by Earl Monroe
Sometimes you get what you wish for and then it doesn’t turn out so well for you, as it didn’t in this case. But if it was to have been in the cards for us to win that series, we would have needed to have Gus playing at full strength to pull it off, and we didn’t have him. Anyway, we played the last game in New York and boarded a plane and flew back to Baltimore. When I got off the plane I was met by a man who handed me an envelope. I opened it right there and saw that it was a paternity suit filed by Gloria.
Damn, I thought to myself. How much bad luck can I have? I just lost four games in a row to my enemy and I’m coming home and get hit with a paternity suit coming off the plane!
After I got home and got in touch with Gloria I found out that she had been calling me all along to tell me that she had given birth to my son, Rodney. But I told her that I had thought she was the other Gloria, who I didn’t want to see or talk to, and that’s why I kept hanging up the phone on her. So eventually we worked it out. Now I was getting hit up to pay child support for another child. Wow, I thought to myself. What am I doing? How fertile am I?
Back in those days I didn’t think about wearing protection. Now I would have to rethink that way of doing things. But I accepted the responsibility of having to pay for child support. So that’s how my second season ended, but not quite. For one thing I was named to the First Team All-NBA squad, with Elgin Baylor, Wes Unseld, Billy Cunningham, and Oscar Robertson. The second team was Dave DeBusschere, Hal Greer, John Havlicek, Willis Reed, and Jerry West. My teammate Wes Unseld was named both Rookie of the Year and the MVP of the league, becoming only the second player to win both awards (Wilt Chamberlain was the other). And our leader, Gene Shue, was voted Coach of the Year. We ended up with the best regular-season record in the NBA that year, with 57 wins and 25 losses. The Lakers had the second-best record, at 55 and 27.
Elvin Hayes was the leading scorer that year with 2,327 points and an average of 28.4 points per game. I finished second in scoring with 2,065 points and an average of 25.8 points per game. Plus I dished out a team-leading 4.9 assists a game. Again, though, the Boston Celtics were crowned NBA Champions for the second year in a row, beating the Lakers four games to three in the finals, with Jerry West being named MVP of that series.
So all in all and considering the fact that we had lost Gus at a crucial time, we had a pretty good season and had something positive to look forward to in the fall when our new season opened. Everyone was hoping Gus’s knee would respond to treatment, and from what he had been telling me from the medical reports his doctors were giving him, he would be ready to play. That was great news for everyone on our team.
We drafted Fred Carter, who I knew from playing against him in high school, in the third round of that spring’s draft. Fred had gone to Ben Franklin High School, which is a bad-ass school in North Philly where city officials sent the notorious students that liked to fight a lot. I remember that when we used to play there, I could hear bongo drums being played up in the bleachers when I walked into the gym. So, while the game was going on I would find myself looking up in the stands to see if somebody was getting ready to shoot at me or one of my teammates because their fans would really be furious about us always beating them. And then, after the game, we would hurry up and get to our bus so we could leave quickly and not get our asses beat by some mob, you know what I mean? Franklin was something else. Tough. So was Fred Carter, and that’s why he earned the title of “Mad Dog” when he first played against Coach Shue and beat him down at the opening of the next season’s training camp.
Now, that particular year we had elected Wes Unseld as our player rep for the union that we had started up and I told him about Coach coming to make me an offer that I turned down. Even though he was a rookie, Wes was good at this kind of thing. So shortly after I told him this he called and said, “Earl, Larry Fleischer, the head of the players’ union, wants to get in touch with you. I told him about your conversation with Coach Shue and he wants to talk to you about it. Is it all right if I give him your telephone number?”
“That’s cool,” I said. “Give it to him.”
So Larry called me right away and said, “You know, Earl, I’ve been watching what has been going on down there and I understand you don’t have an agent?”
“That’s right,” I said.
“What do you think of me being your agent?” he asked.
“I hadn’t really thought about anything like that yet,” I said, “but give me your number and I’ll get back to you.”
