by Jon Scieszka
All of us in the Brown family knew we were going to college, which strikes me as impressive, looking back. It seemed so normal at the time that our parents, who did not attend college themselves, would have very firm expectations that we would do so. In fact, a big part of the reason that my dad worked so hard at his different jobs each day was so that my mom could stay home to be the superb homemaker that she was and to instill in us an attitude of excellence. Mom was smart and disciplined and wanted each of her kids to go further in life than she and Dad did. She was going to make sure that her children were educated to their fullest.
As colleges started showing interest in me, Coach Wootten took me aside. He had seen so many great players come through his gym and go on to play college basketball that he wanted to make certain that I knew what to expect. As the first to go to college in my family, and as a boy who wanted to please everyone by nature, his advice was greatly appreciated.
“When you visit a school,” he told me, “they’re going to show you the best of everything. They set you up, by design, in the perfect honeymoon situation. Therefore, you just cannot commit when you are on campus. Leave the school and come home to discuss the decision with your family. If you still feel the same way after twenty-four hours, then commit.”
Coach wasn’t kidding. I was treated so well on every single visit. Nice accommodations, lobster dishes, which I loved, and other fancy meals, none of which were an issue back when I was eighteen and six feet five inches tall and a skinny 210 pounds. I have to be a little more careful with the drawn butter these days!
I called Coach from Chapel Hill, home of the University of North Carolina. I had a great visit with Dean Smith, and loved the school and the program. I also admired Coach Smith and his inclusive approach to coaching and recruiting … aggressively going after the best student-athletes—black and white. I told Coach Wootten that I wasn’t going to commit on campus, but UNC was where I wanted to attend school. We agreed that I should tell Coach Smith that I was 99 percent sure that I would attend but needed to go home and speak with my family.
A few days later, I saw a letter from Harvard sitting on Coach Wootten’s desk—for me. Immediately, I thought of what Bill Bradley had done at Princeton. I thought that if I could get into Harvard, perhaps I could do the same. Bill Bradley, the Princeton great, was then playing for the Knicks. I probably would have preferred the letter be from Princeton because of my respect for Bradley, and would have probably signed on the spot. As it was, Harvard was immediately elevated in my mind to that position next to Carolina. My mom didn’t try to push me one way or the other. She just wanted me to fully capitalize on the educational opportunity in front of me.
In the process, I took trips to St. Bonaventure, Notre Dame, Michigan, Harvard, and North Carolina. I didn’t take an official trip to Maryland because it was local and easy to visit; but their coach, Lefty Driesell, made his interest clear when he took out a billboard in DC picturing the top four high school players, including me. Flattering, but I was focused on Harvard and North Carolina.
Now, many people thought that Harvard pulled out all the stops when it pulled out a weapon that Carolina couldn’t match: Ted Kennedy. Senator Kennedy, a US Senator from Massachusetts and the youngest brother of our assassinated president John F. Kennedy, contacted Coach Wootten and arranged for a car to come get us and take us to Capitol Hill to meet him. We visited with him in his office, watched him cast a couple of votes in the Senate, and before the day was out, I promised that I would visit Harvard before deciding. As impressive as Senator Kennedy was, the more influential Harvard alumni were former Secretary of the Army Clifford Alexander and successful DC businessman Barry Linde. Getting to know them on a personal level really sealed the deal for me, as both had come from more modest backgrounds like I had.
Red Auerbach, the legendary Boston Celtics coach and executive, was a great friend of DeMatha High and Coach Wootten. Even he weighed in on my college choice. Well, kind of. He grinned at me and told me, “James, remember this: there is only one Harvard.” He didn’t exactly tell me where to go, but he did leave it at that. I got the message. From my mom to basketball executives—everything looked Crimson. Even my siblings were starting to come around. Well, kind of. My brothers thought it would be so cool to have a brother who was a Tar Heel and therefore were still pulling for UNC and Dean Smith to win the recruiting battle. They do remember Ted Kennedy coming by the house, though, and the impression it made on them, even four decades later.
It was still a tough decision because of how much I liked Chapel Hill and Coach Smith; and the University of North Carolina is an excellent school as well.
In the meantime, Coach Wootten called me into his office. “James, how many colleges do you plan on going to next year?” I looked at him, confusion on my face. He went on. “This morning was the fifth call I’ve gotten from a coach—North Carolina, Maryland, Michigan, and others—who told me that you’re ‘99 percent sure’ that you’re coming to his school.”
I grimaced.
“James, you’re going to learn, at some point in your life, to tell somebody no.”
I don’t think that I have yet.
I was still wrestling with the decision. I lost track because of the magnitude of the overall numbers, but my brothers and sister have said that I was being recruited by upward of two hundred schools. Letters were coming in every day from all parts of the country, and I was still unable to decide.
Harvard loomed large in my mind because of the emphasis that my mom and dad placed on academic excellence being the number one priority for us. Coach Auerbach was right—there is only one Harvard. Mom would ask me, “What if you break your leg and can’t play basketball again? Wherever you go to school, if you excel in the classroom, you’ll always have that to fall back on.” She stressed, “What you put between your ears will determine how successful you will be.”
