O'Bannon, Jr. v. National Collegiate Athletic Association et al

Filing 255

Defendant NCAA's Notice of Motion and Motion to Admit Exhibits by National Collegiate Athletic Association (Attachments: #1 Exhibit A, #2 Exhibit B, #3 Exhibit C, #4 Exhibit D, #5 Exhibit E, #6 Exhibit F, #7 Exhibit G, #8 Exhibit H, #9 Exhibit I, #10 Exhibit J, #11 Exhibit K, #12 Proposed Order)(Miller, Jeslyn) (Filed on 6/27/2014) Modified on 6/30/2014 (cpS, COURT STAFF).

EXHIBIT A

3741-1

The Big 0
My Life, My Times, My Game

Oscar Robertson

University of Nebraska Press
Lincoln and London

3741-5

© 2003 by Oscar Robertson
All rights reserved

Manufactured in the United States of America

First Nebraska paperback printing: 2010
Except where otherwise credited, photographs appearing in this book are from the
personal collection of Oscar Robertson.
Credit and additional permission information is located on page 333.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Robertson, Oscar, 1938The big 0: my life, my times, my game/ Oscar Robertson.
p. em.
Includes index.
Originally published: Emmaus, Pa.: Rodale, c2003.
ISBN 978-0-8032-3463-5 (pbk.: alk. paper)
1. Robertson, Oscar, 1938- 2. Basketball players-United States-Biography. I. Title.
GV884.R6A3 2010
796.3 23092-dc22
IBJ
2010013129

3741-6

Acknowledgments

MY

THANKS T 0

Charles Bock, Jeremy Katz, and Rodale for

ful~

filling this project. And special thanks to Zelda Spoelstra.
To my grandparents Early and Pearl Bell and all my Bellsburg, Ten~
nessee, family. To my hardworking mother and father and my brothers,
Bailey and Henry, for pr~widing an innocent, happy childhood.
To Crispus Attucks High School for those wonderful growing and
learning years-two state high school basketball championships, one un~
defeated-and for providing the catalyst for the black population of Indi~
anapolis to be proud. My greatest teachers were from Crispus Attucks High
School, who showed me the great value of education. It certainly made it
easier for me to compete in college.
The success I enjoyed came from those teammates and those I
played against. Thank you, all those players from Colton Street, Lockefield
Gardens, and "Mr. Lockefield," James "Bruiser'' Gaines.
Thank you, Coach Tom Sleet, Albert Spurlock, and especially Ray
Crowe for helping me achieve against odds that I had not even met yet.
To George Smith, my coach at the University of Cincinnati, for let~
ting me use all my talents on a national level. I am grateful to the Univer~
sity of Cincinnati for an indispensable role in my educational growth. I
vii

3741-9

viii

*

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

appreciate those talented professors who did not hinder me from achieving
academic excellence.
I owe Jimmy and Para Lee Brown deep appreciation for providing a
safe haven away from home. My heartfelt thanks to Austin and Gladys
Tillotson for their love and many kindnesses, to Art Hull for his friendship,
and to Dr. Odell Owens for his enthusiasm.
Thank you to Mrs. William C. Swatts Sr. for all your care; for pro~
clueing my best friend, Dr. William C. Swatts Jr.; and for helping to shape
my childhood.
To all those special friends . . .
To Walter Paul for his persistence in getting me to the University
of Cincinnati. Thank you for being a sensitive, supportive, and wonderful
friend. To J. W. Brown, my attorney and dear friend, who provided guid~
ance, wise professional advice, and loyalty. Jake understood people and
made our personal talks so very enjoyable. I sincerely miss his presence. To
his son, Robert, my attorney now, my profound indebtedness for writing the
Milwaukee Bucks contract and for being a steadfast supporter and lifelong
friend. And special thanks to Larry Fleisher.
Thank you, Michael O'Daniel, Ira Berkow, Leonard Lewin, and
Tom Collins--the elite of sportswriters. A special thanks to another spe~

cial writer, Milt Gross, for his wisdom and advice starting when I was a shy,
young player and continuing on to the end of my career.