So he said all right and that he would be waiting for my call. I got in my car and went for a ride, listening to music, which is what I used to do when I wanted to think things out. After a while I came to the conclusion that I didn’t have an agent and hey, if this guy was someone who wanted to do this for me and he was in a position to be knowledgeable about it (as the head of the players’ association), why not do it? Because nothing was going to get by him that I wouldn’t know about if he was my agent. So I called my mother and told her about Larry and she told me that if I felt good about it then I should go ahead and do it. So I did. I called him and told him I was cool with him representing me as my agent.
Then we discussed and worked out the percentages over the phone, that he would receive 5 percent of the deal. Then, to get to know him, I went up to Chappaqua, New York, where he lived (and where Bill and Hillary Clinton live today), to meet him. I liked him right away. He was about 30 years old at the time and I was 24. He was a straightforward type of guy who liked basketball and had a great house. He introduced me to his wife, and I stayed overnight. (That summer, before we worked out the deal with Baltimore, Gabe Rubin, the owner of the Pittsburgh Pipers—the team Connie Hawkins played for—came to visit me. But I turned down his offer because I really didn’t want to play in the ABA. Those contracts tied you down back in those days and you didn’t see all of your money until way in the future. Plus, I wanted to stay in the NBA because I thought the competition was better there.)
After a week or so of back-and-forth trying to resolve whatever conflicts of interest his representation presented (and there definitely were some conflicts because of his position with the players’ union; I don’t know if I was the first guy he represented, but I was certainly one of the first), we signed our deal and I went back down to Baltimore and waited. Then, a little while after I got home, he called and told me he had worked out my contract with the Bullets for $140,000 a year for two seasons. I would get $100,000 per year and the other $40,000 per season would be deferred and that money would accrue with interest. Now, this was the kind of money I had dreamed of making before I signed that ridiculously bad first contract. So I was happy as hell because this would take care of a lot of my personal needs. I could get a new place to live, a new car, and take care of my children better. So I called my mother immediately after I signed the contract and she just about went through the roof with happiness.
Now I could look forward again to sharpening my game by going home to Philadelphia, to Germantown, and to playing in the Baker League. Then, after running and gunning there I would turn my attention back to helping the Bullets get better as a team so we could get revenge on our mortal basketball enemies, the arrogant-assed New York Knicks, by beating them in the Eastern Division and competing for an NBA championship. I was down for it and I knew my teammates were, too. And you could take that to the bank.
My mother, Rose, and my father, Vernon
My grandmother, Mom
My Aunt Mary
With Ma and a neighbor in front of our house on Alter Street
All dressed up
With Mr. John in front of Mom’s house
Vacation Bible school, 1955. This is where I shot my first baskets. That’s me in the white T-shirt, directly under the rim.
John Bartram High School senior prom, 1962
It was during my college days at Winston-Salem State that I first became “the Pearl.” (Photos courtesy of Winston-Salem State University office of At
hletic Media Relations)
With Coach Gaines (left) and Leon Whitley (right), the man who recruited me to Winston-Salem.
With James Reid (left) and Steve Smith, accepting CIAA award.
