Dr. J

by Julius Erving

  Now Mr. Wilson is telling me a full ride is a real possibility. I’ve got the grades—I’m a B student taking college-prep classes—and in the spring of junior year when I sat for the Scholastic Aptitude Tests I scored close to 1,000, which puts me well over the threshold for college eligibility.

  “You got options,” Mr. Wilson is telling me.

  He keeps a separate office for his guidance counseling duties, a small room on the administration corridor that he shares with another counselor. There are guidebooks and pamphlets scattered around, and he does a great job not just with me but with the rest of the team, many of whom will go on to four-year colleges, even if they don’t get athletic scholarships.

  Mr. Wilson tells me he’s getting letters from schools as far off as Iowa and Illinois.

  Iowa? I’m thinking that’s too far.

  “I wanna stay close to Marky and my mom,” I tell him.

  Mr. Wilson nods.

  “You should still take a few trips, see a few campuses. See what feels right. This is college, man. You only go to college once.”

  Mr. Wilson played his college ball at Boston University. “Think about the whole experience,” he’s telling me, “not just the sports.”

  I like that. The whole experience. I have been thinking about that, imagining a bucolic campus, trees, lakes, lawns, old classical-style buildings. I picture myself, the student-athlete, learning about business in between basketball practices.

  I tell Mr. Wilson my plan: to use my basketball to get a college scholarship so that I can secure a business degree. I want to go into business for myself. I need to make sure I don’t end up a wage slave, working in some mailroom or bakery the rest of my life.

  “Solid plan,” Mr. Wilson agrees. “Let’s have a great season, and you keep up the grades, and we can put that plan into effect.”

  29.

  The first meeting of senior season, Mr. Wilson calls all the guys to take a knee before the first practice.

  “I want you to understand what we’re doing out here,” Mr. Wilson says. “It’s like growing up on a farm, you gotta work if you want to meet your goals, you gotta till the soil, you gotta sow the fields, you gotta harvest the grain, and if you’re lucky, you possess a horse to which you might hitch your plow. Man, that horse makes plowing that field a lot easier, that horse makes getting in that harvest a lot faster.”

  He looks around the gym and then at me.

  “Well, we got a horse and that horse is Julius Erving. And we are going to hitch our plow to him and he is going to take us to a championship.”

  The guys all nod. No one even seems surprised by this assertion.

  It may be the first time a coach has told my team, point-blank, that I am now the alpha dog.

  As Mr. Wilson tells me later when we talk, “You’re a leader, Julius, that’s how it’s gonna be, and you need to get used to that. Not just on the court. But in life.”

  I do end up leading the team in most statistical categories, averaging over 25 points and 17 rebounds. But more important, we go 17–2, losing to Long Beach and again when we go back to play my old teammates Al Williams and Archie Rogers from the Sal, who are now starting for Hempstead High. We go down to their gym where I had once dreamed of playing high school ball, and they take us apart, beating us by 20. We don’t have an answer for Al, who can break us down on the dribble and also pass out to hit open shooters.

  When they come to play us in our gym, I am hungry for revenge. The game is tied after the third quarter at 57. It’s close all the way through the fourth until we pull away to win by 8. I score 22 and collect 17 boards. Al scores 27. Our students come rushing out of the stands after the game and I find Al and Archie and give them each a big hug. Both Hempstead and Roosevelt are going to the playoffs, so we may play them again.

  Al and Archie and I had great times at the Sal, and that’s a bond we will always share. Al is such a fine athlete, a sleek point guard and the quarterback of the Hempstead football team. He is being recruited and offered scholarships by dozens of schools all over the country, powerhouses like North Carolina and Michigan. Man, he’s going to be a star and sometimes, even now, I think about what if, you know? What if Al and I played high school ball together?

  No one would stop us.

  And it seems like nothing is going to stop Al.

  But during his senior year, he comes to a school dance and he’s drunk, so intoxicated that school officials eject him from the dance and then expel him. They don’t suspend him, they actually kick him out of Hempstead High School. When the colleges hear about it, he loses every single scholarship offer. Just like that, he goes from a future-can’t-miss prospect to . . . nobody.

  One strike and he’s out.

  When I hear about that, I realize how careful I have to be. For a young black athlete, there is no safety net. One mistake and I can lose everything, no matter how talented I may be as a basketball player.

  Mr. Wilson, Mr. Mosley, and Mr. McIlwain all reinforce this, reminding me that the world is waiting for a young black athlete to screw up. By then we’ve heard of Connie Hawkins, of how one of the greatest players in the history of New York City basketball has been robbed of a college and pro career because of a bogus point-shaving scandal, despite never being arrested or indicted for anything. He is now playing ball in Pittsburgh in this new league called the American Basketball Association where they use—get this—a red, white, and blue basketball.

  Al is heartbroken, but he doesn’t give up, transferring to another school to get his degree. He ends up playing ball at Laurinburg Institute, a two-year college in North Carolina.

