Killer crossover, p.6
Killer Crossover, page 6
One guy said, “What the hell is this? You know there’s a rule, don’t bring your girl to hoop!” I told him to chill, that I was trying to make a good impression. And that he couldn’t guard me anyway! But he wouldn’t stop. Yolanda couldn’t understand it, the territorial feelings of the other guys. “This is unbelievable!” she said. But I told her, “Yeah, this is how it is. This is what I do. I said I play ball all day!” After a few hours, she got bored and realized I didn’t have time to chat. So, during a break, I walked her back to the bus stop and she went home. I’d felt bad that she’d been sitting all alone, but I had to keep my workout going.
44 She made it home and wasn’t upset with me. The situation proved, however, that it was hard to mix a relationship with what I had to do to keep getting better. So, later, when I went to UTEP and she transferred into the school, I wasn’t sure how it was going to work out. It was nice of the university to help us out and accept her enrollment out of community college along with mine. And I was hopeful, but it was rocky. When you don’t grow up with a blueprint for a romantic relationship, it can be hard to find your way on your own. We tried to make it work despite my coaches warning me it would be difficult.
* * *
Heading into college, I knew there was a lot I had to do to improve my game, but I believed in myself that I could do it. The hardest part was clearing my head. The city of El Paso is one of the best-kept secrets in the entire US. It’s a slow-moving place right on the border of Texas and Juarez, Mexico, and as a result it has a lot of history. You can hike up the Franklin Mountains and learn about the original settlers in the region. You can feel culture in the air. It was a big change from Chicago. The people in El Paso are genuine and kind and welcomed me with open arms. Living in that city gave me a chance to think about my future and what I wanted for my life.
Thank God for UTEP. To this day, I still have friends in El Paso, and I always enjoy going back there to visit and eat at spots like Luby’s with its Texas-sized dinner entrees or Grandy’s with its breakfast menu. UTEP, which was founded in 1913, was originally a mining college where students learned how to 45find and identify metals. The school has the motto, “Knowledge and Refinement.” And that was exactly my strategy when I arrived. I wanted to learn more and get better at everything. But life doesn’t always go as planned. What’s the saying, again? Man plans, God laughs. I learned that well at the university.
* * *
Coach Don Haskins made history in basketball by the time he was thirty-six years old. A former player at Oklahoma A&M, he got the job at UTEP in 1961 and held it until 1999. And in 1966, during an era in which many thought Blacks were inferior as people and athletes, he beat the all-white University of Kentucky team with his all-Black starting lineup (UTEP was then known as Texas Western) to win the NCAA championship. That went a long way to throw cold water on racial segregation in college hoops. Haskins, who served as an assistant during the 1972 Munich Summer Olympics, also recruited Tiny Archibald, who was an assistant at UTEP when I attended.
Haskins was a mentor to future NBA coach Tim Floyd, who is now the head man at UTEP. His career casts a long shadow. When I showed up on campus, people warned me about him. Don’t be scared, they said, but he looks just like a bear. That was his nickname, “The Bear.” I was like, How can a man look like a bear? But when I was first introduced to him, I thought to myself, Damn, this dude looks EXACTLY like a bear! It was uncanny. During practices he would resemble a snarling grizzly. But he was great to me. I didn’t get a chance to really know him until I left school. He kept his kinder, fatherly side separate from his rigid coaching side.
46 Coach Haskins was always looking out for us, making sure we made class every day. A future Hall of Famer, he was tough. He made sure you were paying attention in practice, reminding you why you were there in the first place. He also wanted all his players to graduate. He was very detail-oriented and taught me that being early was on time and on time was late. He encouraged us to ask questions, which I really appreciated. Plus, coming in as a freshman, I knew I had to learn the ropes and pay my dues. I came off the bench my first season. Of course, I thought I was ready for college competition, but there were other guys there with more experience.
