And besides, now that I’m wearing the white uniform with red piping and massachusetts spelled out over the number 32, I definitely feel a little more swagger in my game.
That’s not to say I’m a difficult player or moody or hard to coach. I’m a listener, I’m a disciplined practice player, and I’m a shut-down defender who never misses his rotations. That’s why Jack puts up with my freelancing on offense: because he knows he can count on me in practice, in the games, and during the last five minutes. I shoot the highest percentage on the team, and lead the conference in scoring and rebounding, averaging 25.7 points and 20.9 boards a game, the highest single-season rebounding average in school history—and second in the nation to Artis Gilmore of Jacksonville, who averages 22.2.
We go 18-7 overall and 8-2 in our conference, good enough for an National Invitational Tournament bid where our first-round opponent is Marquette University, coached by Al McGuire and led by a New York City legend I’ve played against, Dean “the Dream” Meminger. Marquette had won 26 and lost only 3 and actually turned down a bid to the NCAA tournament to play in the NIT, McGuire deciding he would rather play in New York than Fort Worth, where the NCAA committee had seeded Marquette. The game is back at Madison Square Garden, and I love playing in front of my friends and family, though for a half-second, I’m haunted when I think I see Marky in the stands.
McGuire has Marquette playing a ball-control style, down tempo game. In the first half, we take the lead in the low-scoring battle, and I’m the leading scorer and rebounder. McGuire has never seen me before, and he’s shouting at his bench, “Who is that? Who is thirty-two?”
Meminger tells him, “That’s Julius.”
“Who the hell is Julius?”
“He’s for real. He’s got serious playground credentials.”
But the second half, McGuire uses a Brooklyn boy named Ric Cobb to get me in foul trouble. I score 18 and grab 14 rebounds but it isn’t enough: Marquette beats us by 13. They would go on to defeat St. John’s in the finals to win the NIT Championship.
Our season is over.
10.
I don’t dare tell anyone this, but I find college basketball a little easier than I expected. The only thing difficult is resisting the urge to dunk. The academic work is actually more daunting for me, but by my sophomore year, I’ve developed good study habits and I’m on track for a degree in management that will propel me into my career in business.
My social life is also thriving, as I meet a pretty girl named Carol, whose father is the head of the geology department. She’s tall and fair skinned with a pleasing, oval face and beautiful, straight hair. We meet in class and I ask her to go to the student union for a soda. Our conversation flows naturally; there are none of the awkward silences that I experience with so many women. She invites me over to dinner with her parents, who live in a house in Amherst. This is a long way from the groupie-ish situation that I fell into my freshman year. With Carol, we don’t even mess around until I’ve met the parents a few times. I just see her . . . differently.
She’s always well dressed, with a sort of neat, tidy appearance that I find reassuring. But she carries herself in such a classic, dignified manner that even in sweats and sneakers she has this authority about her. We relate on so many levels: we both worked our way through high school, Carol picking tobacco in western Massachusetts during the summers. We share that intense work ethic and that deep belief in family. I cry when I tell her about Marky. She takes me with her to Bible study classes.
One afternoon, we drive the blue Chevy over to Amherst High School and spread out a blanket on a field behind the campus, the sun setting over the pumpkin and tobacco fields, casting us in orange glow. Carol has packed us a picnic of chicken and salad and we drink soda and watch the sunset. She is leaning into me when a red-breasted finch starts flying close circles around us, chirping as it swoops and then comes down and lands right on Carol’s leg, just sort of walking around and tweeting. It feels as if the vibe we are putting out is so soothing and gentle and loving that it actually draws in small creatures.
I’ve never felt this way before.
I am realizing something about myself, about how I view women at this point in my life. Perhaps it is a product of the impersonal manner in which I was introduced to sex, but I divide women into two categories. There are those who I consider relationship material, who I view as good girls, and then there are those who I see more as objects, as bad girls. I know that’s simplistic and even offensive to many women, and that among the so-called good girls there are plenty of bad people and vice versa, but I am mired in that kind of patriarchal thinking on the subject and it will take years for me to break out of it. My struggle to respect women and to see them all as God’s creatures is one of the ways I’ve had to rise above my own circumstances and perhaps the cultural norms of when and where I was raised.
So while the rest of my teammates indulge in frat parties and some heavy beer drinking and plenty of my college classmates are smoking marijuana, I’m bitten hard by the love bug. Up until that time, I’ve been drunk once in my life, at a high school graduation party when I took a few pulls of whiskey and immediately realized I couldn’t drive home and walked back to my house. Why would anyone intentionally do that to themselves, I think, to decide to lose control in that way? To leave the house in a car and then to have to walk home without it? It just seems so . . . out of order. I mean, if I’m going to do something, it has to make sense, to be constructive, to help me get to where I want to go. I really don’t understand the desire among my peers to get into an altered state. At campus parties, I find the whole furtive rolling of joints, the sucking on a roach, the slit-eyed glaze of a stoned face, to be very uncool. First of all, it’s illegal, so it’s something you have to hide, and I don’t want to hide anything from my parents, from the law, from authorities. And it just looks ridiculous to me, the balling up of a stash in your socks or whatever. I just don’t understand the appeal of it.