I was also still intrigued by the chance to follow in the footsteps of Bill Bradley, the man whom I admired so greatly. He had graduated from Princeton in 1965, a three-time All-American who had led the school to a number three final national ranking following the NCAA Tournament. He was named the top amateur athlete in the United States in 1965. And it was readily apparent, from Bradley’s college career and subsequent NBA career with the New York Knicks, that a player could be no less successful on the court coming out of an Ivy League school.
I had watched him arrive at the Knicks in 1966, my ninth-grade year and the year of the historic game between Texas Western and Kentucky. I had read about his work ethic: he took thousands of shots from all over the court, working on his game every day. He never wanted to receive special treatment and passed up the chance to earn lots of money making commercials and being a company spokesman. He just wanted to spend his time becoming the best basketball player that he could.
I, too, wanted to be an inspiration. In addition to every other reason my family had for me to attend Harvard, I wanted to be a role model. As a young man born into modest circumstances, I wanted to be a role model for kids in similar circumstances and show that the sky was the limit for them. I wanted to be a part of something very special at Harvard … to show that academic excellence could go hand in hand with athletic success. That success like that would make them champions in the game of Life. I wanted to show that there were black athletes who were concerned with things beyond athletic success.
By no means am I a charter member of Mensa, and I didn’t perform particularly well on standardized tests. What I did, however, was work assiduously at my studies. Where it might take another student thirty minutes to grasp the material, I might need four hours. I didn’t let it beat me, however; I was willing to spend as much time as it took, and knew that I would eventually master whatever material was assigned. I knew that I could work hard enough to do well academically at any school.
After agonizing over the decision, I finally settled on Harvard. The school was kind enough to ease the intense recruiting pressure
by giving me an early-admission answer. I accepted and said that I would attend.
That’s when the letter arrived that had me jumping through the roof and appealing to my family to allow me one more college visit because I’d received an envelope with “UCLA” written in deep sky blue and sun gold.
“Mom, this is from UCLA. I have to go. I have to at least visit. Pauley Pavilion. John Wooden. It’s U … C … L … A.” I said it slowly, enunciating each letter, as if she was having trouble with my spelling. “It’s the Mecca of college basketball. They dominate college basketball—they’ve won two straight National Championships and four of the last five!”
Coach Wootten was always quoting John Wooden, UCLA’s Hall of Fame coach. “It takes ten hands to make one basket,” he’d quote Coach Wooden, reminding us that all five players were important.
However, my mother was unmoved. My father, too. They sat me down. “James, you have given your word to Harvard. Your word means more than anything, son. You shook hands and said that you were coming. You cannot change your mind now. You’re going to Harvard.”
And so I told UCLA that I was headed to Harvard, and went up to Cambridge to play for Bob Harrison. Coach Harrison was an NBA All-Star and had played for the old Minneapolis Lakers, Milwaukee Hawks, St. Louis Hawks, and Syracuse Nationals. He came a year earlier from Kenyon College, a program that he had turned around, and arrived with great expectations of doing at Harvard what had happened at Princeton and Pennsylvania. My sophomore year, when we finished 11–3 in the Ivy League and had K. C. Jones, the Celtics great, as an assistant coach, we had our best season—still not as successful, though, as we had hoped. Our team was a talent-laden one, with enough potential to have contended for the Ivy League title each year. Indeed, we were expected to put Harvard basketball on the path to national prominence like those other Ivy League schools had enjoyed. We were ranked the second-best incoming freshman class in the nation in 1969 (freshmen couldn’t play varsity in those days) and had our highest preseason ranking ever the next year, when we were finally eligible to play. Instead, we were mediocre and contributed to the dismissal of Coach Harrison in 1973, as we were graduating.
One game from my college career stands out. We were playing across the Charles River, at Boston University. BU had a couple of players also from Washington, DC, so it had a hometown rivalry feel for me even though it was in Boston. That was probably my best individual game, as I was in a zone all night, scoring thirty-six points in a 104–77 win for the Crimson. At that time, I was not a great, consistent outside scorer, but I was shooting and scoring from all over the court. It was one of those nights when I could take three or four steps across midcourt and shoot … and score. I say “one of those nights,” but come to think of it, that was probably the only night of my life like that! Long jumpers from all over, nothing but the bottom of the net. And those thirty-six points came at a time when college basketball didn’t have a three-point line, either.
Of course, with my outfit that day, I had no choice but to play well. We went over to BU’s gymnasium and walked around campus for a while. The movie Super Fly had just been released that year, and I showed up on BU’s campus wearing a full-length white leather coat. However, to make the coat truly classy, it had gray faux fur around the hem and the collar. It looked like something Clyde Frazier would wear, only he would have had real fur on! And a hat to match. Did I mention that I also wore red zip-up boots and gray bell-bottom pants? If you’re going to do it, go from head to toe! It really made a statement. I shudder to think just what that statement was that I was making to the Harvard alumni who traveled across the river to see the game.
It was certainly a different take on the fur coats usually being worn at Harvard games.
