Earl the Pearl

by Earl Monroe

  After I thought about it I came to the conclusion that he was just really trying to play games with my mind—get inside my head, you know—and maybe, because I was a rookie playing against an experienced player, make me lose my focus. I never thought it was racial, because Jerry wasn’t that type of guy. But he was a competitor to the bone, and he would use any trick he could to get his opponent off his game.

  Jerry West was one of the quickest players I ever played against—“quick as a hiccup,” to borrow a phrase from Sonny Hill—and he was all that and more. Jerry could stop on a dime and give you 10 cents change back, and man could he shoot the ball! He was just a fabulously quick, deadly jump shooter. He always went to the left when he shot his jumper, but he preferred to drive to the basket from the right side so he could shoot with his right hand. On top of that, Jerry was a great clutch scorer, one of the best of all time when the game was on the line.

  I have always believed that in order to be a great clutch shooter you have to do it all the time and not be afraid to take that shot in order to make it. Because if you just do it now and then, you’re not going to be a clutch player. You have to be accustomed to taking that shot. So Jerry was that kind of guy who was always ready to take it. He could dribble, get to his spot, pull up, take the shot, and make it. He did it over and over again. He was special in that way. And Jerry could jump, too, and take you to the basket and score. No doubt about it, he was something, and a very nice guy, too. So I felt it was a pleasure and a privilege for me to compete against him anytime, but especially that time when I scored all those points on him (and Archie Clark and Gail Goodrich, who also tried to defend me that night), because that game marked a turning point in my NBA career.

  After that 56-point game against the Lakers, a sportswriter in Baltimore picked up on Luix Overbea’s “Earl’s pearls” quote—what they had already been calling me in Winston-Salem and in that game in Akron, Ohio, when they were calling me “Earl the Pearl”—and started using the nickname in his columns. It quickly spread to the national media and stuck in a way that “Black Magic” and “Black Jesus” hadn’t, except in the black community. I guess those nicknames were too race specific to be used in the national media. “Earl the Pearl” turned out to be perfect because it was race neutral.

  Before I learned Oscar’s back-them-down move, my game had relied mostly on my shooting accuracy on long jump shots and my skill employing the spin move to leave defenders nailed to the floor, watching me slash to the basket for crowd-pleasing layups. But I was slowly beginning to adapt my game to fit into my evolving sense of how I could be more effective playing in the NBA. My game was always one of process, of evolving to the changing dictates of the modern game, and it would be no different going into the future.

  I remember a game right before the All-Star game break (which I wasn’t selected to play in, though I thought I should have been), when Kevin Loughery ran up to me up during a close game where I had been passing up my shots and dishing the ball to teammates and said, “Come on, Earl, take over the game. Take over the fucking game!”

  I was shocked to hear that coming from him, but I really appreciated it because that’s what I did—take over games. It was exciting for me, whether I scored points myself or got the ball to an open teammate. It made me feel good that I had the confidence of veteran players like Gus and Kevin, because they wanted to win games. And we were starting to win games with me doing what I did best—score the ball. But I didn’t think Jack Marin liked that idea so much, though he never said anything to me directly. I just heard whispers from other teammates that he thought I was shooting and controlling the ball too much, even though I was setting him up to score points, too. But Coach Shue never reprimanded me for playing the way I was playing. At the end of the day, the player who is in control of his team—and that was me now—dictates the flow of the game and gets all of his teammates involved. That was my job now, and everybody had to start getting used to it, making adjustments in their own approaches for the overall benefit of the team.

  Once I recognized what I was capable of doing on the court at this level and my confidence grew, I started to make the crowds go wild. What they liked were the moves I made to get myself open to take shots. The fans were beginning to really like the show I was putting on. So did my teammates. Like I said, our team was starting to jell: Kevin was hitting his jump shot and so was Jack, banking in his jumper from both sides of the floor. Gus was throwing down spectacular windmill dunks so hard he was shaking the rim and the backboard, hitting his one-legged push jump shot, playing in his opponent’s jockstrap with airtight defense, and blocking shots like a crazy man. Chink Scott was hitting nothing but nets on his long, sweet jump shots from anywhere he chose to launch them; Razor Manning was coming off the bench with his manic energy, jumping and running and throwing the ball down into the basket. Man, we were running as a team up and down the floor like rabbits. It was something to behold, very exciting. The Baltimore fans loved it and the crowds started to increase at the arena, the Civic Center, where we played our home games. And soon, by word of mouth, people were coming out everywhere we played to see us. And, like I said, we started winning games, and people love it when you’re winning, when you’re delivering both results and product. That’s when they started coming out, you know what I mean? We were starting to put asses in the seats and management loved it. There were big smiles all around.