  One Division I coach, Frank Layden, decides to take a chance on Al Williams, despite his tarnished reputation, and offers him a scholarship to Niagara College after Al’s sophomore season. Al leads the team in assists, following another pretty smooth point guard named Calvin Murphy. Al will end leading the 1972 team that went all the way to the NIT Championship game, losing to a Len Elmore–led Maryland team.

  Archie and I go back to Campbell Park. He was also a captain of Field Day at Prospect Elementary, but he goes down a very different road than I do. First of all, he’s more of a football player than a basketball player, and he goes to the State University of New York at Cortland but drops out after a semester. I don’t judge his life, but I know it is a difficult one, as he will become addicted to heroin and then get arrested and imprisoned multiple times for assault and robbery, spending much of his life behind bars.

  In my mind’s eye, we are still two boys playing for the Sal, with Don standing on the sideline holding his hands up to his neck.

  Press. Press.

  It could go either way, I realize early on.

  30.

  There is little risk that I will be knocked off course as Al was. But like any young man, I am intensely attracted to members of the opposite sex and starting to need some relief in that area. Hempstead and Theresa are a long time ago, and I haven’t been intimate with another woman since. My shyness is partially to blame, but there is also my single-minded focus, at least during basketball season, which between high school ball, all-star tournaments, summer leagues, and barnstorming around the city lasts pretty much all year. No girl is getting my basketball time.

  My desire springs up, in English class, in trigonometry, on my way to practice. I feel a sense of longing, combined with worry about what that longing might produce. I know how desire and sex can lead to the one mistake that could prevent me from going on to college. A teen pregnancy, as I have seen firsthand with my sister, Freda, forces you to abandon your dreams. I’m not ready for that. What saves me? My shyness, of course, but there are also those angels looking out for me.

  Though Roosevelt is primarily known as a football power, the success of our team and my own individual play have garnered me renown as a basketball player. For the first time, athletics gains me traction with the female portion of the student population. And I can sense that with a little more effort, I
might be able to make some serious time with the faster girls in our school.

  Robert, one of our forwards and the owner of the red Rambler that takes us on our barnstorming trips, is a little more successful with the ladies. He’s made it a point to show us how the seats in the Rambler can be made to lie flat, like a bed. One afternoon, we have about forty-five minutes before practice, and Robert has convinced two cheerleaders to join us out in the parking lot, Robert and his girl in the front, while I’m sitting with mine in the back.

  It’s a cool November day. Fast-moving gray-white clouds dapple the sky and occasional gusts of ocean wind blow through the parking lot, leaves and cigarette butts and gum wrappers dragging along the pavement, making a light scraping noise as they go.

  Robert switches on the radio, the Fifth Dimension singing “Up, Up and Away,” and pretty soon Robert is making out with his girl and I’m engaged in an intense tongue-kissing session with mine. The windows are fogging up, and we may need to adjust these seats. This is a hot situation, and there is potential out here, where nobody can see us. We’ve got forty-five minutes before practice . . .

  “JULIUS? BOBBY?”

  Who is that?

  We see a tweed-sleeved arm rubbing the outside window, trying to clear away the fog. “JULIUS?”

  Oh, no.

  It’s Ray Wilson, our coach.

  “Don’t unlock the door,” Robert says. “Whatever you do, don’t.”

  “JULIUS? TOO MUCH KISSING LEADS TO BABIES.”

  He’s shouting in the middle of the parking lot.

  “YOU HEAR ME? BAAAABIES. YOU GONNA HAVE BABIES!”

  Coach is definitely killing the mood.

  “OPEN THIS DOOR.”

  I can’t say no to Coach. I unlock the door.

  “They got to get out of this car, Julius, right now. You can’t take no chances, Julius.”

  He stands there, arms folded across his chest.

  I turn to my girl. “You got to go. Coach says so.”

  31.

  Mr. Wilson is right. Because even without messing around with any women, I manage to get pulled into a pregnancy scandal. One morning Vice Principal Lester Gaither calls me into his office and tells me that a classmate of mine is pregnant and she has said that I am the father.

  “That’s impossible,” I say.

  “She is quite sure,” Vice Principal Gaither insists.

  “Well, it’s either someone else or maybe this is an Immaculate Conception situation, because that’s the only way this happened.” I’m thinking, Man, I’m going to college. I’ve taken my SATs. I’m passing my classes. I got coaches coming to see me and talking to me and my mom about colleges, and now this?

  No. No way.

  Not a chance.

  “We need to talk to your parents,” he says.

  “Look,” I tell him. “This is simply not possible. I haven’t had relations with ANYBODY. Do you understand? NO ONE.”

  The way I said it seems to back Vice Principal Gaither off a little. He realizes he may have given too much credence to the girl’s story.

  I never hear about the issue again. But it makes me realize how close I am to blowing everything, how tight my game has to be. One mistake, and instead of going off to college I might be stuck living in Roosevelt and working at the jewelry store for the rest of my life.

  32.

  We are the top seed in the postseason Nassau County basketball tournament, and we beat West Hempstead by 40 in the first round. Our second-round game is in Freeport, Long Island, a neutral site, against Elmont Memorial, a predominantly white school. They’re a smaller, less athletic team than we are, as I can see from pregame warm-ups, and I’m a little surprised they’ve made it this far. This feels like our time.

