Earl the Pearl

by Earl Monroe

  Phil Jackson roomed with Eddie Mast (I roomed with Dean) and they both held counter-cultural ideas. They hung out in the Village, liked to go up to Woodstock, where Phil had a place, and were almost a perfect match for each other, at least in my opinion. But I used to talk with Phil and thought even back then that he had a good grasp of the game. I think he could sit there on the bench and analyze what he saw happening on the court and put his own spin on what he thought should have happened in a given situation. Now I’m not saying I knew back then that he would become one of the greatest basketball coaches of all time—that was the farthest thing from my mind back then—but at the same time, I’m quite sure that sitting there watching Red coach made an impression on him as to what he was going to do when he retired as a player.

  Jerry Lucas was another person who I really liked back then and am still in touch with a lot today. I mean, Jerry was a mathematical genius, who also was a Rhodes Scholar, like Bill Bradley. I remember one time he went on a television show (I think it was the Johnny Carson show) because Jerry had a penchant for memorizing things. Jerry had decided he was going to memorize the first 500 pages of the Manhattan White Pages. So they tested him and Jerry came up with all the right answers. He was—and still is—a wonderful guy to talk to. Another thing that astonished me about Jerry was that when we flew from city to city for games guys would play cards on the plane and make small bets, and Jerry kept track of all the bets people made in his head. So at the end of the season one time Dick Barnett had made all these bets and Jerry recalled from memory exactly what he owed and it turned out Dick owed his entire playoff check. Now I don’t know if Dick paid the bill but Jerry surely told him exactly what he owed, down to the penny. He did this with every player on the team. Man, Jerry was unbelievable with that shit. And he was a hell of a player, too. He had game. He was a great rebounder and could really throw the outlet pass. He wasn’t a great leaper but he understood the angles, where the ball would bounce off the rim or backboard and drop and he would be there to grab it. He also had a great shot from outside, could shoot a nice little hook, you know?

  Now Dick Barnett was another hell of a basketball player, and had already been so for a long time by the time I got to the Knicks. Man, Dick could play. He had nice, slick moves, could really shoot the ball and hit that famous fall-back baby jump shot of his. He was, especially when he was younger, a great, great scorer. But when he came to the Knicks, besides getting his points, he made adjustments just like me and became the Knicks defensive guy who guarded our opponents’ toughest players. And because he was also from Tennessee State, an all black school coached by the great John McLendon, I wanted to make sure when I came to the Knicks to let him know I wasn’t coming there to take his job. I really liked Dick as a person. Before Clyde was known as a great dresser, Dick dressed to the nines and it was rumored by a lot of people that it was Dick who taught Walt how to dress. Dick was always dapper and whatnot, was a philosopher even back in those days, and man could he tell funny stories with a deadpan face that had everyone in the room cracking up. He would crack stories funny as shit, but he would never smile, even though he was a very funny guy (he’s smart as hell, too—got a PhD from Fordham and taught for many years at St. John’s University).

  Now the toughest guy for me to talk about on the Knicks during this period is Walt Frazier, even though I love him like a brother today. Because back then, when I first came to the Knicks, we were still rivals, you know what I mean? Despite the respect Clyde and I had for each other it was difficult at first to suspend our rivalry because we had gone so hard against each other so many times over the years. I mean I couldn’t be like Clyde when I came to New York because I had to become the anti-Clyde, so to speak. That meant I couldn’t be flamboyant like he was off the court, couldn’t dress in a certain way, or wear flashy clothes. So I had to wear things that made another statement.

  I did think Clyde and I could have become (if we worked at it) a kind of Larry Csonka and Jim Kiick duo of New York City, as they had been in Miami with the Dolphins. (Csonka and Kiick had been portrayed as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid in a cover story in Sports Illustrated in August 1972.) Nothing ever came of that idea, though I thought it could have worked and we could have taken over the marketing image of the Big Apple. Clyde thought I was kidding, but I was serious because I understood the importance of being here and making something like that happen. After all, New York was the media capital of the world at that time. Anyway nobody was ready for that idea back then, you know what I mean? So we didn’t hang out too much when I first got to New York because Clyde had his own friends and a different agenda. I understood that and never held it against him. So Dean Meminger and I hung out. But over time Clyde and I became close friends and we still are today.