My overall Harvard experience was outstanding, and our lack of success on the court was my only regret—it still pains me to think of our struggles after the promise with which we entered. We entered with a couple of high school All-Americans and several All-State players, but we never put it together. I wish I had applied the same work ethic that I did in high school and after college.
Between the times of political unrest on campus and our disappointing play on the basketball court, we simply never fulfilled our potential. However, when it’s all said and done, the ultimate responsibility lay with me. I knew from high school what it took to be successful. Players are made in the off-season. But when guys from other schools were working all summer getting better, I wasn’t. I had plenty of excuses available—the academic course load made it impossible to enjoy sustained basketball excellence at Harvard—but it doesn’t matter. It’s up to the individual.
Some of the other good memories from those times consisted of seeing my family who went to school in the Boston area. My brother John attended Curry College in Milton, Massachusetts, just south of Boston. The way my sister tells it, Mom told Alicia that she could go to any school she wanted to … in Massachusetts. She ended up attending Emerson College in Boston, which meant that by my senior year, three of us were in school in Massachusetts. For my youngest brother, Everett, however, this meant a significant number of eight-hour drives with Mom and Dad from DC to Boston to visit us and see games. Although he enjoyed being in the locker room and going to the games, Everett said that he was sick of Boston by the time we got out of school. I always enjoyed having them nearby.
It made being so far from home much more tolerable. As it was, those four years marked the only time I would ever live outside of the DC area—my home.
Although our team wasn’t as good as we would have hoped, I performed well enough to be named to the All-Ivy League team for three consecutive seasons and was drafted by the Atlanta Hawks of the NBA and the Denver Rockets of the ABA. I chose to sign with the Hawks but was cut by the team before the first regular-season game.
I couldn’t believe it. I was sure that I was going to be like Bill Bradley and play many years in the NBA, and be a role model for other kids. I was crushed and cried for days. Weeks, maybe. I went back to my parents’ home and wouldn’t come out of my room.
Finally, I quit feeling sorry for myself and got to work. I went into business and then started working a second job: broadcasting NBA games in Washington for $250 a game. Those games led to opportunities on local television and then to a chance to broadcast on national television. After fifteen years of working my way up, I was blessed to cohost the FOX NFL Sunday pregame show and today am thrilled to host the NFL Today pregame show on CBS and Inside the NFL on Showtime, and others.
My basketball talent got me into Harvard, and my hard work in learning as much as I could at Harvard prepared me for all of the fun opportunities God has opened up for me since.
My parents were right: focusing on getting the best possible education truly has provided me with the foundation to have enjoyed much more in life than I could have ever dreamed.
Thanks, Mom and Dad.
CHOKE
BY JOSEPH BRUCHAC
How did I get here? That’s a question most of us have asked ourselves at one time or another. But not about the situation in which I now find myself: standing across the ring from someone who looks twice my width despite us both having weighed in at 165 pounds on the button. Not only that, but as the referee has us touch our gloves at the center of the ring, Tipper Sodaman leans forward with a grin as friendly as a mako shark’s.
“This time, fish, I’m going to gut you.”
How nice of him to remind me—just in case I could have somehow forgotten having my face pushed down into a pile of dog poop behind the football bleachers—that we had met before. How fun to renew old friendships a year later!
I don’t answer him, of course. That would be bad form according to all of my teachers, men who’ve been in this sort of situation themselves.
Oh really? my inner voice replies.
Shut up, inner voice.
But I do whisper to myself as I go back to my corner, “It doesn’t matter if I win or lose. Just as long as I d
on’t choke.”
Oh really?
Inner voice, if you don’t cool it, I am going to kick your butt.
I’m not here to prove myself.
Then what are you here for? asks that sardonic inner voice.
There’s just enough time for me to think back an answer that I believe to be the right one.
Because.
And then to ask myself one more time that same damn question.
How the heck did I get here?
It is not a long story. It’s so short that I can relate it to you as the two of us approach each other to meet in the center of the ring.
Let me begin by making it perfectly clear that I was not a scrawny 98-pound weakling when, at the age of fifteen, I decided to devote myself to mixed martial arts. I tipped the rusty bathroom scale—which was at least as reliable as a congenital liar—at a full 104 pounds. That weight, I concluded, combined with my bony height of six feet three inches, meant that I was well equipped to become a deadly ninja-type warrior. For it is widely known that ninjas can make themselves invisible. All I had to do was turn sideways to more or less vanish. And I was hardly in need of weapons, for as my little sister, Maggie, so supportively observed, I was so bony that I could disembowel someone by just bumping into them with my hips.
If a sense of humor—or self-deprecating sarcasm—was a weapon, then my entire family would be deadly warriors.
“It is just your Slovak blood,” my mother helpfully observed as she passed by our diminutive bathroom, which, lacking an actual door, might be better described as a family showroom. True, everyone else politely averts their eyes when someone is in there. But my mother, being the mother, assumes that she is exempt from such considerations as recognizing her children’s desire for privacy. That is why Maggie, a popular and perky fourteen-year-old, never applied makeup at home but lugged her whole kit—which weighed as much as I do—with her to school in her backpack.