Haskins was loyal to his upperclassmen—especially the ones who had goals to play at the next level. He knew they’d earned their status. At the same time, he didn’t give them free passes. Coach Haskins wasn’t afraid to single people out in practice— that’s where he did most of his talking—or should I say yelling. There were many occasions where people left the gym mad or even in tears, including myself once or twice. But you learned from that. From his … well … “constructive criticism.” There was always a message in his words, no matter how loudly he delivered them. Over my UTEP career, I’d guess that I left a practice heated four or five times.
Even so, I never quit. Though Coach would kill you in front of everybody and totally embarrass you, at the end he’d come over to you and give you some praise, a “Good job, kid.” Whenever he yelled, I would try to listen to the message, not the delivery. I didn’t pay attention to the screaming as much as the idea within it. I knew it was all meant to make me a better person and basketball player, and that’s what I was at UTEP to do. Coach needed to be comfortable with me in the game, and I needed to 47be comfortable with myself. Iron sharpens iron. Greatness isn’t always smooth or pretty.
* * *
As a freshman, I knew it wasn’t yet my turn to dominate. For now, I had to play my role. When I got in the game, my responsibility was to control the tempo and pick up my man on defense, to move my feet and play smart in a limited role. I wasn’t looking to score—that wasn’t what the team needed. If the other team pressed, it was my job to dribble through them, to advance the ball. I remember one game in particular, when Georgetown visited us. Coached by big John Thompson, they had five future NBA players on the roster, including Reggie Williams, David Wingate, and Charles Smith. They were loaded and ranked high that season.
But they were in for a surprise when they came to see us on December 27 at the aptly named Don Haskins Center. I remember zig-zagging through their defense. And while I didn’t look to shoot my jumper often, I was able to set up my teammates. We gave the undefeated Hoyas their first loss of the year, 78–64. That was big for us.
My freshman year, I played about 15 minutes per game, scoring 4.1 points with just under a steal and two assists per game. I wasn’t mad about coming off the bench. I was patient. Coach only had five losing seasons in his career—he knew what he was doing.
By the end of the season, we were 27–5 after beating Wyoming in the WAC championship. We landed a No. 10 seed in the NCAA’s West Regional in Ogden, Utah. We matched up against No. 7 Bradley, which boasted future NBA pro Hersey Hawkins, 48who averaged 18.7 points per game that year. But we fell to the Braves, 83–65. Though I only played 10 minutes (notching two assists), it was good just to make the tourney. When we went back to campus, it was time to get back to work in class and on the court. Though I hadn’t quite decided yet, I was working toward becoming a Criminal Justice major. I wanted to be a probation officer and help people.
On the court, between classes, I worked on my jumper. I’d hardly been able to use it during my freshman season, instead concentrating on layups and floaters. But I wanted to prove to Coach that my shot was reliable and could be a weapon for us next year. So I worked with Billy Barron, who ran the intramural leagues on campus. He said he could help me with my shot. “You need to shoot 500 jumpers per day,” he said. “You’re fine shooting off the dribble but, here in college, teams play a lot of zone. So you have to get your catch-and-shoot game up.” He was right, and I agreed to take his help. I knew I needed all the pointers I could get, especially since I’d just fundamentally changed my shooting style. I needed reps and coaching to keep improving and be my most effective on the court.
We met five days a week and he brought two basketballs. “It’s going to be tough for me until you get used to it,” he said. “I’m going to be chasing your rebounds all over the gym! But it will be worth it.” Bill had worked with a number of other UTEP players this way over the years, including guards Luster Goodwin and Jeep Jackson. “The first week you’re going to be shooting bricks,” he said. “But after the first two or three days, you’ll get accustomed to it.” He had me shoot 25 shots in a row, always moving in between. Run to one spot, catch and shoot. Rebound. Run to the next, catch and shoot. Rebound.
49 Sometimes my misses would roll to the other side of the gym or hit nothing but the backboard. But I learned how to further hone my shot and have a consistent motion every time, whether I was on the move or in place. I concentrated on repetition. I shot in blocks of 25, taking a total of 500 each day. When my legs began to fade, my arms took over. When my arms went out, I’d have to compensate with both legs and arms. Slowly, I started to perfect it. When the school year ended in late May, I’d worked with Bill for two months straight and made real progress. I was sinking 300–325 per 500 rack. When I went home to play in summer leagues, I was lights out.