  As for the Knicks’ chemistry we were a more methodical team than the Bullets, who were more of a fast-break, open-court, run-and-shoot type of team. That kind of play was more exciting to watch and more compatible with my natural style of playing the game. Here, I not only had to adapt myself to Red’s philosophy of playing, but also make adjustments to playing with Clyde and the rest of the Knicks players. With Clyde that meant not having the ball in my hands as I had in Baltimore. I had to take a backseat to Clyde, watching what he did and reacting to that, while it had been the other way around with the Bullets. Again I had to underplay my game because I didn’t want Clyde to think I was trying to take his spot. So I acquiesced a lot, you know, to make sure that didn’t happen. And I think after Clyde saw that, he grew to respect me, because of what I had sacrificed for the good of the team. And, of course, I respected him a lot as well.

  It took a little while for Clyde and I to click as a tandem, but the more we played together the more we knew what to expect from each other over the course of a game. And it was great for me to be able to work one side of the court—the left side mostly—and watch Clyde working on the other side and not have to worry, because I knew what he was going to do from playing with him. The same went for him when I had the ball on the left side of the floor. We were both very good one-on-one players—the best on the team—and we both knew that. So either one of us would just stand back on the other side of the court and watch the other one work magic on an opposing player. That was fun and gratifying, and over time we became fans of each other, would slap hands when the other did something real special.

  Now, we also had other really great players on our team. Dave DeBusschere could really shoot the long jump shot as well as bang really effectively down deep under the basket. He was truly a blue-collar player who came to play hard every night. Then there were Bill Bradley and Jerry Lucas, who could both just shoot the lights out whenever they had an open shot. Also, they were both so damn smart, both Rhodes Scholars who had studied at Oxford in England. Then we had Phil Jackson and Dean Meminger and Dick Barnett coming off the bench and inflicting real damage on whoever they played against. Red could also throw Luther Rackley in there, too, sometimes, if he needed him. Then there were the rookies, Henry Bibby, John Gianelli, Tom Riker, and Harthorne Wingo. We had a big squad that season, but we had just the right mix of players. Everyone worked so well with everybody that we were like a well-run engine in a car being driven by a terrific coach, Red Holzman.

  We started out like gangbusters that season, winning 8 in a row early on, and by the 10th of November we were 13 and 2, including a 25-point win over the Lakers, routing them at the Garden 125–100. We also beat the Bullets twice in back-to-back games, 92–88 and 94–90, during this stretch. I had averaged only 14.2 points a game up to this time, but we usually had five or six (or as many as seven) players in double figures in these games. Willis Reed made his first game appearance of the season against the 76ers on October 21 in the Garden and received a long standing ovation, with big cheers going up every time he scored, though he managed only 6 points in that game. Man, that really showed me how deeply Knicks fans loved their captain, and it was very moving to experience that kind o
f devotion.

  The team that ended our eight-game winning streak was the Golden State Warriors, who stomped us out in Oakland 127–104. Rick Barry, the great player from the ABA, had left that league to compete in the NBA and was now playing for the Warriors. He dropped 26 points on us that night, and I saw what the folks who had watched him play in the ABA had been raving about. I could see now that all of those kudos were well deserved, just as they had been for Connie Hawkins when he played in the ABA. The Hawk was now tearing up the NBA at Phoenix, and there would be a lot of other great players, like Julius “Dr. J” Erving, George “Iceman” Gervin, Charlie Scott, Artis Gilmore, Dan Issel, Moses Malone, and Maurice Lucas, who would all also jump from the ABA to star for NBA teams in the future.

