They Call Me Goose: My Life in Kentucky Basketball and Beyond (Race and Sports) 0813198917, 9780813198910

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PRAISE FOR THEY CALL ME GOOSE

“Jack ‘Goose’ Givens is one of the most beloved figures in Kentucky basketball history. Any fan is going to love Jack’s honesty as he walks you through the highs and lows of his life’s journey. From his humble upbringing, to being a trailblazer and champion at UK, to finding his path beyond basketball, Jack is as determined to inspire through the lines within these pages as he once was between the lines on the hardwood. This is a must-read for the entire Big Blue Nation, any basketball fan, or anyone who wants to learn how to overcome life’s challenging moments.”—John Calipari, head coach, University of Kentucky men’s basketball “When I witnessed Jack Givens’s historic forty-one-point performance in the 1978 NCAA Championship game, I was a young coach at Hoke County High School in Raeford, North Carolina, trying to make my way. Jack became a hero not only to me, but to the young men I was coaching—many of whom were also African Americans like me. The ‘Goose’ inspired us then, and he inspires us now with his powerful life story.”—Orlando “Tubby” Smith, former head coach, University of Kentucky men’s basketball “Jack Givens has written a book that every fan of UK basketball should treasure. It’s poignant, powerful, and perceptive on so many levels, and Doug Brunk has provided the support to make this must reading. Enjoy.”—Neil Amdur, former New York Times sports editor and producer of the “Win or Else” documentary “Jack Givens will, in my mind, always stand out as delivering the greatest performance of any UK basketball player in a national championship game with forty-one points in 1978’s win over Duke. His memoir resonates because it shows how one of the first African American players at UK, who was homegrown in Lexington, remains and continues to grow as one of the

most beloved players in UK basketball history. I know you will enjoy this great read.”—Jim Host, coauthor of Changing the Game “Having covered the UK basketball program for over fifty years, I can honestly say there has never been a team which enjoyed greater influence over the Big Blue Nation than the 1978 NCAA champions. The ‘Goose’ was certainly ‘gold’ the night he scored forty-one points as UK beat Duke 94–88 in St. Louis. Off the court, Jack is one of the friendliest people you’ll ever meet; he takes time for a chat with fans or to sign an autograph. But the emotions and openness in the way Jack writes in this book about certain times of his life gave me chills. I learned things I’d never known about the adversities he faced and overcame. You are sure to be inspired from reading these pages.”—Oscar Combs, founder and former publisher of The Cats’ Pause “Jack’s basketball story is a dream that is still dreamed today by many young basketball players, to grow up to play for the Kentucky Wildcats—and to be a star. Jack is a legend for his accomplishments at UK, but there’s so much more to his story than that incredible performance in the national championship game against Duke. I have followed his career since his high school days at Bryan Station and I have enjoyed working with him calling Sweet Sixteen games, and more recently, as part of the UK Radio Network. I really enjoyed learning so much more about his story than I ever knew, and I know all Wildcat fans will enjoy this book as well.”—Tom Leach, the Voice of the Wildcats, UK Radio Network “Finding out what we didn’t know about ‘Goose’ is why I couldn’t put this book down. Jack and Doug Brunk have you walking a mile in his shoes. That’s huge! I understand why Jack rooted for Texas Western over UK. I understand why a proud Black man likes the name Rupp Arena. And, how a kid who grew up not wanting to walk in the white neighborhoods of Lexington has turned into one of UK’s terrific ambassadors.”—Alan Cutler, longtime Lexington television sports anchor and reporter and coauthor of Cut to the Chase! “Jack Givens’s personality is one of a rather calm demeanor. Always, the unknown factor was how Jack or any recruit would react and perform

under the bright lights. Little did we know that beneath Jack’s calmness was tremendous toughness and the talent of a champion!”—Dick Parsons, former assistant coach, University of Kentucky men’s basketball “Kentucky basketball fans want to know as much as they can about their players or the team. That’s why this book by Jack Givens and Doug Brunk is a must-read for all UK basketball fans. Jack digs deep on a wide variety of subjects and gives you, the reader, insights never revealed before. Heck, I’ve known Jack since 1976 and consider him a close friend, but even I learned things about Jack that I didn’t know!”—Kyle Macy, Kentucky All-American and coauthor of From the Rafters of Rupp “I knew about ‘Goose’ Givens, the basketball player, but I didn’t know Jackie Givens, the man. His story is one of perseverance, hard work, and overcoming many obstacles not of his making. Like me, you will have even more respect for Jack after reading his book!”—Dan Issel, former UK basketball star and NBA Hall of Famer “The year before I went to UK, the guy I looked up to from afar was Jack Givens. In high school, I tried to emulate Jack’s game and demeanor. He earned ‘Mr. Basketball’ honors at Bryan Station High School and just seemed like a great guy. Once I arrived at UK and met him, played with him, lived in Wildcat Lodge, and won a NCAA Championship with him, my admiration for ‘Goose’ only multiplied. To this day, he is one the classiest guys I have ever met. He is a true friend! As we grow older, my admiration for Jack continues to grow.”—Dwane Casey, former head coach, Detroit Pistons “I covered Jack Givens’s career from the time he was a rising star at Bryan Station High School through his All-American performances at Kentucky. Since then, he has become a broadcast partner, colleague, and friend. This book helps me relive those days but also helps me know him even better. Jack takes us not just through the glory, but also the trying times that few of us ever knew about. It’s an honest account of a life that’s known incredible thrills and frightening heartache, all of which have combined to produce a man well worth knowing. As a silky, left-handed shooter, Jack

was a marksman. This book is another bullseye.”—Dick Gabriel, host, Big Blue Insider radio show “I first crossed paths with Jack Givens in Lexington’s Bluegrass-Aspendale neighborhood more than fifty years ago, and we have been friends ever since. Reading Jack’s book brought back great memories of competing against him in high school for three years to sold-out crowds (him for Bryan Station High School and me for Henry Clay High School), and then joining him as a teammate for the University of Kentucky Wildcats in 1974. Four years later, we helped bring a NCAA national championship back to Lexington after a twenty-year drought. Jack had one of the greatest games of his life in St. Louis, scoring forty-one points, and for me to end that game with a dunk was the greatest night of our friendship! There are few people prouder of Jack and his accomplishments in life than me.”—James Lee, former UK basketball star “Jack Givens was the right player at the right time for the University of Kentucky. He was a good player with tremendous character. He stood out because of his play on the basketball court and as a stellar student-athlete. The respect that Jack earned from the people of Lexington quickly extended more broadly throughout the state of Kentucky. He was a player and a person that all citizens of the commonwealth were immensely proud of. Jack and his teammate, James Lee, were well-known for their positive energy on the court. Both players hailed from great high school programs in Lexington, and each brought the enthusiasm and positivity that had been instilled in them to the basketball program at the University of Kentucky. Ironically, I recruited both Jack and James when I was at Austin Peay, and they were in their first years at Kentucky when I began to work for Coach Hall.”— Leonard Hamilton, head coach, Florida State University men’s basketball “Jack Givens and I entered UK as freshmen in 1974, were cocaptains of the 1978 NCAA Championship Wildcats, and have remained close friends ever since. By reading this book, I learned so much more about Jack than I ever knew. He shares important advice to draw from when life throws you curve balls.”—Rick Robey, former UK basketball star

They Call Me

Goose

MY LIFE IN

KENTUCKY BASKETBALL & BEYOND

They Call Me

Goose Jack Givens WITH DOUG BRUNK

FOREWORD BY RALPH HACKER

Copyright © 2024 by The University Press of Kentucky Scholarly publisher for the Commonwealth, serving Bellarmine University, Berea College, Centre College of Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky University, The Filson Historical Society, Georgetown College, Kentucky Historical Society, Kentucky State University, Morehead State University, Murray State University, Northern Kentucky University, Spalding University, Transylvania University, University of Kentucky, University of Louisville, University of Pikeville, and Western Kentucky University. All rights reserved. Editorial and Sales Offices: The University Press of Kentucky 663 South Limestone Street, Lexington, Kentucky 40508-4008 www.kentuckypress.com Frontispiece: Courtesy of the Lexington Herald-Leader. Photo by Frank Anderson. Cataloging-in-Publication data is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN 978-0-8131-9891-0 (hardcover : alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-8131-9937-5 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-8131-9892-7 (epub) ISBN 978-0-8131-9893-4 (pdf ) A note to the reader: This volume contains discussions of sensitive topics. Events are portrayed to the best of the authors’ memory and ability to verify facts. The opinions and interpretations are solely their own. This book is printed on acid-free paper meeting the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence in Paper for Printed Library Materials. Manufactured in the United States of America. Member of the Association of University Presses

To my family, especially my mom, who loved all of her kids equally and sacrificed her own life to make ours better; to my siblings, for always supporting me; to my wife, Linda, for her enduring love and support; and to my children and grandchildren, for blessing my life in ways they’ll never know.

Foreword

Some people make life look easy. The way they walk, the way they talk, the ready smile, the warm handshake, or, in this day and time, a fist bump or nod. The confidence they exude, their willingness to assist you and others. It looks as if nearly everything they do is picture perfect, as though they were born and trained for the public life. No matter where they may go, recognition is certain to follow. People clamor to be near them, to touch them, to speak to them, hoping for a return comment or smile so they may relay this to their friends and report the meeting. In many cases, they are asked to pose for pictures and sign their name. Most are obliging, but not all. In Lexington, Kentucky, if you are a University of Kentucky (UK) basketball player, you are at the front of the line. For nearly fifty years, leading that line has been number 21, Jack Givens. But what do you know about him? Oh yes, he is celebrated as a basketball player, but has it always been so? He has had lots of money and fame, but has it always been like this? What do we know about Jackie Lamont Givens the person? As a kid, did he live a privileged life? Was his life so easy he could play basketball each day, then be pampered because he was so outstanding? Or was he raised in a different environment? One where the daily bread was not easy to find, one where each member of a large family with a single mother and a passel of brothers and sisters all worked to provide.

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Who were Jack’s role models? Who were his guiding lights? We know he was a star player for the UK basketball team and led them to a national championship, but was this the only team he considered playing for? We know he was drafted by the Atlanta Hawks and played in the NBA. We know he was a commentator for WVLK AM, UK Sports Network TV, CBS, TNT, ESPN, the Orlando Magic, and a host of other broadcast outlets. We know he has been married to the same woman (Linda) since 1985. He is a father and a grandfather. We know he scored forty-one points in the NCAA championship game against Duke on a night the “Goose” was indeed golden. But do we know where the nickname came from? Why did he always wear number 21? Do we know what it was like to play for Coach Joe B. Hall or Hubie Brown? What was it like to work with and know Shaquille O’Neal? One could believe that since he enjoyed so much success in the college years, it would surely follow him all of his life. But is this true? Jack is a fighter: that we know. In this book, learn what happened when he was falsely publicly accused and had to fight for his personal and professional lives—a fight that changed his and his family’s lives forever. You remember the UK comeback of 1976 after a mediocre 50–50 record at midseason, rallying for six consecutive wins to close out the year and receiving an invitation to play in the National Invitational Tournament. This was the program’s first return to New York City since the point-shaving scandal of the late 1940s. We all remember the UK team being a surprise winner in the first three games at Madison Square Garden, being picked as a huge underdog to the UNC Charlotte team coached by Kentuckian Lee Rose and led by Cedric “Cornbread” Maxwell, and then beating them for the championship without the services of Rick Robey. It was a special trip to “the City,” the first for most members of the team. There are remembrances of locating a piano in an open ballroom of the Statler Hilton Hotel, where Jack, James Lee, and a group of UK cheerleaders joined in as Reggie Warford played the piano and sang until curfew time. The side trips included Harlem, Midtown, Uptown churches, Chinatown, and Little Italy, where the three mentioned players and team members walked to sights they had never before seen, nor I suspect ever imagined.

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Witnessing firsthand Jack’s bond with each of his teammates through four years was a privilege I have never forgotten. While there have been other close-knit teams, I cannot recall a four-year group that has remained as devoted to one another. This bond continues even today, for when one of the players is in need, Jack is one of the first called upon. He seems to always deliver. It would be impossible to count the number of times Jack has crisscrossed the state from Paducah to Pikeville, Covington to Stearns speaking, playing golf, or just visiting to assist in raising funds for charitable and worthwhile causes. For those of us fortunate enough to have known Jack Givens through the years, and to those who have been fans but never met him personally, we feel he is a very special person. But do we really know Jack Givens? In his own words, the following pages will teach you about one of the greatest and humblest stars to ever wear the blue and white. Along the way, perhaps his story will provide inspiration and courage for your own life. Ralph Hacker Former men’s basketball play-by-play and color analyst, UK Radio Network, member, UK Athletics Hall of Fame

Preface

I have been asked several times in previous years to write a book about my life, but frankly, I never thought my life story would interest people. I have never been one to think that just because I played basketball at the University of Kentucky (UK), people would want to know more about me or what I had to say. I consider myself just a normal guy. But when journalist Doug Brunk contacted me in early 2020 to pitch the idea of working with me on a memoir, I reconsidered. I had worked with Doug on his two previous books, Forty Minutes to Glory and Wildcat Memories, so I was familiar with him, and I like his writing style. About one month after Doug reached out to me, the COVID-19 pandemic hit, which left plenty of time for self-reflection and reevaluation of what’s truly important in life. Several months later, I decided to move ahead with this book for two main reasons. First, thinking back on key events on and off the basketball court that helped shape the person I am today, I figured others might be inspired by my journey or learn something from my story if they find themselves in a challenging situation. So often we look at famous athletes or celebrities and think that everything in their life is smooth and that there are no issues. But we face difficulties just like everyone else. We have moments of self-doubt and hopelessness, and we have lessons to learn—sometimes the hard way. As you will learn from reading these pages, people frowned on my interracial marriage. I fell into serious financial debt that caused so much stress that I developed a bleeding ulcer that required a hospital stay. I was arrested for a crime I did not commit, which challenged xv

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me mentally and spiritually. Then, I had to rebuild my reputation once I was cleared of the charges. I learned that, ultimately, how you handle such tough situations is a lot more important than what those situations are. From an outsider’s point of view, the cards were stacked against me from day one. My dad left our family when I was young, and my mother raised me and my siblings in a public housing project. Some days we did not know where our next meal was coming from. But you know what? The early years of my life were the best years of my life. My hope with this book is that someone in a tougher situation than mine will be inspired because I rose above my circumstances and did not allow them to define me. Growing up in poverty is not an end road. For me, it was an empowering way to start out; it helped me form life values that I hold to this day. The second main reason I wanted to write this book is to recognize the significant people in my life, especially my wife, Linda; my mom, Betty Givens; my nine siblings; my children and extended family; my high school and college basketball coaches; my close friends; my pastors; and my business colleagues. I’m fortunate to have received support from so many good people as I’ve matured and tried to find success as a husband, father, grandfather, and friend, and you’ll meet some of them in these pages: people like Warren and Dorothy Wynn, neighbors in our housing project who made sure I made it to church on Sunday mornings as a kid when my mom was at work; my high school basketball coach, Bobby Barlow; my UK coaches, especially Joe B. Hall and Leonard Hamilton; my former UK teammate Reggie Warford; and Bill Mitchell, a pastor in Orlando, Florida, who helped me get on track with my Christian faith at a time when I needed it most. Writing this book has been much more than a trip down memory lane. I have enjoyed getting to know myself better at different points in my life, viewing the peaks and valleys of my past with a different perspective and hopefully more wisdom. My perspective has changed because those times are over and I’m looking back at them instead of going through them. But those good and bad times shaped me. They helped me become better friends with people who are in my life. They taught me to listen better. They taught me to be more empathetic to people when they approach me for advice, a handshake, or a hug. They also reminded me of my roots in Lexington’s Black community.

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In the summer of 2022, I was notified of my induction into the inaugural class of the Lexington African-American Sports Hall of Fame (LAASHOF). One of the goals of this organization is to shine a light on Lexington sports heroes from days gone by, so to be selected was a big honor! Fellow inductees from that class included my longtime friend and UK teammate James Lee; the late Brenda Garner Hughes, the first Black woman to register as a basketball official with the Kentucky State High School Association; my cousin Charlie Givens, who mentored many young men and women in his role coaching basketball at the Salvation Army in Lexington; Jackie French, who has worked for Lexington Parks and Recreation since 1978 and oversees the annual Dirt Bowl summer basketball league, which I used to play in; the 1956 Douglass High School Demons basketball team, a national runner-up to Louisville Central in the forty-eight-team National Negro High School Basketball Tournament that year; and the 1959 Dunbar High School Bearcats basketball team, which placed third in the Kentucky High School Athletic Association Sweet Sixteen Tournament that season, making them the first all-Black team to advance to the semifinals of the state tournament. In the lead-up to the LAASHOF gala induction ceremony in late September 2022, inductees were invited to be chauffeured in convertibles for a parade through the streets of my old East Lexington neighborhood as a part of the annual Lexington Roots and Heritage Festival. Man, that brought back a flood of memories for me! Along the parade route, many people whom I grew up with asked the driver to stop so they could take a selfie with me, hug me, or congratulate me. Others—some of them perfect strangers—told me how proud they were of me and of the way I represented the Black community in Lexington. I was moved by this because I haven’t lived in East Lexington for decades. It felt like a homecoming. The hall of fame induction ceremony at Lexington’s Central Bank Center was first class. More than a thousand people bought tickets and dressed to the nines for the gala, which included a dinner, entertainment, and the program, which James Lee and I emceed. It was mind-blowing to me that so many people had that much interest in honoring Black Lexington sports heroes from the past. As the festivities got under way, I sensed that attendees viewed the event as something they didn’t want to miss. The spirit of friendship and community that night was unmistakable. There was also

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a feeling that, finally, somebody was recognizing that we’ve had some great Black athletes and sports heroes in Lexington over the years. And there are many more who will get recognized in the future. When I left the gala, I thought, “There is no way this evening could have been any better.” Finally, I’d like to thank members of the Big Blue Nation who began persuading me to join UK when I was a skinny forward playing for the Bryan Station High School Defenders. One was P. G. Peeples Sr., a Black man who graduated from UK during a time when there were only about fifty Black students on campus and who went on to serve as president of the Urban League of Lexington for fifty-three years. During the summer of my junior year at Bryan Station, P. G. came up to me during a break in the action of a game I was playing in at the Dirt Bowl. “We need you at the University of Kentucky,” he told me. “You mean they want me to play at the University of Kentucky,” I replied. “No,” he said. “We need you there.” I didn’t know what he meant by that at the time, but the way he said we made me understand that my ultimate decision to play at UK carried more significance than I appreciated. He and other members of Big Blue Nation supported me through thick and thin and played more of a role in my life story than you might think. Let’s get started. Jack Givens

1 Bluegrass-Aspendale

There’s something scary about walking on railroad tracks to work, but my brothers and I had no other option. The tracks were a shortcut on the walk from our apartment in East Lexington to our jobs at the Little Inn restaurant on Winchester Road, a Prohibition-era roadhouse known for its prime rib. I started washing dishes there when I was thirteen, and my older brothers Anthony and Michael were busboys and sometimes dishwashers. Walking on the tracks also helped us avoid trekking through white neighborhoods that we were not familiar with and that we may not have been welcome in. We didn’t feel comfortable in those areas, not only because we never saw Black people there but because it was an unspoken rule that, in general, white neighborhoods were off-limits to Blacks and Black neighborhoods were off-limits to whites. The 1960s were a time of shaky race relations between whites and Blacks in Lexington, so Blacks often stayed within the confines of Black residential areas on the east and west sides of the city. Sometimes we heard dogs barking, which was nerve racking because we couldn’t see anything except the tall bushes and shrubs that lined both sides of the railroad tracks. When a train approached, there was no clear escape route; we moved to one side and leaned against the bushes and shrubs until the train blew by. We never came across snakes or anything, but I always felt that if something bad did happen, there was nowhere to go until the train passed.

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They Call Me Goose

In this picture from 1938, the first phase of apartments in Bluegrass-Aspendale is fairly new. Our family lived in a two-story unit with three bedrooms and one bathroom. (Courtesy of the Lexington Housing Authority.)

If there was no approaching train, we sometimes counted the number of railroad ties as we walked, to pass time until we reached our goal. Our exit fed into a white neighborhood, which we hurried through on the way to the Little Inn. I remember feeling a sense of relief every time we reached the restaurant. I don’t know why I felt that way, because there is safety in numbers. We never had any issues on that walk, but in the back of my mind, I understood that some people viewed Black boys walking through a white neighborhood with suspicion. I spent the first fifteen years of my life in the Bluegrass-Aspendale public housing project in East Lexington, which was built in stages between 1936 and 1951. At its peak, it had 571 apartment units.1 Our family lived at 523 G North Aspendale Drive, a street address I’ll never forget. In that neighborhood, I played my first games of hide-and-seek and marbles, developed a love for baseball and basketball, and, on a neighbor’s television set, watched

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in amazement with millions of other Americans as Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon as part of the Apollo 11 space mission. I also learned to be part of a community where people looked out for one another. Years after living at Aspendale, I learned that it was built on the site of the old Kentucky Association racetrack, which predated Keeneland and the Red Mile. Back in the early days of horse racing in Kentucky, many of the jockeys were African Americans. For example, Isaac Burns Murphy competed on the Kentucky Association racetrack and later won the Kentucky Derby three times at Churchill Downs.2 I had always thought of Aspendale as just a housing project full of brick buildings and concrete sidewalks, but it’s awesome to know about my old neighborhood’s ties to the history of horse racing in Kentucky, an industry that is vital to our state. It has made me proud to say, “Hey, I grew up there!” There were no remnants of the old racetrack, except that Aspendale Drive followed the circular path of the track itself. An eight-foot-tall chainlink fence topped with barbed wire, which stretched for 350 yards, separated North Aspendale Drive, where Black families lived, from South Aspendale Drive, where white families lived. It may not have been a written rule, but we hesitated to venture from one neighborhood to the other. The apartments on the white side were a bit nicer than the ones on the Black side. That, along with the fence that kept us separated, gave the impression that the whites were better than we were. Each brick building in our part of the neighborhood looked the same, and each contained ten apartments arranged in alphabetical order, so if you were visiting for the first time and didn’t know the building number, it would be hard to tell when you reached the right apartment. There was never much grass, but there were lots of concrete sidewalks. There was also a nearly constant smell of peanut butter in the air from the nearby Jif plant on Winchester Road, which is the largest peanut butter production plant in the world. That smell seemed to be more intense in the summer. During this time of my childhood, the worst thing I remember thinking was that I could never achieve what white people had achieved. Living in a housing project where so much is the same for so many people kind of makes you believe that this is where you are supposed to be and that there is no out. At that time, few adults in our neighborhood had attended college.

Bluegrass-Aspendale was built on the old Kentucky Association racetrack, which predated Keeneland. African American Hall of Fame jockey Isaac Burns Murphy (pictured) not only competed there but also built a home on eight acres adjacent to the track. It had a balcony from which he could watch horses work out in the morning. (Courtesy of Keeneland Library—Hemment Collection.)

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My siblings and I played a lot at this playground, which was on a large oval field in our North Aspendale neighborhood. (Courtesy of the Lexington Housing Authority.)

A few were schoolteachers, which made me think that someday I could become a schoolteacher too. I got to be pretty good friends with Jonathan Davis, one of the white kids from Aspendale. He lived on the McCracken Drive side of the project, which was more integrated. Because of the clothes he wore—they weren’t clean all the time—I could tell that he was more like us. Kids have a way of not seeing color. I still believe that you learn how to be prejudiced. You’re not born that way; you’re taught that way. I just remember Jonathan being able to get along with us. We were the same age and had a lot of the same classes at school. The fence separating North and South Aspendale Drive was adjacent to a six-foot-tall chain-link fence surrounding a maintenance building that stored utility vehicles, riding lawn mowers, and garbage trucks. A park on the other side of that fence, tucked in behind the maintenance building, had a basketball court and a baseball field that we used to play on. During the day, workers kept the large swing gate on the fence open so that residents could walk through and access the park. But at a certain time of night, the workers threw a big lock on the gate so you couldn’t get through. That meant we kids often had to climb over the fence to play in the park. Older

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guys attending high school or college usually dominated the basketball court. Teams that lost left the court and fell in line behind others waiting to play, and that wait could be four teams deep. This left younger guys like me with few opportunities to play basketball, so I gravitated toward baseball. We usually had enough Black and white kids to field two baseball teams. I could catch well, I was skilled at scooping up a bad throw with my glove, and I was left handed, so first base became my favorite position. Defense was my strength; I was never a good hitter, whether we played fast-pitch or softball. I come from a family of ten children, and I was born sixth in line on September 21, 1956. The first child born to my mother, Betty Givens, was Regenia, followed by Andrew, Michael, Barbara, Anthony, me, and Paulette. I also have three younger siblings from different fathers: Lawrence, Darrell, and Kenneth, who died from leukemia in 2017 at the age of forty-seven. My full name is Jackie Lamont Givens. People started calling me Jack in high school, and that stuck. To this day, when I come across people from the old neighborhood, they all call me Jackie. Most members of my family do too. I was named after Jack Smith, who is one of my mom’s younger brothers. Uncle Jack served in the air force, and when he came home on leave, he wore his full-dress uniform. He looked sharp in that white hat! He also had a beautiful wife, Henrietta, so as a young kid, I wanted to be like Uncle Jack. I couldn’t wait to join the air force, get my own uniform, and serve my country. Uncle Jack loved to make people laugh. He also loved to sing. Sometimes we’d sit around talking, and out of the blue, he’d start crooning lines from a song related to the topic of discussion: bits from popular tunes of the day by Motown artists like Stevie Wonder, the Stylistics, and the Four Tops. Uncle Jack also sang gospel songs, including my mom’s favorite: “His Eye Is on the Sparrow.”3 Part of that hymn goes like this: Why should I feel discouraged Why should the shadows come Why should my heart feel lonely And long for heaven and home When Jesus is my portion

I was named after Uncle Jack Smith, my mom’s brother. He was a source of inspiration and always encouraged me. (Author’s collection.)