Facing Akron in the 1967 NCAA Regional Final (Photos courtesy of Winston-Salem State University office of Athletic Media Relations)
College graduation, 1967. Left to right: Ma, me, my niece Tijuana, Mr. John, Theresa, Andrew, and Ann
With Winston-Salem’s chancellor, Dr. Kenneth Williams, on my graduation day
Going one-on-one with the great Oscar Robertson (Photo courtesy of NBA Photos)
Rising to shoot over the Lakers’ Jerry West (Photo courtesy of NBA Photos)
Thinking back on all of those battles with Clyde before we became teammates, that time is like a blur. (Photo by George Kalinsky)
Shooting over Wilt Chamberlain at the 1969 NBA All-Star Game (Photo by George Kalinsky)
Handling the ball against Cleveland (Photo by George Kalinsky)
Taking Wilt to the hole in Game 4 of the 1973 NBA Finals (Photo by George Kalinsky)
Shaking hands with Dave DeBusschere after winning the 1973 NBA Championship (Photo by George Kalinsky)
My father, Vernon, later in life
Ma in the mink coat I bought her on her last Christmas
Chapter 13
REACHING FOR THE DREAM OF AN NBA CHAMPIONSHIP: 1969 TO 1970
I WAS FEELING GREAT IN THE SUMMER OF 1969, as good as I had felt at any point in my life. I was preparing myself to travel up to Philadelphia to play in the Baker League again and to spend a couple of months living in my mother’s new home in Germantown, and I was looking forward to both. My new contract had lifted a lot of pressure off of me regarding my ability to take care of personal business, like providing child support for my kids. I also decided to get myself a different place to live in Baltimore and to buy myself a new car to tool around in. First I ditched my old car, a Pontiac, and bought myself a luxury car for the first time, a new dark silver-blue Cadillac Eldorado with fishtails. Man, that was a real nice ride—it was roomy, comfortable, and stylish—and I loved driving around Baltimore in it. Then I got a new place to stay, a townhouse in an area of West Baltimore called the Village of Purnell, which was a gated community right off Forest Park Avenue, with a golf course nearby. Had I wanted to play—and I would later on—I could have just walked up there and played a few rounds. Gus lived close by and it got to be a community where a lot of black sports guys—Wes Unseld moved there, along with Ray Scott—and white athletes lived.
My townhouse was furnished really nicely. You came in the entrance and went up some stairs to the first floor, where the living and dining rooms and kitchen were. Then, upstairs I had a couple of bedrooms with TVs, one of them a small set I had won when I was named MVP of the Portsmouth Invitational Tournament in my senior year and my teammates were Jimmy Walker, Mike Riordan, and Cliff Anderson. I had another small kitchen put in up there. So I hired a decorator to make it look hip but funky. He put carpet down in both bedrooms and introduced me to Mylar, a thin polyester substance that sort of works like a mirror because you can see your reflection in it. I had the decorator put a very large sheet of it with circles up over my bed. Man, I had fun up in that room.
Besides some of my teammates on the Bullets, a lot of football players lived around there, including four great Baltimore Colts players: offensive tackle/guard Jim Parker, running back Lenny Moore—a real classy, nice guy and a pillar of the community—and defensive tackle Eugene “Big Daddy” Lipscomb. Some baseball players from the Baltimore Orioles, like Frank Robinson and Paul Blair, also lived close by. It wasn’t like we were all living right next door to each other, but we were all at least a short car ride away from each other, and some of us lived close enough to walk. Even though it was a somewhat segregated neighborhood, it was a tight-knit community, with some white people hanging out with us, too. Though whites and blacks played sports and lived together, there were still some areas in Baltimore where black people weren’t welcome, no matter how much money they made. But we made the best of it and didn’t think too much about it until some incident raised its ugly head, which hardly ever happened where we lived. We were just happy with what we were doing, playing professional sports. We were enjoying our success, the money we made, and just being with each other and having fun.
Lenny Moore had a great club out in the Gwynn Oak section of Baltimore called Lenny Moore’s Sportsman’s Lounge, where a lot of athletes and regular people in the community went to eat, drink, dance, and have fun. Lenny kept a well-stocked jukebox in the club and people would play the top hits of the day. So one night I remember going there and this young guy named Marvin Cooper put his dime in the jukebox and played songs by Sly and the Family Stone and started singing along with the tunes and dancing. He was a light-brown-skinned, medium-built guy, about six foot one, regularly dressed, nothing fancy. So everyone watched and kind of cheered him on and then went back to whatever it was they were doing before he started singing and dancing. I didn’t think anything about him until later on that year. But that was the first time I remembered seeing him, at Lenny Moore’s place.
One of my best new friends in Baltimore was a barber named Lenny Clay, who had a barbershop called House of Naturals. Lenny not only became my good friend and barber, but also a guy I could go to with any problem, like when Gloria had me served with paternity papers. Lenny turned me on to Billy Murphy, who was a very affluent, smart, well-connected lawyer (his father was a prominent judge and Billy became a judge later on). Billy was really flamboyant and theatrical, but he was a very good lawyer, and he represented boxing promoter Butch Lewis. It was Billy who worked out my paternity suit with Gloria (and my next one, with Linda). But a lot of black folks in Baltimore had their hair cut at Lenny’s barbershop. He had pictures of H. Rap Brown, Malcolm X, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and Muhammad Ali on his walls (later he put a photo of me up, too). He was a very conscious guy and I grew to trust him with almost anything in my life.