  Golden State played its games in the Oakland–Alameda County Coliseum (now the Oracle Arena), and it was packed the night they beat us. I could see how Oakland could be a very dangerous team in the future, because besides Rick Barry they had Jeff Mullins, a great shooter; Nate Thurmond, a fantastic big man and defensive force; Cazzie Russell, the really fine former Knicks star; and Jim Barnett, another deadly shooter. The Warriors played together and had good team chemistry. So that night I could see them being a problem for many a team down the road. And they proved it when they came to the Garden and beat us again on November 11, this time in overtime, 103–102 in a very hard-fought, extremely close game. Again Rick Barry led them, scoring 27 points with an array of dazzling shots—long jumpers, wicked drives to the hole, hook shots—you name it. DeBusschere led us with 27 points, but neither Willis or I scored in that game. His knee was hurting him, and the pain in my foot had flared up and affected both my minutes and my production. This pain would flare up from time to time throughout the season that year, though it would ease up a little as we moved toward the playoffs.

  I had a good game on November 16, when I scored 24 points in a 119–100 win over the Houston Rockets at the Garden. We had beaten them once that season already, in the fourth game of the year, 103–95, in New York. What was notable for me in both games was that I played against my old teammate Jack Marin, who had been traded to Houston for Elvin Hayes in June of that year. And also new to the Houston roster was Jimmy Walker, who had been traded to the Rockets by Detroit for Stu Lantz. In the first game, Marin and Walker were co–leading scorers for the Rockets, with each scoring 21 points. In the second game Jack scored 22 points, while Jimmy got 17. They both seemed relaxed with their new team, and I was happy to see that they were.

  We played the Celtics in back-to-back games on November 24 and 25, which was Thanksgiving Day. We lost the first game 114–97 in Boston despite 28 points from Bill Bradley. On Thanksgiving at the Garden, we won 97–94, pulling ahead in the final minutes. Clyde led the team with 31 points that day, but Willis, beginning to look like his old self, scored 21, which made everyone on our side happy. Boston had a really fine team that year and would go on to post the best record in the NBA, with 68 wins against just 14 losses. They had two blossoming young superstars, Jo Jo White and Dave Cowens, along with veterans John Havlicek, Don Nelson, Paul Silas, and Don Chaney. That Celtics team played hard every night and proved to be a handful for anybody in the NBA to beat that year.

  Our performance in the first three weeks of December was up and down. We would win three and then lose one, win two and lose another, win two and lose two. Christmas was approaching, and ever since I had been in the NBA I had changed the way I looked at celebrating that holiday. I used to always try to find ways to go home to celebrate Christmas with my family regardless of how short my stay would be, because it always seemed like I had to play a game on that day. I would try, however, to drive up there when I was in Baltimore, because it was a shorter trip than coming from New York. I loved bringing gifts for everyone and just being there. I always remembered how much I loved being with my mother, feeling her presence, seeing how proud she was of me.

  I remember this one Christmas when I was playing in Baltimore I bought her a mink coat and had it wrapped in a big beautiful box with a ribbon tied around it. I will never forget the love in her eyes, that radiant, great smile she flashed when she opened the box and saw the coat. She looked at it, then looked up at me, and started to cry. Then she came and hugged me and said, “Earl, this is wonderful. Thank you so very, very much!” Then she put on the coat and just danced around the room with it on. I mean, it just made me feel great that I could do that for her and make her so happy, you know what I mean? Seeing her smile like that, with tears running down her high cheekbones, was what I missed seeing each and every day, and especially at Christmastime. And it always made me feel good going to see my mother, because a lot of times I took things for granted.

