Becoming Kareem: Chapters 18–25

Every loud sound spurred the people to run even faster.

At camp, I was a celebrity, with kids fawning over me, joking with me, trying hard to be my friend.

As I walked along the streets, I realized that this summer had been a rite of passage for me, a leap from being a child of the projects to being a citizen of Harlem.

White politicians and news commentators expected Harlemites to be repentant and act ashamed, like naughty children who had broken their parents’ favorite vase.

No matter where he went, fans would yell and wave and run up to him as if he were their old high school pal. Inside Smalls, he could control that public adulation somewhat by carving out a space and surrounding himself with close friends.

Wilt’s entourage at Smalls warmly welcomed me to the group, even going so far as concocting a special nonalcoholic drink just for me.

Wilt’s entourage at Smalls warmly welcomed me to the group, even going so far as concocting a special nonalcoholic drink just for me.

Wilt had a reputation for extravagance, but this was all beyond even my imagination. This was where Frank Sinatra or Dean Martin might live in one of their rollicking movies about chasing girls.

Wilt made a point of taking me to swanky places, giving me a taste of what my life would be like one day.

For the rest of that summer, Wilt was my guru into this fascinating world that whetted my appetite to be a professional basketball player.

One complication to my having a serious dating life was that my fantasy woman was the Italian actress Sophia Loren, famous for her sultry, sensuous looks and curvaceous body.

One complication to my having a serious dating life was that my fantasy woman was the Italian actress Sophia Loren, famous for her sultry, sensuous looks and curvaceous body.

I unfairly compared girls I met against this impossible paragon and was disappointed that none measured up.

I liked her immediately, and for some reason I couldn’t fathom, she liked me, too.

Kids danced and socialized and let loose while we divvied up a few bucks of profit. We were the kings of the local underground social world.

Despite the serious occasion, Ali was still mugging for the camera, jokingly extolling his virtues.

I wore the dashiki to show my pride in my African heritage, something black people were only beginning to do at that time.

Coach Donahue noticed my morose mood. “What’s going on, Lew?”

I had recently read James Baldwin’s essays in Notes of a Native Son, after having read his The Fire Next Time in eighth grade and being deeply affected by its bluntness about race relations in America.

To me at that time, Power Memorial Academy represented America’s patriarchal racist past, and that patriarchal system was already burning itself up by trying to stop the inevitable change going on.

But mostly I wanted to get away from home. To see what kind of man I would grow into outside the stifling shadow of my father and emotional grip of my mother.

For a seventeen-year-old high school kid hopped up on hormones and hubris, this was a lot to take in.

My dad studied the men with his cop’s X-ray vision, sizing up their character the way he would a perp at a crime scene.

My mom smiled pleasantly, but her eyes were just as probing as Dad’s.

When I announced my decision to attend UCLA at a press conference about a week after his visit, Coach Wooden told the media, “This boy is not only a fine student and a great college basketball prospect, but he is also a refreshingly modest young man who shows the results of excellent parental and high school training...."

I laughed, but I was thinking about Jack Donahue leaving his family on a day off to drive five hours for a surly kid who barely talked to him.

Knowing that Coach Donahue was on the other end of the phone didn’t bother me. Since my last conversation with Coach Wooden, I had lost any animosity I’d once had.

The incident itself wasn’t the issue—the community’s reaction was incited by what they saw as decades of institutional racism and police brutality.

Even here under the cheerful sun, I realized I would still be a symbol of all black people, a spokesperson for the black causes, an information kiosk for the curious, and a target for vitriol and violence from the ignorant.

That was the physical place, but what I wanted to convey was how it felt to sit at one of the small round tables on a stiff wooden chair and have the jazz notes burrow inside your brain and chest until you forgot time, despite a parental curfew.

I felt so excited, not just because he had praised my writing style, but because the subject matter of my life and my observations seemed worthwhile to others. I had the same reaction as the day the four of us freshmen beat the varsity players in our informal scrimmage.

At UCLA, I suddenly was living in a dorm filled with strangers and sharing a tiny room with my teammate Lucius Allen, a bouncy kid with a “golly gee whiz” Midwestern attitude about everything Californian. Definitely not like my boys from uptown back in New York. But, truth be told, there was something endearing about him.

Worse, we were surrounded by students who were flush, children of wealthy celebrities and business moguls who drove BMWs to their parents’ Malibu homes.

We had entered the gym confident bordering on cocky and just gotten our first lesson in humility from Coach Wooden.

Each time one player progressed or faltered, the whole team’s ability was affected.

He was our coach, and that meant he had a responsibility to each of us—a responsibility that was more a calling than a job. He dressed like a barnstorming Midwestern evangelical preacher, and he had the fervor for making us not just good players but good men.

He was our coach, and that meant he had a responsibility to each of us—a responsibility that was more a calling than a job. He dressed like a barnstorming Midwestern evangelical preacher, and he had the fervor for making us not just good players but good men.

But as a freshman, all I cared about at first was that game we would play against the varsity team to inaugurate the new thirteen-thousand-seat Pauley Pavilion.

Although it was an evening of triumph for the team—and vindication for me—I came away with something more.

Watching Coach Cunningham’s show of respect for Coach Wooden, and seeing Coach Wooden’s genial response, planted the seed in me that there truly were more important things than winning: relationships.