3741-10

Preface

I' V E

A L WAY S T H 0 U G H T that a wonderful thing about sports is

that they give everyone a chance. A child doesn't have to be the best. He
or she doesn't have to make the team in high school or college. A child can
decide if he or she doesn't want to play, doesn't like the sport, or doesn't
want to do the work it takes to improve. But all people should be given the
opportunity to go out and compete and see what they can do in compar,
ison to others. That's one of the wonderful things about America as well.
This country promises everyone a chance. It is a promise that has notal~
ways been kept. A promise many of us had to fight for, even die for. But the
promise has always been here, a shining beacon down the road.
And when some shy, small boy somewhere gets a chance and picks
up a ball-say, a basketball-who knows what can happen, what heights
to which he might rise? If he is dedicated enough, talented enough, strong
enough, he just might do things on the basketball court that no one has
ever seen before. Things no one has done since. He might wind up
changing how the game of basketball is played.
Maybe, just maybe, if he works hard enough and is strong enough,
he could be called the best who ever lived.
And maybe this would be just the beginning.
ix

3741-11

4 *

OSCAR ROBERTSON

Papa dug his own 187,foot well on the property. He worked his own mills
and milked his own cow; he raised hogs and a kitchen garden-one he kept
in the wintertime as well as the summertime. He grew crops of com, black,
eyed peas, hay, and tobacco, using a horse and mules even when most other
people got tractors. Papa also worked twenty acres along the Cumberland
River for a white man named Lightfoot.
Papa wasn't a complex man. What he did with his life was raise the
crops that kept his family and the animals fed, make a little money, and pay
off his farm so that his family had something that belonged to them. He
read the Bible every night, sang church songs, and talked about the Bible.
I have distant memories of him leaving the house before sunrise and re,
turning after dark. He used to sit on his porch all night and rock in his fa,
vorite chair, shelling peas and singing hymns.
I wish I could provide a romantic story about how my parents met.
But the truth is, I don't know. Bellsburg, as well as the other bottomlands
outside Charlotte, Tennessee, was and remains farming country. Its people
are farm people. There aren't too many ways to meet folks out there, and,
when you get down to it, not too many folks to meet. But my paternal
grandfather, Ed, had been the minister at Mount Zion; my mother's side of
the family was numerous and spread throughout Dickson County, with the
church a center of their social lives. So if I had to guess, I'd say there's a
good chance that my parents met at church.
They were young when they met. My mom, Mazell, was less than
twenty, and Dad was somewhere around the same age. Once they were mar,
ried, they lived with Mama Pearl and Papa Bell in their small farmhouse
on State Highway 29 in northern Dickson County.
My older brothers, Bailey Robertson Jr. and Henry, were born in
that farmhouse. And on a snowy Thanksgiving Day, 1938, exactly one
hundred years to the day after Daddy Marshall's birth, I was born there too.
It was a tough birth, and I was a frail, sickly infant. According to my
mother, nobody thought I would survive. If I did somehow make it, then it
looked like my left foot would be deformed. Mom and my grandfather took
turns massaging that foot during the first weeks of my life, telling each
other that I had to pull through.

3741-15

THE CROSSROADS OF AMERICA

*

5

My childhood memories of Tennessee are of stretching fields of grass
and corn, with trees and mountains lining the distance, and a blue sky
thick with clouds. We lived what I imagine was, back then, the typical life
of a Negro family in the rural South. The Klan was active in Tennessee, but
we never saw them, and no one talked about our conditions. We were
simply happy to be around our families, see our relatives, go to church, work
in the fields, and get together on Sundays and socialize. There were cakes
and chickens and other food. My memories of those days are wonderful
ones, and it's not crazy to imagine that my family could have stayed on that
patch of land forever, passing the farmhouse and the chores down from gen~
eration to generation, with nothing changing except the names on the
birth certificates and the names on the gravestones.
But the 1930s were a brutal decade for American farmers-harsh on
whites, and you know that only deepened the hardship for blacks. As the
decade came to a close, farming throughout the South was in the middle
of something of a revolution. Tractors and harvesters were replacing mules
and manual labor, and mechanization was in the process of making black
tenant farmers and sharecroppers expendable. Though Daddy Marshall and
Papa Bell kept working their land, my father started traveling twenty,five
miles a day to Nashville to work. Over time, Dad came to understand that
no black man had a realistic chance of getting the money necessary to pur~
chase any of the expensive machinery now needed to make a go of farming.
He had a wife and three kids, and we were growing. Bailey Jr. was about
ready to finish grade school, and Henry and I were not that far behind. I
was too young to be attending classes, but rules or not, I'd started going to
school with my brothers at nearby Mount Zion, where I was taught by
Lizzie Gleaves. She had to be god-sent. I knew the alphabet, could count
to a hundred, and listened to a lot of the Bible.
No nearby white high school admitted black children, and none of
the black high schools were close enough for us to attend. My father was
intent on making sure his children had more chances at an education and
a better living than he'd had.
Dad had an aunt named Inez who lived in Indianapolis. She con~
stantly encouraged him to try his luck up north in Indiana, the self~

