When the Garden Was Eden

by Harvey Araton

  “Son, you can’t do all that stuff—you got to come out here and play basketball,” Coach Gaines told him. It was the same refrain Willis Reed had heard from Fred Hobdy at Grambling, except that Monroe’s experience growing up in the North made it more difficult to simply look myopically to sports and assume everything would just work itself out.

  He was born Vernon Earl Monroe at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania in 1944, but his mother, Rose, had migrated north from North Carolina in the mid-thirties, when she was only 14. His parents divorced when he was five and he didn’t see his father—a singer and dancer who once worked with Bessie Smith—until young adulthood. On top of that, Monroe lost much of his extended family: ten of his mother’s twelve brothers and sisters had met the kind of untimely end—victims of violence and disease—that poverty metes out.

  Monroe’s family life stabilized when his mother remarried before he reached adolescence. He never lacked for food and clothing, but life in South Philadelphia was fraught with gangs and the inherent collateral damage. When he was eight, Monroe witnessed a fatal knifing, and decades later he would matter-of-factly explain how the killer literally cut the heart out of his victim and threw it into the street.

  As a budding athlete, topping six feet by the time he’d reached early adolescence, Monroe was looked after by his cousins, who escorted him down a safer, alternative path. Early on, he played baseball and then soccer until his junior year of high school, developing nimble feet that would serve him well on the cement playgrounds when he took up dribbling with his hands. But he was no instant sensation, calling his early basketball days “trial and error, waiting on the fence to get picked.”

  Fully grown by the time he was 14, Monroe—at 6'3"—played center at John Bartram High School. By the time he was an upperclassman, he was small for the position and had to maneuver against taller opposition, becoming known for his unorthodox moves and a magnetic dribble, his hand cradling the ball to the extent that many would contend that the chronic palming in the modern game began with him. By senior year he was the talk of Philadelphia, but a novel, perplexing talent. As a frontcourt player, he was considered too small to have any impact in college.

  Being black didn’t exactly expand his options. A few big schools in the South and Midwest did send letters, requesting an academic transcript and photo. He dutifully mailed them off. “I’m still waiting to hear back,” he said.

  At Winston-Salem State, where exposure to the campus protests helped open his eyes to the bigger picture of America’s inequities and outright oppression, he was thrilled when Gaines arranged for closed-door Sunday-night scrimmages in the Winston-Salem gym with the NCAA big boys from Wake Forest. But running the more renowned (white) players around wasn’t enough. He quietly fumed over how the results had to be kept secret. In his view, there were worse competitive injustices, like when he was cut from the Pan American team in 1967, when the tryouts were conducted by splitting the candidates up into practice groups. Assigned to a squad of black college players, Monroe scored 22 points in the last 14 minutes of a scrimmage against a collection of Armed Forces players, several of whom earned spots on the roster.

  “The whole experience of the time, what it was like for a black person to live in America, shaped the way I felt,” he said. Those feelings only grew stronger when he joined the NBA and realized how black players—especially himself—were routinely underpaid. “Basically, like anybody,” he says, “I am worried about making money,” he told Sports Illustrated during his rookie season. “This is not fun anymore.”

  As a Bullet, he didn’t look for controversy; that wasn’t his way. But he had already lived too hardscrabble a life to worry about offending the feelings of people who had never known a day of comparable misery. When asked about the Vietnam War, he didn’t sugarcoat his answer. He said he admired Muhammad Ali and doubted openly whether—if drafted himself—he would serve.

  “He got a draft dodger reputation,” the late Jim Karvellas said during his eighties run as a Knicks radio play-by-play man. Karvellas had been the longtime voice of the Bullets and, like Monroe, had migrated north to call Knicks games in New York. “Things began to get difficult for Earl, and he just said, ‘I want to get out of here.’ ”

  At least he thought he did. The truth of the matter—much plainer to him in hindsight—was that Monroe initially wished only for Pollin to pay him more money. He didn’t have a good relationship with the Baltimore coach, Gene Shue, a control freak who had never warmed to his style of showmanship and wanted to remake the team. But Monroe loved being the Bullets’ premier attraction and considered most of his teammates (and especially Gus Johnson) to be his pals.

