Earl the Pearl

by Earl Monroe

  I told her that I would and then I left. But she still looked radiant, as if she had a smile on her face, and it seemed to me she had a halo around her head. So I went home and they called me shortly after I left and told me she had passed away. She was only 56 years old. I was glad that I was able to see her one last time before she died.

  My older sister, Ann, arranged for Chew Funeral Home to pick up my mother’s body and made the arrangements for her service, which would be held a week later. I decided I would stick around in Philly until the funeral and the burial. I told Theresa that she should come up to live with me in New York for a while after the funeral, and she agreed to do that. We had the funeral and a lot of people came. All of our Philly friends, Sonny Hill, my kids’ mothers. Thank goodness Ann was there, because she was a comforting presence for me. I sat in the front row of the Canaan Baptist Church that day. I never took my eyes off the casket throughout the service. Our pastor, Reverend Gus Roman, and Theresa, Ann, and I were hugging each other and wiping each other’s eyes of all those tears. I have never cried that much in my life before or since.

  Anyway, after the service and the burial I hung out for about a week or so at the house in Germantown, trying to put everything into perspective. Sometimes you need to be away from whatever you do to see things in a new light. No one from the Knicks bugged me with telephone calls asking when I was coming back, and that was good. After a while I began to feel a little antsy, so I called Red and told him I would be coming back in a couple of days and he was cool with that. I also called Tina and let her know.

  So a day or two later I packed my things, got in my Silver Shadow, and got on the turnpike up to New York City. On the way up my mind was swirling with all kinds of thoughts, you know, grief, loss, joy at getting there before she passed, thinking of all the great times we had together, the deep love we had for each other, and the wisdom she always gave me. So I focused in on that and remembered something she had told me the year before, when I was having all those problems with my knees. I was complaining to her one day when she was in New York to visit me for a few days, and after hearing me whining and complaining she reminded me of the time when she had given me that blue notebook to jot down all the names of the guys who were beating me and then cross them out after I had gotten better than them. Then she told me that it was all a matter of confidence. After a while, maybe to let that sink in, she turned and looked at me real hard and said, “Earl, you know you can do it, because you’ve been doing it for a very long time. So stop all this whining and complaining and get your butt out of here and get it done!”

  That had just stopped me in my tracks and I stopped whining and complaining about my knees after that. That’s what my mother always did for me. She brought clear thinking into my life, and I was going to deeply miss having her do that. I didn’t know anyone else who could do that for me. Now, I was going to miss her love, too, but that clarity she had brought was irreplaceable. So on that drive I decided I was going to dedicate the rest of that season to the memory of my mother, though I didn’t tell anybody this—I just kept it to myself. I also decided that I had to become more like “Earl the Pearl” again, when my knees and bone spurs allowed it. I wasn’t in New York because I was Earl Monroe, but because I was “Earl the Pearl,” or “Black Jesus.” So I had to become “the Pearl” again. As a matter of fact, Red Holzman had already spoken to me about this.

  “Hey, Earl,” he said to me one day, “it’s all well what you’re doing, but you seem to have lost your ego.”

  “What do you mean?” I said to him.

  “Well, you know, in order to be good, you have to want to be great, and if you want greatness you got to have an ego. And you don’t seem to have the same ego you had before. So I think you have to go back to playing with more ego.”

  He told me this at the beginning of January that year. And it was only then that I realized that Red actually liked me, you know what I mean? I had always felt, ever since he hadn’t played me a lot in that All-Star Game when I was a starter and he was the coach, that he didn’t like me. But for him to come up and talk to me this way kind of freed me up to be me, you know, to be “Earl the Pearl” again. That was much appreciated on my part and it made our relationship a little bit different, less personal, you know. So I kind of relaxed in my approach to my game after that and it showed immediately in my scoring production. After we had that talk my average jumped up to 19.2 points a game over a nine-game stretch.

  When I got back to New York everyone came up and gave me hugs and their condolences, which I really appreciated. But after losing my mother I couldn’t really hear anything, because my mind, heart, and soul were just gone. There was this huge hole in my spirit and in my life. Even the sweet, loving affection and tenderness of Tina couldn’t fill it up, although it was comforting having her around. There was nobody who could make this anything but what it was, not even me. My sweet mother was dead, gone forever, and there was nothing I or anyone else could do about that fact.