3741-16

14

*

OSCAR ROBERTSON

I was eleven years old when my parents divorced. It's a sensitive
topic for me even now, all these years later. But I think all the financial
pressures may have had something to do with it. Even after the divorce,
money was so tight that my father kept living in our house, sleeping in the
same room as my mom. He'd get up and leave for work before me or my
brothers were out of bed, or while we were getting ready for schooL Then
at the end of the night, he'd come home from whichever of the three jobs
he might have been working. Mom and Dad didn't talk to each other. And
they never told us about the divorce. We just kept living our lives. Me and
my brothers wouldn't find out they'd been divorced until years later, when
I was in high school.
By now, mom was working too. Although she was trained to be a
beautician, she got a part~ time job as a domestic, cooking for a white family.
I don't remember their name, but I'll never forget the street. It was the 5500
block of Broadway. Every day she arrived at the home of the rich white
family she worked for and would walk around back, to the servants' en~
trance. She even had to eat her meals on the back porch.
That Christmas, in the middle of all this hardship, she brought
home what turned out to be the best and most important present of my life.

It seems one of the boys in that family had discarded a basketball.

It was sort of scarred up. Old. Didn't have the greatest trim on it.
But then again, the tread wasn't lopsided, and the ball was regulation size.
It was my ball.

L0

CAT ED IN THE HEART of Naptown, Crispus Attucks was a

source of pride for the black community of Indianapolis. Named after the
African-American who had been shot by British troops in the 1770 Boston
Massacre, the school was a lumbering, three~story red brick building. The
foul-smelling canal was close to its front doors, and Fall Creek was just a
few blocks away. The building didn't have a regular-size fieldhouse or a regular-size track. It was overcrowded, with almost double the number of stu~
dents it had been constructed to hold. And yet it was a miraculous place.

3741-25

THE CROSSROADS OF AMERICA

*

15

The principal was black, and the majority of teachers were black Ph.D.'s
who weren't allowed to teach in white schools.
Legend has it that the week that Attucks opened, the Klan had a
parade and celebrated the separation of black and white students. That was
before my time, so I can't verify the story any more than I can dismiss it.
What I can say is that when I was a child, seeing the school's green, gold,
and white colors on a tee shirt commanded my attention. Players from Attucks dominated at the Dust Bowl and the Y.
In those days, if you were black, you were told you weren't smart.
You were bad. You were inferior. Black people needed something to look
up to, something to give us hope. This was why my brothers and I listened
to Joe Louis and Sugar Ray Robinson on the Friday night fights, and this,
I think, is why the Crispus Attucks basketball team was so important to the
black population of Indianapolis, why the African-American newspaper,