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A constant friend is He His eye is on the sparrow And I know He watches over me Another gospel favorite that he sang around our family when I got older was “The Potter’s House.”4 These are the opening lines of that hymn: In case you have fallen by the wayside of life Dreams and visions shattered, you’re all broken inside You don’t have to stay in the shape that you’re in The potter wants to put you back together again Oh, the potter wants to put you back together again Uncle Jack’s favorite saying was “It’s better to be kind than to be right.” I believe that motto, and it defined Uncle Jack. He went out of his way to help people and got along with everybody. I try to be like that too. He also provided encouragement. In a bad situation, he would say, “Asking God for strength for this day.” That’s the way I start out my day. I ask God for strength. At Aspendale, we lived in a two-story apartment, and all three bedrooms were upstairs. My mom had her own bedroom, which meant that I shared a bedroom with my brothers, while my sisters shared the third bedroom. With two double beds in each bedroom, we had a loose agreement that whoever got home first earned a place in one of the two beds. We also had mats that we would put on the floor. If you got there late, or if you were the youngest, you either slept on the floor or carved out a little space at the foot of a bed. Meanwhile, there was only one bathroom in the house, which had a bathtub but no showerhead. The sink seemed to always be stopped up. We couldn’t get the pipes to work right, so sometimes I’d have to get down on my knees and lean my head near the bathtub faucet to wash my face and brush my teeth. My dad, Reuben Givens, left our family when I was very young, so I never got to know him. In fact, I can’t say I remember what he looked like, except from pictures I have seen. Many kids in Aspendale faced the same situation. Mothers ran most of the households. But I clearly remember

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Kids always seemed to be outside playing at this cluster of apartments in Bluegrass-Aspendale. (Courtesy of the Lexington Housing Authority.)

how we viewed our friends who had both a mom and a dad in the home. I considered them to be very fortunate. I thought it was great that their dad had a presence in their lives. The saying “It takes a village to raise a child” rang true in our neighborhood. For the most part, parents knew one another, so when we were caught misbehaving by one of the dads in the neighborhood, that man had the authority to correct us on the spot. He didn’t have to call my mom and ask, “Can I get on Jackie for doing this or that?” There’s no way we could say anything back to him; we did what he said to do. So memories of interacting with other kids’ fathers in this way are strong for me to this day. I didn’t dwell on the fact that my dad wasn’t around. I don’t remember ever being told why my dad left our family; it was just something that we didn’t talk about. I think the reason we didn’t talk about it was that I didn’t know any better; I was so young when he left. Miss Marie Shy, my third-grade teacher at Constitution Elementary School, made an impression on me. She was a Black woman who served as a mother figure to many of us, someone who genuinely cared about our

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well-being. She was encouraging and wanted us to succeed. She made sure that we got our assignments done and that we took advantage of the time we had in school. Ironically, Miss Shy gave me the only spanking I ever received in school. We weren’t allowed to run down the halls or in classrooms at school, but one day she caught me running down the hallway on my way back to class. Miss Shy got behind me, stretched back her arm, and swatted me on the butt a couple of times. It was no big-time spanking, but it surprised me. Lesson learned! Without question, my mom and my older siblings served as my role models early on in life. My mom was a strong leader in our family. When I was young, she was a self-employed maid who helped raise other people’s children, clean their homes, and cook their meals. If you ever saw the 2011 movie The Help, based on the novel by Kathryn Stockett, the lives of the two Black maids portrayed in the film resembled our mom’s life. She served others before herself, and some of those she served confided in her like a trusted family member. Sometimes I’d tag along with Mom to clean homes on a Saturday or Sunday morning. Many of her clients’ homes were big, and it seemed they were built for rich people. Those kinds of houses were out of reach for our family. I don’t remember Mom raising her voice much. I also don’t remember her being a strict disciplinarian, although she certainly demanded and got respect from all of us kids. I wanted to serve my mom because she did most of the heavy lifting of raising us and keeping food on the table. She did what she had to do. Women were the leaders in our extended family as well. My grandmother Helen Smith (we called her Gran) of Danville, Kentucky, and my great-aunts Curly, June, and Jenny worked as maids to support their families. Gran raised at least twenty kids over the years, in addition to four of her own. To this day, people come up to me and say, “You don’t know me, but your grandmother is the reason I am what I am today. She raised me. My parents were too busy.” My mom followed in her footsteps. Although I had some fatherly figures as relatives, in the late 1950s and early 1960s it generally fell on the mothers to take care of the house, raise the kids, and make sure the kids didn’t create extra havoc for the fathers to deal with when they got home. For most of my life, my dad wasn’t around our house, so all of that responsibility fell on my mother.

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My sister Regenia primarily handled the day-to-day running of the house because my mom was often away working until five or six o’clock in the afternoon. When we younger kids got instructions from any of our older siblings, we didn’t argue; we fell in line. If one of them said to me, “Go wash the dishes before Momma gets home,” I did that. That all came from our love and respect for our mother. We wanted to please her. We all had to do our part to make it work. I don’t remember those as being bad or difficult times; it’s just how things were. We later moved into a larger home, but all ten of Mom’s children were born during our days at Aspendale. With ten kids in a three-bedroom apartment, there wasn’t a whole lot of one-on-one time with our mom. Often, the only time we were all together in one place was when we gathered around the kitchen table for dinner on Sundays. We also spent family time together sitting around in the house and playing cards. When we eventually got a black-and-white television set, we watched shows like The Andy Griffith Show, My Three Sons, and Leave It to Beaver. I fantasized about someday living in a house like the ones depicted in those shows and wondered if I’d ever have such an opportunity. We Givens kids knew that Mom loved us collectively and individually. None of us doubted that. She pushed us to be the best versions of ourselves. She encouraged us to make the best grades we could, and she would not settle for bad grades. If I ever got into trouble, if another parent or adult in our neighborhood came up to Mom and said, “Jackie did this,” or “I saw him doing that,” I knew that would disappoint her. I also knew I would be putting pressure on her to be the disciplinarian. That consisted of her coming home from work late and tired and me hiding upstairs, hoping no one would tell her the trouble I got into. If she did find out, I’d be summoned downstairs. She’d send me outside to break off a switch (a branch) from the bushes near our apartment. I would take the switch into the house, and she would use it to spank me. If I didn’t get a switch that was firm enough, I’d be sent back out to get a more durable one. That usually meant the spanking would be more intense. Mom only carried through with a spanking a few times. One day I got caught stealing a piece of candy from a market on the walk home from school. Mom held the switch in one hand and said to me, “Now if you do

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this again, you’re going to get a spanking with this! I don’t want to hear this about you again.” When she did carry through with a spanking, she’d say, “Turn around!” I always tried to wear blue jeans or long pants—something that would cushion the pain a little bit. I don’t recall these spankings as being abusive whatsoever; Mom was trying to teach me a lesson. That was her way of keeping us in line. You didn’t want to disappoint my mom. She just held that kind of influence on me and on my siblings. She also devoted time to other kids in the neighborhood whose moms and dads were too busy or weren’t around. For example, the mother of our close childhood friend Nate Pass died when he was young. My mom knew that Nate’s dad was often away from home working, so she made sure that Nate got something to eat but also gave him motherly advice when he needed it or asked for it. Other times Mom offered Nate unsolicited advice just as she did with all of us. He was around our family so much that he became like a brother to me. Nate lives in Indiana, but he calls my mom regularly just as my own siblings and I do, and he visits her when he comes to Lexington. He calls her “Mom” to this day. Our own family faced periods of food insecurity as well. My mom, on returning home from work, often instructed me to carry in a box full of food from the front porch. At first, I didn’t know if she was bringing the boxes home with her and just needed help getting them into the apartment or if someone was leaving them for us. It became clear what was going on when one of the women whom Mom worked for, Mrs. Betty Wyatt, repeatedly showed up unannounced with food because she knew my mom was struggling. As kids, we knew that other people were bringing us food too, but Mom did her best to hide that from us. For a short period of my early childhood, she had to go on welfare and was eligible for food stamps. Mom wasn’t proud of that either. Gran raised Mrs. Wyatt and her husband, Charlie, so they knew our family well. The Wyatts lived in Elsmere Park, which at that time was an exclusive neighborhood with big homes. The Wyatts invited our whole family to join them at their house for a couple of Thanksgivings and Christmases. We all got nice outfits to wear. We didn’t own a camera, but the Wyatts did. They snapped some of the only childhood photos ever taken of me and my siblings.

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I love this family picture from one Christmas we spent at the Wyatts’ house. Seated on the couch, left to right: Barbara, Mom, Regenia, Paulette, Andrew, and Michael. Seated on the floor: Anthony (left) and me. (Author’s collection.)

Regenia, who is eight years older than me, was like our second mom. She bore a lot of responsibility for us younger siblings and commanded respect. Regenia made sure we got up and got dressed for school because often our mom had to get up at six o’clock and leave for work before we even got out of bed. Regenia made sure all of our chores got done, and she also prepared many meals for us, usually brown or white beans and cornbread. She made great cornbread! We always wanted some of that. I’d break it up in the beans and try to stretch out that meal as much as I could. I appreciate the sacrifice she made to tend to our needs during the times when my mom was working. We didn’t lose any instruction in the way we were supposed to behave. Mom taught her well. Andrew was an authority figure to me because he was my oldest brother. He worked in restaurants and then enlisted in the navy, where he served

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Betty Wyatt (seated on the couch, right) knew my mom struggled financially, so she sometimes brought food to our apartment. This picture shows us at the Wyatts’ house on Christmas Day. Left to right: Barbara (standing), Andrew, Anthony, Regenia, Paulette, and me. I’m looking at Betty’s husband, Charlie, who is seated at the far right. (Author’s collection.)

from 1969 to 1973. When he came home on leave, Andy always seemed to be seasick from being on the water. He didn’t have the same level of responsibility around the house as Regenia did. Like me, Andy wasn’t very outspoken, but he led by example. If we got out of line or slacked off on our chores, he’d set us straight. We knew he was in charge. Since he was the oldest boy, he often slept on the couch downstairs by himself, which was a privilege in our house. Otherwise, he’d have to share a bed with a sibling or two.

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My second-oldest brother, Michael, was the sibling I looked up to the most. I considered him a good-looking guy, and he was the first of my older brothers to have a real girlfriend, Marie Beatty. Mike played basketball for Henry Clay High School, so he became the first athlete in our family. He was a good player, he was cool, and he had a cute girlfriend, so I wanted to “Be like Mike,” just like that 1992 Gatorade commercial jingle featuring Chicago Bulls star Michael Jordan. My brother Mike inspired me to become a basketball player. In fact, he invited me to tag along when he played in the neighborhood park, and sometimes he picked me to be on his team. I wasn’t very good at basketball at the time, but it was fun to play with the older guys. Mike also dressed sharply. As I got older, I wore some of his hand-me-downs, like a pair of jeans or a pair of shoes. My second-oldest sister, Barbara, liked to throw her weight around with me and her other younger siblings. Sometimes she’d try to delegate one of her household chores to us, but we didn’t fall for it. When I was about eleven years old, my brothers and I awoke to commotion coming from my sisters’ bedroom. Barbara was having her first seizure from then-undiagnosed epilepsy. I remember that night like it was yesterday: the ambulance arriving in front of our apartment and the emergency medical services (EMS) workers wheeling Barbara away on a stretcher. That scared her and all of us, of course. We were worried sick. Today, she manages her epilepsy well. The brother closest to me in age, Anthony, has always been a take-charge type of guy. We called him Gee after his middle name, Gerard. He always seemed to be in the middle of everything, whether at home or out and about. Gee became a track-and-field athlete and excelled as a high jumper. He ran fast and had serious hops. In fact, he dunked a basketball sooner and better than I did. One evening, Gee got in trouble for something, and Mom sent him outside to get a switch to use for a spanking. Gee came back in the apartment and handed it to her. When Mom approached, Gee darted into the kitchen, and Mom followed after him. “Don’t you run from me!” she said. Gee and Mom were on opposite sides of the kitchen table, staring at each other like angry opponents at a Ping-Pong match. Every time Mom shuffled side to side in one direction, Gee shuffled the other way. “Don’t whip me, Momma!” he cried.

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This went on for a bit, and Mom finally got close enough to grab Gee’s arm. When he tried to shake it loose, Gee’s arm swung back and clocked Mom on the face. My brother Andy happened to arrive home when Mom’s pursuit of Gee began, so after his arm met her face, Andy lunged at Gee and pushed him against the kitchen wall. He jacked him up a little and said, “If you ever hit my momma, whether you mean to or not, you’re gonna get it from me!” That defused the situation. Mom was happy with the outcome, and Gee didn’t get a spanking, but he knew that he was wrong. He also knew that if he ever ran from her or did anything like that again, he would have to answer to Andy, who was the oldest and the strongest of us boys. It made me not want to get in trouble either. You didn’t want to fool with Andy. My sixth biological sibling, Paulette, is two years younger than me. We called her Polly, and she was the consummate little sister. We walked to Constitution Elementary School together, and she often tagged along with me when I got together with friends or played in the neighborhood park. My brothers and I always looked out for her, but Polly tried to boss us around at times. She would say to me, “You better get your homework done. You’re supposed to do that before you go outside and play.” (I usually put off homework until just before bedtime.) Or she might say, “I’m gonna tell Momma that you didn’t take the garbage out.” If we had a girlfriend or if somebody liked us whom she didn’t like, she’d tell us. She was very likable and had a lot of friends. She was also a good student. Looking back, I consider myself fortunate that I had supportive siblings growing up. Other people aren’t so lucky. I don’t remember a time when I felt picked on, which is a good thing. In fact, we never really picked on one another. With so many kids in a small apartment, we had to get along. Everyone in our family had chores because Mom was busy working to support us. When I got old enough, one of my chores was doing laundry for the family every Sunday afternoon. The walk to the laundromat was much shorter if the swing gate in front of the maintenance building was open, but it was usually locked on Sundays. That meant I’d have to climb that fence, so I developed a routine. I’d stuff the dirty clothes in pillowcases (darks in one, whites in the other) and carry them over my shoulders. Once

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This photo was taken in our apartment after church one Sunday when I was eleven years old. (Author’s collection.)

I got to the swing gate, which had some give where it was chained, I’d push the container of laundry detergent through the opening. Then I’d scale the fence with those pillowcases swung over my shoulders and make my way to the laundromat. Griffith’s Market on Sixth Street was next door to the laundromat that we frequented. Sometimes Mom would give me a quarter so I could get something at Griffith’s to snack on while I waited for the coin washers and dryers to do their thing. If I lacked extra money, I’d try to squeeze two or maybe three loads of laundry in the dryer together so I could have a little money to go next door and get something to snack on. As much as I didn’t want to have to do laundry on Sunday afternoons, I understood that it was my responsibility. I also knew that on certain nights washing dishes in the kitchen sink fell to me, since we didn’t have a dishwasher. On other days, I mopped the kitchen floor.

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My early childhood at Aspendale taught me to be happy regardless of the situation. Our family didn’t have much, but Mom never let on that she struggled to provide for us with the money she made. That life was all I knew, all I had. I didn’t know what it was like to have a bicycle. I didn’t know what it was like to have a pair of roller skates. I didn’t know what it was like to have a lot of stuff that other kids had. I was really happy, though. There’s nothing about how I grew up that I would change other than easing the burden on my mom, who worked so hard to provide for us.

2 Growth Spurt

Three of my siblings were born well after me, starting with Lawrence, who was born when I was seven. His dad, Robert Weathers, never married our mom, but he moved in with us after Mom got pregnant with Lawrence. I liked him, but I never viewed him as my dad. Robert helped to provide, but I wasn’t aware of how he did so, whether he contributed to rent or supplied food. I was too young to know. Almost one year later, my brother Darrell was born. Since he and Lawrence were so close in age, it was almost like having twins around. They were inseparable. I babysat both boys a lot, especially when they got to be two, three, and four years of age, because I wasn’t working yet. I changed diapers. I gave baths. I heated up baby bottles on the stove. I helped in this way even when Mom was home. My older siblings did the same thing with me. I don’t know if I ever remember when there wasn’t a baby or toddler around; it was a way of life. My youngest sibling, Kenny, was born when I was thirteen. His dad, Robert Bingham, lived with my mom until he died in 2002. I didn’t know him well at all. Because of the age difference between Kenny and me, we didn’t hang around each other very much, but he always had a smile on his face. He was a big guy and earned a spot as defensive lineman on the high school football team. He was talented enough to play football in college, but he gave up the sport after high school. Lawrence looked up to me, especially as I got older and started to play sports. He wanted to do everything I did. He wanted to be a good basketball 19

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Left to right: My three younger brothers, Kenny, Darrell, and Lawrence. They always seemed to have big smiles on their faces. (Author’s collection.)

player. It didn’t turn out, but that didn’t keep him from working at it. He was so dedicated. Because he was smart and did well in school, I knew it was just a matter of time before he excelled at something. Lawrence took on the role of big brother to Darrell and Kenny. Some of this was because my older siblings and I were moving on with life, so when they came along, we weren’t around the apartment as much. I’m not surprised that Lawrence became the police chief of Lexington, Kentucky, in 2018, because he displayed leadership qualities even at a young age. If he went somewhere, Darrell and Kenny wouldn’t have to ask him to tag along. He would say, “Come on. Let’s go.” He looked after them and treated them well. Growing up in a large family taught me that I had to learn to get along with other people. It also taught me that it’s difficult to make it in life if you’re not willing to understand that there’s always a boss—somebody you’ve got to answer to—even if it’s an older brother or sister. Things go a lot more smoothly if you listen and try to do as you’re told.

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My brothers and I spent a lot of time on this field in North Aspendale, playing baseball during the summer and football during the winter. (Courtesy of the Lexington Housing Authority.)

I talked earlier about the dynamic between North Aspendale and South Aspendale. There was also a dynamic between those living in the housing project and those living in the single-family homes that bordered Aspendale. People who owned their own homes were generally perceived as better off than those of us who lived in the housing project—with better finances and more opportunities for success in life. It probably wasn’t true, but that was the perception, even though as a whole Aspendale was considered the hood. Another lesson I learned from being raised in Aspendale was the importance of work. I loved my job washing dishes at the Little Inn restaurant, not just because I made some money but because I helped provide for our family. I gave most of my paychecks to Mom to use as she saw fit. I also liked working at the Little Inn because the chefs made sure we had a meal during our shift. We didn’t get prime rib very often, but their hamburgers were great. I enjoyed being there. My coworkers were fun. We were always laughing and looking out for one another. We also played jokes on one another. One day, my brother Gee and Stephen Wynn, who also worked at the Little Inn, told my brother Michael and me that they had to be at work early, so they got a head start on that walk along the railroad tracks.

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Unbeknownst to me, they didn’t really have to be at work early. Instead, they planned to jump out from behind some bushes along the railroad tracks when I passed by because they knew how much that walk scared me. Michael knew of this plan, so once he and I reached the spot where Gee and Stephen were hiding, they jumped out from behind the bushes. I was so scared that I took off running! One of them yelled, “Hold on; it’s just us!” I should point out here that after our shift at the Little Inn, my brothers and I never walked along those scary railroad tracks at night. We always took the longer route home, using the sidewalks along Winchester Road until we came to Race Street, which fed into our neighborhood. Plenty of streetlights lined Winchester Road, which made it safer to walk at ten or eleven o’clock at night. On days when I walked by myself to and from work, I always took this longer route. I never walked alone along the railroad tracks or through neighborhoods where I felt I shouldn’t be. Because we were responsible for one another, we Givens kids never really had time to get into trouble. In fact, our immediate neighborhood was generally peaceful, largely because of the “It takes a village” credo that prevailed. When the streetlights flickered on at dusk, we knew that it was time to go home. We weren’t allowed to stay out until ten or eleven o’clock at night unless we were working. Even then, we couldn’t be out alone. The last thing you wanted was for Mom to send one of the other kids looking for you. If that happened, you had to explain why you were out later than you were supposed to be. There also wasn’t much to do in our neighborhood at night. We didn’t have a mall to hang out in, or PlayStations, smartphones, and other distractions to amuse ourselves, as kids do these days. Plus, many other families in our neighborhood had five or six children. The last thing they wanted was a bunch of other kids hanging around inside the house. We couldn’t have sleepovers with other kids in the neighborhood, because they didn’t have room in their apartments. Neither did we. That’s why a sense of freedom and adventure kicked in when I visited Gran at her house in Danville, which is about thirty-five miles away from Lexington. To me, coming from a housing project with so many apartments, Gran’s house seemed more like a farm. She lived on about a half acre of land, and at least half of it was a garden, where she grew corn, tomatoes, green beans, and cucumbers. Gran also raised chickens. On many Sundays, she hosted fried

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chicken dinners. Mom didn’t own a car, so we didn’t visit Gran often, but her house was a frequent gathering spot for Sunday dinners, Thanksgiving, and other holidays. I had cousins and many relatives who lived in Danville, so they joined us there and brought a dish to share. Thanksgiving was always a feast! Aunt Curly made her blackberry cobbler, which she only did on special occasions. Aunt June made her specialty, chicken and dumplings. We also had turkey, vegetables from Gran’s garden, a country ham, a city ham, and chitlins. We kids would eat a little bit, then play baseball on the field next to Gran’s house. Or we’d walk to the outdoor basketball court at nearby Danville High School. It always impressed me that Gran had her own home in Danville. So did my other relatives who lived there. I spent at least two summers away from Aspendale to live with Gran. I boarded the Greyhound bus in Lexington, and once it reached the Danville station, I exited and walked to Gran’s house. Often, I was the only kid around her house for days, so I got a lot of special attention, which I wasn’t accustomed to. I never went hungry because Gran kept her kitchen stocked and enjoyed baking, especially cakes and pies. She made a yellow cake with caramel icing that was my favorite. She also made good pineapple upside-down cake and German chocolate cake. Gran introduced me to fishing, which became one of my favorite pastimes. We used cane poles to fish on nearby Herrington Lake. Sometimes we’d rent a rowboat, find a place on the water, rig our line, and drop our hooks. Other times we fished from the banks of the lake. Either way, Gran had a knack for fishing. She would point to a spot on the water and say, “Drop that worm right there.” I’d drop the line where instructed, and, sure enough, I usually caught a fish! We placed the fish into five-gallon buckets and added ice to keep them fresh. Once we caught our limit, we cleaned the fish together. I used a spoon to scrape off all the scales. At first, I couldn’t bring myself to cut off the head and gut the fish, but with Gran’s instruction, I got used to doing that too. During the few times we planned to fish two days in a row, Gran rented a cabin at a campsite near Harrington Lake. We rose with the sun and fished. Sometimes my aunt Jenny joined us. Those were some of my favorite memories as a kid. The real reward after a day of fishing came after we returned to Gran’s house. I’d help her pick vegetables from the garden, and she’d prepare a feast: our catch of the day, usually

My grandmother, Helen Smith, introduced me to fishing, which to this day is one of my favorite pastimes. (Author’s collection.)