  Three buses rolled out from Roosevelt High, bringing our fired-up student body, who also sense this could be the year we finally get a banner for our gym. On campus, I feel the love from my fellow students and I feel motivated by the opportunity to give something back to my school. I think about Bobby, and how my cousins are living down south in their segregated communities, and I realize how lucky I am to be going to a school that is so racially diverse. I’m friends with black kids and white kids and they all come out to support the Rough Riders.

  The slide-out wooden risers with their clackety iron undercarriages are all extended accordion-like, and our students are hooting and cheering during our layup drills. Our powder-blue-and-gold warm-ups catch the shimmering light so that as I go up to dunk the ball, I am like a patch of sunny sky somehow trapped indoors. My leaps—my search for freedom.

  Yet from the opening tip, there is something wrong. The officials begin making questionable calls. Our other forward, George Green, has this move where he does a little hop when he catches the ball. He does his hop, he catches—it’s simultaneous—and then he either passes or shoots or puts it down for a dribble. It’s legal, and he’s been doing it all year and he’s never been called for a violation. But this ref calls it the first time George touches the ball.

  “Traveling. Number 4.”

  What? That ain’t no travel. Ref, come on.

  You can hear our guys murmuring and the ref puts his whistle in his mouth, as if to call a technical on us.

  I look over at the ref, a bald guy with a mustache and a chest puffed out like a rooster. He looks at me as if to say, What are you going to do about it?

  Mr. Wilson is clapping. “Don’t worry about it. Focus. Focus.”

  But the next time down the court, when George’s man swings over to double-team me and I pass the ball to George, he is called for traveling again.

  “What the—?” George bounces the ball hard off the floor.

  I grab him and pull him downcourt.

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  But every time we touch the ball, something like that happens, strange traveling calls, and when we complain, technical fouls. Still, somehow, we manage to pull ahead by a couple of points.

  Then the ref calls a foul. Saying it’s on Number 4: George Green. But George isn’t even under the basket. He is slowly making his way up court and is still on the half-court line.

  Our crowd is by now agitated, murmurs of protest giving way to loud catcalls and boos and questions about the referee’s integrity. “You making money betting on Elmont?”

  George is standing near half-court, fuming. “What? Are you crazy? Who’s paying you?”

  The ref T’s him up. That’s his second. “You’re out of here.”

  By now our fans are seething. And George’s own family is verging on hysteria, with his mother screaming at the ref, “Shame on you. Shame!”

  And then his cousin, Glen, comes running out of the stands and takes a swing at the referee, who ducks but goes down when Glen tackles him. By now, there are about a dozen spectators on the court.

  Glen and the ref are separated; the court is finally cleared. Somehow, the game starts up again. Elmont is awarded another pair of technical free throws. We are now off our game, and we end up losing by 3 points, 62–59.

  Soon our fans are fighting with Elmont students out in the parking lot. Some of our students start vandalizing Elmont cars. When the Elmont team tries to get away, they surround the bus and start rocking it back and forth, vowing to tip it over. The Elmont team looks terrified, and in newspapers the next day, they call it “the melee.”

  We’re in our locker room, furious, and we can hear the chaos outside. When a Newsday reporter comes in and tells us there’s a brawl going on, a few of us, and especially George, want to join in and get revenge. But Mr Wilson, who is standing with his jacket hanging over his shoulder, tells us to stop, wait, that we should think about what we are doing and the risks we are taking.

  “You know, you go through life and everything is not going to be fair, but you just got to hang in there, hold your head up high, realize all you can do is the best you can do and not let the results, even the ones that seem unfair, define you. You men are better than this.”
He looks at me. “Nothing is promised to us. But we keep moving forward. Some of us are going to keep playing ball. For some of us, this might be the last basketball game of our lives. But all of us are moving on. We are going to go upstairs and get on our bus and act with dignity and pride and show that no matter what, we will keep going.”

  It’s one of Mr. Wilson’s finest hours. Who knows what would have happened if I had gone back upstairs, gotten involved in the melee, maybe helped to tip over a bus and injure a bunch of kids. I might have lost everything.

  Later, Mr. Wilson will tell me that he thinks our being the best black team left in the playoffs may have had something to do with the way the game was called. But he wouldn’t let me get involved in postgame violence that could have damaged my prospects.

  33.

  In part because of my winning the Most Outstanding Player award for Nassau County my senior season, the college recruiting has picked up in intensity. I’m an easy target for recruiters because my grades are solid and my SAT scores guarantee I’ll be eligible. Since the beginning of senior year, I’ve had college coaches come and sit in our living room, talking to my mom and Mr. Dan about what they have to offer. No one comes over more than Louie Carnesecca from St. John’s. He sits with my mom and sips tea and tells her about St. John’s. Mom always reiterates that her main concern is my education. She wants me to become the first in our line to get a four-year degree.

  “Julius is a smart boy,” she says. “Don’t think of him only as a ballplayer.”

  Louie nods, agrees, adjusts his glasses. He visits moms all over the country and sits and charms them and he tells my mom that he will personally guarantee that I get an education.