  The subject elicited a contemplative frown, a pursing of Monroe’s lips. “Deep down, I really didn’t want to leave, and I’m not sure I would have if it was just me,” he said. “But things happened. Larry was an agent. He did what agents do. When he felt that we could and should force a move, I just kind of went along with it.”

  When Fleisher told Pollin that his client no longer wanted a contract extension, he provided a list of three teams to which Monroe wanted to be dealt: his hometown 76ers, the Lakers, and the Bulls, who in 1966 had filled the vacancy created in Chicago when the Zephyrs moved to Baltimore to become the Bullets.

  Pollin was torn. He respected Shue’s opinion, but Monroe was his star. The longer he did nothing, the tenser the situation became. Then Monroe and Fleisher walked into his office in early October 1971 and announced that Monroe was essentially going on strike. Pollin appealed to Monroe’s sense of commitment to his teammates, if not to him. But while Pollin was on the subject, hadn’t he demonstrated his loyalty with the Game 7 bonus the previous spring?

  Fleisher wasn’t buying, and Monroe wasn’t talking, letting the agent speak for him. “Earl’s not going to play for you anymore,” Fleisher said. “You have to trade him.” Just like that, Monroe disappeared from the Civic Center. He didn’t inform his teammates, never said good-bye. He left the Bullets bewildered and bothered, at least in the case of Jack Marin, who blasted him in the papers.

  “I was frustrated and said some ugly things, but that was because I didn’t want him to leave,” Marin said. “We had built the team and felt like we were getting closer to the championship.” Marin regretted his outburst and eventually realized that Monroe’s exit was probably inevitable, given his flash and Pollin’s finances.

  “Obviously Earl was a talent made for a bigger market,” Marin said. “I think Larry Fleisher convinced him of it. We were playing a lot of nights in front of 5,000 to 6,000 people, even as well as we were doing. And Gus Johnson was kind of losing it, with the bad knees and all. But at the time and because of where he wound up, it was a tough pill to swallow.”

  With Monroe absent and in Fleisher’s custody, public resentment mounted against him. Pollin decided to punt. He set the stage for a deal by trading Kevin Loughery and Fred Carter to Philadelphia for Archie Clark, who at least measured up statistically—21.3 points and 5.4 assists the previous season, to Monroe’s 21.4 and 4.4. But in making the hasty trade, Pollin wound up with another contractual headache. Clark, too, was campaigning for a new deal, a big raise.

  When the Knicks rolled into the Civic Center on October 22, neither Monroe nor Clark showed up to play. Shue was reduced to starting a rookie, Phil Chenier, and a second-year player, Gary Zeller, in the backcourt. The Knicks blew the Bullets out, 110–87. So embarrassed was Pollin that he offered fans attending the game a ticket for another. With his team descending into chaos, he took a phone call from Ned Irish. “I’ll give you Dave Stallworth and $100,000 for Earl,” Irish said, with all the compassion of a tax collector.

  Much as he chafed at the New Yorker’s gall, Pollin respected and admired Irish, and anyway he needed the cash. But he also knew he’d be excoriated in the local papers if he accepted Stallworth alone in exchange for Monroe. Without much leverage, he told Irish that he liked the hustling kid on Holzman’s bench, Rior
dan. It was obvious that he was a favorite of the sophisticated New York fans. In Baltimore, he might have upside as a player and a personality.

  “Throw Riordan in,” Pollin told Irish, “and you’ve got a deal.”

  Irish happily surrendered Red Holzman’s guy, who happened to have a broken wrist, suffered in a workout. The trade was announced on November 11, stunning the basketball world. Imagine hearing in 1985 that Magic Johnson had been traded to the Celtics—that’s how unimaginable the dealing of Earl Monroe to the Knicks was in 1971. Even more incongruous was the notion that he and Walt Frazier could share a backcourt. Not only were they impassioned rivals, stars who both wore a perfect 10 on their jerseys, but their efficacy was predicated on control of the ball—no one knew what would happen when they didn’t have it in their hands.

