Earl the Pearl

by Earl Monroe

  I perfected this move that summer in the Baker League games and added it to my long-range jump shooting repertoire. I teamed up again with Trooper Washington and Frank Card. As usual, good and great players played in the league that summer, such as Billy Cunningham, Matt Guokas, Hal Greer, Luke Jackson, Wali Jones, Connie Hawkins, Fred Carter, Chink Scott, Guy Rodgers, Freddie Crawford, Bernie Williams, Bill Bradley, Trooper Washington, and so many others. Sometimes Wilt would drop in and play a game with Sonny’s team, and so would Hal Lear and others. So we had another great summer and we won the championship again.

  Philadelphia has always been a great party town. The parties there were unbelievable because most parties are held in someone’s house. And as I grew older the parties were usually held in the house of someone that I knew, so everyone there was happy to be together. That was the beauty—for me—about getting together with people I knew and having a great time. At first it was a lot different from Baltimore, or New York City, which is much bigger than Philadelphia. In New York City you have all these different areas, like the Bronx, Brooklyn, Harlem, other parts of Manhattan, Queens, and Staten Island. And the people living in these areas, for the most part, rarely party together. Philly is large, too, and diverse, but there were smaller communities there back in the day, and as we got older we were more close-knit. At least I thought so, especially back then. I was still learning my way around Baltimore, and even though it was half the size of Philadelphia, it reminded me of Philly in some ways—even the row house type of architecture. But I was beginning to like the city in certain ways and I would grow fonder of it as time went on.

  Anyway, I had some really great parties out in Germantown, down in the basement, after many of those Baker League games. A lot of players would come out to those parties and hang with some of my friends from the neighborhood and from South Philly, too. So Ma’s house would be jumping into the wee hours of the morning. That was a lot of fun, and my mother liked having all those famous athletes around. So did my sister Theresa. Cookie came up a few times over the summer and that was cool. I saw her sometimes when I drove down to Baltimore a few times to check on my new digs. But I had some lady friends coming over in Philadelphia also, especially Juanita, a fine-looking girl who was a friend of Theresa’s, and we started hanging around. Then there was Sylvia, who was a nurse. So that was who I was seeing that summer. Whenever they were around Cookie stayed down in Baltimore. But soon enough it was time for me to go back to Baltimore to start getting ready for the upcoming season. So toward the end of August I packed up my stuff and drove back down there to begin training camp.

  After getting swept by the Knicks in the Eastern Division playoffs the previous spring, we were looking for revenge coming into this new season. The Bullets had finished first in the Eastern Division and had posted the best record in the NBA, so to lose like that had been disheartening for us. In our minds we had a lot to prove to ourselves and the rest of the league entering the 1969–1970 season. We knew we had a very good team; we just had to prove it, and we were determined to do just that. We always had injured guys on our squad like Gus, who was always fighting through knee injuries, and Kevin, who had fought through that injury bug with his ribs, as well. Our nucleus of players was still relatively young, with Gus and Chink being the oldest guys at age 31. We had added a couple of good rookie guards to our roster after training camp, Fred Carter and Mike Davis, who had been our first-round pick that year. Fred was really a great addition to our squad because he brought a sense of true grit to our mix that meshed well with the toughness of Gus Johnson.

  Like I said, we were an up-tempo team. Gus or Wes would get the ball off the boards and the rest of us would get out there and run. Gus and Wes used to bet each other who would get the most rebounds in a game, and Wes usually won, though Gus won sometimes, too. I loved being out in the open floor on a break. If someone was caught trying to guard me out there they were in a whole lot of trouble, because I was going to take them to the hole with a bunch of moves they couldn’t deal with and score the ball. If I was running the floor with a couple of teammates on either wing, I could dish to one of them for the score. Or I could fake like I was going to dish it to one of them and then, when the defender went for the fake, I would just go right by him and score. So we had a very dangerous team, and we knew it.