  I played my first game after my mother’s death on February 3 at the Garden against Cleveland. The fans gave me a rousing round of applause to welcome me back and I was happy to hear all those people clapping, calling out my name, and wishing me well. The Cleveland players also came over and welcomed me back. Then we went out and beat them 95–90 in a close game that was ultimately decided at the free throw line, where we went 25 of 29. I scored 20 points in my return. As we were running off the court I looked over and saw Woody Allen sitting in his normal seat. I said to myself, Everything is going to be all right.

  We essentially split the remaining 24 games of the season, winning 13 and losing 11. I began to feel pain in my foot down the stretch, too, which affected my scoring production. We lost twice during that span of games to our eventual Eastern Conference Semifinal opponent, my old team, the Baltimore Bullets. If we got by them—and we were all confident we would—our next opponent would most likely be the Boston Celtics, unless they got upset by the emerging Atlanta Braves, who had finished with the fourth-best record in the conference. Our record against Boston was 4 and 3 that year, which was pretty good considering that the Celtics had lost only 14 games that whole season. Two of those 3 losses had come in the last 7 games of the season, however.

  Besides the Lakers (who we really wanted to play and beat to exact a measure of revenge for the previous season’s Finals loss), the three most dangerous teams out West were the Milwaukee Bucks, Golden State Warriors, and Chicago Bulls. So we would have to see how all of this shook itself out. We had split 2 games against the Lakers over those last 24 games, and were 2 and 2 against them overall. We had the same record with both Milwaukee and Golden State.

  The way we saw it, we had a pretty good chance against any team we’d have to face in the playoffs. If Baltimore was our first-round opponent, we were confident we could beat them without too much trouble. If it was Atlanta, we thought we could take them out, too—no sweat—even though they had a very good squad with Pistol Pete, sweet-shooting Lou Hudson, and Walt Bellamy. With Boston, we knew we’d be in for a dogfight to the very end, but we believed we were the better team despite their superior record. If we survived in the East, our only thoughts were on Milwaukee with Kareem, Oscar, and Bobby Dandridge, though we felt we could defeat them in a seven-game playoff series. We didn’t give much thought to Golden State, although they were a very good and dangerous team with Rick Barry, Jeff Mullins, and the ageless defensive wonder, the great, much-underrated center, Nate Thurmond. But in the end, like I said, we definitely wanted to play the Los Angeles Lakers.

  So that’s what we all set out to do as a team: to get to the Finals and defeat the Los Angeles Lakers and lift the championship crown off their collective head. For all of us—and especially for me, because I hadn’t won an NBA championship and because I had dedicated the season to the memory of my mother—the Lakers had become our “enemy,” just as the team I was playing for now had been when I was a Bullet. The Celtics had also
become an “enemy” of sorts, and we had a feeling we’d have to get past them if we were going to reach the Finals and win the NBA title, which is what I wanted now more than anything else in the world. Over those last 24 games I averaged just more than 15 points per game, though I was slowed down in 5 or 6 of those games with bone-spur pain in my left foot. But I wasn’t going to let that stop me if we got to that final game and the championship was on the line. I knew I had to and would rise to the occasion and compete at the highest level for the championship, no matter the pain.

  We ended the season with two straight losses, to the Atlanta Hawks and then the Boston Celtics. Then, just as we’d figured, we drew the Bullets in the Eastern Conference Semifinals, with the first game scheduled for March 30 in Madison Square Garden. Although we had lost our last two games to them, we were pumped to beat them in this initial outing. They jumped on us right from jump street and led us by 6 at the end of the first quarter, but we battled back and were behind by only 2 points at the half, 45–43. We caught and passed them in the third quarter and led by 4, going into the final quarter 69–65. Clyde and I were dueling with Archie Clark and Phil Chenier in a furious guard battle. But Clyde and I pressed pedal to metal and scorched them in the final quarter and we won going away, 95–83, with Clyde leading the way with 25 points and me dropping 23. Wes and Willis fought to almost a draw, though Unseld outscored the Captain 14 to 8. Chalk up Game One in the Knicks’ win column. One and zero, our favor.