  The question of whether or not Frazier and Monroe could coexist immediately consumed the sport. Oscar Robertson recalled arguing with teammates, telling them they were crazy to think Monroe wasn’t good enough to adapt to the Knicks’ style. “A basketball player is a basketball player,” he told me. “And Earl Monroe was a great one. There was never any doubt in my mind that he would succeed.” He meant Monroe, with Frazier, and vice versa.

  In the backseat of a taxi on the day the trade was announced, Phil Jackson—whom Riordan had introduced to “blue-collar New York”—told Bill Bradley he had doubts the experiment would work. Bradley, a fan of Monroe’s going back to their summer league shoot-out in Philadelphia, told him he was nuts.

  “Earl will fit right in,” Bradley said. “He’s a hell of a player.”

  WHEN POLLIN FINALLY AGREED to the deal that sent Monroe to New York, Monroe was shocked. He was intrigued by the idea of seeing his act on the Garden stage, if a little concerned about how it would play. Fleisher told him not to worry: his ship had come in, with a new contract that would be worth about $200,000 a season for three years, with an option for a fourth.

  Still, Monroe, crazy as it sounded, was conflicted, because what he really wanted was to stay with the Bullets and get paid, too. He called Jerry Krause, who had scouted and befriended him, to vent; Krause was now working for the Bulls in Chicago. “Those bastards don’t think I’ll give up my game,” he told Krause. “They think I’m a loser. Well, fuck them. I’m a winner. I’ll give it up. Walt can get the glory, and if they need me in the fourth quarter, I’ll be ready.”

  But Monroe understandably had doubts, and needed a shoulder to lean on, someone to talk him through the dramatic career shift. He went home to Philadelphia to see his longtime confidant Sonny Hill.

  Based on the strong bond they had formed through Monroe’s participation in the Baker League and in Philadelphia basketball circles in general, he and Hill had kept in touch through college and the Baltimore years. Hill watched his friend play his first game with the Bullets at the Civic Center—October 18, 1967, a 121–98 romp over the Knicks—and often traveled from Philly to Baltimore for the games after that. “We had what I considered to be an inseparable relationship,” Hill said. “I said, ‘We are talking about you leaving Baltimore, your team—can you go up to New York and fit into that style?’ And I kept repeating myself—‘Can you fit in? Can you fit in?’ ”

  Monroe grew annoyed with the implication that he couldn’t. “You have to understand that Earl was the quintessential school-yard player and he was going to go to the team that was the most anti—school yard team in basketball,” Hill said. “So I kept asking him, ‘Can you be part of that kind of offense? Can you play without the ball?’ ”

  “Sonny,” Monroe said, “I can play basketball.”

  “What he was saying was, ‘I’m from Philly. I’m from the Baker League,’ ” Hill said. “ ‘Whatever someone needs me to do on the court, I can do it.’ ”

  Monroe was offended by the skepticism, as if his indivual prowess couldn’t shine in an environment more structured than Baltimore’s. “You know, Philadelphia’s a different animal than New York,” Monroe said. “In the playgrounds down there, we pride ourselves on teamwork, on passing the ball, whereas in New York, most of the guys made a move to the basket, one-on-one.”

  The way Monroe saw it, Philly ball was really more Old Knicks than New York ball was. As Holzman had noted all those years ago in his scouting report, Monroe knew the game, but like a great jazz artist, he was blessed with the ability to riff. Joe Lapchick once remarked that if a deceased player could rise from the grave, he would think Monroe was playing a different sport.

  That said, beyond Bradley and Jackson, other Knicks were skeptical of the deal. Frazier had a view that went beyond Monroe’s ability to assimilate. He believed the Knicks, following the disappointment of the previous spring, were in the process of remaking the team. They had already shipped Cazzie Russell out west to Golden State during the off-season for Jerry Lucas, adding a quality big man as protection for Willis Reed’s tendinitis-ridden left knee. Frazier dwelled on newspaper speculation that the Knicks were also in the hunt for Houston’s talented young post player Elvin Hayes, using him as bait.

  “I’m taking that sort of for true,” Frazier told reporters. “That’s the only way the trade for Monroe makes sense. They don’t need both him and me in the backcourt.”