The Indianapolis Recorder, covered the team so fervently. They won games.
Well, imagine how important to our family it was when, in 1950,
Flap made it onto the varsity squad at Crispus Attucks.
Standing five feet nine, Flap was just a sophomore. He filled in as a
reserve guard on a team loaded with talent. There was Hallie Bryant, the
team's leading scorer, who would go on to become one of the first black
players to enroll in the University of Indiana. And Willie Gardner, a tall,
thin, six-foot-eight forward, would be recruited by various colleges, but because his family was dirt-poor, he ended up signing on directly with the
Harlem Globetrotters. As for Flap, after his high school career, he went to
Indiana Central College (now the University of Indianapolis) and set a
state collegiate scoring record, with 2,268 points in four years-a record
that, as I write this, still stands for small colleges. Flap would also spend a
short stretch with the Harlem Globetrotters. But that was later. In 1950 to
1951, the Crispus Attucks Tigers, coached by Ray Crowe, was the first allblack basketball team that played in the state finals of the Indiana High
School Basketball Tournament.
I vividly remember watching the regionals and the game that got
them into the state finals. The state tournament was broadcast on television,
and we watched the regional finals in our horne. It was really something-

3741-26

·16 *

OSCAR ROBERTSON

that game was the first Crispus Attucks basketball game I ever watched, as
well as the first sporting event I ever saw on television. Even if I didn't

un~

derstand that it was the state high school tournament, I knew something im,
portant was happening.
With four and a half minutes to play in the 1951 regional finals, the
Crispus Attucks Tigers trailed the all,white Anderson Indians by ten
points. John "Noon" Davis, the Tigers' fine forward, was called for his fifth
and eliminating foul. My mother's fist curled around a napkin as she
watched a five~foot~nine sophomore checking into the game to replace
Davis. Bailey "Flap" Robertson.
A smattering of polite applause came from the sea of black faces
stuffed behind the Attucks bench. There were shouts of encouragement
from the black fans way up in the comer of the back bleachers, where all
the police were on watch, ready to prevent any problems.
Coach Ray Crowe had left Flap's name off the roster during the sec,
tional tournament for reasons he never fully explained. So this was Flap's
first action in the playoffs. He later told me and Henry that when he got a
chance to play, he wanted to make sure the coach would remember him.
And he did. The first time Flap touched the ball, he shot. Fifteen,foot
jumper. Nothing but net. Anderson's lead went down to eight.

The Indianapolis Recorder's Jim Cummings would report that this
shot "rekindled a spark of hope in Attucks hearts. If sophomore Bailey
Robertson-who didn't even play in the sectional games--could score so
easily, so can we."
Two quick baskets by Willie Gardner. A free throw by Bob JewelL
Within ninety seconds, the lead had been cut to three.
Fifteen thousand fans were going wild in the Buder Fieldhouse. The
Attucks supporters were stomping their feet and shouting. Across the floor,
the Anderson fans were just as crazy.
Hallie Bryant hit a turnaround jumper to cut the lead to 74-72.
Now the Attucks corner broke into their legendary "Crazy Song."

Oh, Anderson is rough
And Anderson is tough

3741-27

20

*

OSCAR ROBERTSON

The neighborhood echoed with the hard reverberations of basketballs get~
ting pounded into the dirt, clay, and asphalt, and a film of dust was ever
present, wafting through Naptown's shanties and apartment complexes.
There might be fifty or sixty guys on the side of the court-adults, high
school cats, you name it-all of them sitting and waiting for their turn to
run. If your team lost, you weren't going to play anymore that day, so
players had to put out, really compete. There wasn't spare time to look
around, pose, and see who was watching.
Since I was too young to run with the best players, I had to show up
early if I wanted to play and get on a team when games were just forming,
before the big guns had taken over the courts. Lots of times I ended up off
·-+he side,

on my own, working on something basic: free throws, crossover

)les, or dribbling with my weaker left hand. The basics were about all
uld achieve back then, but I always liked counting down the seconds
an imaginary game clock. Then, with the score tied and time running
(1

I'd take the same shot Flap took, for all the money.
Whether it was at the Dust Bowl, the Senate Avenue Y, or during