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with side dishes of green beans, sweet corn on the cob, fried potatoes, and cornbread. Nowadays I often go fishing on big bass boats with fancy rods and reels that either I or my friends own. I always think back to those days fishing with Gran in the little three-person boat with no motor, rowing out to our favorite fishing spots on Herrington Lake, using our cane poles to fish. Even though fishing is better now because of rod and reel improvements, I think those days were more fun. Those were simpler times, and I think the fish tasted better back then too, probably because of Gran’s expertise at cooking. During the summers I spent at home in Aspendale, we kids stayed outside later than we did during the school year. We couldn’t leave our immediate area, but most of the kids would be out playing hide-and-seek, marbles, and Pixie Stix. One of my best friends from the neighborhood was Stephen Wynn, who had a twin sister, Stephanie. The three of us were the same age. Their mom, Dorothy Wynn, made cream candy from scratch a few times every year and sold bags of it for ten cents or a quarter. “I’m making candy, so if you want some, save your money,” Mrs. Wynn would say to us prior to making a batch. We always looked forward to that candy; it was so good! Mrs. Wynn and her husband, Warren, owned a color TV, which was a novelty in our neighborhood. In fact, many families didn’t own a blackand-white TV either, and no one had air conditioners. (When our family eventually got a black-and-white TV, we placed a color overlay on the screen to make it look like a color set, but it didn’t work well. You could hardly see through that thing!) Sometimes on sticky summer nights, the Wynns pulled their color TV out onto their front porch and invited interested neighbors to pull up a chair or a blanket to watch. I’ll never forget that night in July 1969 when seemingly all of our neighbors gathered around that set to watch astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walk on the moon as part of the Apollo 11 mission. That amazed me. Mrs. Wynn handed out popcorn and cream candy that night. Three years earlier, I watched the 1966 NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship between Kentucky and Texas Western with my neighbors on that same TV set. As I recall, all of us rooted for Texas Western to win because they started five Black guys, while Kentucky started five white guys. Texas Western won that game. As a nine-year-old

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boy, I—like most other people in the Lexington area—perceived that Black basketball players weren’t welcome or wanted at the University of Kentucky (UK), that Black players either weren’t good enough or weren’t needed for the program to succeed. To me, the victory by Texas Western helped prove that white players were no better than Black players and that, at least for this game, the Black players were better. The Wynns also had a station wagon, and on some Sunday mornings they drove us and other neighborhood kids to Greater Liberty Baptist Church, though most of the time we walked. Greater Liberty was our family church, but Easter Sunday was often the only time we worshipped there together, since mom usually worked on other Sundays. Incidentally, Easter Sunday and Christmas were the only times during the year that my siblings and I received a new set of clothes. The only other time I got “new” clothes was when I inherited hand-me-downs from my older brothers. I don’t remember much about Sunday school except the snacks—usually a cookie and apple juice—but I remember it being strict. Kids kind of fell in line behind the adults. Reverend Albert B. Lee, the father of my future Kentucky teammate James Lee, served as Greater Liberty’s head pastor. People used to say that church was “on fire” with believers in Jesus. All I know is that the first time I attended the adult service there, it scared me to death! People would come in and testify, sing, dance, and holler out expressions like “Amen!” “Praise the Lord!” “Hallelujah!” “Tell it like it is, preacher!” and “Watch out now, preacher!”—sometimes in the middle of Reverend Lee’s sermon. It was like they were having their own conversation with him. I didn’t know what was going on. I remember thinking, “I don’t want to go back to that church. That’s a little too much.” I always went back, though. Mr. and Mrs. Wynn made sure I did. The more I attended, the more I understood that the actions of the worshippers I found so unusual were expressions of faith. They were “in the Spirit.” I confessed my faith in God and got baptized at Greater Liberty when I was eleven years old. It seems like yesterday! Baptismal services were a grand celebration: a lot of singing and praising God for another soul won for Jesus. Getting baptized changed my way of thinking. It’s not that it changed how I lived on a daily basis but that my baptism helped form my thoughts and actions regarding how I treat people and how I want to be treated. It drove

I worshipped at Greater Liberty Baptist Church in Lexington and was baptized here when I was eleven years old. (Photo by Doug Brunk.)

Visiting the Charles Young Community Center in Lexington brings back great memories. I played my first indoor basketball league game here when I was ten or eleven. (Photo by Doug Brunk.)

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home even more the importance of loving and cherishing my family, and it gave me a better understanding of what being a Christian is all about. It didn’t mean that I had to be perfect and do things right all the time. It taught me that I could be forgiven for my sins, which was a good thing, because I certainly have made my share of mistakes. Even in school, being baptized helped me get along with people who were different from me. It also made me look forward to church even more. I was self-motivated to attend and to learn more about what it means to be a Christian. I still feel that way. I met James Lee before we started attending Sunday school at Greater Liberty. He and his family lived in a house on Pemberton Street, which bordered our housing project, and we competed against each other in Little League baseball games played at Castlewood Park in Lexington. We also hung out at the Charles Young Community Center on Third Street, which was the only community center in our neighborhood.1 That’s where I played in my first indoor basketball league when I was ten or eleven. During the summer, the center held activities for youth and teens, including arts and crafts classes. I learned to draw and paint there. I don’t remember having a basketball hero as a kid, because to have a sports hero, I’d have to know about that person. At that time, I didn’t like basketball enough to seriously follow it. I do remember the New York Knicks teams with Earl “the Pearl” Monroe and Walt “Clyde” Frazier, first because of the fur coats and fancy suits they would wear to Madison Square Garden. Then that made me pay attention to them as basketball players. We didn’t have a TV for most of my childhood. It was more important for us to be outside playing sports in our neighborhood rather than to be inside watching sports on TV, especially during baseball season. Because of this, I didn’t get to watch athletes like Jackie Robinson and Hank Aaron much, but when I did, they motivated me to become a better baseball player. One person who emerged as a hero for most every Black kid I knew was Louisville native Muhammad Ali. I’m not a boxer, but I remember times on the basketball court, if you made a good play, you might serve up Ali’s phrase “Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee” to your opponent. We all wanted to be like him. I didn’t know everything about Ali’s advocacy for racial and social justice at that time; I was just a kid, but I supported him for taking stands and took interest in the good things he did.

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Two basketball players who inspired me when I was young: Travis Grant (left) and Elmore Smith of the Kentucky State University Thorobreds. They’re pictured here at an event celebrating the 1970 NAIA National Championship with Kentucky State coach Lucias Mitchell and teammate Mike Bernard (far right). It was the first of three straight NAIA national titles for the Thorobreds. (Courtesy of the Lexington Herald-Leader. Photo by Paul Lambert.)

I remember thinking I would attend Kentucky State College, a historically Black university that was renamed Kentucky State University (KSU) in 1972. My heroes were some of the guys who played basketball for KSU, like Elmore Smith, a seven-foot center, and Travis Grant, a sixfoot, seven-inch forward who could flat-out play. In fact, his nickname was “the Machine,” and he became one of the all-time leading scorers in college basketball history, racking up 4,045 points between 1972 and 1976. I certainly never followed the University of Kentucky Wildcats at that age because they didn’t have any African Americans on their team. In fact, not many African Americans attended UK, period. A 1975 report sponsored by UK’s Office of the Dean of Undergraduate Studies and the Office of Institutional Information found that between 1967 and 1974, the percentage of entering freshman who indicated their racial background as Black or African

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American remained consistently low.2 It was 1 percent in 1967 and rose to just 1.5 percent in 1974. In the fall of 1968, James Lee and I tried out for the seventh-grade basketball team at Dunbar Junior High School. James and I made the cut, but I quit after the first few practices because I just didn’t like basketball very much. I liked playing, but I didn’t like practicing or running. Plus, baseball was my favorite sport at the time. It’s hard to like something if you don’t think you’re good at it. I thought I was good at baseball, especially on defense. Also, this was about the time I started working at the Little Inn. I liked working. I liked making money and eating well. The following year, James and I tried out for the eighth-grade basketball team, this time at Lexington Junior High School, a newer, nicer school that we attended because of the realignment of our school district. Some of the guys around me said, “Man, you need to try out for the team.” It was one of those things you get talked into doing, whether you want to or not. James and I made the team, but once again my heart wasn’t in it, so I quit. I don’t remember getting any grief from anyone for that decision. Back then, teams would have fifteen or so kids on the roster, so losing a player over the course of a season was not a big deal. It also wasn’t unusual for kids to quit for whatever reason. Sometimes, they couldn’t afford to buy a uniform or a pair of basketball shoes. Other times, parents just didn’t want their kid to play. Looking back, I regret quitting the seven- and eighth-grade teams. Had I stayed on the roster, I could have built my skills earlier, so I may have been an even better player by the time my college career came around. This taught me a lesson that I’ve shared with my own kids and grandkids: once you put in the effort to make a team, you should never quit. The team is counting on you to do your part. If you’re not happy, ride it out until the end of the season and don’t try out again the following season. After the eighth-grade academic year ended, I boarded a Greyhound bus to Danville and spent the summer with Gran. This marks the time I started playing basketball seriously. Bo Hawkins and other cousins of mine lived in the Danville area, and almost every day we played pickup basketball games on the outdoor court at Danville High School. Bo was a star player for that school. He was also a great shooter, so I was in that element of

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An eight-foot-tall chain-link fence topped with barbed wire separated Black and white residents of the Bluegrass-Aspendale Housing Project until it was taken down on January 30, 1974. Our family had moved out of Aspendale by then, but I thought I’d never see the day. (Courtesy of the Lexington Herald-Leader. Photo by John C. Wyatt.)

basketball, and I became a better offensive player from competing on that outside court. I could always jump high, but my coordination improved, and I could handle the ball a little better. I got better at scoring around the basket. Things just started to click. I also got taller. In fact, that summer I grew from about five feet, eight inches tall to six feet, two inches tall. When I returned home, my height shocked everybody. For ninth grade, I returned to Dunbar Junior High School because of another realignment of our school district. This time I had no choice but to play basketball. My physical education teacher, Richard Green, and the basketball coach, Robert “Soup” Campbell, watched me play in pickup games during gym class and told me that I was going to be on the basketball team that year, even before tryouts were scheduled. Their encouragement, which was more like a demand, gave me no option other than to play basketball. That was all the encouragement I needed. They were both authority figures,

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which I needed at that time. Both had strong personalities, although Coach Campbell was more laid back than Coach Green, who was more aggressive and demanding. You didn’t talk back to either one of them. Coach Green was the school’s football coach, but he also helped coach basketball. Two things were required for me to play basketball: a physical exam and a permission slip signed by my mom. The school provided access to a doctor to conduct my physical exam, but Mom was afraid that I was going to get hurt, so she refused to sign the permission slip. What injuries she was afraid of, I really don’t know. She just had it formed in her mind that I was going to get injured. I signed the permission form myself, but you could tell it was my signature, so I asked Coach Campbell for a new one. That’s when I decided to ask Regenia to sign it. She had signed things on Mom’s behalf in the past, like report cards or permission slips for school field trips, so my request for her signature this time wasn’t so unusual. Looking back, I’m not sure that Regenia understood exactly what she was signing, but she signed the slip, and I was on the team. During one preseason practice, my teammates and I were running a full-court drill. After completing the drill, we were supposed to walk back along the side of the court. One of my teammates missed that detail and instead walked back up the middle, where I was running the drill at full speed. We collided. When I fell, part of my nose ended up on the other side of my face; I’d broken my nose! An ambulance arrived to transport me to the UK hospital, but the driver stopped by our apartment first to pick up my mom. She climbed up into the back of the ambulance, furious. “Boy, you weren’t even supposed to be playing basketball!” she hollered. “How are you playing basketball? I didn’t sign that paper!” After she chewed me out, I remember how quiet and long the rest of the ride to the UK hospital seemed—even though it was only a few miles. The interesting thing is, for the rest of my high school career, she never refused to sign a permission slip to keep me from playing. She never attended a high school game, though, because she still worried about me getting hurt. Coach Campbell led by encouraging, and he stayed on us a lot, but not in a way that was demeaning or that made us feel bad. That was good for my nature and my personality. Coach Green was rougher around the edges. If they were playing good cop, bad cop, Coach Campbell would have been

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the good cop, and he had the better basketball mind of the two. Coach Green was the tough football guy who taught us how to be tough. But he was fair and loved us just like Coach Campbell did. They were the kind of guys a lot of us needed in our lives at that time, to hold our feet to the fire and make sure we were not just good basketball players but good students as well. They made sure that we got our schoolwork done and that our grades were what they needed to be. That kept us out of trouble. Our ninth-grade team was competitive and good. We won a bunch of games, but after the season ended, I couldn’t wait to return to play in baseball leagues at Woodland Park. Still, for the first time, I was excited about the next season of basketball at Henry Clay High School and about the prospect of being teammates with James Lee.

3 Movin’ On Up

During the summer after ninth grade, I cut back my work hours at the Little Inn to play more pickup basketball games on the outdoor court at Aspendale and at other courts around Lexington. I also played league baseball at Woodland Park. That summer marked the first time I played in the Dirt Bowl, a five-on-five basketball league played on an outdoor court in Lexington’s Douglass Park, on the west side of the city. It served the low-income neighborhoods in Lexington, especially the Charlotte Court housing project. The tournament got its name from the dirt court used when it started in 1962—with nothing but a basketball goal and a rim. Herb Washington and Melvin Cunningham, who were both Black residents of Lexington, helped develop the Dirt Bowl from a small summer league into one of the nation’s best. In fact, in 1983 it was one of four summer leagues featured in a Sports Illustrated story.1 Nowadays, Douglass Park has three full blacktop courts with painted lines, bleachers, and game clocks. It’s big time now. I interacted with Herb and Melvin a lot. They cared about the success of the guys who played in the Dirt Bowl so much that they attended many of our high school basketball games. They took great interest in our careers. For the Dirt Bowl, we put our own teams together, paid a registration fee, and competed against guys with varied skill sets, including those our own age as well as older guys who had played in high school, college, and even the NBA. By that summer I could really jump, so I was best around the basket. I blocked shots, rebounded, and got putbacks. My first Dirt 35

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In my days of competing in the Dirt Bowl at Douglass Park, there was only one court. Now there are three courts and bleachers for fans. (Photo by Doug Brunk.)

Bowl experience was on a team with James Lee and other guys I would be playing with at Henry Clay High School. Guys attending other area high schools, including Bryan Station, Tates Creek, and Lafayette, also formed teams. And teams came in from surrounding counties, like Woodford and Bourbon Counties. On most days, the games started around five o’clock at night because it was too hot to play during the day. In July of each year the Dirt Bowl stages an event called Super Sunday, a day set aside to celebrate basketball. It’s a carnivalesque atmosphere that features matchups of the league’s top talent, along with live entertainment, arts and crafts, and food vendors. I remember competing in my first Super Sunday, not believing how many people were out to watch us play. The event draws huge crowds and is open to players from a wide range of ages and backgrounds. Back in my day, high-level teams had street ballers, college players, high school players, and even some of the better middle school players. Since Douglass Park was perceived as an area for Black people, very

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few white players participated. The matchups for Super Sunday were usually based on talent more than on record in the league, and the teams with the most talented players squared off against each other later in the day. Those games always attracted the largest crowds. In 1972, court-ordered desegregation plans in Fayette County required busing programs, so students who had previously walked to school rode buses for the first time. For me, that meant riding a school bus from Bluegrass-Aspendale to Henry Clay High School, which was a little over three miles away. The bus was crowded, and many students were forced to stand because there weren’t enough seats for all of us. I’m sure there were times when I had to stand, but I don’t remember it being a big deal. Anyway, it sure beat walking that distance every day, and I enjoyed riding through different neighborhoods on the way to school. As basketball tryouts started that October, James Lee and I imagined a great team with players coming in from junior high schools that fed into Henry Clay, including Lexington Junior High, which James had attended, and Dunbar Junior High, which I had attended. Both of those schools’ ninth-grade teams were regarded as the best in Lexington. In the middle of basketball tryouts, I came home one night, and Mom announced that we were moving out of Aspendale. She’d bought a single-family house on Hollow Creek Road in Northwest Lexington’s Hollow Creek subdivision, which meant I’d be attending Bryan Station High School instead of Henry Clay. That news overtook any kind of hard feelings I might have had about leaving one high school for the other. We had a brand-new, ranch-style, four-bedroom house. We were “Movin’ On Up,” just like in The Jeffersons! No more chain-link fence separating Blacks from whites. No more smell of peanut butter in the air. It was big time for us, almost overwhelming. I think my mother paid about $15,000 for the house, and she had a thirty-year mortgage. It was by far the biggest purchase she ever made. These days, paying $15,000 for a house isn’t much, but home ownership brought a sense of pride to our family and to all of the other families in the neighborhood who owned their homes. It created a sense of belonging—a much different feeling from renting and living in an apartment. Some of our neighbors in Hollow Creek rented their homes, but they shared no common walls. Like us, they lived in a freestanding home with a driveway, a front yard,

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and a backyard. It reminded me of how I’d felt visiting Gran and my other relatives in Danville when I was younger. The next day, I told Al Prewitt, Henry Clay’s head basketball coach, that our family was moving out of the school district. He immediately called Bobby Barlow, Bryan Station’s head basketball coach, to let him know about me. I found out later from Coach Prewitt that he told Coach Barlow, “Look. You have a really good player coming. You have to get him into tryouts.” He also said that Coach Barlow “owed him a big one” because he allowed me to go there and play. That’s how I was able to join the last few days of basketball tryouts at Bryan Station. At the time, Bryan Station had the best track-and-field program in Lexington, and possibly the best in the state. A lot of people thought our family was moving to that area so that I could play basketball at Bryan Station. In fact, the boys’ track-andfield coach, Paul Woodall, was more excited about getting my brother Gee than Coach Barlow was about getting me for the basketball team. Gee was quick. He ran the 220-yard sprint, the 440-yard relay, and the 880-yard relay, but he was also a great high jumper. As for my situation, yes, I was leaving James Lee and some of the other guys I knew who were trying out for that season’s basketball team at Henry Clay. There were ties, but since a few schools fed into Henry Clay, I didn’t have an allegiance at that time. The excitement of moving into a new house topped that. In fact, it was the first time I started to believe that we could ever achieve something like owning our own house. I don’t know why, but I thought we’d be in Aspendale forever. I felt a real sense of pride to be out of the projects and have our own house with a driveway, a front yard, and a backyard. This made me start to wonder what I might achieve in other parts of my life. About that time, I began thinking about college, so I knew there may be more opportunities. I didn’t think a whole lot about UK at that time, but I knew there were possibilities for other schools, especially once basketball season started and I began receiving letters of communication from colleges in and out of Kentucky. After we moved into the house at Hollow Creek, I slept in my own bed for the first time in my life because we had a fourth bedroom and Regenia, Andy, and Mike had moved out. I also rode a bus to school for the first time and had my first real crush on a girl. Our next-door neighbors, Johnny and

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Virginia “Tootie” Watkins, had a daughter my age named Rosalyn, who was a cheerleader at Lafayette High School. The Watkins family had moved in from a different area of Lexington than we had, and they were able to keep their children enrolled in the school district they moved away from. Rosalyn was one of the best-looking girls I’d ever seen. I had the biggest crush on her, but I was way too scared to approach her. She and I eventually became really good friends because we were neighbors, but I never had the nerve to ask her out or to let her know that I liked her as something other than just a friend. I was shy back in those days, but Rosalyn and I remained friends through high school. The Hollow Creek development was primarily a Black neighborhood, but there were white families too. The mix was probably 70 percent Black to 30 percent white. Single-family homes lined our side of the street, and apartment units on the other side were a constant reminder of how far our family had come. The neighborhood, which was new and developing, had a whole different feel from what I was used to. Walking around, I never felt I was somewhere I shouldn’t be, like I had when I walked in the white neighborhoods near Aspendale. It was family oriented, and it was our neighborhood. I felt a similar way about Green Acres, a nearby subdivision with generally nicer single-family homes that had been developed just before Hollow Creek. Some of my teammates from the Bryan Station basketball team lived there, including Buck Clay, Cooley Clay, and Anthony Jackson. Green Acres Park, which was up the street and around the corner from our house, served both subdivisions. It became one of my favorite spots for pickup basketball games. The courts had lights up until midnight, I think, so if the lights stayed on, we would stay out there and play basketball—especially in the summer. Guys would come from all parts of town to participate in some of our pickup games. Green Acres Park wasn’t on par with Douglass Park as far as the Dirt Bowl league was concerned, but during the week, when we wanted to play, there were always good games there. I could walk around Hollow Creek and Green Acres without anyone wondering what I was doing or where I was going. That was a great feeling. However, the move from Aspendale meant that I had to quit my job at the Little Inn because it was now too far away to walk to. After about a month, I got a job washing dishes in the restaurant at the Ramada Inn on New Circle Road in

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Lexington, which was about a ten-minute walk from our house. I worked there through the summer of my sophomore year. Just as I was adjusting to life at Bryan Station, our family got word that my father, Reuben Givens, had died from diabetic complications. Since he was my father, it was tough to learn about his passing, but I don’t remember having a lot of sad feelings at the time. He’d left our family soon after my sister Paulette was born, and then moved to Chicago, so it wasn’t like I got to know him during my formative years. I’d lived my life for such a long time without him. By this time, Mom had been working for a few years as a nurse’s assistant at Eastern State Hospital in Lexington, which specializes in caring for mentally challenged individuals. She continued doing some housekeeping work on the weekends, but her full-time job at the hospital was nine to five on weekdays, so for the first time in her life, she had a steady paycheck. She started out helping to maintain the hospital and care for patients. She made sure they took their medication and brought them food to eat. If the patients ate in a group setting, she sometimes monitored the cafeteria, ready to help if someone needed it. Mom took training courses to earn certifications, and by the time she retired from the hospital after twenty-eight years, she was providing all the same professional services that the registered nurses did. She was proud of that, even though she did not have a formal college degree in nursing. Even though I was a new student at Bryan Station, when I showed up for the last few days of basketball tryouts, I recognized some of the other players because we had competed against each other in the Dirt Bowl or in pickup games at Duncan Park or at other courts around Lexington. Bryan Station already had a good basketball team, so going into those first few days of tryouts, I had to pick things up quickly. Ted Hundley was six feet, eight inches tall, so the center position was spoken for. He was a year older than me, a good shooter who went on to play at Morehead State University. Other upperclassmen on the team included guys like Carl Shye, a forward who was a good jumper and had a game like mine; Ron Birch, a forward who shot well; and Ronnie Williams, a really good point guard. He could shoot the ball lights out! I came in with fellow sophomores James “Cooley” Clay and his cousin Buck Clay, who were both guards. We all made the roster and started to challenge each other for starting positions. (Incidentally, I

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Members of the 1971–1972 Bryan Station Defenders, left to right: Buck Clay, Carl Hubbard, James Clay, Louis McDowell, me, Carl Shye, Ted Hundley, Butch Washington, Melvin Sykes, Eddie Neal, Ron Birch, Sam Smith, Ronnie Williams, and Paul Morgan. Our team managers were Jeff Sharp (front left) and Charles Mitchell. (Courtesy of Bryan Station High School.)

chose jersey number 21 because my birthday falls on September 21, and it was neat to have that numerical connection to my birthday.) My toughest competition in practice came from upperclassmen Carl Shye, Melvin Sykes, and Sam Smith, who were all forwards. I didn’t expect to be in the starting rotation that year, and during the first few days of practice, I wasn’t. By the time we got to season play, though, I had worked my way into the starting lineup. Coach Barlow and his assistants, Charles Livisay and Ed Allin, were great men who devoted a lot of time to us. Coach Barlow became a father figure to me. He cared about all of the players, but he seemed to go out of his way to look after guys whose dads weren’t in the home. In fact, he cared less about how I did on the basketball court and more about how I was doing in other areas of my life. He often gave me rides home after practice or stopped by the fast-food restaurant Burgers Shakes to make sure I had something to eat. The ride home from the gym to our house wasn’t that long, but he would talk to me about school, church, my brother Gee—a lot of different things other than basketball. He was a strong Christian, he

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My Bryan Station teammates and I were lucky to have coaches who cared so much about our well-being. Head Coach Bob Barlow (center) is flanked by his assistant coaches Charles Livisay (left) and Ed Allin. (Courtesy of Bryan Station High School.)

was always encouraging, and he had no problem quoting from scripture now and then. Coach Barlow also made sure that I and my teammates had a ride to the gym for home games. If we didn’t, he and his wife would swing by to pick us up. I stayed in contact with Coach Barlow throughout his life. A few years ago, when he was in his mideighties and wasn’t getting around so well, we attended some Kentucky High School Athletic Association Boys’ Sweet Sixteen Basketball Tournament games together. We were sitting behind one team’s bench, and the head coach launched into a profanity-laced tirade, calling his players all sorts of names. I found it uncomfortable to watch. I leaned over and told Coach Barlow, “Coach, you didn’t do a good job of preparing me for college.” He turned to me with a downhearted look and, with his slight characteristic stutter, said, “What do you mean?” “You were the only coach I’ve ever had who didn’t use profanity,” I said. “So you didn’t prepare me for Coach Joe B. Hall at Kentucky or for Coach Hubie Brown when I got into the NBA.”