  That day I realized I had been taking things for granted for quite a while now since I had come to the NBA. And remembering that moment, seeing the smile on her face that Christmas when I was in New York playing a game and couldn’t be there to see it, brought this home to me. But I had left home for good in 1963 when I went to Winston-Salem and had unfortunately missed a lot of Christmas celebrations. Over time, holidays lost their relevance for me and really didn’t mean that much because I was always playing somewhere, and that was especially true once I came into the NBA. I felt the same about Easter, Thanksgiving, and New Year’s Eve, too, and I felt it would be the same problem even after I finished playing. But now that I had kids, I would have to figure out a way to address my problem of not celebrating holidays.

  By Christmas Day, after beating the Pistons in New York, we had a record of 28 wins and 9 losses, which was pretty good considering everything hadn’t fallen into place for us as a team yet. But I felt we were getting there in terms of team chemistry, and we closed out 1972 by beating my old team, the Bullets, for the third straight time on December 30 at the Garden, 100–98. We had been behind going into the final quarter, but we caught them and nipped them at the wire. I played my best game of the season to that point, scoring 26 points. That was a satisfying game for me because I played almost pain free throughout the game, and I was happy to have played so well against my old team. But the win was also gratifying because Willis played so well against Wes, outscoring him 20 to 6. It also sent a signal to the rest of the league that we were going to be a contending team throughout the balance of the season if Willis was healthy and continued to play the way he played that night.

  The win over Baltimore was our third straight, and we followed that up by winning our next 8 as well, not losing again until January 19, when we fell to the Lakers in Los Angeles 95–88. That string of wins upped our record to 39 and 10, and during that stretch we were really starting to click as a team. But tragedy struck for me on January 3, four games into that streak, when my beloved mother suffered a brain aneurysm while trying to push my sister Theresa’s car in the driveway of her home in Germantown and was rushed to the hospital.

  What happened was Theresa’s canary-yellow Volkswagen Karmann Ghia with a black convertible top had stalled in the driveway of the house, and Ma had gone out in the cold to help push it so the car would start. Theresa was trying to pop the clutch, but Ma couldn’t hear what Theresa was saying to her because she had collapsed. So Theresa got scared, called a taxi, and took her to Germantown Hospital to see what was going on. That’s when the doctors discovered she had developed an aneurysm. Now, my mother had high blood pressure and Theresa told me that Ma hadn’t been taking her medicine because she had run out of the pills. Ma had exerted so much energy straining herself in trying to push the car that she collapsed. After they admitted her she was in there for more than two weeks before I was finally able to get there because of our schedule, though I had been calling her every day from wherever I was to get updates on her condition. The prognosis was that she was stable, but the doctors said they had to watch her carefully and that they would let me know if her condition worsened. If my memory is correct, I think my mother took a turn for the worse when I was playing in Houston on January 21, because I think that’s the
day my sister called and told me. I remember playing in that game and only scoring 3 points. My mind was not in that game and we lost 107–103.

  When we got back to New York from Houston the team flew up to Buffalo and I went through the motions of playing in that game as we beat Buffalo 99–92. I scored 16 points in that game, and all the opposing players, having heard through the grapevine how sick my mother was, came up and gave me their best wishes for her survival. On the flight back to New York I told Red that I thought I was going to have to take some time off because of Ma’s condition and to try and pull my mind back into playing mode. He said I could take as much time as I needed. When I got back to my apartment in New York, Theresa called and told me things had gotten worse. This was January 26. So after I took care of a couple of things I picked up my car on January 28 and drove down to Philly, arriving that evening. I went by the house, got myself together, and the next day I went to the hospital alone. By the time I got there visiting hours were over and I had to tell them I was visiting from New York. So they finally let me go to my mother’s room. By this time it was almost night. When I got there I saw Ma lying in the bed and when she saw me her face lit up. I went over to hug her and could feel the warmth of all her love. We talked for about 45 minutes. I told her how good she looked and that she seemed to have a glow about her. When I got up to leave she walked me to the door and hugged me. Then she said to me, “Earl, if anything happens to me you and Ann take care of everything, including Theresa, because she’s your younger sister.”