005. A year later the Pacers also retired the number 31, the number Miller now wears in bike races.
He wasn’t retired long though. A week before his 40th birthday, he joined his sister Cheryl as a basketball analyst with TNT, launching a second act that has outlasted his playing career.
“Just different chapters, right?” he said. “I enjoyed my early teens. I enjoyed high school. College was unbelievable. The pros. You know everyone has a life book and everyone has unbelievable chapters.
“Some are longer than others and I’m enjoying this chapter of my life.”
The latest chapter in Miller’s life book actually has two storylines. There’s the TV one, which has a plot twist now that TNT has lost the broadcast rights to the NBA, forcing Miller to jump to NBC where he will be the network’s lead game analyst this season.
Then there’s the bike one. Both are fed by the same competitiveness that fueled Miller’s stellar NBA career.
“All my games, dating back to high school, right before jump ball I got nervous,” he said. “That’s kind of like when you’re lining up and the race director’s giving instructions. Those butterflies come back.
“But some of the crashes in here can be catastrophic. The injuries are a lot tougher in this sport than they are in basketball.”
Yet Miller likely would have been content with his leisurely rides over the hills near his Malibu home — one of the few on his street with a basketball hoop in the backyard — had he not posted a picture of himself on a bike on social media some eight years ago. George Mota, a competitive mountain bike racer and hardcore NBA fan, saw the post and challenged Miller to come out to a race — which he did.
“That kind of got me hooked on racing,” Miller said. “I didn’t even know there was a lane for this.”
He has been showing up at starting lines throughout Southern California since. And he’s impressed veterans of the sport with how well he’s adapted.
From left, Sal Martinez, Reggie Miller, Sam Wiernucki and James Ramussen celebrate after the OC MTB Gypsum XC Race in Gypsum Canyon last month.
(Carlin Stiehl/Los Angeles Times)
“In cycling, mountain biking, you have beginners, intermediates and then experts,” said Spiegel, whose Team Big Bear Mountain Bikes promotion company has put on more than 250 mountain bike events. “He moved himself up pretty quickly. The skill set required to ride a mountain bike far exceeds that of riding a road bike. So he has put himself out there in certain situations.”
He may be the tallest rider in every race he enters — and he’s certainly the only 60-year-old basketball hall of famer. But he does his best to blend in rather than stand out.
“He is very humble and just wants to fit in and do this thing,” said Mike Hooker of OCMTB Races, which put on the Gypsum event.
“It’s not about him when he’s out there,” added Hooker’s wife, Alison. “I don’t think he wants attention that way. I don’t think he’s that kind of person.”
Eventually Miller started a racing team, BOOMBABY, whose name comes from the catchphrase Bobby “Slick” Leonard, the Pacers’ longtime radio broadcaster, would use every time Miller sank a three-pointer. And the name is still associated with goals since Miller uses it to peddle branded racing gear, with the proceeds funding programs to grow cycling programs at HBCUs and to support the Equal Justice Initiative, which is committed to ending mass incarceration in the U.S. while challenging racial and economic injustice.
“My main mission in cycling is I’ve always wanted to get more women, more people of color. It should be a little bit more diverse,” said Miller, who served a year and a half on USA Cycling’s board of directors.
“I’m not out here trying to think I’m the next Lance Armstrong or Mathieu Van der Poel,” he continued, referencing the Reggie Millers of cycling. “I’m just trying to show people it doesn’t matter size, race, background. You can do anything you want if you set your mind. One person, that’s all you’re trying to reach. And that person will hopefully reach one person.”
The name of Reggie Miller’s racing team, BOOMBABY, is a nod to the catchphrase Bobby “Slick” Leonard, the Pacers’ longtime radio broadcaster, would use every time Miller sank a three-pointer. Miller sells racing gear with the name, with the proceeds funding programs to grow cycling programs at HBCUs and to support the Equal Justice Initiative.
(Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)
Maybe that’s what really led Miller to the sport — the chance to be the change he always wanted to see. The chance to show his three school-age kids, son Ryker, 12; and daughters Lennox, 9, and Remi, 4, that a celebrity isn’t a person who is famous, but rather someone who treats everyone else that way.
“Out of all the hobbies someone can have, good and bad, this is one of the best,” said Laura Laskowski, Miller’s longtime partner and the mother of his three youngest children. “It makes him so happy and he gets to inspire our children to know, even after you’re done working or playing or whatever it is you love, there’s still something else you can strive to be great at.
“The NBA and biking are two different worlds. The biking world, he just makes people better. He inspires people. And it does rub off.”
Many riders agree, saying Miller, who is perpetually upbeat, has already made the sport — and those who practice it —better.
“Just the way he treats everybody, motivates people, it’s probably one of the best things here,” said Ramiro Guzman, 58, a BOOMBABY rider who finished less than five minutes behind Miller at the Gypsum Canyon race. “It’s not even just cycling. It’s for being a better person. Not just a better rider, but a better human being.”
Miller makes a difference in other ways, too. At the Gypsum Canyon race, he personally doubled the meager $2,700 prize-money purse to assure both the men’s and women’s overall winner would take home $1,000 each.
It wasn’t the first time he’s done that and it won’t be the last.
“When I started this, the purses weren’t equal,” he said. “The women trained just as hard as the men did to compete in this race and they should be rewarded just as much. To get more African Americans, women, kids, it starts at the grassroots level.”
At the same time Miller isn’t running a charity. If you want some of that prize money, you’re going to have to beat him to collect it.
“He does everything the best he possibly can,” brother Darrell said. “He puts everything into it and the object is to win.”
Reggie Miller stands next to Bob Sima on the podium after winning second place in the 55-59 age group at a race in Gypsum Canyon last month. Miller turned 60 the next day.
(Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)
In the Gypsum Canyon race, Miller traded places multiple times with a 16-year-old named Victor Gee, who was born four years after Miller played his final NBA game. The exhausted riders entered the final hairpin turn even, then rose up on their pedals for the final short sprint to the finish, with the teenager beating the hall of famer by an eyelash.
“I am nowhere near the best out here,” an elated Miller, caked in dirt and bathed in sweat, said after finishing 15th among 82 starters, placing second in his age group. “But I want them to see I know their pain and suffering. And I want them to know that I’m suffering with them.
“That’s the beauty of being a cyclist.”