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We both got a good laugh out of that. Coach Barlow never used a curse word during my career at Bryan Station. As we listened to that coach lay into his players, he said, “Jack, I’ll tell you one thing. If that’s the only way a coach can encourage his players to play, then he’s not doing a very good job coaching.” That’s the kind of wisdom he had. He died in 2020 at the age of ninety-four, shortly after the COVID-19 pandemic hit. I miss him. Coach Livisay, an African American, had been the head basketball coach at Douglass High for eighteen years.2 He spoke softly but carried a big stick and reminded me of my junior high school coaches at Dunbar. He refused to let us take shortcuts, especially when it came to academics. He might say something like, “I talked to Miss Robinette. She said you didn’t finish your homework. Why didn’t you finish your homework?” Coach Livisay was just as pleasant as could be, but he made sure that we played to our talent level, and he held us accountable. He gave us advice whether we wanted it or not and dealt with us in a personal way. That’s what I appreciated most about him. He had our best interests at heart. He wanted us to win anytime we got on the floor, but he wanted us to win in the classroom as well. Coach Allin had played two seasons as a reserve for UK and had gone on to coach at Midway High School and Woodford County High School.3 He was also my driver’s ed teacher. He would say things like, “If we don’t win this game, you’re not going to be able to drive tomorrow in driver’s ed.” His sense of humor put us at ease. In my sophomore year at Bryan Station, I couldn’t believe how much better the talent was from my one year of junior high school play. We had very competitive practices. Buck Clay was as quick as any guard I’d ever seen during my high school career, especially on defense. He made it difficult for opponents to get the ball up the floor. His one-on-one defense was awesome, and it showed in practice: the upperclassmen guards on our team struggled against him. Cooley was also the quarterback on the football team, so he made good decisions and was a good athlete. Not as quick as Buck but taller and longer. It didn’t take long for people to start paying attention to the Bryan Station Defenders, because with the exception of other Lexington schools, we blew teams out and became known for our strong defense. We played a full-court press, and I would play a rover position near half court. I could

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Here I am passing the ball to Ted Hundley (24) in the post during a game against Lafayette my sophomore year. (Courtesy of Bryan Station High School.)

cover from side to side, so a teammate or I would usually pick off any long pass our opponents tried to throw once they were trapped, and we would have easy layups going the other way. That was the most impressive thing about our team in my sophomore year. The atmosphere at our home games was amazing. The bands were both good and loud, and our fellow students cheered us on from the bleachers with passion. Our high school cheerleading squad also played a part in our success. They won a lot of state competitions. It wasn’t long before all of our games were full or sold out, especially matchups with other city high schools like Henry Clay, Lafayette, and Tates Creek. Those were the games we most looked forward to. The number of notable Black ex-basketball players, coaches, and community leaders who attended our high school games surprised me: guys like Herb Washington; Charlie Givens, a distant cousin of mine who was the recreation director at Lexington’s Salvation Army Community Center for many years; Sanford Thomas “S. T.” Roach, who coached the Bearcats’ basketball program at Lexington’s old Dunbar High School from 1943 through 1965; and former Bearcats John Will “Scoop” Brown; Joe Hamilton; Bobby

When I attended UK games as a recruit, I was impressed by the play of Tom Parker (12), who was a lefty like me. At right is Tom Payne (54), the first African American player to sign with the Wildcats. (Courtesy of the University of Kentucky Special Collections Research Center.)

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“Poo Cat” Washington; George Wilson; and Julius S. Berry, who scored more than three thousand points during his Dunbar career in the 1950s and was nicknamed “Goose” after Reece “Goose” Tatum, star of the Harlem Globetrotters.4 I knew Mr. Berry, but because of our age difference, I never got to see him play. I wish I had. I’ve heard so many stories about him as a playground legend. The above individuals were many of the same guys who brought lawn chairs to watch us play at the Dirt Bowl. They supported all the players. If it was a good play, it didn’t matter what team you were on; they cheered for you. They wanted us all to do well; they made us feel like we were playing for them. I heard stories about other guys who attended our games, how they played and how good they were back in their day. Some were talented enough to play NCAA Division I basketball, but at that time, African Americans didn’t have many opportunities to compete at that level. It was also difficult to attend college without a scholarship because most couldn’t afford to pay for it on their own. So it was great to see them in the stands cheering us on and having fun. I don’t remember the exact timing, but at some point during my sophomore year, UK’s assistant coaches Dick Parsons and Lynn Nance started to recruit me. They invited me to attend my first Wildcats game in Memorial Coliseum, and I remember liking Tom Parker,5 who was a lefty like me and could shoot the ball. Still, I wasn’t thinking that UK would be my first college choice. For one thing, Tom Payne, the first Black player to suit up in Wildcat uniform, stayed in Lexington for just one season (1970–71) before he left for the NBA.6 He struggled with some personal problems while at UK, but he faced discrimination as well. According to an article by Brian Bennett in the Louisville Courier-Journal, “Threatening phone calls, broken car windows and eggs smashed on his front door became routine” after he arrived in Lexington.7 Payne also “feared for the safety of his wife—whom he married right after high school—and their infant daughter.” To me and others in the Black community, this treatment indicated that he wasn’t welcome at the university because of the color of his skin. Despite Payne’s short time at UK, some of us viewed Coach Adolph Rupp’s recruitment and signing of a Black player as a step in the right direction. That led to the signing of Reggie Warford in the spring of 1972, followed by Merion Haskins and Larry Johnson. I’ll talk about those guys later.

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During my high school career, I didn’t consider myself a shooter. I became that in college, but in high school I don’t remember taking a lot of shots far away from the basket. I was just a good athlete, and I had a lot of raw talent. Of course, there was no three-point line, so there was no reason to even think about that. I was good around the basket and didn’t mind mixing it up, which worked out well for our team, particularly after I moved into the starting lineup, because Ted Hundley liked to play outside and was a better shooter. I scored most of my points on fast breaks because I would rebound and pass to the guard and was quick enough to get out on the wing. I was good at fundamentals because that’s what Coach Barlow emphasized. I could jump, rebound, block shots, and score around the basket. I played hard and worked at getting better. I also played good defense, which Coach Barlow wanted from us. I could guard out on the wing as well as or better than anyone else we had on the team at the four or five position. Ted and I became good friends. He lived within walking distance of Bryan Station, so on home game days, he’d invite me to his house after school. His mom usually prepared a meal for us, and we’d walk back over to the high school, put on our uniforms, and get ready for the game. Later in my sophomore year, as my teammates got to know me, a few of the guys started to call me “Goose.” I didn’t remember who first called me that until 2020, when I called up Ted Hundley to help me sort it out. “Ted, who first started calling me Goose?” I asked. “I did!” he replied. “Don’t you remember?” Ted reminded me that Coach Barlow had driven us and another teammate or two to watch a Kentucky Colonels basketball game at Freedom Hall in Louisville. Big-name players on that Colonels squad included Artis Gilmore and former UK stars Dan Issel and Louie Dampier. One of their teammates was a six-foot, seven-inch forward/center named Jim “Goose” Ligon, who was an American Basketball Association All-Star in 1969. “I saw Goose Ligon, and I thought he resembled you,” Ted said. “He was about your size, wore his hair pretty much the same length as you did, and played the same style as you did. That’s why I started calling you Goose in practice when we got back to Lexington. It caught on after that.” As Ted told me this, I recalled attending that Colonels game, but I don’t remember anything about Goose Ligon in particular, except that he was a

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When Ted Hundley and I traveled to Louisville to watch the Kentucky Colonels with Coach Barlow, Ted said I resembled their six-foot, seven-inch forward/center Jim “Goose” Ligon (pictured here) in looks and style of play. In our next team practice, Ted called me “Goose,” and my nickname was born. (Courtesy of Lloyd “Pink” Gardner.)

great ballplayer. I’m glad that Ted helped me clear up the question of who first called me Goose. The Bryan Station Defenders ended the 1971–72 season strong. On March 4, 1972, we won the Forty-Third District Tournament with a 72–63 victory against Tates Creek in Memorial Coliseum. One week later, we

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I scored this layup for Bryan Station in a second-round 1972 district tournament game against Lafayette, which we won 85–51. Our team captured district and regional titles in basketball during the 1971–1972 season. (Courtesy of Bryan Station High School.)

captured the Eleventh Region championship by defeating Tates Creek again, 69–63, also in Memorial Coliseum. Ronnie Williams led the way for us that night with twenty-two points. I scored nine points and grabbed thirteen rebounds. This victory earned us a spot in the Kentucky High School Athletic Association Boys’ Sweet Sixteen Basketball Tournament at Freedom Hall, which had a capacity of 13,500. That trip probably was

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the first time I ever stayed in a hotel room. I had no clue how popular the state high school basketball tournament was; almost every game was sold out! I still remember hearing longtime Freedom Hall public address (PA) announcer John Tong introduce the starting lineups for our games. It was a special feeling to be there; the excitement, the size of the crowds, and the atmosphere were hard to beat. I didn’t know anything like that existed. In the state tournament, we defeated Johnson Central 87–60 and Covington Holy Cross 68–61 but lost in the semifinals to the Owensboro High School Red Devils 67–63. I scored 21 points and pulled down 7 rebounds in that game. One of Owensboro’s star players was Kenny Higgs, who went on to play at Louisiana State University, although he wanted badly to join James Lee and me at UK. Another good player on the Owensboro team was Jerry Thruston, a six-foot, six-inch forward who was named “Mr. Basketball” for the state of Kentucky in 1972. Coming off the state tournament, Coach Barlow was named the Herald-Leader’s City Coach of the Year for guiding us to a 25–7 record, and Kenny Higgs and I were the only nonseniors to make the all-tournament team. Before I started high school, I never paid attention to the state tournament, so I didn’t fully appreciate what an honor like that meant. I was also a Herald-Leader All-State honoree, in addition to being named to the paper’s 1972 All-City basketball team, along with my teammates Ronnie Williams and Ted Hundley. I received some good recognition, but that wasn’t my motivation. I was driven to compete on the court simply because it was something that I liked to do.

4 “Come to Kentucky!”

During the summer after my sophomore year, I continued to work at the Ramada Inn, and I played basketball almost every day. The level of competition at the Dirt Bowl seemed more intense, and we started drawing bigger crowds for every game, not just for Super Sunday. If my game was at five o’clock on Sunday afternoon, I’d attend church, return home, change clothes, and get something to eat. Then I’d head over to Douglass Park to watch the games until ours tipped off. I also spent a good amount of time that summer fishing with Gran’s brother, Uncle Paul Routt, and my cousin, Roger Fitzpatrick, who is three years younger than me. We called him Fitz, and he tagged along with me to games at Bryan Station and the Dirt Bowl. Uncle Paul and Aunt Alice lived in the Green Acres subdivision, and they owned a boat, so Uncle Paul, Fitz, and I would fish from time to time at nearby farm ponds or at Harrington Lake. Sometimes Gran joined us. Before fishing, I often spent the night at Uncle Paul’s house, and we left before sunrise to make the most of our day. He loved to tell stories, especially about his fishing adventures. I always wondered whether he was telling the truth, but he made the fishing stories sound real enough that no matter how farfetched they seemed, I was hooked. Fitz and I fished with Uncle Paul well into our adulthood, up until a year or so before he passed away. Gran lived to be one hundred, and Uncle Paul lived to be ninety-six before he passed away in 2013, so I got a lot of fishing in with them. Fitz’s mom, Annette, and her sister, Sandy Routt, attended almost every Bryan Station home basketball game and many of 51

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Our 1973–1974 Bryan Station squad went 30–5 and made it to the second round of the state tournament. Front row, left to right: Kenny Thompson, Pat Littleton, Donnie Moore, Norman Jackson, Buck Clay, Odyncy Johnson, Stewart Beatty, and Perry Noplis. Second row, left to right: Coach Bob Barlow, Coach Charles Livisay, Robin Parker, James Clay, me, Jim Hodge, Glenn Taylor, Anthony Jackson, and Coach Ed Allin. (Courtesy of Bryan Station High School.)

our road games. Annette and Sandy knitted beanies with a pom-pom on top for our entire team, in our school colors of blue, green, and gold. Many of us wore those beanies to games, and they became part of our game-day outfit during the winter months. I turned sixteen on September 21, 1972, which made me eligible for a driver’s license. I learned to drive in my mom’s Ford Gran Torino, which she bought to drive back and forth to her job at Eastern State Hospital. If I needed to get somewhere while Mom was at work, or if one of my other siblings needed the car, Annette and Sandy often lent us their family’s Chevy Nova. Sometimes that was my transportation to and from school or home basketball games. As I was putting together this book, Fitz reminded me that three years after I graduated from high school, I chauffeured him and his date to the Bryan Station senior prom. I wore a suit, rented a Chrysler New Yorker, and opened the car doors for them like a real chauffeur. Before the prom, I treated him and his date to a nice meal at Cliff Hagan’s Ribeye steakhouse. Once basketball season came around, my teammates and I looked forward to a promising run. We had made a strong showing in the previous state tournament, which made me want to get back there again. We had many

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The Defenders gather for a team huddle before tip-off. No one’s wearing their socks low—a sign of the times! (Courtesy of Bryan Station High School.)

good players returning, so a lot was expected of us. In fact, it was anticipated that Kentucky’s Eleventh Region representative would be Bryan Station or Henry Clay. Around this time, I started to receive letters of interest from college and university basketball programs all over the country. At the end of most school days, someone in the Bryan Station administration office made announcements over the PA system. Some days the person would say, “Jack Givens, come to the office to pick up mail.” That was how I received my first communication from interested schools, and I couldn’t wait to get to the office to see who had sent me a letter! Some of the schools I had never heard of, but I remember receiving letters from Notre Dame, Rutgers, UK, and many other SEC schools, as well as the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV), the University of Hawaii, and even the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)! It was shocking and exciting. It wasn’t just me, though; a few other guys on our team got sent letters of interest as well. We’d bring the letters to the locker room before practice to share and to compare, to see who had drawn interest from the better colleges. When I brought such correspondence home from school, my brother Gee took it on himself to

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Two of my favorite teachers at Bryan Station were Gloria Compton (left), who taught health and physical education, and Jane Robinette, who taught business law and recordkeeping. (Courtesy of Bryan Station High School.)

fill out the prospective student athlete forms that accompanied the letters and mail them back, to make sure that we responded to every school. I managed to earn good grades during high school, usually As and Bs. If I got anything lower, Coach Barlow threatened to not let me play. My mom also threatened to not allow me to play if my grades weren’t good. She wanted me and my siblings to do well in school, so she held our feet to the fire on getting good grades anyway. Threats from Mom always worried me more than those from Coach Barlow. I was fortunate to have good teachers. One of my favorites at Bryan Station was Miss Jane Robinette, who taught business law and recordkeeping. She loved UK sports, but more than anything, she loved Bryan Station sports. On a game day against one of the Lexington schools, if she saw me in the halls or in the lunchroom, she would tell me, “You come to my class, and you’re gonna rest this afternoon. I’ll talk to your teachers, and I’ll take care of it, but you need to stay off your feet and rest.” When I accepted

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Ted Hundley (24) and I both jump to grab a rebound during a matchup against Tates Creek on December 21, 1972. Tates Creek won the game, 43–42. (Courtesy of the Lexington Herald-Leader. Photo by E. Martin Jessee.)

her offer, she’d find me a desk in the back of her class, and I’d rest my head while she taught. She did this for my teammates as well. Miss Robinette attended every home game and many of our road games. After a home game, she would tell me, “You stay home in the morning and get some sleep.” I never did. I would say, “But, Miss Robinette, I have a class!” She’d say, “Don’t you worry about that. I’ll make sure your teacher understands.” She was a super lady, a concerned and engaging teacher. Gloria Compton was also influential. She taught health and physical education and was the Bryan Station cheer coach, so she was always full of energy, just the nicest lady. She always had a smile on her face, and she poured all her energy into her students. After she retired from teaching, she served on the Bryan Station Alumni Association Board of Directors, and in 2018 she was inducted into the Governor Louis B. Nunn Kentucky Teacher Hall of Fame. During the 1972–1973 basketball season, UK fans attending our games started to say things to me like, “Hey. We want you at Kentucky,” and

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“Come on, go to Kentucky!” This happened more often at away games than at home games. It was unbelievable, and it made me feel great, mainly because our team drew larger and larger crowds for away games and the demand for tickets got greater and greater. We knew we were a good team because the fans made us feel that way. The teams we faced for away games outside of the immediate Lexington area were mostly white, and almost all of the Kentucky fans in the stands were white. Their vocal support got me thinking more seriously about UK as my college destination. The Wildcats only had one Black player on the 1972–73 roster: Reggie Warford. Maybe there would be a place for more. Our team lost only three games my junior year: all to Tates Creek High School. They had our number that year for some reason, with guys like Tyrone Dunn, whom I matched up against, primarily because I was a little taller and could defend him some. He and my cousin Terry Hawkins were both great shooters who could fire it up. Tates Creek also had a lot of size across the front line with guys like Doug Ferrell and Eric Singleton. They would kind of build a wall around me, which made it difficult for me to get the ball. Besides beating us twice during the regular season, they defeated us 60–55 in the semifinals of the Forty-Third District Tournament, which meant that we did not qualify for the regional or state tournaments. I scored nineteen points and grabbed sixteen rebounds in that game, but Ted Hundley and I got into foul trouble that night. We were all disappointed because we were the top-ranked team in Kentucky for much of the season, and in our minds, we were the best team in the state. This team was probably the best during my career at Bryan Station, mainly because of Ted Hundley’s presence; he did things that made us all better. We closed the season with a 24–3 record. Coach Barlow was named the Herald-Leader Coach of the Year, and I earned Herald-Leader first-team All-State recognition, along with my teammate Ted Hundley and James Lee. I also received third-team Associated Press 1972–73 All-American basketball honors. Toward the end of basketball season, I started dating a Bryan Station student who was a year older than me. She lived in St. Martin’s Village, a middle-class African American subdivision near Douglass Park, and I often went to her house after school to spend time with her and her family. We hit it off really well, but our backgrounds were so different. She was outgoing,

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Here I’m pulling down a rebound against Tates Creek, who beat us three times during the 1972–1973 season. Those were the only games we lost that year. (Courtesy of Bryan Station High School.)

popular, and very attractive, and I was shy at the time, so to have a girl like that interested in me was flattering and surprising. To use the basketball analogy, I was playing above the rim, in my mind. Her father was a concrete specialist in the construction business, and her mother became like a second mom to me because I spent so much time at their house. She volunteered at a school for mentally challenged children and young adults and worked part-time at a nursing home caring for senior citizens. By this time in my high school career, national powerhouse basketball programs like the University of Houston and UCLA had already recognized the importance of recruiting Black players onto their teams. For example, the Cougars signed the six-foot, nine-inch power forward/center Elvin Hayes in 1965, while the Bruins signed the dominant seven-foot, two-inch center Lew Alcindor (now known as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) in 1966. Closer

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to Lexington, the Western Kentucky University (WKU) Hilltoppers integrated their basketball program by signing Kentucky natives Clem Haskins, a six-foot, three-inch point guard, and Dwight Smith, a six-foot, four-inch guard, in the fall of 1963. A few years later, WKU signed Jim McDaniels, a seven-foot center who was named Kentucky’s “Mr. Basketball” in 1967. It took some time, but this trend also started to take shape in the SEC. The UK basketball staff was recruiting me and James Lee hard, but several people whom we respected in Lexington’s Black community held a negative view of the university at that time and encouraged us not to sign. In their minds, many super-talented Black basketball players in previous years had not even been considered by UK. The individuals who advised us not to sign with UK included members of our church, community leaders, and some of the older men who attended our Dirt Bowl and high school basketball games—a few of whom were former players who had been overlooked by UK in the past. So, while the mainly white fans in small Central Kentucky counties where we played encouraged us to sign with UK, people from the Black community in Lexington who meant a lot to us thought otherwise. I was flattered by the interest UK took in me, but the basketball staff at the University of Tennessee was also heavily recruiting me. In fact, that summer they invited me to spend a few days working as a counselor at a basketball camp on the campus in Knoxville so that I could get a feel for the area and get to know them. Other than the summers I spent at Gran’s in Danville, this was the first time I was away from home on my own for any period of time, so it was a big step out for me. I rode on a Greyhound bus from Lexington to Knoxville, and assistant coach A. W. Davis picked me up at the bus station. The University of Tennessee was the first college campus I spent significant time on. It impressed me, and the basketball staff treated me great. Ray Mears and Stu Aberdeen were likable coaches, and they made it clear that they wanted me to be a Volunteer. In fact, after the visit I thought about signing with Tennessee. Other than UK, it was the only major university I seriously considered. Many other colleges and universities recruited me, but I only made official visits to UK, Tennessee, and Eastern Kentucky University. I liked the University of Louisville, but I didn’t give it strong consideration. I probably would have been more interested if they had invited me for an

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official visit, but that never happened. By the time other schools started to recruit me during my senior year, most of them assumed that I would be attending UK or the University of Louisville, even though my official announcement didn’t come until the end of my high school basketball career. Shortly before classes resumed for my senior year at Bryan Station, my girlfriend informed me that she was pregnant. I was scared to death! We had fooled around, so I knew that it was possible, but it was something that I did not expect to hear. It was a new set of circumstances, and I didn’t know what to think. I tried to avoid it. I tried not to believe it. For many weeks, I tried to hide it from my mom and everyone else I knew, but once she started showing, I couldn’t avoid it; I had to tell Mom. “We’ll get through it,” she assured me. “We’ll be able to handle it. Just don’t worry about it.” She supported me 100 percent. That made it easier for me to deal with the situation. Also, my mom knew my girlfriend’s mom, so they talked. In those days, a pregnancy out of wedlock was something that you kept quiet about. Her family knew. My family knew. I don’t know who else might have known about her pregnancy, but it wasn’t widely talked about. Soon after we notified our families and close friends about my girlfriend’s pregnancy, she informed me that I wasn’t the father. I was stunned! I always thought that I was because we were dating each other at the time. Plus, once she found out she was going to have a boy, she asked for my permission to name him Lamont after my middle name. “No, you’re not the dad,” she told me. So I was confused and didn’t really know what to expect or what to think, even though I believed that she had become pregnant by me. This wasn’t all on her, because it was easier for me, safer for me, not to become a father. Not so much because of the time it was going to take from me but because of perception, because of my reputation as a high school basketball player hoping to earn a college scholarship to play Division I ball. It was more convenient, and I didn’t have to deal with a likely media circus from the situation. I regret this now. I wish I had stood up and accepted the responsibility. If I really wanted to confirm that Lamont was my son at that time, I could have gotten a paternity test. Despite her about-face on this, she and I remained friends and continued to talk. I visited her at home as her pregnancy progressed and up until

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Lamont’s birth on January 29, 1974. I didn’t see Lamont much after he was born, but he looked just like me, and I felt strongly that he was mine. My mom and her mom did too. In the meantime, her mom stayed in touch with me and made sure I knew everything that was happening with her daughter and Lamont. When basketball season began that year, I tried my best to compartmentalize this whole situation, but it was always in the back of my mind that I could be a dad. Our Bryan Station team was determined to make it back to the state tournament, having been denied an opportunity in the previous season. We were anxious for games to start but knew it would be a challenging season because every public school in Lexington—Bryan Station, Tates Creek, Lafayette, and Henry Clay—was playing at a high level; the talent on each team was so good. Speaking of Henry Clay, after my sophomore year I was assigned to guard James Lee most of the time because I matched up against him best. Usually, one of his teammates guarded me. After our clashes, I always teased James that he was scared to guard me. Those games were super competitive. On December 18, 1973, I scored forty-five points and pulled down twenty rebounds against Henry Clay, but they beat us on our home court 80–75. James poured in twenty-six points and grabbed nineteen rebounds. It was that kind of game. We were good friends, but once that ball was tossed up, we started going at each other. James was a banger, physically strong. He and I banged against each other so much that it was difficult for some referees to know how to call the game. Thankfully, a few referees, guys like Doug Hampton, Ancie Casey, Jerry Jenkins, and Charlie Fiske, allowed James and me to play hard against each other. Because of this, our coaches eventually instructed us not to guard each other. Also, since our team had so much quickness at every position, with guys like James “Cooley” Clay, Buck Clay, Norman Jackson, and Anthony Jackson, we played a very good 2-3 matchup zone defense. We didn’t guard man to man a lot in the half-court setting, which made things difficult for a lot of teams. We also had a good full-court press. We beat most of our opponents handily during the first half of my senior season, but on February 16, 1974, we fell to Harrison County in Cynthiana, 70–69. One of their star players, Jerry Fogle, scored twenty-four points against us. He and his teammates cut the nets down and celebrated like it

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was the state tournament championship. It was that big of an upset, and it opened our team’s eyes to how Bryan Station basketball was perceived throughout the state. That game made us totally refocus on the rest of the season and got our minds ready for the district and regional tournaments that were coming up. We were playing well and handling most of the teams on our schedule. We had also won the Louisville Invitational Tournament (LIT) on January 26, 1974, with a 73–65 victory over Ballard at Freedom Hall. Everybody wanted to play in the LIT; it was popular and competitive. Outside of the loss to Harrison County, when we played noncity teams we built such a big lead in the first quarter that many times the starting five saw no minutes in the second quarter. The same thing would happen in the second half. If we increased the lead in the third quarter, the starters wouldn’t get to play in the fourth quarter, so we starters learned to take advantage of the time we had on the court. During this year, regular-season matchups of Lexington public high school basketball teams sold out so fast that hundreds of people who wanted to attend the games were left out in the cold. Because of this, Memorial Coliseum hosted these matchups, but demand for tickets was so great that these games also sold out! The crowds were standing room only; it was high school basketball at its best. If you weren’t inside Memorial at six o’clock at night for a seven-thirty game, you would not get in the gym; the fire marshal would close the doors. If a doubleheader was scheduled, you would have to be there an hour and a half before the first game. As a high school recruit, I attended only a couple of UK games at Memorial Coliseum, but I remember how loud it was and how into the games the fans were. It was just like that when the Bryan Station Defenders played against Henry Clay, Tates Creek, and Lafayette there: an electric atmosphere, extremely loud. The atmosphere and the feeling that I got from playing in Memorial Coliseum started to grow on me. On March 9, 1974, my Bryan Station teammates and I squared off against our rival Henry Clay for the Eleventh Region championship crown in front of six thousand fans at the Frankfort Sports Center.1 I remember the bus ride over there. We couldn’t wait to play! We knew it was going to be a good game because we had lost to Henry Clay earlier in the season. It was also the last go-around for me and other seniors on that team, like

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That’s my teammate Stewart Beatty cutting down the net after our team captured the Eleventh Region title in 1974 by defeating Henry Clay 79–63. This earned us a berth in the state playoffs. (Courtesy of Bryan Station High School.)