;:,lice Athletic League games a bit later, I took any chance I got to get in
game with older players, like Hallie Bryant, Willie Gardner, Henry, and
)f course, Flap. The younger group of guys I ran around with and I were al~
ways trying to get in those playground games, but there was a pecking order,
and the older guys wouldn't let us on the court. In order to play against the
older guys, you had to have the size and strength necessary to win your way
through the day. Eventually, though, we became the dominant team. The
tough guys.
Basketball players-even good ones-don't become smart all at
once; it takes years and years of playing the game. In my case being a smart
player and a good player were wrapped up in one another. Getting a chance
meant you had to make the most of it. Nobody out there was running a
charity. If I wanted to stay on the court, I had to be good enough to keep
myself on it. Guys were bigger and older and stronger than me, and they
tried to overpower me, pushing and holding me, playing rough. Guys would
try and set up down low against me all the time, getting position near the
basket. Then, once they had the ball, they'd back me in, muscling their way

3741-31

26

*

OSCAR

ROBERTSON

I think that Principal Lane and the other school administrators be~
lieved in using sports as a corollary to their concept of black education and
dignity. Their idea was to grow smart, polite, educated citizens, while also
showing the white community that these citizens were good, decent young
men who could compete on athletic fields without any problem. Along
these lines, Principal Lane and the other administrators believed that At~
tucks's sports teams were best used to help build relationships with the
white community. So basketball coach Fitzhugh Lyons selected his players
more for their manners than their athleticism. Then he taught them polite
basketball. "Keep your feet on the floor when you shoot and pass," he told
them. "Don't get too close to your man on defense." Lyons even gave
speeches before games about how losing now might give way to winning in
the long run. Still, seeing how the state high school athletic association
wouldn't admit black schools to its membership, the mandates of politesse
did not help much. The school didn't have a regulation gymnasium, or
even a decent track or football field. All basketball games were played on
the road, very few of them against white competition except for the occa~
sional small rural school or Catholic academy (the Klan had also made sure
to

ban Catholics).
Finally, in 1942, the wartime effort began a shift in the state's po~

litical mood. Some city schools, like Howe High, started winking at the
Klan's zoning laws and accepted black students. Soon after, a meeting of
the Council of the Indiana High School Athletic Association allowed for
white schools to play black schools and share revenues from games. Attucks
may not have had a gym, but the Tigers started playing a few home games
nonetheless-at Tech High School, a cross~town integrated school that
would become our rival, and at Butler University.
Ray Crowe was hired as an assistant basketball coach in 1948. The
eldest of ten children, Ray had a younger brother, George, who had played
pro baseball on the New York Renaissance with Jackie Robinson. Eventu~
ally, George would go on to a ten~year career with the Braves, Reds, and
Cardinals, and was involved in a minor scandal when the baseball com~
missioner ordered that Stan Musial start the all~star game ahead of him. As
an assistant, Ray Crowe was influenced by Lyons's approach of capitulating

3741-37

CHAPTER FOUR

"Talk Is Cheap"

1955-1956

A LT H 0 U G H

I

A M N 0 T W R I T I N G this book to relate every

injustice I've suffered, it's simply impossible to tell my story without talking
about race. As much as I am an American, I am a black American. And to
tell you about growing up in the Jim Crow South, and a segregated, Klan~
infested Midwest, I must acknowledge the influence of race. Similarly, it's
impossible to discuss my experiences with basketball without mentioning
race, black and white. Otherwise, you might as well think about America's
history during the second half of the twentieth century without acknowl,
edging the civil rights movement. Or consider the Civil War without men,
tioning slavery. The subjects are all intertwined.

It wasn't until Attucks won our initial state title in my junior year
that I had my first meal in a restaurant. I was seventeen years old, and be,
fore that, I hadn't so much as set foot in downtown Indianapolis, much less
55