  We entered the new season with a sense of purpose, a renewed confidence in ourselves that we knew would be tested early, because our first five games were against tough opponents: the Bulls, Celtics, Lakers, Royals, and especially the Knicks, who we played in our fifth game of the season at Madison Square Garden. So we would get to see soon enough how we stacked up against some top teams, how our new sense of purpose withstood those early challenges.

  We opened the season on October 15 with a 98–93 win over the Chicago Bulls in Baltimore. I had a good opening game, scoring 26 points in that victory, while five of my teammates scored in double figures. Jerry Sloan led the Bulls with 21 points. If my memory is correct (though it could have been later that year) I think this was the first time I saw Marvin Cooper outside of Lenny Moore’s club. All of a sudden I see Marvin dressed in a big gray Applejack cap and a blue cape around his shoulders and he’s not really dancing but he’s putting a hex with his hands on the opposing team! And the music being played is Kool and the Gang. I was stunned to see this but the crowd was cheering and we won. So he comes back for our next game, does the same routine, and we win again against the Celtics three days later, 124–117, behind 34 points by me and 25 from Kevin Loughery. So that was the beginning of the Dancing Harry legend in Baltimore and it lasted throughout my entire career in that city and took on another life later on, which I will talk about later.

  It looked like we were rolling, but we lost the next game on October 21 to the Lakers in a shoot-out, 142–137, in Baltimore. Jerry West went off for 39 points, while Wilt Chamberlain scored 38 and had a ton of rebounds. I hurt my knee early in that game and finished with only 3 points. Kevin put up 35 in that game, while Mike Davis, substituting for me, scored 30. We won our next game, against Cincinnati, on October 24 in Baltimore, 131–126 in overtime. My knee was still sore in that game, but I managed to score 12 points. But my teammates took up the slack, especially Gus Johnson, who scored 39 to lead us.

  Then, on October 25, came the day we had been looking forward to all year, when we traveled up to New York to play the Knicks. The Garden was packed to the rafters, with more than 19,000 rabid Knicks fans jammed into that legendary basketball shrine. Everyone on our team was fired up in the dressing room before the game. But we came out flat and they damn near ran us out of the building with a 128–99 drubbing. I mean, we were never in that game, you know what I mean? We had six players reach double figures and I got 22 points, but my knees were still bothering me. Bill Bradley led the way for the Knicks with 23, Walt Frazier added 21, and almost everyone on their squad scored.

  At this point in the season our starting five was me, Gus, Jack, Kevin, and Wes, with LeRoy Ellis and Chink Scott coming in for the big men and rookies Mike Davis and Fred Carter spelling Kevin and me. So we were basically playing nine guys. Then, in October, my knees started hurting real badly and Mike Davis had to spell me. This went on for a while until the pain eased up.

  After we lost to the Knicks, which was a real downer, we went out to Detroit, beat the Pistons, then lost three in a row before winning three straight. It was weird. We lost our next game, on November 8, to the Royals when Oscar got 38 (I had 27, as my knees were starting to feel better), but then we got back on track and won nine straight. I averaged more than 26 points a game during our winning streak, which ended with a 121–106 loss to the Celtics on November 29.

  After that loss to the Celtics we beat Cincinnati, then lost 3 straight again. One of those losses was to the Knicks in Baltimore, 116–107, before our largest crowd of the season (more than 12,000 people) on December 5. That was our second loss to our “mortal enemies” and it was another bitter defeat to sw
allow. We lost our next game, too (in overtime to Seattle), then won one and lost another before winning four in a row. Then, after that winning streak, we went into Madison Square Garden and lost to the Knicks for the third straight time that season, 128–91, with Walt Frazier putting on a show with 29 points to my 13. They literally shot us out of the arena, beating us by 37 points to the delight of more than 19,000 rabid fans. Again we went south to Baltimore with our egos tucked somewhere between our legs, but we were also mad as hell and vowed to beat them the next time we played them. That loss dropped our record for the season to 22 wins and 12 losses. New York was 29 and 6 and in control of the Eastern Division.