Norman Jackson, Buck Clay, and Cooley Clay—a time for us to shine. Even though James Lee scored twenty-seven points and had fifteen rebounds for Henry Clay, we won the contest 79–63. I scored thirty points and pulled down eighteen rebounds, while Norman Jackson scored eighteen points. The victory earned us a spot in the Fifty-Seventh Kentucky High School Basketball Tournament at Freedom Hall, where we found ourselves matched up against Owensboro and their star player, Kenny Higgs, in the first round. Kenny averaged twenty-eight points per game that year and was one of the best players in the state.2 Owensboro had beaten us in two previous matchups during my Bryan Station career: 67–63 in the semifinals of the state tournament during my sophomore year, and 65–63 in the championship game of the Owensboro Invitational Tournament during my senior year. This time, Owensboro built a ten-point lead in the first quarter, but we outscored them 16–7 in the second quarter.3 In the second half, our defense took over the game, and we started to pull away. Buck Clay and Norman Jackson made it difficult for Kenny Higgs to get the ball. He fouled out of the game in the fourth quarter, and our team prevailed 75–60. I scored thirty-five points

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and pulled down twenty-four rebounds. Norman had thirteen points, and Cooley added twelve. After the win against Owensboro, we matched up against Louisville Male in the state tournament quarterfinals on March 15, 1974. We entered that game ranked number one in the state,4 and we had beaten some of the best teams in Louisville during the LIT earlier in the season, so I really wasn’t all that concerned about Louisville Male. In our minds, winning the LIT set us up to win the state tournament, because the Louisville teams had big men. The Ballard Bruins had Jeff Lamp and Lee Raker. You’d hear about them throughout the state. Louisville Central was always good, but we didn’t know a lot about Louisville Male. Coach Barlow had convinced us that we were the best team in the state, but during the second quarter of the game that night, Male built a lead that it kept for good. Their sophomore shooting guard Darrell Griffith scored twenty-five points and grabbed thirteen rebounds. He was so quick. One of his teammates, sophomore Bobby Turner, scored twenty-four points on us; some were big-time outside shots. We did not expect that. I had thirty-one points and sixteen rebounds in the game, but we lost, 84–75. In my mind, this was a big upset; we finished our season 30–5. After the loss, we were disappointed because it meant the breakup of a great team. “We’ve been together for so long, James [Clay] and Buck and myself,” I told a sports reporter after the defeat.5 “We’ve been running around together since we were sophomores. I just hate to see it end. I don’t mean our friendship will end, but we won’t be playing together anymore, except for some alley ball.” I also felt bad for Coach Barlow. Losing in the state tournament is totally different from losing a game during the regular season. Even to this day, I think, “Man. I just wish we could have won a state tournament.”

5 “How Did You Get So Good?”

Soon after the Kentucky High School Basketball Tournament ended, Coach Barlow asked me to stop by his office after school. We talked for a while, and the phone rang. He picked it up and handed the receiver to me. It was the director of the Kentucky State High School Athletic Association, who informed me that I’d been chosen as the 1974 Kentucky Mr. Basketball, an honor that recognizes the top high school senior basketball player in the state. He told me I’d be wearing a number 1 jersey in the annual Kentucky-Indiana All-Star games that summer. On top of making the all-tournament team, being named Mr. Basketball was a great achievement. After all, there were other worthy candidates that year, including James Lee, Kenny Higgs, and Robert Miller. When I informed my family later that afternoon, they were all proud. Mom—who never attended one of my high school games because she was worried I’d get hurt—hugged me and said, “Oh, Jackie. How did you get so good?” The joy on Mom’s face when she asked me that moved me to tears. “Momma, I don’t know,” I said. “I was just playing ball.” During homeroom the next day at school, someone in the administrative office announced my honor over the PA system. It seemed like everyone at Bryan Station congratulated me that day! The support from my classmates and teachers was amazing. I went from signing a few autographs to signing bunches of autographs on newspaper articles and other items. That took some time to process because I considered myself as just another student at 64

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Vert Taylor (standing) presided over a press conference at the Continental Inn in Lexington on April 17, 1974, where James and I announced our commitment to UK. Family members who joined us that day were (left to right) my brother Anthony, my sister Barbara, and Reverend Albert Lee and Mary Lee. (Courtesy of the Lexington Herald-Leader.)

Bryan Station. I was also being recognized more out in public and receiving mail from fans around the state congratulating me. Around this time, I was also named a Parade All-American, third-team selection along with my future UK teammate Rick Robey. A few weeks later, on April 17, 1974, James and I staged a press conference at the Continental Inn in Lexington to announce our commitment to UK. We tried to look our best because we knew that our signing would draw a lot of interest. I wore a white suit, a wide-collared shirt, a wide tie, and platform shoes, which were all in fashion in the 1970s. I didn’t have a big Afro, but I spent extra time that day trying to get my hair right. My brother Anthony tied my tie for me because I hadn’t worn one often before that event. James and I were really decked out, dressed to a T. We knew we weren’t just representing ourselves that day. We were representing the entire Black community we had grown up in. Anthony and my sister Barbara joined us that day, as did James’s parents, Reverend Albert B. Lee and Mary Lee. We invited Vert Taylor to preside.1 Vert was a pharmacist who had graduated from UK, and his wife, Joan, was an educator, so they were kind of like Lexington’s version of the

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Huxtable family as portrayed on The Cosby Show. James, other young high school basketball players from around Lexington, and I looked up to Vert. He stood about six feet, five inches tall, so he looked like a basketball player. We considered him a role model and viewed his success as something to strive for. He set the standard for where we wanted to go. The Taylors had a large home in the Tates Creek subdivision, and their house backed up to a golf course. They invited us over to have meals and just to hang out. We’d also shoot baskets and play pickup games with their son, Vince, on the basketball goal in their driveway. Vert played with us also. He cared about all of the basketball players in Lexington. “You don’t know how great this is for me,” Vert said during his opening remarks that day.2 “The people of Lexington have been good to Jack and James, and they want the feeling to be reciprocal. I told them to look at every offer. I told them how important it was to get a good education, but I also stressed how important it was that Kentucky have them.” As for the perception that UK had mixed success signing Black players, Coach Joe B. Hall said this at the press conference: “It mostly has been the result of something our opponents have used against us.” He explained, “It’s an image that was placed on the university by our competition. Now we have five Blacks on the squad and they’re all good representatives of the school, like all our players are. We’re extremely proud of them.” Coach Hall understood that work was required to repair old ways of thinking—the perception that Black players were not welcome at UK. My teammates and I—both Black and white—were more interested in building the future of the program than in dwelling on the way things had been under Coach Adolph Rupp. Coach Hall felt this way too. Change couldn’t have happened any other way. Sure, Coach Hall faced pressure succeeding a coach who had guided UK to four national titles, but he consistently recruited the nation’s best players, regardless of their skin color. James’s father, Reverend Lee, was a role model because of the way he carried himself and the way he cared for people in the community. He wasn’t the only Black preacher around, but he was my preacher. He offered advice freely, always seemed to have a smile on his face, and always remained positive. For example, during my high school years, when I saw him before or after church services at Greater Liberty Baptist, he’d often say something

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James Lee and I were all smiles after signing our letters of intent to play basketball at UK. Apparently wide neckties were once in fashion. (Courtesy of the Lexington Herald-Leader.)

encouraging about my play, like “Looks like you had another good game.” Or he’d tease me by saying, “Henry Clay is going to beat you next time you play them.” More than once, he took me and James out to dinner after watching us play in the Dirt Bowl. He was dressed to a T every time I saw him. Not that he would wear a suit to the games in the summer, but he would have his shoes shined up. He often wore pants with a crease and a nice shirt. I wish I could say that I ultimately decided to sign with UK for profound reasons, but that wasn’t the case. The coaches certainly proved that they wanted me, but personal circumstances played a key role. I wanted to stay close to home. I loved my family, and I didn’t want to attend college far away from my mom. The relationships I’d formed in church, in school, and throughout Lexington were also important to me; it would have been tough to leave. In addition, I was scared to fly at that time. I’d never flown on a plane, so the thought of getting on one to visit colleges and universities scared me. I’d heard stories these visits often involved bribes of cars, money, and other gifts for prospects. I have often wondered what such visits would

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have been like and whether or not things like that really happened, but I wasn’t bribed to attend UK or any other institution, because I didn’t know enough about the recruiting process to ask things like “Can you help my mother?” or “Can you help my family?” That might have happened to other recruits at that time, but it didn’t happen to me. After the press conference, James and I joined our families for a meal at Cliff Hagan’s Ribeye steakhouse to celebrate. I believe that was the first time I’d seen one of their famous ribeye steaks. It was huge! They also had a great salad bar and served baked potatoes that were almost the size of somebody’s head, along with a loaf of hot bread right out of the oven. From that day on, the attention that James and I received when we were out and about in public intensified. I thought, “Man, this is a bigger deal than I ever thought it would be.” For the first time, I felt a sense of how special it was to sign with UK. Things kind of changed. The sense that I was representing something big carried over into the Derby Classic on April 28 at Freedom Hall, which pitted a team of Kentucky and Indiana All-Stars against the US All-Stars. It was the first real all-star game I’d ever been a part of. Rick Robey was on the US All-Star team, along with Moses Malone, a two-time All-American that UK was recruiting hard. Moses was a machine under the basket. I thought, “If we get this guy, our team is going to be great,” but Moses began his pro career right out of high school, which was unheard of at the time. Still, the Derby Classic drew a crowd of 13,749 spectators,3 in part because UK fans wanted to make sure that Moses knew they wanted him at Kentucky. I think he would have signed with UK had he not gone pro. After two quarters, our team led 53–45. The halftime entertainment was a one-on-one competition: James Lee from our team versus Moses Malone from the US All-Stars. Both played a physical game, so it was fun to watch them bang around. James took on that big fella and figured out a way to beat him, 16–15! I was so happy for him; it was a big deal. I was also happy for our team, which won the game against the US All-Stars, 91–88. Moses led all scorers with twenty-two points. James and I scored twelve points each. After the Derby Classic, I had a few weeks of high school left to finish, so I worked to keep up my grades. I also continued to play basketball almost every day. Once I graduated from high school, UK lined up a construction job for me so that I could earn some money. I remember

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my first experience with a jackhammer, trying to control it while breaking up a concrete sidewalk on Main Street on a hot and sticky summer day. I remember thinking, “Why in the world did I get this job?” The first Kentucky-Indiana High School All-Star series game took place on June 22, 1974, at Freedom Hall in Louisville, while the second game tipped off on June 29 at Hinkle Fieldhouse in Indianapolis. James and I knew some of the Indiana All-Stars from the Derby Classic, so we had established a degree of friendship. Going into these two games, we had a roster full of the best high school seniors from Kentucky, and I thought, “There’s no way anybody’s going to beat us.” But Indiana had a good team, and they beat us in both games: 92–81 in Louisville and 110–95 in Indianapolis. They played a more physical style of basketball than we did. They had more size and were stronger around the basket. The losses were a reality check for me; they taught me that I was going to have to up my game going forward. That summer, Leonard Hamilton, who had just been hired as an assistant coach for UK, attended games at the Dirt Bowl to watch James Lee and me play. An African American, Coach Hamilton befriended people of influence around inner-city Lexington who could help him make connections to potential recruits, guys like Vert Taylor; P. G. Peeples, who was president and CEO of the Urban League of Lexington for fifty-three years; my cousin Charlie Givens; S. T. Roach; and Louis Stout, who in 1994 became the first African American commissioner of the Kentucky High School Athletic Association. All of these guys—along with Reverend Lee—were in the upper echelon of Lexington’s Black community. I certainly didn’t think of myself on that level, but I shared athletic circles with them. They attended the Dirt Bowl and high school games of local prospects, including James and me. They were always seated up front and center and shown respect. They had an aura of confidence about them and modeled what I wanted to be, how I wanted to be viewed. I didn’t know how I was going to do it or if I would ever have the opportunity, but they set the standard for what I wanted to achieve someday—the way they carried themselves, the way they talked, and the way they acted. Many young Black basketball players and men who had played for him viewed S. T. Roach as a father figure. He talked to me about UK in a positive way, especially during my senior year of high school. He didn’t

The hiring of UK assistant men’s basketball coach Leonard Hamilton in the summer of 1974 helped solidify Coach Hall’s commitment to changing the culture of the program. (Courtesy of the University of Kentucky Special Collections Research Center.)

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fully advocate for UK, though; he would say things like “Make sure you give it a good consideration.” He always sharply dressed, and he was one to put his arm around your shoulder and make you know that he cared. I felt that he had my best interests at heart. I got to know him better after I signed with UK. I viewed Louis Stout as “Mr. Kentucky High School Sports,” an insider with more of a pulse on basketball and all other high school sports in the state than anyone else I knew. I don’t remember him promoting UK as much as I remember him recognizing my talent as a basketball player and encouraging me with a smile or a pat on the back. He advised me to be good and to work hard. I consider Coach Hamilton a trailblazer for UK basketball much like Reggie Warford was. A native of Drakesboro, Kentucky, Reggie arrived in 1972 and became the first African American basketball player to stay four years and graduate from UK. He was the perfect person to help integrate the program at that time because he was strong willed and confident and never shied away from taking a stand. For instance, during Reggie’s freshman year, the UK band used to lead the Memorial Coliseum crowd in singing Stephen Foster’s famous ballad “My Old Kentucky Home” before tip-off. One time a group of white UK fraternity brothers pointed at Reggie and Black players on the opposing team when the crowd sang the ballad’s line “’Tis summer, the darkies are gay.” Reggie found that offensive, so he sat down for the rest of the song. Soon after that incident, UK officials moved the singing of “My Old Kentucky Home” to the games’ conclusion. The Black Student Union and the Black fraternities on campus petitioned to have the word darkies in the song replaced with people. It took about ten years for that to change, but the line now goes, “’Tis summer, the people are gay.” When Coach Hamilton arrived on the scene, he had a strong aura, just like Reggie. One day at the Dirt Bowl, Coach Hamilton introduced himself to me. He was a smooth talker who knew the right things to say, and he always wore a big smile on his face. I don’t recall exactly what he said to me that day, but it was probably something like, “We needed you to come to the University of Kentucky.” He might even have said, “You and James signing with the university will change how people think about UK. You coming to Kentucky will help my career and make my job a lot easier.”

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It was a high priority for the coaching staff to sign James Lee and me for the 1974–75 basketball season. Coach Hamilton likely told me that adding us to the roster would improve the university’s image within the city of Lexington and the state of Kentucky. I’m sure he also said something about us winning the national championship now that James and I were on the team. By the 1973–74 season, the Wildcats had three Black players from Kentucky on the roster—Reggie, Merion Haskins from Campbellsville, and Larry Johnson from Morganfield—but the program had never had Black players from Lexington. In conversations with Reggie, Merion, and Larry during my recruiting process, I got the impression that they wanted more Black players on the roster at UK. I don’t remember them saying anything negative about the program or the university; they encouraged me and James to join them. Otis A. Singletary, who was UK’s president at the time, also struck me as a person who supported efforts to recruit more Black athletes—not just for basketball but for other sports as well. He was one of the first people I met as a recruit, and he carried an air about him that reflected what I thought a university president should be: welcoming and genuine. I got a warm feeling about him immediately, and my friendship with him lasted through my whole career at UK and continued after my graduation. He invited me over to his office a few times just to hang out and talk. A few days before the fall 1974 semester got under way at UK, I moved into Holmes Hall, an old freshman dorm on campus. I took my clothes and school supplies over there little by little since our house was so close by. Each room was small: two creaky beds, two desks, and two chairs, not much room for anything else. I roomed with sophomore guard Larry Johnson. As our other teammates arrived on campus, I’m sure that Coach Hall brought the whole team together; I just don’t recall the specifics. I do know that we started to play pickup games in Alumni Gym and that Coach Hall told us to make sure that we were in shape for our preseason conditioning program. College life took some getting used to. I couldn’t believe how large some of the class sizes were. I didn’t like eight o’clock classes, but we had to take early-morning classes to free our schedules by midafternoon for basketball practice. During my first semester, I had an eight o’clock class on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, classes might have started at nine o’clock. One of the biggest lessons I learned my freshman

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year was to avoid taking an eight o’clock class if at all possible! Those classes came around fast, especially on mornings after a game. They were really bad on cold mornings, which brought back memories of how cold I had been as a kid walking to school from Bluegrass-Aspendale in the winter months. I tried my best to never miss a class, even if we had played on the road the night before and had returned to Lexington at two or three o’clock in the morning. I always sat near the front of the classroom because I wanted the professors to see me and to know I was interested and serious about what they were trying to teach us. I also wanted my fellow students to know that I was working just as hard as they were to get good grades. I didn’t want to be perceived as receiving preferential treatment because I was a college athlete. My brother Anthony attended UK during part of my time there and joined the Black fraternity Alpha Phi Alpha. Because of my responsibilities to the basketball team, I didn’t have much discretionary time, so I never joined a fraternity. However, I attended many step competitions sponsored by the Black fraternities on campus, who challenged one another to dancestep moves choreographed to popular music. These events drew interest from Black and white students alike. Onlookers grooved to the rhythm of the music and the synchronized steps of the fraternity brothers. As for my life away from campus, I stayed connected to my Lexington neighborhood by visiting home on weekends and worshipping at Greater Liberty Baptist on Sundays. I also played in the Dirt Bowl in the summer and spent time at the Charles Young Center to mentor youth. I didn’t attend as many local high school basketball games as I would have liked to because of my own practice schedule, travel, and games. James Lee and I were part of a freshman recruiting class that included Rick Robey, Mike Phillips, and Danny Hall. During pickup games at Alumni Gym, we learned that we weren’t in high school anymore. We were playing against men, and it was obvious. In particular, the seniors, Kevin Grevey, Mike Flynn, Bob Guyette, Jimmy Dan Conner, Jerry Hale, and G. J. Smith, made sure that we freshmen knew that playing at this level wasn’t going to be easy. For example, after going against fellow forward Kevin Grevey, I fully understood that I wasn’t going to take his spot. Grevey never said, “You’re not taking my spot,” but by the way he played, I knew that if I was going to take his spot, I’d have to earn it. It wasn’t going to be given to

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Four of UK’s five freshmen for the 1974–1975 season, left to right: me, James Lee, Mike Phillips, and Rick Robey. Dan Hall is not pictured. We became brothers in every sense of the word. (Courtesy of the University of Kentucky Special Collections Research Center.)

me. The seniors set the tone. This made the pickup games very aggressive, very physical. It was a great lesson for me because I understood that it was time to go to work. I also remember how hard Larry Johnson, Mike Flynn, and Reggie Warford played against one another for the point guard spot. At times I thought there was going to be a war! Nobody refereed these games. If somebody was upset and wanted to deliver a message, they did. This gave me an idea of what formal practices were going to be like, but first came the preseason conditioning program, which started in September. I thought I was in pretty good shape, but I soon found out otherwise. UK was the first college basketball team to incorporate weight lifting into its preseason training program. Until that point, it was thought that lifting weights, especially with your upper body, was not good for basketball. Pat Etcheberry, who was UK’s strength and conditioning coach, started putting us through some of the same weight training that he put the football team through. We had weight training and sprints on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday and distance running on Tuesday and Thursday. On Monday,

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Wednesday, and Friday, we would run from Memorial Coliseum across campus to the track and the football weight-training facility, which was probably a couple of miles. We had thirty-two seconds to run a 220-yard dash, and we added one 220-yard dash every other day until we built up to running thirteen in one day. As soon as we got to the track on those days, the team’s student managers would pull the garbage cans out and place them at the finish line because a lot of guys had to throw up after running five, six, or seven 220-yard dashes. As we built up to ten and beyond, it was difficult. After we ran our sprints, we lifted weights at the football training center. Etcheberry was like a drill sergeant; he was tough. He had us do everything from step-ups and curls to squats and bench presses, but we all got in good shape and became physically strong. That was important over the course of our college careers, for sure. The managers kept a record of everything the players did, including if we failed to meet a certain metric. I hadn’t developed much of a relationship with Coach Hall up to that point. He showed me and the other members of the freshman recruiting class that he was glad to have us in the program. He was not one to joke around a whole lot, but he seemed to enjoy a good laugh now and then, and he had a likable personality. Once official basketball practice started in October 1974, though, he wasn’t the pleasant, mild-mannered coach that I’d come to believe he was. He was no longer nice, accommodating, or cordial. He was all business, and he didn’t care if we didn’t like him. He was there to run practice, to make us as good as he could. He became a whole new person, like a light switch that went from light to dark. Coach Hall didn’t go out of his way to make us feel that we couldn’t like him, but he sure didn’t care what we thought about how he ran his practices. He was overbearing, which was the opposite of what I was used to with Coach Barlow, who was the nicest man that you could ever meet. He hardly ever raised his voice and never said a curse word. He didn’t talk at you; he talked to you. That was my standard for what coaching should be. Coach Hall’s style took some getting used to. He didn’t want practice to be fun. At times, I wondered if I had made the right choice by signing with UK, but it was like that for everyone. There were times when we second-guessed ourselves. We wondered, “What made me decide to come here? What about Coach Hall’s recruiting made me like him?”

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I don’t remember Coach Hall giving me an especially tough time during my freshman year, because I was coming off the bench. Did he get on my case? Yes. Did he expect more? Yes. Did he make it tough on me? Sometimes. But, compared to the tirades he sometimes unleashed on the seniors, to the leaders of that team, it was like night and day. He could be on Grevey or Jimmy Dan or Mike Flynn. I felt so bad for anyone being chewed out. I had to hear it and see it every day. Coach Dick Parsons and Coach Hall had a good-cop, bad-cop approach to coaching, with Coach Hall as the bad cop. He was in control, but when practices got tough and everyone was on edge, Coach Parsons was the icebreaker; he often stepped in and eased the tension, usually by saying something funny with a dry tone. On the other hand, if Coach Parsons felt like we deserved to be chastised for something, he didn’t hold back. Coach Hamilton was also all business during practice. In one of our drills, we had to score points in the paint while student managers hit us with handheld, padded football blocking dummies. If Coach Hamilton sensed they weren’t hitting us hard enough, he took over, and he would just beat us senseless with those dummies! We couldn’t fight back, obviously, because he was one of the coaches. We could push back on the managers during this drill, and that was no problem. Coach Hamilton loved tough practices. Throughout my freshman season, upperclassmen on the team taught me valuable lessons about how to deal with Coach Hall because my teammates and I had good camaraderie. We hung out, we talked, and we had meals together at the student center cafeteria or at Jerry’s Restaurant, which was right across from Holmes Hall. They also taught us freshmen how to handle the toughness of college basketball. It was part of the onboarding process, realizing that the toughness of the day-to-day competition was expected. It was simply a part of the growing process and not to be taken personally. After practice, for instance, Merion Haskins sometimes joked about something Coach Hall said. He’d say, “Jack, don’t listen to that stuff.” All of that is part of the learning process that made playing at Kentucky on this particular team very special. I spent most of my time with Reggie, Merion, Larry, and James. We called Reggie the “old man” because he was a junior my freshman year and because he walked with sway that made him look older.