* * *
Sophomore year, I was in the starting backcourt with senior Jeep Jackson. As an underclassman, my job was still to set up the juniors and seniors on the team. But, at the same time, I had the freedom to look for my own shot. As a result, my scoring jumped from four points per game as a freshman to ten as a sophomore. My minutes doubled and my assists went up from two to about five per game. I also averaged 2.2 steals per game, compared to just under one the previous season. That’s how I got most of my offense, off steals—picking pockets or jumping in passing lanes and quickly going the other way.
Defense leads to offense. That was my mindset. It was the kind of mentality that helped me gain more national recognition. I even won the MVP Awards for the 1987 Sun Bowl Invitational Tournament. In practice, I showed Coach that I’d worked on my jumper and, slowly, he gave me more rope during games. The other development that year was the new freshman 50that Coach Haskins brought in to the team, future NBA All-Star Antonio Davis, a big power forward who could rebound and score with anyone in the country. When he arrived, you could tell he was inexperienced, but had a lot of potential. He was like a baby deer about to turn into a buck.
In the pros, Antonio was an important part of the Indiana Pacers, but with us, he was still a youngin. Over the course of the season, he and I worked to develop chemistry. A point guard needs a good big man, and the 6-foot-9 forward was just that. While he only got about nine minutes per game as a freshman, I was excited about what the future held.
That year, I helped lead UTEP to a 25–7 record, finishing with an eight-game winning streak before losing in the conference tournament to Wyoming. Even so, we made the NCAA tournament. A No. 7 seed, we matched up against No. 10 Arizona in the first round … except the game was played in Tucson. On their campus.
That Arizona team was stacked. It boasted future pros Sean Elliott (a 20-point scorer in college), Tom Tolbert, Anthony Cook, and Jud Buechler, along with my Chicago pal and future MLB All-Star, Kenny Lofton. The NCAA knew it was a conflict of interest, and it ended up being the last time a team played a home game in the tourney like that.
But that didn’t help us then. Arizona had endured injuries to Elliott and other players that season and, despite their lower seed, were favored to win. But they didn’t know UTEP had come to play! Nobody knew Coach Haskins was getting us ready for war.
In the locker room, Coach said no one should play as hard as we play. We’d put in so much time and hard work beating each other up, he said, that now it was time to go out there and beat 51them up on their home floor. “Go out there and work HARDER than them,” he said. “With more ENERGY than them! If you let them out-energy you or outdo your effort, you’re hurting YOURSELVES!” He was right. As we were warming up before the game, we knew Arizona had more pressure on them than we did. Every time we went down and got a stop or came back on offense to score, we could feel their shoulders getting heavier.
The game was nip-and-tuck. We were up four, then they went up. But by the end of the second half, you could tell they were exhausted. The pressure had gotten to them. At the end of regulation, our guard Chris Blocker made a shot, but the refs said his toe was on the line and what we thought was a three turned out to be a two, which sent the game to overtime tied at 79. Seeing them gassed, we put things into another gear and completely outplayed them in the extra period, outscoring them 19–12 and taking the victory, 98–91. Nobody had given us a chance— Arizona was thought to make their own run in the tournament. But then UTEP came along. I notched six assists, and it was one of the highlights of my college career.
In the next round, however, we weren’t so lucky. We went up against the No. 2 University of Iowa, led by B. J. Armstrong and other pros like Kevin Gamble and Brad Lohaus. It was a close one, but we lost in the end, 84–82. I had 11 points and six more assists, but it just wasn’t enough. While we’d made it further than the year prior, and we’d lost to an Iowa team with seven future pros that later made the Elite Eight, the loss still stung. For the future, we had two future pros and one was Davis, who barely played as a freshman. Still, there’s always next season! So I went back to campus and continued to work on my game. One of the ways I did that was hooping with the locals around the city.