  This was really turning out to be an up-and-down period of wins and losses for us, one we hadn’t expected to have this early on, especially because of the record we had compiled the previous season. We just knew in our hearts and minds that our record should be much better at this point in the season. But it wasn’t, so that fact triggered some soul searching. We also knew, however, that my injuries had hampered our team a lot during this period. They weren’t season-ending injuries, but they were nagging and lingering in their nature in that I hadn’t been completely free of them since they had started in November. At the time of our loss to the Knicks on December 20, I was still hurting. And by the time we played and defeated the 76ers in Baltimore on Christmas Day, I was finally starting to feel a little better, though not much. But Jack and Kevin picked up their scoring, combining for 60 points, and we won 121–113. We won our next game against San Francisco, too, then lost three in a row, ending the calendar year with a 122–111 New Year’s Eve loss to the Hawks in Atlanta. After the game we received some more bad news when we learned that Mike Davis, our rookie guard who had been playing so well, was injured. He wouldn’t return to the lineup for more than three weeks. So that was a downer, especially considering how I was still suffering from knee pain. Now Fred Carter would have to be the first guard off the bench, replacing Davis, and Bob Quick, our second-round pick that year, would have to play a more significant role.

  We went back to Baltimore to get ready for our next game on January 2 against Cincinnati. We had two days off, so I spent that time relaxing in Baltimore and having dinner with Baltimore Colts star Bubba Smith at his apartment in the heart of downtown. I had gotten to know Bubba (his real name was Charles Aaron Smith) pretty well. We were about the same age—I was 24 and he was 23 but would be 24 early in 1970—and both of us had come to Baltimore around the same time. He had been a legendary college defensive end at Michigan State (he would have gone to the University of Texas had Darrell Royal, the Longhorns head coach, been permitted to offer him a scholarship, but the Southwest Conference didn’t integrate until 1967 and Texas didn’t integrate their squad until 1970) and was the first overall player selected in the 1967 NFL draft, the same year I was chosen number two in the NBA draft (surprisingly, he was chosen in the 11th round by the Bullets that year, too). He was six foot seven, weighed 265 pounds, and was extremely fast and quick for a man his size. Bubba was also very hip and wore a Fu Manchu moustache. He was one of the first cats I knew who had a place downtown, and it was a real big apartment. And Bubba was very funny, like he used to tell me with that deadpan look of his, “You do know, Earl, that I was a real good basketball player when I was in high school and I could have made the NBA if I had concentrated on playing that instead of football. You do know this, don’t you?”

  I would look at him, laugh, and say, “Sure I do, Bubba, I heard about your basketball game. But I don’t know about you making a team in our league.”

  He would just shake his head and tell me he could have made it if he had tried. And we would go back and forth like that, with him being deadpan and me laughing. And then we both would burst out laughing. Bubba was really something. He would have great parties down at his place and after all the reveling was over it would be like freak city. It was a wonderful place to be.

  I remember one time during the previous summer, before this season had started, when I got introduced to angel dust. Now, I was very reluctant because I didn’t even smoke at the time, and still don’t. But I was sipping on my Courvoisier cognac and starting to feel a buzz when some guy came up to me and handed me a cigarette-looking thing he had rolled and said, “Go on, try it. But don’t take too much now.”

  So I looked at it and because I wasn’t feeling any pain, I said, “Hell, why not?”

  I took two long drags and the next thing I knew I felt like I was somewhere else looking back at myself. I couldn’t move. My mind was running and my eyes were watering up but I couldn’t move! Everything I saw was, like, jumping up and moving in slow motion. But I wasn’t in control and I’m a control freak. So I started getting frustrated. Chicks were rolling around naked on the floor and then coming up to me and there was nothing I could do. I was just staring at them and it was like a psychedelic film I’d once seen about experimenting with marijuana. But everything was serene and it went on like this for, like, two hours. I wanted someone to throw water in my face to break the spell but I couldn’t seem to speak. It was scary.