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One of the team rules at UK was that freshmen were the first to get taped up before practice. If we were running late and an upperclassman came in, that person could take our place in line, which risked making us late for practice—something we never wanted to happen. On the first official day of practice, Reggie Warford taught me an important lesson. After I got taped up in the locker room that day, I walked onto the court of Memorial Coliseum, and Reggie threw me a basketball. “Come on, Rookie,” he said. “Let’s play some horse.” “Okay,” I said. “Let’s go.” “You go first,” Reggie said. I took a shot and made it. In horse, you’re supposed to match the shot your opponent makes, but Reggie walked the other way and proceeded to take a different shot on the other side of the court. “Hold it, Reggie,” I said. “I made this shot.” “No, you didn’t.” “Reggie, I made the shot!” “No, you didn’t,” he replied matter-of-factly. I thought, “What the hell’s going on? I know I just made this shot.” “Look,” Reggie said. “In high school, that shot would have counted. But at this level, the only shots that count are the shots that go in and don’t hit any rim—shots that swish through the net. If it hits the rim, it doesn’t count.” “I hit the rim, but the ball still went in the basket,” I countered. “No,” he said. “Not at this level.” Because of this interaction with Reggie, I began to work on the mechanics of my shot, getting the correct arc, the right touch. That’s the main reason I became a better shooter at UK, from that first day in practice with Reggie. For example, if I was trying to make fifty free throws during a drill and twelve of them hit the rim, I repeated those twelve shots until they all swished through the net. I trained my mind to pay close attention to that. Even when I hit a shot that caught rim during a real game, I mentally counted it as a miss so I could keep my focus and swish the next one. Reggie took me and James under his wing. He was protective of us. At six feet, two inches tall, he was the shortest player on the team, but he was the one guy that nobody wanted to go against in practice. He wouldn’t back

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down from anybody. Reggie had short, stubby fingers that he stiffened up and stuck into your ribs when he defended you or tried to block you out for a rebound. It felt almost like a knife cutting into your skin. He could control a guy on the court just with his fingers, kind of guiding you where he wanted you to go. He was that strong. Reggie was a big brother to us, no doubt. Later in my freshman year, he started to date a girl who was good friends with the girl I was dating. Both girls were white, and at that time it wasn’t widely accepted for Black guys to date white girls. One thing I learned from Reggie is that he didn’t care what other people thought about that situation, or about him, for that matter. “Man, you gotta be yourself,” he told me. “You can’t listen to everything people say.”

6 The Road to San Diego

What struck me most about my freshman year was how different everything was from high school, not only in the elevated level of competition in our practices but in that of our opponents throughout the season. Our first road game of the season was against archrival Indiana. Coach Hall instructed us to wear dress shoes with our travel outfit, which consisted of a blue-and-white checkered blazer, a white turtleneck, and navy-blue dress slacks. Jimmy Dan didn’t have any dress shoes, so before our team bus left for Bloomington, he stopped by my room to borrow a pair, since we had the same shoe size. Back then I wore platform shoes with high soles. They were in style, but Jimmy Dan had never worn platforms before, so when he stood up after putting them on, he wobbled so much that he nearly fell over face-first! He used my desk to steady himself, but he kept losing his balance as he tried to adjust to the fit of those platforms. That might have been an omen for that Indiana trip. Our matchup with the Hoosiers in Assembly Hall on December 7, 1974, marked the first time that season we had gone into a hostile environment, and it was frightening. Cheers from their fans were deafening at that game, so partial for Indiana and so vocally against us. I had never experienced anything like that before. I subbed into the game for Kevin Grevey, who started at small forward. I guarded Scott May, who was an All-American, just a great player. I remember some of the screens I had to try to fight through and the many times their big man Kent Benson, who probably weighed 260 pounds, gave me a forearm to the chest. We hadn’t experienced that, 79

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even as hard as our own practices were back in Lexington. Those types of plays, with guys setting moving screens and throwing their forearms up, were technically illegal. During one of our offensive possessions, I drove to the basket for a layup, but Scott May blocked my shot. I think Quinn Buckner picked the ball up and threw it down the floor to Bobby Wilkerson, who dunked it. The crowd went crazy. I remember this like it was yesterday. Scott looked at me as we were running down the floor and said, “Boy, don’t you bring that weak shit in here anymore.” I wanted to crawl under the scorer’s table and hide. With less than two minutes left in the game, to everyone’s surprise, Indiana Coach Bobby Knight and Coach Hall met at half court and began arguing nose to nose. As Coach Hall turned to walk away, Coach Knight smacked him in the back of the head. There were very few times when Coach Hall didn’t have a rolled-up program in his hand, but as soon as Coach Knight struck him, the program dropped to the floor. I can still see the back of Coach Hall’s hair spraying up in the air. It was kind of an upper swipe. It wasn’t a really hard hit, but the disrespect Coach Knight showed with the gesture changed his friendship with Coach Hall from that moment on. It also wasn’t a good time for it, because Indiana was up on us big, our guys were tense, and the game was almost over. I remember the look on the face of our assistant coach Lynn Nance as he tried to reach Knight after he smacked Coach Hall. Coach Nance was a former FBI agent who had guarded presidents; he was a fighter first. Coach Hall restrained him from getting too close to Coach Knight. The Hoosiers won the game, 98–74. That’s the only game I’ve ever played in where I thought everybody would have to fight to get out of the gym. After the game, Coach Knight was quoted as saying that the slap was “good-natured” and that he had used the gesture “to show affection to every basketball player that ever played for me.”1 Coach Hall said, “I did not interpret it as good-natured, and that’s all I want to say.” Coach Hall never talked about the head-smack incident with us, but after that loss, he showed the filmed game and pointed out the illegal screens and forearms—all the physical punishment that the Hoosiers had put us

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through. He was so mad at us for letting them push us around, upset that we hadn’t put up more of a fight. Two days later, our next opponent was North Carolina at home. The Tar Heels had a solid team, with guys like Mitch Kupchak, Phil Ford, and Walter Davis. Against Indiana, Kent Benson had beaten Rick Robey both on the stat sheet and from a physical standpoint, scoring twenty-six points compared with Rick’s six. Rick blossomed after that Indiana game; he came out motivated against North Carolina and took it out on Mitch Kupchak. Even though Kupchak scored seventeen points and pulled down seven rebounds in that contest, Rick made him work for every one of them. Rick had turned up the physical defense that would define him for the rest of his career. We beat the Tar Heels 90–78, and that kind of changed our whole season. We went from being a promising team to being a strong team. Indiana taught us what physical basketball was all about. Once we got into Southeastern Conference (SEC) play, I began to understand what it meant for opponents to match up against Kentucky, which at that time had four NCAA crowns and the most wins in college basketball. Even subpar teams always seemed to play well against us; they viewed it as their chance to take down Goliath. That took some getting used to, and I learned quickly that we could not have an off game anywhere. That was one of the toughest things about playing at Kentucky. If we didn’t play our best, we could lose the game. Coach John Calipari often says we’re everybody’s Super Bowl. It’s true. Another thing I learned during my freshman year was how important the games were down the stretch of the season to position ourselves for a good seeding in the NCAA Tournament. First place in the SEC was on the line when we traveled to Tuscaloosa, Alabama, for a matchup with the Crimson Tide on February 22, 1975. They had some talented ballplayers like Leon Douglas, Charles Cleveland, and T. R. Dunn, all of whom went on to play in the NBA. That game was a real dogfight, but we won, 84–79. From there we traveled to Gainesville, Florida, for a matchup against the Gators on February 24. Their home court was in an old gym, smaller than Bryan Station’s! The students sat right on the bench behind us, stuck their knees in our backs, and called us names. We fell to Florida that night, but it wasn’t because anyone got injured or fouled out.

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The day before the game, it was eighty degrees outside, a pristine Florida day. The seniors and other guys on our team hung out by the hotel pool to tan. Some of the guys stayed out there too long and got sunburned. Those guys played awfully the next day against the Gators. We lost 66–58, with the fewest points we scored in a game that season. When I think back, it was funny that some of our guys got sunburned, but we lost a game. We bounced back quickly and handily won our two final regular-season games, Vandy (109–84) and Mississippi State (118–80). In that year’s NCAA Tournament, we beat Marquette 76–54 and Central Michigan 90–73. But everybody was waiting for the finals of the NCAA Mideast Regional at the University of Dayton Arena, Ohio, which pitted us against unbeaten and top-ranked Indiana, a rematch from the beatdown they had served us earlier in the season. I viewed this game as being all about our seniors. I knew how much it meant to them, especially to Mike Flynn, an Indiana native who had been named the 1971 high school Mr. Basketball in that state. The Hoosiers had recruited him and had won the previous four matchups against the Wildcats, so he caught a lot of grief from IU fans for signing with UK. In the locker room before tip-off, Coach Hall picked up a stick of chalk and scribbled four words on a blackboard: “Nets! Bus! Police! Coliseum!” Then he launched into a pregame pep talk.2 He asked us to be careful not to injure ourselves when cutting down the nets after the game—to use a ladder and scissors only—and instructed us to return to Lexington on the team bus, not with family members or friends. He also said that once we reached the Kentucky state line, there would be a police escort back to Memorial Coliseum, where we’d celebrate our victory. That talk fired up all of us, especially Mike Flynn. I’d never seen such an intense look in his eyes. Before the tip, Coach Hall told our captain, Jimmy Dan Conner, to inform the referees that when the first Indiana player set a moving screen or threw a high elbow, our guys would stop play and fight back. The refs remembered what had happened back in Bloomington earlier in the season. They seemed to downplay Jimmy Dan’s notification, but in the first ten seconds of the game, Bob Guyette got into a confrontation with IU’s Steve Green.3 That set the tone for the game, and from that point on, the refs

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called guys for moving screens or high elbows—tactics they had used on us earlier in the season to gain an advantage on offense. The intensity of the crowd for this matchup was through the roof. There seemed to be as many Kentucky fans there as there were Indiana fans. A key factor in the game was that Scott May, IU’s regular-season leading scorer, played with a cast on his shooting hand because of a wrist fracture he had sustained about one month earlier. He wore the forearm cast to protect it, but I know for sure it slowed him down. He wasn’t on the floor much, and he scored only two points, which was fine with me because of the message he had given me earlier in the season. We were aggressive on defense and forced twenty turnovers to our fourteen, and we prevailed 92–90. It was a close game from start to finish, and our seniors led the way. Flynn finished with twenty-two points—almost three times his season average—while Grevey and Conner had seventeen apiece. “This is the greatest victory in my whole life,” Flynn said after the game.4 “This makes up for all the losses in the past—it makes it all worthwhile.” This game had a national championship feel, and to this day I wish that it had been the 1975 NCAA title game because we upset the number one team in the country and our seniors were so fired up for it. Once our team bus crossed the Ohio River, Kentucky State Police cars escorted us down Interstate 75 to Lexington for a celebration in Memorial Coliseum. Along the way, we passed fans who had gathered to wave and cheer us on. Some had pulled their cars over on either side of the road. Others from small towns congregated on overpasses to wave UK flags and hold up handmade signs and banners. It was an unbelievable sight! When we reached Memorial Coliseum, an estimated seven thousand excited fans had gathered to welcome us home.5 Some lined up outside to get in, just like they did when trying to buy tickets for a regular-season game. Once our team walked onto the stage that had been set up for us, the cheers from the crowd were unreal. “I tell ya, this turnout here is like the spirit we played with today,” Coach Hall told the crowd over the PA system.6 I still can’t get over how many people were in the coliseum that day.

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I hugged Jimmy Dan Conner (left), James Lee, and Kevin Grevey to celebrate our sweet victory over Indiana in the NCAA Mideast Regional in Dayton, Ohio, on March 22, 1975. (Courtesy of the Lexington Herald-Leader. Photo by E. Martin Jessee.)

The victory over Indiana earned us a spot in the Final Four in San Diego, along with Syracuse, UCLA, and Louisville. It marked the first time that most of us had been to California. As a bonus, Mom’s coworkers at the hospital raised money for a round-trip plane ticket to San Diego so that she could watch me play in person for the first time. We also looked forward to seeing my brother Michael and his wife, Lizzy, who settled in the San Diego area. Gran’s brother, John Smith, and his family also lived there after his career in the navy. On arriving in San Diego, our team took the opportunity to enjoy everything the city had to offer. We hit the beaches and the San Diego Zoo,

Dr. V. A. Jackson’s grandson, Alan Vick, joined the mob of fans who greeted us at Memorial Coliseum after our win over Indiana in the NCAA Mideast Regional in Dayton, Ohio, on March 22, 1975. (Courtesy of the Lexington Herald-Leader. Photo by Ron Garrison.)

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toured a naval base, and dined at some nice restaurants. Before this trip, I had never been on a beach before. It was special to see the vast Pacific Ocean for the first time and to stick my toes in the chilly water. Our semifinal game against Syracuse at the San Diego Sports Arena was a bit sloppy. We committed thirty-one personal fouls and twenty-four turnovers, and the Orangemen had about the same (thirty fouls and twenty-six turnovers).7 Our seniors didn’t put up their usual scoring numbers, maybe because of how physical and emotional the previous week’s win against Indiana had been. All I know is that some of us reserves had to pick it up. Rick Robey and Mike Phillips combined for nineteen points and fifteen rebounds. I finished with twenty-four points and eleven rebounds. We won 95–79 and outrebounded the Orangemen 57–40. “We just don’t have the bench Kentucky does and this lack of depth hurt us,” Syracuse coach Roy Danforth told a sports reporter after the game.8 “Kentucky has such great depth. They can run people in and out and not hurt themselves.” Most of us on the team hoped we’d match up against Louisville in the championship game, but the Cardinals fell to UCLA in overtime, 75–74. After that victory, Coach John Wooden surprised everyone by announcing his plan to retire after the NCAA championship game. That certainly affected how the UCLA-Kentucky contest was viewed. It ultimately gave the Bruins an advantage in terms of calls made during the game and of crowd size, since San Diego is relatively close to Los Angeles. I regarded the NCAA championship game against UCLA much like I did the NCAA Mideast Regional game against Indiana. I saw that same fiery look in the eyes of Grevey, Flynn, Jimmy Dan Conner, and Bob Guyette as I saw before the Indiana game. There was no question that they were ready to play. That game was all about the seniors, and we rallied around them. I kind of felt like I was along for the ride because I didn’t know how much I would play. Once the game tipped off in front of more than fifteen thousand fans and a national TV audience, it was close from start to finish. The Bruins only played six players. Grevey was having a great scoring night, but our big guys got into foul trouble. At one point late in the game, I remember Coach Wooden walking out onto the court to dispute a foul. In my mind,

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he deserved to be assessed a technical foul for walking onto the court like that. Instead, one of the refs sort of escorted Wooden back to the bench. We trailed by ten points with about twelve minutes left in regulation.9 Five minutes later, we cut the lead to 76–75 but got no closer. The Bruins outrebounded us in the second half 28–16, and we shot just 38.4 percent for the whole game.10 Grevey led all scorers with thirty-four points, but we fell 92–85. “Their offensive rebounding when our big men were in foul trouble and playing inhibited turned the game around,” Coach Hall said that night.11 This loss disappointed me, but it didn’t devastate me. In my mind, reaching the championship game in my freshman year and having a chance to win that—it couldn’t get much better. I was happy we had reached the final game. I later found out that coming in second was just a footnote and that it didn’t mean as much as I thought it did. But at that time, I didn’t fully understand the difference between winning and losing a game like that. Also, I thought we’d be back on this stage every year automatically because we had great players returning the following year. I thought we would win during the regular season, win the SEC, and march through the NCAA Tournament. I found out the next year how important Kevin Grevey, Jimmy Dan Conner, Mike Flynn, and the other seniors were to our team. Still, I thought we were the better team in the 1975 NCAA championship game. If we had played UCLA anywhere besides California, I think we would have won. But John Wooden’s announcement of his retirement and the resulting hoopla made it tough for us. Being runners-up in the national championship game elevated the celebrity of our team in Kentucky. Many of us received requests to speak at high school sports banquets and basketball camps, as well as to Kiwanis and Rotary Clubs. Speaking in front of a large group of people was daunting for me at first because I was shy at that point. But I got used to it. Being interviewed by the media so much certainly helped me get more comfortable expressing myself. It seemed like I participated in more of these engagements with every year of my career at UK. I drove all over the state and visited some communities I’d never been to or heard of before. These experiences helped me better understand how important UK basketball is to the fan base we now refer to as the Big Blue Nation.

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What I talked about at these events varied depending on the group that had invited me. If it was a civic group like Rotary, we would always talk Kentucky basketball because that’s what everybody wanted to hear about. I would talk about my experience playing at UK and open it up to questions. If it was a high school basketball team, I felt like it was my responsibility to make sure the kids understood how tough it was to make the roster of a high-profile NCAA Division I basketball program like UK because seemingly every team I was invited to speak to had a kid who dreamed of playing for the Wildcats. I spoke about the importance of working hard every day to improve your skills, to listen to your coaches, and to take the fundamentals of the game seriously. The main thing I emphasized was the necessity of getting an education so that if they didn’t make a college team, they would still have that to fall back on. Many speaking engagements and the like that my teammates and I were invited to sold out or were standing room only. James and I traveled together to many of these events. I found it unbelievable that the interest was that strong, and that made playing at UK even more special to me. Having grown up in Lexington intensified that feeling for me because Kentuckians love homegrown basketball players. They want to see players from the Commonwealth do well. I should mention here that once James and I decided to attend Kentucky, the people who had initially expressed reservations about us becoming Wildcats—including my mom, people from our church, and others from whom we sought advice—offered nothing but support. No one ever told me, “Man, you made a mistake by going there.” The people who looked out for me and James wanted us to be given a fair chance to play. We were. They also wanted us to be successful. We were. We contributed, and the fans appreciated us. I should also mention here that throughout high school and college I had a good working relationship with the media. I tried to make myself available anytime they wanted to talk to me, and I think they appreciated that. When I didn’t play or practice well, or when it appeared to him that I wasn’t working as hard as he thought I should, Coach Hall often said to me, “You’ve been reading your press clippings, haven’t you?” But if I didn’t play well or if we lost a game, I wouldn’t read the newspaper accounts, because I didn’t want to know anything negative they may have been saying. I tuned

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As a volunteer for Big Brothers of America during college, I was matched with Scott Ferguson, who came from a single-parent home like me. We’re pictured here playing hoops on a campus court that was located across from Alumni Gym. (Courtesy of the University of Kentucky Special Collections Research Center.)

it out. I had the ability to block out the negative; criticism didn’t weigh as heavily on me as it might have for other players. Toward the end of UK’s spring semester, I became a volunteer for Big Brothers of America, which later joined forces with Big Sisters International and became Big Brothers Big Sisters of America. I grew up with a lot of kids who needed a friend, somebody to hang out with and be there for them, so I was happy to get involved with the Big Brothers program. I got matched with a twelve-year-old boy named Scott Ferguson, who was raised in Lexington by a single mother. He had two siblings, including a younger brother, Anthony, who sometimes tagged along with us for our weekly meetups. Scott was a lot like me in that he was a pretty quiet kid; he didn’t talk a whole lot. Fortunately, he liked many of the same activities that I did, especially fishing. We would also go to the park to shoot baskets or to join in a game of pickup baseball if there were enough guys around. Other times, we played catch at the apartment complex where he lived.

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During college, I spent three summers working as a teller at the National Bank of Cynthiana. I’d often go fishing after my shift. (Author’s collection.)

I introduced Scott to longtime UK basketball equipment manager Bill Keightley, who invited him to help with some ball-boy duties, like grabbing rebounds during team practices and some home games. Scott loved being around the program. He was my “little brother” for the rest of my UK career. I didn’t realize the impact I was having on Scott’s life at the time, but he credits my influence as being key to his accomplishments in life. After a twenty-two-year career in the US Army, he attended Eastern Kentucky University, where he earned master’s degrees in both public administration and education. Scott went on to teach math at the Fayette County Regional Juvenile Detention Center, as well as to coach basketball and teach in the Fayette County School System. In 2013, he became the first African American to earn a doctorate in education in leadership and policy studies from Eastern Kentucky Press. He still lives in Lexington, and we talk from time to time. I’m proud of Scott and of our relationship.

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During the summer between my freshman and sophomore year, I lived in Rose Lane Apartments, a privately owned complex on the outskirts of campus. Reggie and James also rented units there. The apartment manager, Patty Reed, and her future husband, Bert Eyster, who was a Presbyterian minister, lived on-site and looked out for us. They made sure that people didn’t bother us. I wasn’t around much, though, because I landed a full-time bank job in Coach Hall’s hometown of Cynthiana, which was a welcome change from the sweltering outside construction job from the previous summer. I commuted there in a used 1971 green Chevy Monte Carlo with a white roof, which was my transportation for my entire college career. Tracy Farmer, who owned the National Bank of Cynthiana and was good friends with Coach Hall, invited me to work as a bank teller. One of the first people I met working there was Doug Hampton, who owned an insurance business in town right next to Biancke’s Restaurant, where I often ate lunch. He was also a popular high school basketball referee. Doug had a farm pond on his property, so once he learned about my interest in fishing, I had an open invitation to fish there. He also introduced me to his son John, who became a basketball referee for the SEC. The easiest way to reach the pond from the Hamptons’ house was to drive Doug’s pickup truck across his farmland, which was soggy in some spots, especially after it rained. On days when I had some free time, Doug loaned me his pickup, and John and I headed out to fish. Sometimes I invited Scott Ferguson to join us. Invariably, I’d get the pickup stuck in muddy spots on the way to the pond or in waterlogged areas right around the rim, so Doug would have to come with his tractor to pull us out of the mud! Through my job at the bank, I met many other people who had a pond or a creek on their property, so this afforded me plenty of opportunities to fish during the three summers I worked in Cynthiana. For example, a creek ran through the property owned by bank customer Sam Phillips, so he invited me to fish there. Sam taught me how to use a Rooster Tail spinnerbait, which I used to catch smallmouth bass for the first time. I remember how aggressive those fish were; I had to really fight to lure them in from the creek. To this day, the Rooster Tail spinnerbait is one of my favorite lures. Though I had grown up fishing with Gran and other family members, during college I often fished by myself. I really enjoyed that quiet, private

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time to think and hang out. It was relaxing, a good change of pace from the wear and tear on my body that playing basketball brings. Back then, I’d bring along a little transistor radio. I’d find a spot to fish, turn the music down soft, and cast my line. It was peaceful. I also enjoy the challenges of fishing, such as knowing where to cast to avoid getting your bait stuck when you’re navigating around trees or weedy waters. It keeps you thinking. You’re trying to outsmart the fish, to entice them to take the bait. Then there’s the challenge of luring the fish in after you get one hooked. There’s nothing better than being out in nature, enjoying the quiet, the breeze, and the birdsong—especially in Kentucky. A key lesson I learned from fishing all these years is that even on days when I don’t catch a single fish, I still have a good time. I enjoy being out there. As for my work at the National Bank of Cynthiana, some days were so slow and boring that I struggled to stay awake. It was a small town, after all. During those slow periods, I’d think, “Man. Can we just have a bank robbery or something to have some excitement, some action?” But I was fortunate. I worked with good people who helped me balance my cash drawer and my books on days when things didn’t line up. They could always help me figure out where I missed a penny here or a few dollars there, to make sure I got things right. After my workday, I drove back to Lexington to join my teammates for evening pickup games at the blue courts on campus, at Alumni Gym, or at the Dirt Bowl. Jimmy Dan, Mike Flynn, and some of the other graduated seniors still lived in the Lexington area and joined us for those games. We were still basking in the glory of reaching the NCAA National Championship and finishing second in the country. We returning players were thinking, “We’ll pick up from where we left off.” We knew we’d be a good team. We thought we’d be just as good as we were the previous season by the time official practices started back up.