After I settled into my new place, I drove up to Germantown, deposited my things, and got back in the swing of living in Philadelphia again. A lot had fallen into place for me in a positive way, which allowed me to concentrate fully on getting better at playing the game of basketball. I had intentionally put on some weight the previous offseason after observing Oscar Robertson, and I was still determined to get stronger a year later. Oscar was so much stronger than I was, especially when he played down low, when he backed opponents down and got into position to score over them. I had some success doing that against smaller guards, but I found I needed to gain more weight in order to do it on a regular basis against larger opponents.
When I arrived at my mother’s house in Germantown, I started eating again. But I also conditioned myself by running what we called suicide drills. Suicide drills are when you run from one end of the floor to the other, then backpedal to where you started. You do this from baseline to baseline. Then you run from the baseline to the foul line and backpedal to where you started. Then you do the same from the baseline to half-court and back, and then to the far-end foul line and back. You do these suicides for perhaps a half hour and this really gets your juices flowing, your legs and thighs in shape. Plus it helps with expanding your lung capacity. So I coupled the exercise with eating my mother’s food so I could still gain weight and stay in shape. See, we didn’t lift weights or do any kind of iron work back in those days. Whenever I was in Philadelphia during the summer I ran suicides and hills to strengthen my legs, which Coach Gaines had us do to get in condition back at Winston-Salem. Then I played basketball all day, which was also about running and jumping, and that’s the way I stayed in shape.
Playing in the Baker League games was different from playing in the famous Rucker Pro League in Harlem. One very important difference was that Baker League games were played indoors in a gym. Rucker’s games were played outdoors on a concrete court, surrounded on two sides by wooden bleacher
s, a wire-mesh fence, and trees. So when it rained or the wind was high they either cancelled the games or the elements affected the way they played, mostly in a negative way. Long-range jump shooters like me had to adjust their shots on days when the wind was high because it affected their accuracy; wind gusts frequently blew well-aimed jump shots off course. So players at Rucker adjusted their game when the wind was up, opting for short jump shots and drives to the hole for layups or dunks. Baker League players didn’t have to make those kinds of adjustments because the games were held inside a gym. Still, I enjoyed seeing games played at Rucker because the games were highly competitive and a lot of great players, like Lew Alcindor, Connie Hawkins, and Julius Erving, balled up there.
As usual, the games in the Baker League that summer were tremendous. Archie Clark joined our team late in the summer after the Lakers had traded him and Darrall Imhoff to the 76ers for Wilt Chamberlain. So after Archie joined us, we formed a hell of a backcourt, me with my spin move and Archie with his great, shake-and-bake crossover move. Plus, we had a lot of pro players from the NBA, ABA, and the Eastern League dipping in all the time to play a game or two. Like I said, I think I loved playing there more than I did in the NBA because of the freedom I felt playing there. I was not only hitting my long-range jumper, doing my spin moves, and slashing drives to the basket, but also practicing my low-post game—basically, 18 feet out from the basket or closer—rather than from outside the key.
I had found out through practice that if I bumped down my defender—I called it “bumping down”—I could, after I got the position I wanted, fake up as if I was about to shoot a jump shot to get his body moving toward me. In that instant I would extend my elbow with the ball in both hands, then put that elbow in his face to force him to move back a little. That way I got the space I needed to get my shot off. Then I would tippy-toe jump—I never was a great jumper—as I faded back and shot my jumper over his outstretched hand as he was falling backward. I rarely, if ever, got this shot blocked. It also was a great way to draw a foul by forcing the guy guarding you to hit your elbow as you went up for the shot. And if you made the shot it might become a 3-point play if you converted the free throw.