  Finally, somehow I made it home. I still don’t remember how I got there, but somebody must have driven me back to my townhouse in my car because it was there when I woke up. I remember staying in bed the entire day after that party. And I promised myself after that incident that I would never, never smoke anything like that again. And I didn’t.

  By the time of our January 2 game against the Big O and his Royals in Baltimore, the pain in my knees had subsided. We won that game 118–116 in a hard-fought, very tightly contested encounter. I led us in scoring that night with 25 points while Oscar led the Royals with 31 and a bushel-load of assists. I always felt good when I played well against Oscar, especially when we came away with a win, because he always taught me something. But then we lost our next two games, the first in another shoot-out with Cincinnati, 129–128. We led most of that game, but in the fourth quarter the Big O, Tom Van Arsdale, Johnny Green, and Fred Foster turned up the heat and they caught and edged us by 1 point. Van Arsdale and Oscar combined for 65 points, while I led the way for us with 28 in the losing effort.

  Our next loss was again to our “enemy,” the New York Knicks, on January 6 in Baltimore. The day before we played New York, management had traded Ed Manning—I really hated to see Razor go because we had become good friends—to the Chicago Bulls for Al Tucker, my old teammate from the Pan American Trials. Anyway, Al joined our squad in Baltimore, where we got killed by the Knicks again, 129–99, in front of a very disappointed crowd. My knee pain had flared up again, and I only scored 6 points in that game. I don’t think anyone played well for us except Wes Unseld, who scored 27 points and grabbed a whole lot of rebounds. But Willis Reed played well that night too, scoring 25 points and snatching his share of rebounds. I think everyone on the Knicks team scored that night, with Dick Barnett and DeBusschere getting 21 apiece and Frazier adding 19.

  Bouncing back from that defeat, we won our next four games, beginning with a 121–116 victory over Detroit in Baltimore on January 7. The pain in my knees had eased up a bit, enabling me to drop 28 in that game. It was my first real shoot-out with Jimmy Walker since we came into the league, with him going for 31 points to lead Detroit. Jimmy’s scoring had begun to pick up, as I had expected it would. Now he seemed to be clicking well in his game and I was happy for him, because he was a very nice guy also. We played our last game before the All-Star extravaganza on January 18 and lost to the Phoenix Suns 134–133 despite Loughery and Marin combining for 67 points.

  I wasn’t chosen for the All-Star game, which took place in Philly, that season, and I was very disappointed I wasn’t able to put on a show for my hometown fans. But hey, what could I do about it? The selection process was totally out of my hands. Oscar Robertson, Walt Frazier, Jimmy Walker, Hal Greer, and Flynn Robinson were the guards chosen to represent the Eastern Division, and Gus was the only Bullets player selected. The East squad won the game 14
2–135. Willis Reed scored 21 points, took down 11 rebounds, and was named MVP of the game, which drew more than 15,000 fans into the Spectrum. I know a lot of the fans loved the show the All-Stars put on, but a lot of them, especially my family and friends, also expressed disappointment that I didn’t play.

  Our next game after the All-Star game was in Philadelphia and we lost, 133–118. Mike Davis returned to the team that night and everybody knew Bob Quick’s days as a Bullet were numbered (in fact, he was traded to the Detroit Pistons on February 1 for Eddie Miles, my old nemesis). Mike scored 6 points in his return and I got 23, but we never led in that game. We exacted some revenge the next night, however, by beating the Sixers in Baltimore 112–111 behind Gus’s 27 points. Philadelphia still had a very good team, though they were not as good as they had been when they had had Wilt, Billy Cunningham, Hal Greer, and Chet Walker all together. When they traded Wilt and Chet, they started—in my opinion—a slow slide downhill, even though they got Archie Clark and Darrall Imhoff from the Lakers for “The Big Dipper.” Now, don’t get me wrong, they still had a good squad, but they weren’t as dominant as they had been when I came into the league because their roster had changed so much.