At parties, while other students are getting drunk or high, Carol and I are like our own universe, sober, yes, but intoxicated on our love. One night, we’re over at Kappa house with some of the guys on the team, and there’s a keg in the back and a little dance floor in front and they’re spinning some slower jams on the hi-fi, and Carol and I are dancing to Smokey Robinson, clinging to each other on that dance floor, and it’s another of a thousand moments like that finch landing on Carol’s leg. We feel that we have tapped into such a powerful force—our nineteen-year-old desire and affection—that the terrible events of our world, the assassinations of Dr. King and Bobby Kennedy, of the horrors recently reported about My Lai, of the murders at Kent State, of the riots that tear apart black communities throughout the country, even of losing Marky, and Bobby, and Tonk, that this simple goodness of the two of us in love can protect us from evil.
11.
Coach Leaman becomes my greatest advocate. The 1970 NCAA All-American team includes Pete Maravich, Bob Lanier, Dan Issel, and Calvin Murphy, a pretty good lineup right there. The second team has Austin Carr, Charlie Scott, and Sidney Wicks. With the exception of Lanier, who had led St. Bonaventure to the Final Four that season, these are guys from big-name programs. Leaman believes that I’m as talented as any of them, and my going unrecognized nationally is due to playing in the lightly regarded Yankee Conference.
This is made clear to me when I’m not invited to the Olympic development program.
The intention of the Olympic Development Program, as it’s called, is to groom a dozen players in preparation for the 1972 Munich Olympics. The United States had finished in fifth place at the 1970 World Basketball Championships in Ljubljana, Yugoslavia, a sturdy team that included a high school senior named Bill Walton. That team would beat the USSR but would lose to Italy, Brazil, and home team Yugoslavia. The plan now is to assemble the best forty players in the country, ten from each of four regions, and then bring them out to Colorado Springs, Colorado, to scrimmage against each other
over the course of a three-week camp to see which twelve should make the Olympic development team that will tour Europe playing national teams.
Johnny Bach, the head coach at Penn State, is one of four coaches running the program and Coach Leaman and Bach are close, so Leaman keeps calling him and telling him he’s crazy to leave me off the program. Finally, Bach relents and allows me to be listed as one of four alternates. “If anyone gets hurt, he can come out to Colorado.”
So early that summer, as I’m all set to work at Roosevelt Park as the manager, I get a call from Jack telling me I’m to fly out to Colorado Springs and join the Olympic Development Camp at Air Force University.
For the first time, I’m on a team with the most famous young ballplayers in America. There’s Tom McMillen from Maryland, Joby Wright from Indiana, Cyril Baptiste from Creighton, Paul Westphal from USC, and my old recruiting buddy Bob Nash from Hawaii. I get there a week after most of the guys, who have been learning Coach Bach’s systems and getting familiar with the style of play and dimensions of the international game—slightly wider lanes in a slightly narrower court. I adapt quickly to the new setting, and from the first scrimmage, I am able to impose my will, to get to my spots, control the boards, and find angles to the basket. Once again, it is my rebounding that forces Coach Bach to keep me on the floor. McMillen is six eleven, Baptiste is six ten, Wright is six nine, and I’m outrebounding all of them.
They teach you to always box your man out so that he can’t go up and get the ball. My style is to always check where my man is, and as long he’s not in position to get the ball, then I go up and get it. It’s a slightly unconventional approach because instead of focusing on blocking out, I’m sort of leaving my man early to get the ball. And if I’m timing my jumps correctly, I can take rebounds away from other guys who are in the area because I can get up higher and faster than they can.
But the biggest difference between the college game and the international game?
Dunking is allowed.
I rise.
Bach stops me after practice one day. “How are you doing, Julius?”
I shrug. “I’m doing my thing, Coach.”
He laughs. “Well, just keep going and getting the ball and there is no way we are going to leave you at home. No way.”
That becomes my plan. I will snatch more rebounds, collect more loose balls, and get my team more possessions than any other player there.
Pretty soon, it becomes clear that I’m one of the top players at the Olympic Development Camp. I mean, the players can feel it and the coaches can see it and while I don’t have that perspective, I do know that my contribution is clear and measurable. When we watch film of our scrimmages, I notice I’m rising up out of the pack in the lane to grab more balls than any other player, and my outlets are crisp and efficient, and I’m blocking shots. I’m clearly not the best shooter on the team, but that doesn’t matter—we’ve got plenty of guys who are willing to hoist the ball. Maybe our best offensive threat is Paul Westphal, who has such a smooth game, great handles, flashy, and can dunk with both hands.
In the evenings, after practice and showering, we play cards in these lounges that connect the dorms. (I’m rooming with James Brown from Dartmouth.) During the card games, some of the guys start talking about their plans for the future. And a few of the guys, Joby Wright, Ricky Sobers from UNLV (he’s originally from the Bronx), and others start talking about how big a bonus they are going to demand.
Bonus? What are they talking about?
Wright is saying he’s going to ask for $50,000 so he can buy a Corvette. Other guys are saying they’re going to get more.