  I was also learning a lot from playing against the best players in the world night after night. The competition was on a really high level and that just got my competitive juices flowing. I especially enjoyed watching and playing against Elgin Baylor and Oscar Robertson, two of my favorite ballplayers. Man, that was a treat. I didn’t have to guard Elgin because he was a forward and I was a guard, so we didn’t go up against each other head-to-head very often. But when we did it was special—competitive, but always respectful. Elgin could do anything he wanted to do with the basketball—shoot and score any way he wanted to—whether it was with jump shots, little hooks, or layups. It didn’t matter. Elgin could dunk the ball if he wanted to, but he seldom did that, preferring instead to just lay the ball in on the backboard. He was also an excellent rebounder and passer, a complete all-around great player.

  Same thing with Oscar, who to me was the epitome of a player who understood how to play basketball. Oscar would come out in the beginning of the game and set the tone by passing the ball, getting his assists, rebounding the ball. Then in the latter part of the game he would get his points. He’d back his opponents down, shoot turnaround jumpers over them, score on layups, whatever. I mean, he scored points in bunches, just took over games. And he was a big, strong guy—but not as strong as Gus—at six foot five and 220 pounds. I always liked the way he played. He was something else, too.

  Then there was Wilt “The Big Dipper” Chamberlain—everybody from Philly called him “Dip”—who was in another category all by himself. He was the greatest player that ever lived, in my opinion. No question. Though he stood seven foot two and weighed 275 pounds, in his prime Wilt could run and jump like nobody’s business. He could pretty much score on whoever was guarding him anytime he wanted to and pass, get assists, block shots, and snatch any rebound that came close to where he was. But he also had a legendary personality, could talk trash with the best, stay out until all hours of the morning and still outplay anybody—even those who had gotten all their rest—the next day. He was scary good, but he was a good guy, too, with a great sense of humor. Man, his talent was totally out of this world. He would have been a dominant player in any era, no doubt.

  The NBA’s top team in my rookie year was the Celtics, who went on to become the NBA champions that season (and the next year, too). They had Bill Russell, Sam Jones, John Havlicek, Bailey Howell, Larry Siegfried, Tom “Satch” Sanders, Don Nelson, and Wayne Embry on their roster. But I think the Philadelphia 76ers had as much pure talent as they did, with Chamberlain, Billy Cunningham, Hal Greer, Luke Jackson, Chet Walke
r, Wali Jones, Larry Costello, and Matt Guokas; with a regular-season record of 62 and 20, the 76ers were 8 games better than the Celtics that season. The same thing with the Lakers, who, despite finishing 4 games behind Saint Louis in the West, lost to the Celtics that year in 6 games in the NBA finals. They had, besides Jerry West and Elgin Baylor, Archie Clark, Gail Goodrich, Tommy Hawkins, Mel Counts, Darrall Imhoff (both of them really tall centers), and Freddie Crawford.

  But the constant traveling was wearying, especially when we had to travel on poorly maintained airplanes with windows so loose the airline had to cover them with boards. The Bullets mostly traveled on Piedmont Airlines in those days, and I used to joke that their motto should be “We never lose sight of the ground.” I said this because the planes never flew up very high. I mean, I could always see the telephone poles from my window, so long as it wasn’t boarded up. Sometimes we flew on North Central, which was another ragtag airline. It seemed like their planes were always encountering turbulence. Of course back in those days we carried our own bags and washed our own uniforms. I mean there were some cats who would forget to wash their uniforms and they would be a little sweaty, maybe a little dried out, crusty and funky. So the smell up in the air would be humming.