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Everything I remember about the start of our 1975–76 season was positive. Our preseason conditioning program went well. Everybody got in shape and seemed excited. Our crop of freshmen included Truman Claytor, Dwane Casey, and Bob Fowler. UK football star Derrick Ramsey, who was a sophomore, joined our roster in the second half of the season. To me, nothing indicated that we weren’t training as hard as we had previously. When official practices started, though, I could tell that Coach Hall wasn’t happy with the way we were playing. He screamed at us, told us we weren’t that good—more often than the prior season because we had lost our seniors. It became obvious that those seniors were more important to our team’s previous success than we realized. He was the toughest on me because I was the team captain. I later learned that he had inherited that style from Coach Rupp, who always made things hard for his starters, his leaders. In my mind, though, we were having great practices. I shrugged it off and thought, “Well, that’s Coach Hall doing what he does, trying to get us to practice harder.” Our first game that season was December 1, 1975, against Northwestern University on their home court in Evansville, Illinois. We arrived in Chicago ranked seventh in the Associated Press (AP) poll and stayed in a hotel that may have been nice in its prime but that had a kind of depressing atmosphere. Everything was dark and gray. Once the game tipped off in front of fifty-five hundred fans, we didn’t play to our potential, especially on defense. We trailed by eight points at halftime and ended up losing 89–77. We won 93

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the boards, but Northwestern outshot us from the floor 60 percent to 49 percent, and they committed eleven turnovers to our sixteen.1 “There was no leadership at all,” Coach Hall said after the game. “We just stood around searching for something to happen.”2 The loss shocked me. I thought, “How dare they! We just came off of the national championship game.” I realized later that Coach Hall had been giving us such a hard time in practice because he saw that we were not playing with the same physical intensity that had defined our team the previous season. When we weren’t playing tough or he thought we were just going through the motions, he’d sometimes say, “You guys have been reading your own press clippings.” We had been told how good we were, so we became full of ourselves. We were overconfident, and it started to show. One week later, we played North Carolina in Chapel Hill and lost again, 90–77. We played a decent first half but had trouble adjusting to the Tar Heels’ zone defense in the second half. They made 62 percent of their shots in that half, while we shot just 34 percent from the floor in those final twenty minutes.3 That was another sign that our defense wasn’t up to par. The more we lost, the tougher Coach Hall got on us. We had to change the way we played. We bounced back and started to win, but in January 1976, we hit two separate three-game losing streaks. To make matters worse, Rick sustained an injury to his right knee in the opening minutes of our January 5 contest at Alabama, which we lost 76–63. He returned to play in our January 24 win over the Florida Gators in Gainesville and in our January 26 overtime loss at Auburn, but Rick reinjured his knee and was sidelined for the rest of the season. I remember thinking, “This is going to get a whole lot worse before it gets any better, losing one of our key scorers.” Anytime our team faced adversity like this, our equipment manager, Bill Keightley, was an important source of moral support. We had days when Coach Hall would ride us so hard in practice that we wanted to leave the team and never come back. Bill, who was affectionately known as “Mr. Wildcat,” could see what we players were going through. He wouldn’t let any of us stay down in the dumps for very long, whether it was from a bad practice or a bad game. He knew from experience what to say and how to

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When my teammates and I were discouraged after a rough practice or game, longtime men’s basketball equipment manager Bill Keightley went out of his way to lift our spirits with an arm around our shoulders and an invitation to “the cage” for a candy bar and a cold drink. He did the same for our student managers. (Courtesy of UK Athletics.)

say it to pick up our spirits and get us refocused. Bill’s office was known as “the cage,” the equipment room. He protected every uniform, every T-shirt, every pair of gym shorts. He treated them like they were his. If I had a bad practice and Bill saw me walk past the cage, he’d say, “Goose, come back here a minute.”

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A former World War II marine veteran and postal carrier who grew up in Lawrenceburg, Kentucky, Bill had a presence that commanded respect. I’d walk into his office, and invariably he’d have a big stash of giant candy bars on his desk: Snickers, PayDay, you name it. He’d hand me a candy bar, grab a Coke for himself, and say, “Sit down here a minute. Goose, you know you don’t need to be listening to all that stuff Coach Hall is sayin’. You know that, don’t you?” “Yeah, Bill,” I’d reply. “You’ve just gotta listen and not pay any attention to it. You have to make sure you don’t let it get to you.” Bill didn’t do this just for me. He spent individual time with anyone who had a bad practice or who got chewed out, including the student managers. Every now and then, Bill would give me an extra pair of Converse shoes in my size, usually not the same type of shoe we played in but a pair to walk around in. He would do things like that to make you feel valued and to help you forget how bad practice was. Bill was like a doting father or grandfather. I think of how I am with my grandkids, as if they can do no wrong, you know? You want to spoil them. Bill was the same way. The coaches didn’t care whether you liked them or not. Their job was to make us better. Bill wanted us to feel comfortable coming to him. He wanted us to know that he was there for us. He was always making us understand, “You’re going to be all right. You just have to get through this.” He went out of his way to make sure that we felt good about ourselves, to build us up. In February 1976, we hit another three-game losing skid of road games at Tennessee, Georgia, and Vanderbilt. After a 69–65 loss to Vandy on February 14, Reggie and I called a players-only meeting in our dorm once we got back to Lexington. Reggie, the lone senior on our team, was the most vocal. He made sure we understood that he was not going to end his UK career with a losing record. “We have enough talent,” Reggie said. “We’re good enough; we can do this!” He pointed out that we had scored just sixty-five points against Vandy and needed to be more aggressive on offense. Reggie also told us we were playing like we were waiting for Rick to come back from his injury. Rick wasn’t coming back, of course, so it was on us to improve our offensive play.

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Coach Hall (left) and his predecessor Adolph Rupp chat before the tip-off of our home game against Alabama on March 6, 1976. Rick Robey (far right) was sidelined with a knee injury. (Courtesy of the University of Kentucky Special Collections Research Center.)

In practice the next day, we told Coach Hall about our resolve to end the season strong. He said, “Okay. Let’s go!” We spent that week focused on fundamentals, mainly defense. We practiced aggressively and mentally prepared ourselves for a home contest against Florida on February 21. Our efforts and Reggie’s pep talk paid off. We won 96–89—our highest score that entire season—and connected on 65 percent of our shots. James and I combined for thirty-eight points and thirteen rebounds, and each of our starters scored in double figures.4 “This was the most unselfish we’d played in a while,” Coach Hall said of our team after the game. “They were penetrating and kicking the ball off and shooting much, much better.”5 That game was a turning point. We finished our regular season winning six games in a row and averaged about ninety points per game in those victories, for a record of 16–10 overall and 11–7 in SEC play. Despite the strong finish, we failed to qualify for the NCAA Tournament, but we received an invitation to compete in the National Invitational Tournament (NIT) at

I put up this shot in the paint against Alabama on March 6, 1976, as James Lee (32) and Merion Haskins (30) looked on. We won 90–85. (Courtesy of the University of Kentucky Special Collections Research Center.)

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Madison Square Garden in New York City. After learning this news, we called another players-only meeting. We decided that winning those last six games was a good way to end the season and that if Coach Hall asked us if we wanted to accept the invitation to the NIT, our answer would be no. We were thinking, “If we’re not going to play in the NCAA Tournament, we don’t want to play anywhere.” I personally was not in favor of going to the NIT, but I didn’t understand the significance of playing in it. My only prior experience involved the NCAA Tournament, which had a much larger field of teams: thirty-two, compared with twelve in the NIT. The next time our team gathered with the coaching staff, we anticipated having a conversation about whether to play in the NIT, but Coach Hall never invited such discussion. He told us we were going, period. With that settled, we formed a mindset to go and win it all. Our thinking was that we didn’t want to be runners-up in the NCAA one year without going to the NIT and winning that the next year. A more superfluous reason for not wanting to go to the NIT was that the sidelined Rick Robey planned to vacation in Florida for spring break. Many of us thought, “Man, we should all go on spring break with Robey and have some fun!” Once Coach Hall shut down that option, we refocused our attention on playing basketball. New York City, here we come. Going into the NIT, we faced questions about how good our team was because we had struggled for so long that season and then won our last six games. Some critics and fans expected us to play one game, lose, and come back home. I don’t even know if Coach Hall expected us to win the whole tournament, especially without Rick, but I knew we were going to give our best effort. Once we stepped off the bus in front of the Statler Hilton Hotel in Manhattan, I was struck by how different the Big Apple was from any place I’d ever been. The gigantic skyscrapers impressed me, but I remember the constant noise of the city, the busyness, the honking of car horns, the sounds of public buses, and the occasional sirens from fire trucks, ambulances, and police cars. At times it was deafening. You could not concentrate on anything but that noise; it was sensory overload. Walking down the street, I noticed the congestion and the diversity of people going about their day: how they dressed, how they walked, which languages they spoke—a true melting pot.

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There, places familiar to me like McDonald’s, Wendy’s, KFC, and movie theaters weren’t located in the stand-alone buildings I was accustomed to. They occupied storefronts in a sea of buildings that stretched for blocks, as far as the eye could see. That was strange to me. It was hard to believe how different New York City was from Lexington and from any of the cities in the SEC we had played in. The first time we set foot in Madison Square Garden for practice, it seemed old to me.6 The court creaked, and the seats and banners hanging from the rafters looked a little run down, but it felt like a sacred place for hoops—just like Memorial Coliseum. No doubt about that. During shootaround, I remember thinking about the great athletes who had played in this arena, guys like Walt Frazier, “Earl the Pearl” Monroe, and Willis Reed. I felt inspired. Because we didn’t make the NCAA Tournament, I considered this season a disappointment. That’s why I was shocked to see so many Kentucky fans in the stands for our open practice. Even when we walked around the city, we encountered fans wearing Kentucky apparel, and that was comforting. Our first NIT matchup was against the Niagara Purple Eagles, played in front of about four thousand fans.7 The Purple Eagles were pesky, but we won 67–61. James Lee led our team with twenty points; I scored sixteen, while Larry Johnson added twelve. We won the next two games as well, against Kansas State (81–78) and Providence (79–78). Earlier in the season, we had struggled to win such close games because we lacked the confidence and mental toughness to finish strong. We finally figured out how to win tight games. The more we won, the more excited and focused we became. We finally appreciated what an achievement it was to reach another final game of a national tournament, this time against the UNC Charlotte 49ers. Rick flew up from his spring break getaway in Florida to join us for that game. He wore his uniform but remained on the bench. The last time Kentucky won the NIT had been in 1946, so this was our chance to bring another title back to Lexington after a thirty-year drought. The 49ers proved to be tough opponents. In fact, they led 54–47 with ten minutes and eleven seconds left in regulation,8 but we rallied to win 71–67 thanks to big shots down the stretch by Reggie Warford, Larry Johnson, and Mike Phillips. In fact, those three were our leading scorers in that

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The 1976–1977 Wildcats, left to right: Kyle Macy (who redshirted that season), Jay Shidler, Tim Stephens, James Lee, LaVon Williams, me, Merion Haskins, Larry Johnson, Dwane Casey, and Truman Claytor. Seated: Mike Phillips (left) and Rick Robey. Gotta love the 1970s fashion! (Courtesy of the University of Kentucky Special Collections Research Center.)

game. Larry and Mike scored sixteen apiece, while Reggie added fourteen, including an eighteen-foot jumper that put us up for good with about a minute to play. That silver NIT trophy was ours. “Down the stretch, we wanted to get in the NIT for Reggie,” Coach Hall said after the game.9 “He’s our only senior. I’m glad he saved those buckets for today.” Winning the NIT was important for us; we now understood what it felt like to win a national tournament on a big stage against good competition and which mindset we required for a championship run. We also learned to trust one another to make plays. It takes a lot of trust and belief in your teammates to perform in tight games. These lessons would serve us underclassmen well for the rest of our college careers. The win over UNC Charlotte also changed my view of the NIT. It showed that there were plenty of talented teams that didn’t make the NCAA Tournament, which at that time was limited to thirty-two teams. We found out how tough it was to win. Remember: initially, most of us didn’t want to play in the NIT, so for us to change our mindset about it and figure out a way to run the table against our opponents was a significant accomplishment.

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This photo was taken prior to UK’s inaugural game in Rupp Arena on November 27, 1976. Left to right: Larry Johnson, Dwane Casey, Rick Robey, me, Jay Shidler, Truman Claytor, and Tim Stephens. Mike Phillips is looking at the camera, and trainer Walt McCombs is in the back row. (Courtesy of the University of Kentucky Special Collections Research Center.)

Our status as NIT champs set the tempo for our summer workouts and intensified our goal to get back to the NCAA Tournament. We had a great crop of new players joining our 1976–77 roster, including Jay Shidler, LaVon Williams, Tim Stephens, and Kyle Macy, who sat out the season as a redshirt transfer from Purdue. We could tell in our summer workouts how good and competitive we were going to be. Nobody was more physical in those practices than LaVon, who was a Parade All-American. He was a bruiser who made it tough on me, James, Rick, and Mike. He made us all better players. It was like he was on a mission to let us know, “This is your team, but you’re not pushing me around. I’m gonna do whatever needs to be done to help us win, but I’m gonna hold my own too.” We needed a no-nonsense kind of guy like him. Watching Kyle and Larry Johnson compete against each other that summer made me wish those two had a chance to be on the floor together during the regular season. Kyle was a point guard, but had we been able to

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put Larry at the point guard position and run Kyle at the two-guard position off screens, that would have given our team a new dimension. Kyle wasn’t available because of his redshirt status, of course, but I think that would have made us the best team in the country. The good thing about having Kyle redshirted was that he was at practice every day learning our system. Once official practices started in Memorial Coliseum that October, anticipation was building for our move to Rupp Arena, a new home court in downtown Lexington with enough room to seat about twenty-four thousand Wildcat fans. Opening night would coincide with our first regular-season game against Wisconsin on November 27, but because of construction delays, we had to get used to Rupp Arena kind of on the fly. It seemed like a big barn. It was cold inside and lacked a good feel for basketball when we first walked in. The seating color scheme was distracting; there were sections of red, gold, and purple, with the red seats looking more like a dark orange. It didn’t feel like home at all. The baselines and sidelines were different, and the lighting caused us problems. I liked to shoot from the corner of the court, and it seemed like I was looking up into the lights when I shot. They eventually changed the angle of the lighting, but it took a lot of time to get used to the difference between the basketball atmosphere we had in Memorial Coliseum and the big-building feel of Rupp Arena. It’s like moving into a new house; it takes time to develop the homey feeling you had in your old house. Also, some of us wondered if going from an eleven-thousand-seat capacity in Memorial Coliseum to twenty-four thousand in Rupp Arena was too much of a leap. I thought, “How in the world are they going to sell that many tickets? Where are all these people going to come from?” But they came. On opening night against Wisconsin, 23,266 fans packed the arena to help usher in a new era for Wildcat basketball.10 The starting five included me, Larry Johnson, Rick Robey, Mike Phillips, and Jay Shidler. We won 72–64, but we blew a twenty-point lead, which Coach Hall wasn’t happy about. The arena noise for that game wasn’t as loud as I had anticipated, probably because Rupp Arena was so big. It was also a new experience for the fans. It took some time for the crowd-roaring game atmosphere to come around. In my mind, the 1976–77 squad was the best team during my four years at UK. I think it shows in how convincingly we won most of our games that year. We had one slipup early in the season, an at-home 70–68

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The starting five for UK’s first game in Rupp Arena on November 27, 1976, left to right: Rick Robey, Larry Johnson, Jay Shidler, me, and Mike Phillips. (Courtesy of the Lexington Herald-Leader. Photo by E. Martin Jessee.)

loss to Utah in the finals of the UK Invitational Tournament on December 18, 1976. We were ranked third in the country and had defeated Bowling Green handily the previous night, so fatigue may have been a factor, but we did not expect to lose to Utah. I shot only three for thirteen from the floor, ice cold. It was a good learning experience because after that game we came back refocused. In fact, the only other regular-season losses we had were to the Tennessee Volunteers: 71–67 in overtime at home on January 12, 1977, and 81–79 at Knoxville on March 5. Their duo of Ernie Grunfeld and Bernard King averaged over forty points per game and became known as “the Ernie and Bernie Show.” Man, the Volunteers were good. We finished our regular season with a record of 24–3 overall and 16–2 in SEC play, which earned us a bid in the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament. In the first round of play on March 12, we faced Princeton at the Palestra, a historic arena that is home to Philadelphia Big 5 basketball. With a little

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over eleven minutes to play in the first half, I got elbowed in the eye, which gave me blurry vision for the rest of the game. We won 72–58, but that was a tough contest because Princeton’s strategy involved lot of backdoor cuts, constant motion, and picks—the so-called Princeton offense. They ran their offense well and were good at controlling the tempo of the game. Rick led our team with twenty points, while Truman added twelve and Jay scored ten. Five days later, we faced the Virginia Military Institute Keydets at Cole Field House in College Park, Maryland, in the NCAA East Regional semifinal game. Truman went off, scoring twenty-nine points and knocking down thirteen of his fifteen shots from the floor. “The rims looked like they were wide open, just like at Rupp Arena,” Truman said after the game.11 “After the first shot went in, I felt I was going to have a good game.” I added twenty-six points, and we pulled away from the Keydets for a 93–78 victory. Two days later, we matched up against UNC, with a spot in the Final Four on the line. The Tar Heels had a solid squad, with Phil Ford, Walter Davis, Mike O’Koren, and Tommy LaGarde. We knew it was going to be a tough game, but it’s one we should have won. Our last lead came with a little more than fifteen minutes left in the first half, and we trailed 53–41 at halftime. We spent the rest of the game trying to catch up. In the second half, we narrowed UNC’s lead to 59–53, and then they switched to the four-corners offense, also known as stall ball. It didn’t help that the Tar Heels sank all sixteen of their second-half free throws.12 We fought back, though, and with one minute and thirty-two seconds left in regulation, Rick made a three-point play that cut UNC’s lead to 71–70. But we got no closer and fell 79–72. We all thought we’d be back in the Final Four that year, so the loss crushed us. “The difference was the free throws,” Coach Hall said after the game.13 “We made a great comeback, but North Carolina just did not miss.” I remember how quiet we were after that game; no one said a whole lot. This game was another turning point, especially for me, Rick, Mike, and James. We understood that we only had one more chance to win an NCAA championship. When we returned to Lexington, we had academics and other obligations to take care of, but within a few days, we were back in the gym practicing, more determined than ever to make the following season special.

8 Rolling Along

I spent the summer of 1977 more focused on basketball than at any other time in my life. I continued to work at the bank in Cynthiana, but I cut back on fishing. I spent evenings and weekends playing pickup games at the Dirt Bowl and with teammates at the blue courts on the UK campus. We also played at the Seaton Center, a campus gym with indoor and outdoor courts that hosted summer basketball camps for kids. At night, we played pickup games inside for the campers after lifting weights at the nearby football training center. That was the first time I remember lifting weights on my own. Our incoming freshmen for the 1977–1978 season included a good mix of personalities and talent: big men Chuck Aleksinas (six feet, eleven inches), Scott Courts (six feet, ten inches), Fred Cowan (six feet, eight inches), and Chris Gettelfinger (six feet, two inches). They looked up to us older guys as big brothers from the start; they didn’t come in throwing their weight around. They wanted to learn what their roles were. They wanted to fit in. By the time official practices started in October, I think Coach Hall could tell that there was something special about this team. He didn’t have to scream at us to get us to work, like he did my sophomore year. We were as competitive with our weight lifting and preseason running program as we were in practice on the basketball court. We were self-motivated, and many of us started to build serious muscle, especially Rick, Mike, James, and myself. That indicated the kind of team we were going to be that season. Nobody was going to be tougher than us. We set that tone right away. Our 106

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Rick Robey (53) and I were cocaptains of our 1977–1978 team, which finished with a 30–2 record and a national NCAA men’s basketball championship. (Courtesy of George L. Fletcher.)

practices were so physically intense that on some days, Coach Hall sent us home early before anyone got hurt. This team was more than just competitive and physically strong, though. We had a deeper roster than at any other point during my college career. Coach Hall could have inserted “platoons” of players like Coach John Calipari did during the 2014–2015 UK basketball season because we had no weaknesses; we had that many guys who could seriously play. For example, on the second day of practice, Jay Shidler suffered a small hairline fracture in the fifth metatarsal of his right foot, which sidelined him for the first two games of the season. We certainly missed Jay, but Kyle, Truman, and Dwane filled in nicely for him. We could insert different player combinations that season so that if someone got hurt, got in foul trouble, or was having a bad game, we didn’t miss a beat. It was good to have a team that deep.

This is my profile from UK’s 1977–1978 basketball media guide. I started the season as the eleventh all-time leading scorer but finished at the number two spot behind Dan Issel. (Courtesy of UK Athletics.)

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I don’t spend a lot of time dwelling on what-ifs in life, but if Merion Haskins and Larry Johnson had been members of the 1977–78 squad, that would have made us an incredible team. I don’t say that to take anything away from my teammates that season whatsoever, but no one was tougher on me during practices at UK than Merion Haskins. He was on me every day and made me work so hard that the only thing I could do was get better. Couple that with Larry Johnson’s quickness and his ability to run the team, and we easily would have been the best team in the country. Even so, I sensed the potential of our current team and was more excited than ever for our preseason training and for the start of official practices. My teammates were fired up too. Once that part of the season got going, we thought, “It’s time to get ourselves physically and mentally ready to play.” On November 11, 1977, we hosted the Soviet Union National team in an exhibition game played in Memorial Coliseum. They were considered one of the best teams in the world and had a seven-foot, four-inch star center named Vladimir Tkachenko. The Russians jumped out to an early 11–7 lead in the first few minutes of the game, but then we rattled off ten straight points and never looked back. With just under nine minutes left in the game, James threw down one of his powerful dunks over Tkachenko, and the sellout crowd roared like crazy. We had six players score in double figures and won handily, 109–75—a big win that set the pace for our regular-season play. “The whole team good players defense, good shooters, good tactics,” the Soviet Union National team head coach, Alexandr Gomelsky, said after the game.1 “I congratulate Coach Hall. He has very good team. He very good coach.” We continued our dominant play in the season opener against the Southern Methodist University Mustangs on November 27 at Rupp Arena and won 110–86. I scored thirty points in that game, and Rick added twenty-three. For our next contest, we hosted the Indiana Hoosiers. The game was tied eleven times in the first half.2 The Hoosiers tried to be physical with us, but later in the game, they switched to a 2-3 zone defense. Maybe it was because their star player, Mike Woodson, fouled out with a little more than twelve minutes left in regulation, but that’s when I knew we had them, because Coach Bobby Knight always emphasized man-to-man defense. The switch to zone showed that they couldn’t deal with us, and we won 78–64.

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Left to right: Coach Hall with Marie and Dr. V. A. Jackson, who became our house parents when we moved into Wildcat Lodge. Dr. Jackson was the team’s longtime physician. (Courtesy of the late Marie Jackson.)