52 In El Paso, there are a lot of Mexican people since the city is on the border with our southern neighbor. And I used to play tons of pickup games in the university’s intramural gym with them. That gym would get so sweltering hot. You’d get so sweaty you had to sit in the shade before you got in the car. The guys would come in after work and just play. Their average height was maybe six-feet, so guys like the rebounding machine Antonio Davis wouldn’t have gotten anything out of a game like that, but it helped me. Those guys challenged my ball handling skills. It was a fun battle. They brought the best out of me every time.
* * *
Sadly, that same year, our UTEP team experienced tragedy. On May 2, 1987, weeks after the NCAA tournament, our guard Jeep Jackson died of cardiac arrest. He was just twenty-three years old. And as far as we knew, Jeep didn’t have any history of heart trouble. We were shocked—especially Coach Haskins. After playing a few minutes in an exhibition game, Jeep collapsed in the gym while sitting on the bench, passing out mid-conversation with Kyle Stewart. When the ambulance arrived, he was already dead. The California-born Jackson was a criminal justice major and had just been named to the All-Western Athletic Conference first team. It was a tragedy for us all.
Adding to the hard times, Yolanda and I were splitting up, too. That connection we had, it was no longer smoldering. Instead, it was fading. I still loved her, but I knew I needed to spread my wings on my own. It wasn’t that I wanted to chase after girls, but I had to know what it was like to be an independent person in El Paso. When she’d enrolled at UTEP as a student with me my 53first year, leaving Olive-Henry, my coaches had warned me that having a steady girlfriend was going to wear thin. They weren’t being cruel, it was just that being a student-athlete was two full-time jobs. I had my dorm and she had an apartment, but we were often together. I had to always think about her, if she was okay, what she was doing at home, if she was occupied. It was too much for me. They warned it would be a distraction—and it was.
I couldn’t keep my mind on what I needed to do. If I wanted to make it to the next level, I had to focus on myself. It hurt to tell her this, and I know it hurt her to hear it. It hurt to see her leave, but it had to happen. If it was meant to be, I told myself, we would reconnect. It’s hard to fall in love with your high school sweetheart. There is so much life to live. But when Yolanda went back to Chicago, I was able to have more time to reflect on the work at hand and building a bond with my teammates, while freeing up my mind and keeping my eyes looking straight ahead. When I came back to the city to visit in the summers, we still hung out. We’d still talk on the phone some nights—we kept lines of communication open. We’d see movies and eat dinner together. We remained friends and even acted a little closer than that at times, but she understood that I had to concentrate on my career at UTEP. After the summer, I prepared for my junior season. This was going to be my biggest test to date. I was no longer an up-and-comer. I had to be a team leader. It was going to be a challenge—one I was more than ready to attack head-on.
After my sophomore year, I faced a big decision. I’d just come off a season starting in 30 of our 31 games, averaging 10 points, 4.8 assists and 2.2 steals. But there was a problem: my knee was killing me. Growing up in Chicago, I played on too much 54concrete. The result was that, in the summer after my sophomore year, I found out I had a cyst on my right knee. The thing hurt so badly that I knew I needed surgery. The question was when to get it? I thought about waiting to go under the knife the summer after my junior campaign, but I just couldn’t take the pain. My knee felt like it was on fire.
My doctor, knowing I was in pain, asked if I could wait, as there may be new technology in the works that could help. But, in the end, it was just too much, and I elected for surgery. Months after I got the procedure, he said that if I had been able to hold off, I could have had arthroscopic surgery, which would have meant he wouldn’t have had to remove any cartilage—but my body was telling me that I needed to act immediately, so it is what it is. Today, though, I still walk with a bit of a limp. Not because I’m hurting, but just because that’s how my leg moves now. I knew it’d be something I would have to deal with for the rest of my life. But, luckily, when I made the pros, I was able to find medicine that has helped me ever since.