  Then there were arenas like the Cincinnati Gardens, home of Oscar Robertson’s Royals. It was so raggedy. In the locker room we had to step on boards going in and out of the shower. I never took my socks off when I showered in the Cincinnati Gardens. The gym floors were terrible there, too. When we went to Cincinnati to play, we always stayed in the Sheraton Hotel. So when we’d go down to eat or to have a drink there would be a bunch of white guys sitting around the piano bar, drinking and talking and singing loud. I remember one particular night when me and two other black guys on the team—Ed Manning and Stan McKenzie—went down to the bar, these white guys started drunkenly singing a rendition of “Ole Black Joe,” looking at us and grinning. I was glad Gus wasn’t there because he might have killed one of those stupid assholes, and then we would have all gone to jail. Anyway, we just looked at them disgustedly, shook our heads in amazement, then got up and left. Boston was terrible, too. Back then the court at Boston Garden had dead spots that, when you dribbled the ball over them, would cause the ball to bounce oddly or veer off weirdly in some unexpected way. But the Celtics players knew where those dead spots were and would avoid them. Their visitors’ locker room could be suffocatingly hot or real cold, too. But the Celtics locker room was really nice. So between the dead spots and the conditions in the visitors’ locker room, Boston Garden offered the Celtics a true home court advantage.

  As bad as Cincinnati and Boston were, I always liked going to New York, because Madison Square Garden had real great facilities. They also had really loyal crowds who cheered loudly for their Knicks. The floors were great and so was the city, so I always loved playing there, even when we lost. I liked playing on the West Coast, too, in Seattle, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. They had great facilities, the cities and people were hip, and there were beautiful ladies everywhere. Detroit and Chicago were also cool. I learned a lot by traveling across America, seeing how people were in different parts of the country. And hanging with Gus was really special because he knew where and where not to go in every city, and he passed this valuable information on to me.

  Our last two games of the 1967–1968 season were against the Boston Celtics and the Philadelphia 76ers. We beat the Celtics 147–139 on March 17 in Boston, and I scored 29 points in that game. LeRoy Ellis scored 32 for us, Jack Marin had 28, and Chink Scott added 26. I don’t think Gus played in that game. For Boston, Sam Jones scored 26 and Don Nelson had 24, but John Havlicek led them with 29. That was a high-scoring game, and after that loss the Celtics went on to win the NBA championship, beating the Lakers in the finals. After the Celtics won the championship I felt really good about that win and about our prospects for the next season.

  Three days later we closed out our season with a 137–119 loss to the 76ers in Baltimore. I scored 46 points in the game, but it wasn’t enough. Seven different 76ers scored in the double figures that night, with Chamberlain and Wali Jones leading the way with 26 and 24 points, respectively. Wilt’s fall-away jumper, with just a few seconds left on the clock, hit the backboard, then skimmed along the top of it and fell in the basket to score. That basket gave him 1 more point than I had for the season, making him the league’s third-highest scorer behind Dave Bing and Elgin Baylor. After the game he commented to me that he couldn’t let a rookie outscore him. That was typical Wilt.

  The 1967–1968 NBA season was kind of a weird one in that the Philadelphia 76ers had by far the best record in the NBA—62 wins and 20 losses—while the Celtics’ record was only 54 and 28. But the Celtics beat the 76ers in the 7-game Eastern Division finals, coming back from a 3-games-to-1 deficit. Saint Louis had the best record in the Western Division, with 56 wins and 26 losses, but they were upset in the first round by a Nate Thurmond and Rudy LaRusso–led San Francisco Warriors squad, 4 games to 2. Los Angeles, who would beat the Warriors to secure a spot in the finals, had a regular-season record of 52 wins and 30 losses. So the season was kind of unpredictable in that way. My Bullets teammates and I finished our season sixth (and last) in the Eastern Division, with a record of 36 wins and 46 losses, but we were encouraged by our performance after the All-Star game, as we went 19 and 16 over the final 35 games.