  Game Two was played on April Fools’ Day in the Garden. We jumped all over them from the opening tip-off, never trailed, and won by 20, at 123–103. I led the way with 32 points in one of my best performances of the season. For the Bullets, Phil Chenier came out hitting jump shots from all over and netted 27, while Elvin Hayes added 23. So now it was two games to zero in our favor as the series shifted to Baltimore. We came out fast against them again in Game Three and won 103–96, in a closer game than the last. We had five players score in double digits, with Bill Bradley the high man with 23. Elvin Hayes led the Bullets with 36 points, but Willis badly outplayed Wes, holding him to only 3 points. Now the Bullets’ backs were up against the wall, down three games to zip. So we all felt they would be desperate for a win the next night, on April 6 in Baltimore, and they were, fighting their way to a 97–89 victory behind 34 points from Hayes.

  Throughout the games in Baltimore I suffered again through catcalls and nasty names, as the fans there had dished out whenever I played down there since I’d left the Bullets. At first it was a little off-putting and caught me by surprise, but now it only fueled my competitive juices. Game Five was back at the Garden, but we came out sluggish and dropped behind by 5 points in the first quarter. Then we got serious and led them 54–45 at the half. Desperate to stave off elimination, the Bullets came back strong in the third quarter and trailed by only 1 going into the final period. But then we just came out and laid the hammer down on them, pulling away in the final quarter to win by 10, at 109–99. I shut up all the hecklers and catcallers by dropping 26 points—mostly on long jumpers—on my ex-teammates that night, leading the club in scoring. Archie put up 30 for the Bullets and Chenier and Hayes combined for 40, but it wasn’t enough. We walked away with an Eastern Conference Semifinal series victory four games to one and were on our way to play the formidable Celtics in the Eastern Conference Finals, with the series set to open in Boston on April 15.

  We had about five days to rest and practice to get ready for the Celtics, who had been taken to a sixth game by Atlanta. I decided to use that time to get some cortisone shots for my foot, have the fluid drained from my knees, and just lay around my apartment with Tina. I read somewhere that Nate “Tiny” Archibald, the great little guard from the Kansas City–Omaha Kings, had led the NBA that season in both scoring and assists, averaging 34.0 points a game and 11.4 assists. Those were some incredible statistics. But then again, Tiny was an incredible player, really lightning quick, smart, and man, could he shoot the ball and take it to the basket. He was on the All-NBA First Team that year along with John Havlicek, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Spencer Haywood, and Jerry West. Bob McAdoo of Buffalo (who would become a teammate of mine with the Knicks) was voted Rookie of the Year and Tom Heinsohn was selected Coach of the Year.

  As I became better acclimated to life in New York City, I was getting into music more and more. Man, there was music everywhere—you know? Salsa, pop, jazz. Miles’s albums—A Tribute to Jack Johnson, Bitches Brew, and On the Corner—with those weird-ass psychedelic drawings on the covers and that thumping music inside, really moved me. So did the music of Gladys Knight and the Pips, Roberta Flack, Donny Hathaway, Marvin Gaye, the O’Jays, Stevie Wonder, the Temptations, James Brown, Sly and the Family Stone, Aretha Franklin, Earth, Wind and Fire, and the Persuaders, whose song “Thin Line between Love and Hate” was a favorite of mine. Those were the artists whose songs we listened to at parties during this period. And in addition to all of that great music, I had also been influenced from a young age by the “Philly Sound,” you know, artists like Gamble and Huff, the Delfonics, the Stylistics, Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes, Patti LaBelle, Teddy Pendergrass, Grover Washington Jr., Solomon Burke, and all the other great musicians from my hometown.