I’m silent, just listening, but I realize they are talking about playing professional basketball. Because there are two rival leagues, the ABA and NBA, for the first time college players have some leverage and don’t have to sign with the NBA team that drafts them. Rookie salaries have been going up, and these guys are talking about how much money they are going to get when they turn pro.
Pro? Are they serious?
They are.
Now I’m thinking, If Wright and Sobers and Westphal are talking about playing pro ball, and I’m outrebounding and outscoring these guys, then that means . . . I should be thinking about playing pro basketball.
I had never thought that was possible before. I mean, pros were Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain and Jerry West, the Lakers and Celtics and Knicks. I’m a kid from Long Island who plays in the Yankee Conference. My whole plan is to get a business degree.
Nobody from UMass has ever played in the NBA.
12.
When they announce the final twelve spots, there are six white players and six black players and I don’t think that’s a coincidence. I know they weren’t expecting me to be on the team because when they present us with our blue team blazers, with USA on the chest, for the team photo, the sleeves on my jacket barely reach my elbow. I guess I’m taking the place of a shorter player.
So instead of working at Roosevelt Park, handing out basketballs and roller skates, I’m going to be flying to Europe on a Pan Am flight to play basketball in Finland, Poland, and the Soviet Union. For almost all of us, this will be our first trip abroad, and the coaches have impressed upon us that we are ambassadors for our country. I take that seriously. I like the mission. We are basketball players for our country, and this is the middle of the Cold War, and these countries, at least Poland and Russia, are Communist states that represent a stark contrast to the freedoms of the USA. Mom is so excited for me. Freda and her kids come over to say good-bye, Barry and Keith giving me big hugs.
“Juliuth is going to Europes,” says Barry.
Barry is a good little ballplayer himself. I pick up both my nephews. Man, I’m thinking before Mom and Mr. Dan drive me to JFK, I’m gonna miss America.
We fly on a Pan Am charter to Moscow. Most of the guys have cameras and many of us are keeping diaries as well. We’re staying at the Cosmos Hotel and the first night they host a special dinner where we meet the Russian national team, who we will be playing in a series of games throughout the Soviet Union. These are men in their twenties and early thirties, big, stocky, tough guys, Army officers, many of whom, like Sergei Belov and Modestas Paulauskas, would win gold at the Munich Olympics two years later. At the welcome dinner, held in the hotel ballroom, the Russians lay out a big banquet, with crab, salmon, and caviar—at least we recognize those dishes—but there are plenty of other foods that most of us are reluctant to try. And the main beverage, as we discover, is vodka. The Russian players are guzzling it down. We are sticking to soda and water. I’m looking at these guys, with their mustaches and muscles, and I’m thinking: these guys look serious.
“Na zdorovie!” they keep shouting, and draining another shot. To your health!
I’ve never seen anyone drink that much alcohol.
It certainly doesn’t seem to affect them on the court.
We tour the Kremlin, visit the famous onion-domed Orthodox cathedrals, and spend some time window shopping at the GUM department store. But despite the attempts of our Russian hosts to show their country in a positive light, the guys and I can feel that there is something dour and downbeat about this culture. We see long breadlines everywhere. And there are women working construction, digging ditches. “Man, they got ladies over there with a jackhammer!” Even worse, it’s a culture without rock and roll. In the stores, they play marching band music. Every once in a while, when we are walking around on the streets, some kids will sidle up to us and say, “American, yes? Beatles? Rolling Stones?”
I’ll nod. I don’t know what they want.
And our interpreter will come over and run the kids off.
“What do they want?” I ask.
“They want your music,” he will say.
I think about how we take it for granted that we can go down to the Sam Goody’s and buy whatever album we want. For these kids, that music must sound like freedom. At night, when I’m sitting in my room with Ja
mes Brown, he’ll put a Sly and the Family Stone eight-track on his tape deck and I’ll think it sounds just beautiful.
Dance to the music
Dance to the music
That sounds like freedom right there.
We play the Russian national team three times, in Moscow, Kiev, and Tallinn, and we lose in very tight contests. They are the toughest opponents any of us have ever faced. That we hold our own against these physical, grown men is amazing, but we don’t feel that’s any consolation for losing as representatives of our country. These guys are tested veterans, and they play with a machine-like efficiency and execute no matter how we play them. Excelling at every aspect of the game, they play crisp zone defenses and every player on the team can shoot. And they have arms as thick as my legs.
This is a road trip beyond any I’ve ever been on. The courts are different, irregular, with more divots than the old Boston Garden, and the officiating is unfamiliar. Louis Nelson from Missouri is one of our best defenders. He’s a little guard who sort of wiggles his butt as he gets down low on defense. When he’s guarding the inbounds passer, he puts his hand up in the passer’s face to block his line of sight. Whenever he does this, the officials come over and tell him to stop.
“Why?” Louis asks. “It’s legal.”
“Discourteous,” he is told.
I play well against the Russians, pulling down over 10 rebounds a game and scoring double figures, most of my points coming on dunks over the big Russian centers. Only we can’t beat these grizzled Russians.
Dr. J Page 14