3741-66

56

*

OSCAR

ROBERTSON

eaten there, except to catch the bus to Tennessee. Being a champion basketball player opened the restaurants' doors to me. Maybe there were some
white high school basketball champs who had never been in a restaurant
until they won it all, rural kids out on a farm or whatever. But they at least
would have' been welcome.
That first trip downtown filled me with a strange mixture of excitement and disappointment. I still felt the fresh glow of the win, an enormous
pride in our achievement, a sense of giddy lightness inside. At the same
time, it was a shadowed happiness, weighed down. When Ray Crowe shepherded our spiffed-up Attucks Tigers into a restaurant called La Fendricks,
my smile had long faded. I don't remember being overly impressed by the
place. I can't remember what I ate. But I do remember the camaraderie, the
novelty, and the sense of a hushed excitement. We were on our best behavior, and we were treated like champions.
Besides the trip downtown and the restaurant meal, there were many
other firsts as a result of being the state champs. Different civic organizations
around the city invited the team to special ceremonies in order to celebrate
our victory. The mayor called us "Indianapolis's Crispus Attucks" in public,
whatever he might have said privately. People's willingness to honor us
showed me that winning might not completely eclipse race, but it did rebalance the equation some. Our athleticism had always elevated our status
in our own neighborhood, but now we had a chance to experience what it
felt like to be welcomed and treated special outside our home turf.
While I was thrilled to be state champ, and while many of the experiences that came with victory were wonderful, I wasn't about to get
complacent. I kept visiting the Dust Bowl and the Y, working on my shots,
improving any weaknesses I could discover, doing what I had always done.
I wasn't a little kid practicing with a worn-out basketball anymore. Now I
was on the threshold of adulthood, and I had experienced what it felt like
to win, both the sweet and the bitter. And if winning titles carried a tinge
of disappointment, I sure didn't want to come close to losing.
My senior year, I was the sole returning senior player. But up from
the eighth- and ninth-grade teams came Sam Milton, Bill Brown, and
James Enoch, as well as a player I called "my defense," Al Maxey. I moved

3741-67

64

*

OSCAR ROBERTSON

hundred schools approached him. Indiana was one of the three or four fi,
nalists. In his first autobiography, Wilt, Chamberlain said that when he was
making his decision, rumors reached him that McCracken wasn't all that
fond of blacks. Chamberlain went on to write that although Indiana re,
cruiters later told him they would double whatever any other school offered
to pay him, he signed with Forrest ''Phog" Allen and Kansas. McCracken's
version of events was different. He would tell at least one reporter that
Chamberlain had been offered to him for five thousand dollars, up front.
In McCracken's version of the story, he refused to pay Wilt, and lost him
for that reason. "We thought we had Wilt. He announced he was coming
here. Phog Allen stole him away from us."
Well, I was the most hyped recruit since Chamberlain. Maybe that
made McCracken distrustful of me.
When track season ended, l became free of varsity obligations and
could legally make home visits to universities. The first place I wanted to
go was Bloomington. One cloudless spring day, Coach Crowe drove me
there. I got to McCracken's office expecting a certain warmth; after all,
they were one of the schools sending me information and saying they
wanted me to play for their team, and I was the state's Mr. Basketball.
McCracken's secretary said he was busy. Could I please have a seat
and wait?
Well, after I sat there for thirty minutes or so, McCracken's door fi,
nally opened. He invited me into his office, and I sat down. He was quiet for
a moment, looking at me, sizing me up. Finally he said: "I hope you're not the
kind of kid who wants money to go to school." I did not know that kids got
money to play at schools. I grew up religious and was taught to do the right
and honest thing. I didn't want money to go to college, I just wanted to go.
I didn't answer him and just walked out of his office, back to the car,
seriously insulted.
If that man had said, "Oscar, we would like you to come to Indiana
and play for us," I would have taken a pen from my own pocket and signed
with him right there. Instead I came away thinking that I wouldn't play for
Indiana University if it were the last place on earth.
"I got to leave," I told Ray.