  Even though the Celtics won the NBA championship, the Lakers’ Jerry West was named the Finals MVP. As for other individual honors, Wilt Chamberlain was named MVP of the regular season, and the All-NBA First Team was comprised of Dave Bing, Oscar Robertson, Wilt Chamberlain, Jerry Lucas, and Elgin Baylor. Hal Greer (MVP of that season’s All-Star Game, which was played in Madison Square Garden), John Havlicek, Willis Reed, Bill Russell, and Jerry West were named to the second team. Dave Bing led the league in scoring that year, with 2,142 points and a 27-points-per-game average. As for me, I was voted onto the All-Rookie team, with Walt Frazier and Phil Jackson from the New York Knicks and Bob Rule and Al Tucker from the Seattle SuperSonics. I was also named the league’s Rookie of the Year and was awarded a gold basketball, though I didn’t receive it until the next season started. I wasn’t the unanimous choice for Rookie of the Year, but I received all the first-place votes except one. For the season, I scored 1,991 points, averaging 24.3 points a game and leading the Bullets in scoring. I also dished out 349 assists, which was the most on the squad, averaging 4.3 a game. I played in all 82 games and led the team in minutes with 3,012 for the season. So all in all it was a pretty good season for someone they used to call a playground, “hotdog” player.

  Then, on April 3, our team received some great news when the coaches and management selected consensus All-American center Wes Unseld of the University of Louisville Cardinals as the second overall pick in the 1968 college draft. Elvin Hayes, the high-scoring forward from the University of Houston, had been picked number one. But getting Unseld, a six-foot-six-inch, 245-pound rebounding and defensive college legend, was just what the doctor ordered for our team. Unseld’s addition enabled us to move Chink Scott and LeRoy Ellis to their more suitable positions at forward and pair Wes with Gus Johnson under the basket. Plus, with Wes’s rebounding and outlet passing skills, he could really trigger our running game and I envisioned us running the floor and scoring all kinds of breakaway shots off our up-tempo, fast-break style. I was really looking forward to teaming up with Wes, and I knew everyone else on our team was also.

  We also picked up another fine rookie, Barry Orms, a six-foot-one-inch guard, in the second round of that draft. So with the good rookie year I had just finished, I felt great going into the next season. My off-season goals in the competitive Baker League were to double down on my conditioning and to practice and fine-tune my new move of backing my opponents down. During that time I would also gain a little more weight so I could be stronger and more successful in implementing this maneuver.

  On another note, the NBA had expande
d again, with the Phoenix Suns and Milwaukee Bucks joining the Seattle SuperSonics and San Diego Rockets, who had entered the league together the year prior. On top of that, the Saint Louis Hawks relocated to Atlanta. So the league was growing, and rapidly.

  Obviously, my rookie year in the NBA was as great as anything I had dreamed of regarding my growth as a player. But in my personal life and in the world swirling around me, there were some shocking and stunning developments. At first, after the season was all over, I really enjoyed resting my weary body, spending time with my lovely lady, Cookie, and going back and forth between Philadelphia and Baltimore to spend time with my family and friends. I was beginning to like Baltimore, was getting to know the city better with the help of Cookie, Gus, and Lenny Clay, my barber. So I was feeling good, charging my battery back up, and just enjoying having some time off.

  With all that in mind and to gauge where my head was at on my contract, Coach Shue called me a couple of weeks after I had gotten back to Baltimore from New York, once the playoffs were over. He said he wanted to take me for a ride to discuss the upcoming season and my new contract. So I said okay and we picked a day to get together. Anyway, he came and picked me up and we were riding around talking about the year we had just finished and then he said to me, “Earl, the owners recognized that you had a real good season and they feel as though they want to do something for you. They want to tear up your remaining contract and give you a three-year deal for $25,000, $30,000, and $35,000 for each of the three years.”

  Now, I hadn’t complained out loud or anything like that over my two-year rookie contract. But they all knew I wasn’t appreciative of what I got. So I just looked at him and burst out laughing. Then I said to him, “Well, Coach, I think I’m just going to go ahead and play this year out because I made that commitment. That’s what I said I would do when I signed for two years, so I’m just going to ride the commitment out and see what the deal is after that.”