  Unbeknownst to Frazier, Monroe had put his ego in storage when he packed up and left the Baltimore Civic Center. He sat down at the Garden for a get-acquainted session with his new coach, and when Holzman asked what he needed, Monroe said: “Just one thing. Before anybody asks the question about whether I’m going to start over Barnett, I don’t want to. I’ll earn my way.”

  Holzman was surprised. He was prepared to work Monroe in slowly but to make him a starter as soon as he could, having already consulted Dick Barnett, who was on board. “I was 34 years old,” Barnett said. “I wasn’t going to be playing that much longer. I understood what they were doing.”

  Monroe’s debut that night was a fascinating study in the transition the Knicks were undertaking. For one thing, Golden State was in town with Cazzie, who had left New York generally appreciative of his time there, and grateful for the chance to rebuild his reputation as a big-time scorer, though with some lingering regret that was similar to what Monroe felt over leaving Baltimore. New York had been his first professional home.

  “It was strange—me coming back as an opponent, the Minutemen broken up, Earl Monroe and Jerry Lucas in the Knicks uniform,” Russell said. “It was a moment of saying, ‘Wow, this is really different.’ But at the same time, life teaches you to move on.”

  Russell went forward with a 42-minute, 20-point, 6-rebound, 5-assist performance in a 112–103 Warriors victory that was the Knicks’ fourth straight defeat. Appearing for the first time in two weeks, Reed played 23 scoreless minutes, missing all five of his field goal attempts.

  Monroe was marginally better, logging 20 minutes and scoring 9 points after receiving what the New York Times described as a “thunderous ovation” from the sellout crowd of 19,588. Afterward, he said he wasn’t in game condition and would need about two weeks to get in shape. But the real Monroe appeared that season only in occasional flashes. What New York saw that first night was pretty much what it got the rest of the way: 20.6 minutes a game, 11.4 points, 2.2 assists—Earl without his Pearl, fitting in to the point of becoming another foot soldier, a moneyed Minuteman, pressing for minutes off the bench along with the rookie Dean Meminger.

  Monroe liked his teammates well enough. “I’ll never forget DeBusschere coming up when I walked into the locker room for the first time,” Monroe said. “Then Bradley and Reed. And that was good.” He found them to be cordial, businesslike. The old line about the Knicks was that when they left the Garden, they hailed 12 different cabs—an exaggeration, but Monroe could see right away that they were not fraternal like the Bullets. And he certainly was not one of them, on or off the court.

  “As far as my game,” Monroe said, “it went from spectacular to being like a student. It was very hard when the game was at a certain poin
t not to try and take over, because I was so used to doing that. I’d always played at a certain pace and rhythm, managed the game as opposed to just playing it.”

  More transcendent showman than traditional superstar, Monroe was never as dominant as Oscar or West. But because he was an anti-establishment cult figure in a sport fast becoming a bastion of black expression, his sacrifice was even more painful for devout fans. Those who had watched him or played against him from his earliest playground days didn’t recognize the role player he’d become in New York.

  “I’d go down to Philly and guys would say, ‘Eleven points a game—what’s up with that?’ ” Monroe said. “I got dogged a lot, you know, but I made sure to go down to the Baker League that summer to bust them all up, just so they knew I was still me.”

  CONSIDERED IN THE context of the modern era, Monroe’s sacrifice had a “He did what?” quality that players like LeBron James—secure in his expectation of getting paid, location notwithstanding—would find incomprehensible. Joining forces with Dwyane Wade in Miami was one thing; going to the bench was another. “What Earl did could never happen today,” said Kevin Loughery, Monroe’s backcourt partner in Baltimore. “Can you imagine an agent or a shoe company allowing a guy like Earl to go to a team where he wouldn’t even start?”

  Big-market influence remains a persistent story line in the modern NBA, and twenty-first-century players do make sacrifices. Kevin Garnett, Ray Allen, and Paul Pierce happily teamed up to win a 17th title for Boston in 2008, proving to be perfect complementary pieces. James, Wade, and Chris Bosh in the 2010 summer of free-agent insanity at least had the same idea, even if year one ended unhappily. But no NBA star player has ever made so radical a career transformation in his prime as did Monroe.