3741-75

70

*

OSCAR ROBERTSON

to know that you can take them for their word. And that promise for the
future seemed to offer me something that no one else had: respect for me
beyond my basketball abilities and a real concern for what was best for me
as a person regardless of what I could do for them.
I hadn't actually investigated the university itself. Cincinnati was
two hours or so south of Indianapolis on Highway 52. I knew the city was
about the same size as Indianapolis and had about the same demographics.
The Bearcats had an all~white team and a white coaching staff, and they
weren't exactly basketball legends, so I hadn't placed them high on my list.
At the same time, my choices were really narrowing. If I wanted to stay
close to home, there weren't too many choices. These people seemed to be
honest and sincere. Plus, there was the matter of the coach, George Smith.
George had grown up on an Ohio farm and had a style that put
people at ease. Recruiting was one of the things he was good at. He was a
charmer, but in an easygoing way that didn't make you feel like you were
being charmed. When we sat down for our first interview together, I was
prepared. He asked me the question that everyone asks, "What do you want
out of college ?u I answered him promptly: "One, naturally I want a good
education. Two, I want the opportunity to play major,league basketball for
exposure in the large cities. Three, I want no black problem. Four, I want
to be close to my family and friends in Indianapolis. Five, I want to play in
Madison Square Garden. They say that's the mecca of basketball, and that's
where I want to play."
I wasn't trying to make a good impression. I was just answering hon,
estly and being myself. I had thought plenty about what I wanted out of
college, and I knew that none of it was negotiable. My friends always said,
even way back then, that I was driven. A friend once told me, "At seven,
teen you knew exactly what you wanted by twenty,seven. At twenty~seven,
you were getting right on target for thirty,seven." I might not have phrased
it that way, but I couldn't disagree.
Coach Smith seemed impressed by the clarity of my list and the lack
of hesitation I showed before giving it to him. He smiled at me, nodded,
maybe gave a little laugh.
My trip had other memorable parts. Ted Berry, who later became

3741-81

"TALK

Is

CHEAP"

* 71

Cincinnati's first black mayor, had a reception for me. I will never forget
how nice he was to me. On another recruiting visit, Ross Hastie, a wealthy
university supporter, led a private tour around his home for me and a team~
mate, Al Maxey. The house had a pool and tennis and basketball courts. As
they showed me around, I kept shooting Al looks, Can you believe this? I
keenly felt how little I knew about finance or culture or international rela~
tions. I couldn't add much to any conversations, so I stayed quiet.
At some point, while I was sitting by the pool, Ross Hastie's young
son, who must have been six or seven years old, turned to me and said,
"Gee, you sure are black."
Well, it got quiet. Really quiet.
I smiled at him and calmly explained that my ancestors came from
another continent. It was very hot there, and dark skin was the norm. That
answer was probably more words than I'd said all day, and after it came out
of my mouth, it felt like the whole room exhaled.
On June 8, 1956, I wore my cap and gown along with 170 other se,
niors graduating from Crispus Attucks. I was sixteenth in my class, which
put me in the ninety,first percentile, and a member of the National Honor
Society. The next day, I announced my intention to enter the University
of Cincinnati.

3741-82

CHAPTER FIVE

Collegiate Life

1956-1958

N 0 WAD A Y S ,

S 0 M E GUYS jump straight from high school into

the NBA. The time when Moses Malone, Bill Willoughby, and Darryl
Dawkins defied convention and logic is long past. The individual and co},
lective success of Kevin Garnett, Kobe Bryant, and Tracy McGrady burst
open the floodgates. When Kwame Brown went straight from his high
school graduation to the number one pick in the draft, it solidified the
trend, turned what was once a rarity into a rite of passage. This past year,
anyone with cable television and even a moderate interest in sports
watched LeBron James become a SportsCenter celebrity, with special seg,
ments about the Hummer his mom got him and the replica jerseys that the
boy was given, with announcers all the while lecturing and pontificating
about exploitation, even as their network was broadcasting his games.
Coming from the kind of poverty I did, I certainly can understand
72

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someone making the leap right into the professional ranks, especially
when there are millions of dollars involved. Hell, if someone had offered
me a Jackie Robinson jersey when I was in high school, rules or not, I
would have taken it.
Having said this, I also know that there's a difference between being
physically capable of doing something and being mature enough to under~
stand everything that comes with what you are doing. The NBA draft has
become something of a futures market, with teams taking young, raw
players and relying on the idea that they will develop gradually, blossoming
into stars three or four years down the line. Kids are being put in a