  Also, the 1970s blaxploitation films had a big influence on black people and our culture, films like Shaft, Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, Cotton Comes to Harlem, Hit Man, Blacula, Trouble Man, The Mack, Trick Baby, The Spook Who Sat by the Door, Gordon’s War, Coffy, Cleopatra Jones, Black Caesar, and especially Super Fly, which hit movie theaters in August 1972. This film had a huge cultural impact on many black Americans, especially in New York City. Everywhere you looked in the Big Apple, from 1972 until the beginning of the ’80s—on the streets of Brooklyn, the Bronx, Harlem, and Midtown Manhattan—you saw black men and women wearing platform shoes (or, as some people called them, “ankle breakers”), long mink coats (in the winter), wide-brimmed hats, and bell-bottom pants, and women in real short miniskirts. Men and women both wore big, Afro-style hairdos, while other, more street-oriented men wore their hair in long, pimp-style processed hairdos à la the late Ron O’Neal’s Super Fly character, Youngblood Priest. And Curtis Mayfield’s hit soundtrack to Super Fly and Isaac Hayes’s to Shaft could be heard blaring all over Harlem and the black neighborhoods of Brooklyn.

  It was Super Fly—directed by the late, great photographer Gordon Parks—Mr. O’Neal’s character, and the film’s soundtrack that defined a certain black urban style in that period. I know for sure that it influenced the personal styles of Walt Frazier and myself, as we adopted Youngblood Priest’s look of wide-brimmed Borsalino hats, long mink coats, stylish suits with bell-bottom trousers, and platform shoes. But Clyde didn’t wear his hair in the long pimp style Ron O’Neal wore in Super Fly. Instead, he wore a moustache, long sideburns, and a goatee. Clyde lived in the penthouse of a building on East 52nd Street, had a round bed covered with a mink spread, and tooled around in a two-toned burgundy Rolls-Royce with an array of beautiful women. On the other hand, I had come to town with a Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow myself, had a moustache and a tiny goatee, and wore long, stylish coats and platform shoes, too. But I lived on the Upper West Side and not in a penthouse. We both were influenced by the style of Super Fly and its classic soundtrack, which could have served as our theme music during this period. But neither of us was influenced by drug dealers, or street life, or any of the other stuff depicted in the film. For me it was the power of Curtis Mayfield’s music that swept me away. But as I have said, both of us were shy, in fact quiet and private, off the court.

  But because we also had flamboyant public personas on the basketball court and off and drove Rolls-Royces, and because the media dubbed us the “Rolls-Royce backcourt,” we were wrongly thought of as loud, boisterous, and all kinds of other adjectives. Many didn’t think we would survive playing together because they assumed our personalities and games would clash. But that never happened because we had great respect for one another—and
deep affection, too—from competing against each other for so long. Now, we had discovered that our games could mesh and we were complementary parts of a well-oiled, efficient team of stars who never let their individual egos get in the way of playing and winning together as a team. Clyde and I remain close friends to this day.

  By playoff time we were firing on all cylinders as a team, and after disposing of the Bullets we went to Boston with a lot of confidence. But we were thrashed by Boston in Game One, 134–108, one of our worst losses of the season. The Celtics had six players reach double figures, led by Jo Jo White with 30 and Havlicek with 26. Clyde led us with 24 points, but we were never really in the game. So we came back to New York and had two days’ rest before Game Two. This time we came out swinging and thumped Boston 129–96, handing them one of their worst defeats of the season. Even steven. Eight Knicks reached double figures that night and 11 of our 12 players scored, which was a testament to Coach Holzman’s philosophy of hitting the open man and playing team ball. Again, Clyde was the high man with 24. Series on.

  We went back up to Boston for Game Three. We beat them 98–91 behind 23 points from Clyde. Havlicek, Cowens, and Jo Jo White combined for 80 of Boston’s 91 points that night. It was a hard-fought game in which only 31 total points were scored in the final quarter, but we found a way to win. We now led the series two to one going back to the Garden, where we beat them again, this time in a double-overtime thriller, 117–110. I didn’t play in that game because my bone spurs acted up. Danny Whelan, our trainer, advised me not to play because if Red saw me hobbling around he was going to take me out. So why bother suiting up? But Clyde hit some big shots in that game, and so did DeBusschere. Clyde led us in scoring that night with 37, while Dave dropped 22. Jo Jo White and Dave Cowens led the Celtics with 34 and 33 points apiece, but again it wasn’t enough. So now we were up three to one, with a chance to close out the series and earn a return trip to the Finals.