situa~

tion and a life they aren't prepared for. Part of playing basketball is having
the game' experience, maturity, and smarts to know what to do. But every
year, there are more guys running up and down NBA courts with no idea
how to play or handle themselves professionally. On the one hand, good
for them; they made it into the big time. But the flip side is, once you get
enough guys on the court who don't know how to play or conduct them~
selves, who throw tantrums and scream at their coaches and get into
trouble and are generally too young and self~centered to know what they're
doing, the end result is that quality of the game gets diluted. The state of
professional basketball is adversely affected.
But my experience wasn't a textbook example on the way things
should be either. In 1956, when I enrolled in the University of Cincinnati's
School of Business Administration, freshmen weren't eligible to play varsity basketball in college. Schools had freshman teams. The idea was to give
incoming student~athletes a year to adjust to college life, at the same time
allowing them to assimilate gradually into their athletic program, mature
physically, and get ready for varsity competition. That was the idea,
anyway.
If you had told me then that I'd spend the great majority of my adult
life living in Cincinnati, I probably would have laughed at you. Yet I have
spent forty-three of the past forty-seven years living here. Shortly after I
graduated from Crispus Attucks, I packed up what few shirts I had, two
pairs of pants, my sneakers, and moved to Cincinnati for the summer.
Walter Paul helped set me up at the Cincinnati YMCA and got me a job

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A week later I was named the college player of the year for the third
straight season, the only player to be so honored at that time. In the three
years I played on Cincinnati's varsity team, the Bearcats had a combined
record of 79-9. I scored fifty or more points five times in my collegiate ca~
reer and accumulated at least forty in twenty~three games: twenty~seven
percent of the varsity contests I'd played. After my senior season, my jersey
and number, twelve, were raised into the rafters, retired, never to be worn
again. More importantly, now players wanted to come to Cincinnati. Paul
Hogue, our sophomore center from Knoxville, Tennessee, said that part of
the reason he came to Cincinnati was to play with me. Tom Thacker,
George Wilson, and others felt the same way.
I'd come to Cincinnati as the only black player on the basketball
team; the year after I left, they had three black players in the starting
lineup; the year after that, four. And while some people m:1y h:1ve second~
guessed me for constantly passing the ball against California, I think that
the experience Paul Hogue, Bob Wiesenhahn, and Carl Bouldin gained
from that game helped them during the following two seasons when they
were led by a new coach. Cincinnati finally did win national

champi~

onships, without me on the floor, and won them back~to~back.
I graduated in June 1960, along with the rest of my class. Although
I made the dean's list a few times,· I didn't· quite get to graduate with
honors. Even though I'd had some difficult times at the University of
Cincinnati, I also received a good education. My conduct in the classroom
and performance on the basketball court helped t9 wear down some of the
resistance to black students. While a student at the University of Cincin~
nati, I met people who would remain friends and advisors throughout my
adult life.
·Perhaps my experiences would have been different if I had been a
white athlete. Maybe people would have treated me better or there would
have been fewer controversies. But when I was just a freshman, sitting in
Austin Tillotson's house while he told me that black people did not come
to the University of Cincinnati for a reason, I decided that I was glad they
chose me, because I could handle that responsibility. And I know that
whatever problems I had during my four years there, I did handle myself

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that real war was going to break out on the floor, they called all kinds of
fouls: even the slightest contact drew a whistle. We still were in control
and led by eighteen at halftime. But foul trouble hurt us in the second half,
and Russia drew to within ten.
Coach Newell called time~out. In the huddle he told us to press,
pick them up full court, and get right into them.
Well, we went out there again and just destroyed them. Their guards
simply couldn't handle our quickness, and we jumped and trapped them
and caused one turnover after another, outscoring them 25-1 in what I am
proud to call one of the greatest displays of pressure defense of all time.
The final score was 81-5 7. Two days later we destroyed Brazil in the
gold medal game. Jerry West and I stood on the top rung of that podium
representing our team and our nation. Jerry was so nervous that he felt his
pants shaking. I remember standing there and looking out into the crowd,
searching for my wife. During the game I hadn't thought about anything
but winning, and afterwards I was happy because we did. But when the first
notes of the "Star~Spangled Banner" played over the loudspeaker, I really
felt it. I remember wishing that some of the guys I'd played ball with in high
school could have been up there, all the people that pushed me, who I
played against, who helped me get to this point. I remember thinking about
all the sacrifices I'd made and all the hell I'd been through. And now I was
on the podium, representing my country, accepting an Olympic gold medal.
It was overwhelming.

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