Five days later, we played the Kansas Jayhawks at Allen Fieldhouse in Lawrence, Kansas. This was Jay’s first game back since his foot injury, and he scored six points in ten minutes of play. The game itself was sloppy, though. We turned the ball over twenty-two times but came away with a 73–66 victory. Kyle was our lead scorer with fifteen points, and Mike added fourteen. On the plane ride home, we learned that Coach Rupp had passed away from cancer. It was ironic, because Coach Rupp had grown up in Halstead, Kansas, and had been a reserve for the Jayhawks under Forrest “Phog” Allen. He had also been tutored there by Dr. James Naismith, the man who invented the game of basketball. Over the holiday break between the fall and spring semesters, our team moved from Holmes Hall into Joe B. Hall Wildcat Lodge, a brandnew, stand-alone building that included individual rooms with beds long enough for seven-foot-tall people. Unlike Holmes Hall, Wildcat Lodge had

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air-conditioning, a kitchen, dedicated space for team meetings, four guest bedrooms, and a basement with a pool table, a large-screen TV, and a large sectional couch. It looked like a ski resort in Colorado and was built by donations from boosters, construction companies, and leaders in Kentucky’s coal-mining industry, so that made it special. Everything was plush. The thing I remember most was how immaculate the guest bedrooms were. The coaching staff could now host recruits instead of reserving rooms at a hotel in town. We had the best of the best when it came to how athletes lived on campus. Living there brought us pride, added to our camaraderie, and strengthened our team chemistry. We became closer by spending most of our free time together there. We also enjoyed a bit more freedom to come and go as we pleased as long as we didn’t miss curfew. Every now and then, Coach Hall or Coach Hamilton would stop by unannounced to make sure we were honoring our curfew. We also had student managers living in the dorm to keep an eye on us. Coach Hall chose the team’s longtime physician, Dr. V. A. Jackson, and his wife, Marie, to be our house parents at Wildcat Lodge—a position they took pride in. Once they moved in, it was like having a mom and dad with us all the time. We knew we could go to them if we needed anything or if we felt sick. Dr. Jackson was famous for his vitamin B12 shots; he thought they were the cure for everything. As much as I hated needles, I would get those shots because of the energy boost they provided. Like many other fans, Dr. Jackson had grown up following Kentucky basketball, so the program had a special place in his heart. He was a good man. Mrs. Jackson was the sweetest woman you could ever meet. She assumed the role of house mother 100 percent and treated us like we were her own kids. She never hesitated to tell us if she thought we weren’t getting enough sleep or enough to eat. Mrs. Jackson also made sure we stuck to our curfew. She and Dr. Jackson were sharp dressers; Dr. Jackson always wore a suit to games. I recall that his tie always matched the handkerchief in his jacket’s breast pocket. That season, our team continued to win games, mostly by wide margins, but on January 23, 1978, we got thrown a curveball in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, in a game against the Crimson Tide. Their coach, Charles “C. M.” Newton, a UK alumnus who had been a reserve guard/forward on Coach Rupp’s 1951 NCAA National Championship team, started three guards, which created a

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matchup challenge for us. We hadn’t dealt with this kind of lineup before. Usually, I guarded an opponent who was taller than me, where I had an advantage at the small forward position as far as quickness was concerned. In the game against Alabama, I had to guard a ball handler who was quicker than me. This pulled me farther away from the basket on defense and caused me lots of problems. I only scored six points in that game. I was two of seven from the floor and had seven rebounds and three turnovers. It stands out as a bad game for me. And our team was due for a loss. We had won fourteen in a row and were playing well, so for the Crimson Tide to beat us 78–62 showed me that in addition to having to deal with a three-guard offense, we lost our focus a little bit. After the upset, Coach Newton described the win as “one of the biggest” in Crimson Tide basketball history. “We knew we couldn’t match Kentucky in size and strength, and we knew we’d have some mismatches,” he said.3 “But by using the small lineup, we created some mismatches for them, too. Their size and strength could not match our quickness.” We regrouped and won our next three games handily against Georgia (90–73), Florida (88–61), and Auburn (104–81), but on February 11, 1978, we faced a battle in Baton Rouge against the LSU Tigers, who were ready to avenge a twenty-point loss we had handed them the previous month. The Tigers started Kentucky natives Kenny Higgs (who had played at Owensboro High School) and Durand “Rudy” Macklin (who had played at Shawnee High School in Louisville). LSU officials opened the arena about ninety minutes before tip-off, so there were scores of fans in the stands during our shootaround, and they were fired up. I don’t remember hearing profanity, but several fans began to scream at us, calling us names, that sort of thing. I recall that they directed most of it toward Chris Gettelfinger because of his curly red hair. Some of the jeers were creative and made us laugh; it was unusual. They said things to me like, “Are you ever gonna graduate? You’ve been at Kentucky for ten years. It’s time for you to get out.” From the first tip, we knew that LSU had come to play. They built a pair of twelve-point leads, one in the first half and one in the second half, but we rallied to tie the game and send it to overtime.4 Four of their five starters fouled out in regulation, and the fifth did so in overtime. That should have given us an advantage in the extra period, but we couldn’t close

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the game out and lost 95–94. The Tigers shot 61 percent from the floor, to our 56 percent, and Higgs and Macklin combined for thirty-four points. We also got outrebounded 41–29, which shows how poor our defense was. During the postgame press briefing, Coach Hall said that some of us hadn’t come mentally prepared to play that night. “That just is a characteristic of this team,” he said. “We’re not able to rise to the occasion when we’re up against another team that wants it more than us.”5 I don’t know that it’s ever good to lose a game, but if you get better from it, then it was worth going through. Coach Hall was so mad at us for not defending well against LSU that the next day he called our starters “the Folding Five.”6 He was on a warpath, and it showed on February 13 when we took the floor in Oxford, Mississippi, for a contest against the Rebels. In that game, Coach Hall seemed to pull out guys for every missed shot, every turnover. In fact, he made seventeen substitutions in the first half alone.7 Despite his multiple changes to the lineup, we won 64–52. We shot 52 percent from the floor and outrebounded the Rebels 37–29. Another reason Coach Hall became upset after our loss to LSU was that we still had two regular-season matchups left with the Tennessee Volunteers, who were our biggest rivals. We won our first matchup with them 90–77 in Rupp Arena on February 15, a victory that refocused us, got us back to playing up to our potential. Ten days later, we beat them at the Stokely Center in Knoxville, 68–57. Two games later, we hosted UNLV at Rupp Arena for senior day, the last time that Mike, Rick, James, and I played in that building as Wildcats. When each of us was introduced by the game announcer, we burst through a large hoop covered with paper that contained our name and likeness, and a record crowd of 23,608 fans gave us standing ovations to show their appreciation.8 I couldn’t see what was on the other side of that hoop, so I had this thought in my mind: “I’m going to run through this, somebody’s going to be right on the other side, and I’m going to run right into them.” That’s the only thing that kept me from breaking down and crying right there on the spot. Before tip-off, Kentucky’s former governor A. B. “Happy” Chandler sang Stephen Foster’s “My Old Kentucky Home,” which was a tradition on senior day. Happy was up in years and looked a little frail, but when he picked up that microphone, it was like he was lifting everyone in Rupp

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My mom (right) and my brother Anthony (left) looked on as I was introduced for our senior-day matchup against UNLV at Rupp Arena on March 4, 1978. (Courtesy of the University of Kentucky Special Collections Research Center.)

Arena onto his back; it was that powerful. I’ve never heard anyone sing such a heartfelt version of “My Old Kentucky Home” as Happy did that day. You could tell that it was more than just a song to him; it held profound meaning. That was an emotional part of the day for me, and it had nothing to do with the lyrics of the song, which have a controversial legacy, as I mentioned earlier. The way Happy delivered that song drove home every emotion, every feeling I had as a player for UK, especially knowing that it was my last time to play in Rupp Arena. My mind was racing a million miles an hour. I don’t remember thinking back to high school and being recruited and all the stuff that happened before I signed with UK, but I had a quick thought about playing games in Memorial Coliseum. Most of the images in my mind centered on the teammates I’d had over my four years as a Wildcat, especially the memories built with Rick, Mike, and James. I also thought about my mom and siblings, who were in the stands, and others who had supported me. The starting lineup that afternoon included us four seniors along with Kyle at the point. A lot had been made about UNLV coming in for that

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Our senior-day game against UNLV was emotional for me, James, Rick, and Mike. Here we huddle with Kyle Macy (4) after the starting lineup was introduced. (Courtesy of the University of Kentucky Special Collections Research Center.)

last home game of the season. The Runnin’ Rebels were unranked, but they were a powerhouse team, and their star player, Reggie Theus, was considered one of the best ballers in the country. I guarded him during that nationally televised game, which was close in the first half although we dominated in the final twenty minutes of play. We held Theus to twelve points and cruised to a 92–70 win. We shot 64.5 percent from the floor and outrebounded UNLV 38–13, and all of us seniors had at least one dunk. I wasn’t much of a dunker, but because my emotions were so high that day, I dunked on Theus, and UNLV called a time-out. James ran up to me and slapped my hand so hard with a high five that my hand went numb! We seniors were that pumped up, and we couldn’t have asked for a better final home game. Rick scored twenty-six points and grabbed seven rebounds, I had twenty-four points and pulled down five rebounds, Mike scored seven points and hauled down nine rebounds, and James added thirteen points and four rebounds. I remember hugging James after the game, thinking about how far we’d come and how the perception of UK’s basketball program had changed since we arrived as freshmen in 1974. Fans now seemed far more interested in our team’s winning games than in the racial makeup of the roster. Our team certainly felt that way. All that mattered to us was winning, and we did. We started to see more Black people attending games, more Black people wearing Kentucky apparel around town, and more Black players adding UK to their recruitment wish list. That was a source of pride for us.

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Even some of the Black guys from our church and community who were once overlooked by UK talked more about Kentucky basketball with us than ever before. So did other people in our neighborhoods. If they couldn’t score game tickets, they got involved by watching on TV or listening to play-by-play announcer Cawood Ledford on the radio. Starting with Reggie Warford’s arrival in 1972, UK’s increasingly integrated basketball program brought the community together like nothing else, drawing in people from all different walks of life. Winning in sports does that because everybody’s cheering for the same thing: for you to win a ball game. This became clearer to me in the years after I graduated. There was no question that if a player was good enough to play at Kentucky, Coach Hall, Coach Parsons, and Coach Hamilton were going to recruit him. It had nothing to do with the color of his skin. That marked a huge change from the past. So when the Rupp Arena crowd gave me and James a standing ovation before our game against UNLV, that gesture erased a lot of bad memories. I’m sure about that. We finished the regular season ranked number one in the Associated Press (AP) poll, so we knew we were going to be the favorite team going into the 1978 NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament. It didn’t matter to me whom we played first, but we were ready to get started because there is inherent anxiousness, nervousness, and excitement in that time between the end of the regular season and the beginning of the NCAA Tournament. For the higher-ranked teams, the toughest game in the NCAA Tournament is the first one because your opponent might be an eight seed or a ten seed with nothing to lose. They come at you and play all-out open basketball because they know they only have to be really good for one game to pull off an upset. When the bracket was revealed, we learned that our first matchup would be on March 11 against the Florida State University Seminoles at the Stokely Center in Knoxville, Tennessee. I don’t remember thinking we’d have any problems with Florida State, but their point guard Anthony Jackson had been a teammate of mine at Bryan Station. He was a heady player, very smart—a floor general in every respect. Besides Anthony, I didn’t know much about the Seminoles, who were ranked number thirteen in the final regular-season AP poll. I just knew we had to figure out a way to win the game. That probably caused me and some of the other guys to play a little bit tighter, a little more on edge, than in any other game. I wouldn’t say

Florida State gave us a scare in the first round of the 1978 NCAA Tournament, but we prevailed, 85–76. Here, Truman Claytor drives to the basket while I anticipate a rebound. That’s Mike Phillips at far right. (Courtesy of the University of Kentucky Special Collections Research Center.)

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that the contest against Florida State was our toughest during the course of the tournament, but mentally it was the toughest game to prepare for, at least for me. It showed in the first half. We played on our heels and allowed the Seminoles a lot of runouts, and they finished the first half with a 39–32 advantage. During halftime, Coach Hall was furious about our shaky play. He directed most of his comments at me and Rick. He announced that Mike and Kyle would remain in the starting rotation for the second half and that LaVon Williams, Fred Cowan, and Dwane Casey would replace me, Rick, and Truman. This decision surprised me. We knew we hadn’t played well, but it wasn’t the first time that we’d found ourselves in a situation where a team got off to a good start against us. There was no reason to think that we couldn’t get our act together and play well in the second half. I don’t know that Rick, Truman, and I deserved not to start the second half, but I understand Coach Hall’s reasoning. He knew that Dwane, LaVon, and Fred were high-energy subs who would provide a spark, particularly on defense. That created pressure, however, because it raised the question of where the offense would come from with that lineup. We were already behind. That unit rose to the occasion, though. For the first nine minutes of the second half, they outscored the Seminoles 16–14, forced four turnovers, and didn’t allow them to expand their lead, which gave Coach Hall more time to drive his point home to me, Rick, and Truman. Florida State started to get fatigued. With a little more than ten minutes left in the half, Coach Hall put me, Rick, and Truman back in the game, with our team down 53–48. We had to show that we were mentally ready to play. For a starter, sitting on the bench for that long forces you to get mentally ready. It forces you to want to take it out on somebody, so we went on a 14–0 run against the Seminoles to build a 62–53 lead with six minutes and fifty-three seconds left in regulation and never looked back.9 We won 85–76. While some fans and members of the media considered Coach Hall’s move gutsy, others second-guessed him. “The fans may call it a gamble, and the press may call it gambling,” he said after the game.10 “But I know my ball club. The subs brought us out of it.” That win earned us a spot in the NCAA Mideast Regional in Dayton, Ohio, for a March 16 matchup against the unranked Miami University

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Redskins. The practices leading up to that game were intense because Coach Hall was still angry about the performance of our starters against Florida State. Anytime we played poorly, he made us run a lot of defensive drills, which always resulted in physical, emotional practices. For five-on-five games during our practices, the starters wore white jerseys while the subs wore blue or red jerseys. During our first five-on-five game that week, Coach Hall instructed me and Rick to wear red jerseys; he was trying to drive home his message to us. By the end of that practice, we were running offense and defense as part of the starting five. But at the beginning, we ran with the second unit. That was the first time I had worn a red practice jersey since my freshman year when I was working against Grevey. After a week of hellish practices, I wondered how our team would respond in the game against Miami of Ohio. The Redskins kept the score close for the opening minutes, but we began to fire on all cylinders and rolled to a decisive 91–69 win led by twenty-four points from Mike Phillips, who was from Manchester, Ohio. We were back to playing our signature solid defense, and five of our guys scored in double figures. Our swagger was back.

9 Back to the Final Four

Two days after our victory over Miami University, we faced the Michigan State Spartans and their star freshman, Ervin “Magic” Johnson. We knew Michigan State played a good zone defense—mostly a 2-3 matchup zone— so we spent a lot of time preparing for that game by running offenses we thought would create shots against it. Magic averaged seventeen points and 7.4 assists per game that season, so I knew that if we were going to beat the Spartans, we had to handle him and his teammates defensively. We started out man to man, and my job was to contain Magic and not let him get going early. But I had to make sure I channeled him to our big guys on the wing. We changed our defense some in that game. We usually played a 1-3-1 zone defense, but for that game, we worked on a 3-2 zone. I ran the top of that defense a little bit to give us a bigger presence there. We packed our defense in tight because we didn’t want to give Magic a lane to get to the basket. Michigan State led early and was ahead 27–22 at halftime. Fortunately, they did not make a lot of outside shots, but the game was close the whole way. Right before the second half started, Coach Hamilton suggested to Coach Hall that our forwards come closer to the top of the key and set a screen for Kyle. That way, Kyle could either take a jump shot or, more importantly, keep the ball in his hands and force Michigan State to foul so he was the one shooting free throws near the end of regulation. Coach Hall picked the perfect time in the second half to run the play suggested by Coach Hamilton; Michigan State didn’t have time to adjust to it, and 120

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Our team held one open practice at the Final Four—on the eve of our matchup against Arkansas. (Courtesy of the University of Kentucky Special Collections Research Center.)

Kyle helped seal the victory for us by sinking six free throws in the final two minutes and forty-three seconds of play. He finished with eighteen points, including ten of eleven from the charity stripe, and we won 52–49. This change in our offense was another example of how Coach Hall was a better x’s and o’s coach than people gave him credit for. He could come up with schemes and devise plays on the fly that made a difference in the outcome of a game. The Spartans’ forward Greg Kelser led all scorers with nineteen points, but Magic scored just six points on two-of-ten shooting to go along with five assists. More important than holding Magic to six points was that we didn’t let him get double-figure assists because when he did, the Spartans would get really good. Punching our ticket to the Final Four in St. Louis was a great feeling; there was so much pressure on us to get back to that stage. We celebrated our victory, but we had something else in mind. We wanted to win the national championship; nothing less than that was going to satisfy us. We

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Here I’m being interviewed in the Checkerdome before our semifinal game against Arkansas. (Courtesy of the University of Kentucky Special Collections Research Center.)

were eager to get to the Checkerdome in St. Louis and start our march to the championship with a matchup against the Arkansas Razorbacks. The other semifinal game featured Notre Dame versus Duke. During the week leading up to the Final Four, our practices were lighter than normal. I had injured my left shoulder, and it had been popping out of the socket. I recall initially hurting it toward the end of the regular season—a couple of games before our senior-day matchup against UNLV. It didn’t happen often, but sometimes when I went up to block a shot or overextended my left arm, it would pop out of the socket and then go totally numb, to the point where I couldn’t even lift it. Our trainer, Walt McCombs, wrapped my shoulder in an Ace bandage to restrict movement, but the dislocations started to happen more often, so he ordered a brace for me. It was kind of like a jacket that laced up in the front and had a shoulder harness. It didn’t affect my shooting much, but it was too uncomfortable to wear during games. Coach Hall also wouldn’t let me wear that brace during open shootaround for the media. He didn’t want any news to come out that I was injured. I walked around a lot with big bags of ice strapped onto my shoulder, but

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the main treatment for that injury was an electrotherapy device, which Walt applied two to three times a day that week to keep the blood flowing and to reduce swelling. Meanwhile, in the background, my teammates and I were trying to maintain our focus on preparing for Arkansas because there were so many things pulling at our attention: interviews with newspaper reporters and national media and all the hoopla that goes along with being in the Final Four. However, our practices leading up to that game fell off a little bit. In fact, in a media interview Coach Hall expressed concern that we weren’t as sharp as usual. Fans wanted to mingle with us, which normally we welcomed, but in this situation, we had to stay focused. Our coaches instructed the hotel staff to disconnect the phone lines in our rooms because we were getting so many calls from girls and fans wanting to meet us and to hang out. We also had family members staying at the team hotel. However, some of our relatives had many other people around them, which made it difficult to hang out exclusively with family members. We were escorted by security anytime we took the elevators to or from our rooms, and we were instructed not to stop and talk to people or to sign autographs. Of course, we all liked the attention, but we couldn’t let ourselves get involved with the extra stuff that was going on. I was concerned about Arkansas because the Razorbacks ran a threeguard offense with Sidney Moncrief, Marvin Delph, and Ron Brewer— superstar players who were known as the “Three Basketeers.” They were quick, could handle the ball, and could create shots. Coming into that game, we knew that Arkansas had not seen a team like ours, but we’d had the experience of playing against a three-guard offense during our regular-season loss at Alabama in January 1978. However, in our rematch against the Crimson Tide the following month, we adjusted to their three-guard offense and beat them 97–84. From the first tip-off in front of 18,721 fans at the Checkerdome, it was nip and tuck. Their three-guard offense forced us to play some zone defense, but we mostly played man-to-man defense since that had been a key to our success all year. We were ahead by as many as seven points in the first half and by nine points midway through the second half, but the Razorbacks kept coming back. They blocked seven of our shots, forced fourteen turnovers, and held Rick and Mike to just thirteen points combined.1 Mike played just

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seventeen minutes because their small lineup created matchup problems for him. Thankfully, Jay Shidler sank some key long shots for us and did a great job guarding Brewer, and James scored thirteen points and pulled down eight rebounds. The play that sealed the game came with just under two minutes left in regulation, after the Razorbacks had just cut our lead to 61–59. It was an out-of-bounds play called “Rick, Rick, Rick,” which we named after Robey. This was meant to shift the defensive attention to Rick coming up from half court to call for the ball to be taken out of bounds. It set me up because the defensive player at half court with Rick had to come up to keep him from catching the ball. Kyle took the ball out of bounds. For this play, instead of me setting a screen on a guard as I normally did, I pretended to set a screen, and as Truman made the cut over the top to receive the ball inbounds, I released and ran down the floor. Kyle threw me a perfect, nearly floor-length pass. I caught it and scored a layup, which gave us a 63–59 lead with one minute and forty-three seconds left in the game. This was yet another example of Coach Hall’s knack for making a big call during a key part of the game. That put us over the top and helped us win that ball game, 64–59. I finished with twenty-three points. Arkansas was probably the best team we played all year. They weren’t very deep, but they were great athletes who were in great shape. After such an intense game, Coach Hall wanted us to get away from basketball for a little while. He wanted us to go out, have a big dinner, and chill out, but Rick suggested that we order pizza in the hotel and watch the video replay of the Notre Dame–Duke game instead (which the Blue Devils won 90–86). We got plenty of bad publicity from national media about staying in the hotel that evening. They thought Coach Hall orchestrated that decision and portrayed us as not having any fun. Truth is, we just wanted to go back to the hotel and watch the game, so that’s what we did. My left shoulder hadn’t bothered me during the Arkansas game, but it did pop out of the socket while I was wearing the brace at our closed team shootaround the next day, so I sat out the rest of that practice. This injury happened enough that I knew it would get back to normal, but I was concerned that I might have to play the championship game with the brace on or that my shoulder would pop out during the game. I didn’t lose sleep worrying about it, though, because there was no rhyme or reason as to when

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it might pop back out again. I was thinking about what we needed to do to beat Duke. It had never entered my mind that we would be playing the Blue Devils for the national championship because I’d thought that year’s Notre Dame team was better than Duke. We had played the Fighting Irish earlier in the season. They were a great team with guys like Kelly Tripuca, Bill Laimbeer, and Orlando Woolridge, so I was relieved that we didn’t have to play them again. That probably added to my confidence because in my mind I knew that we had a better team than Duke. I knew they would have to worry about us and our game plan more than we would have to worry about them and their game plan. Because Rick, Mike, James, and I had competed in an NCAA championship as freshmen, been NIT champs as sophomores, and narrowly missed making the Final Four as juniors, we didn’t get caught up in any hoopla this time around. In our minds, it was another game, another team standing in the way of us winning the championship. Coach Hall didn’t have to tell us, “This is going to be big. You can’t let the crowd and the craziness get to you.” We didn’t have to go through all that. I guarantee you that Duke did. You can’t go through that experience without the coach telling you more than once, “Don’t think about this as a big game. It’s just another game.” Rick, Mike, James, and I had the luxury of having been there before. That was one of the reasons I was so confident heading into that game. The game started out a lot tougher than I’d thought it would. Duke showed they could play; they were ready. They played a 2-3 zone, which meant that they had to extend out to cover our guards. This left the middle section of the zone open, and I started taking shots from fifteen to seventeen feet. I got off to a slow start, but I scored twenty-three points in the first half, including sixteen straight to close out the half. The game plan didn’t call for me to get all of those shots, but when I didn’t have the ball, I kept moving to get open, and my teammates kept feeding me. Duke never adjusted its defense. We were up by seven points at halftime, and Duke had made twenty out of twenty-one free throws. That was on us because we weren’t defending without fouling. You can talk all you want about how close the referees were calling the game, but if you take twenty free throws away and give them ten, we could have been up fifteen or eighteen points at halftime. For the final

While waiting for the championship against Duke, I reviewed our game plan in the Checkerdome locker room. (Courtesy of the University of Kentucky Special Collections Research Center.)

Duke’s Mike Gminski defends while I pass to an open teammate. That’s Gene Banks (22) looking on. (Courtesy of the University of Kentucky Special Collections Research Center.)

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twenty minutes of play, we knew that all we had to do was defend and not foul and we would be all right. I fully expected the Blue Devils to tighten their zone to take away the shots I was getting, but I also understood the predicament they were in. If they tightened their zone coverage on me, we had plenty of other players who could get open and make shots from the middle of their zone, including Kyle, Truman, Jay, and Tim Stephens. Once the second half started, I kept looking for the defensive change to come, but it never did. The Blue Devils were worried about getting in foul trouble, so they started to give up shots to reduce their chances of picking up a foul. During the first time-out, Coach Hall recognized that Duke was not changing its game plan, so instead of suggesting any adjustments, he said, “Forget everything else. Just keep getting Jack the ball.” If the Blue Devils were to make an adjustment and send their bigs at me, we agreed that I’d dump the ball off to Robey, Phillips, Lee, Macy, or Claytor. We discussed other options, but Duke never made a change. I was totally surprised, but I kept moving without the ball to find open shots. I don’t know that I took two shots in a row from the same spot during that whole second half. With three minutes and forty-eight seconds left in regulation, I put up a jumper from the baseline that grazed the side of the backboard before it went in. When I put that up, I thought, “Man, I shouldn’t have taken that,” because I was too close to the baseline and a little behind the backboard for that shot to have any chance of going in. But I was open, and Mike Phillips kicked the ball out to me, so I just shot it. I like to tell people I practiced that shot all the time, but of course, that was one of those times it was better be lucky than good! At about the thirty-five-second mark, Coach Hall sequentially inserted teammates who had seen little or no action in the game: Dwane Casey, Scott Courts, Fred Cowan, Chris Gettelfinger, and Tim Stephens. We were up 92–84. I thought Duke would send their subs in at the same time, but they didn’t. People ask me all the time, “Were you upset with Coach Hall for pulling you out when you were three points away from tying for the most points ever in a championship game?” (UCLA’s Bill Walton holds that record for his forty-four-point performance against Memphis State in 1973.) I wasn’t, because at the time I didn’t know I had scored forty-one points. All I knew was that we were ahead on the scoreboard; that’s all that

Cutting down the nets in St. Louis was the highlight of my college career. I remember this moment just like it was yesterday. (Courtesy of the Lexington Herald-Leader. Photo by Frank Anderson.)

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Our team mingled with fans well after we cut down the nets in St. Louis. Here, Rick Robey (left), James Lee, and I savor the moment. (Courtesy of the University of Kentucky Special Collections Research Center.)

mattered. Looking back, would it have been nice to stay in there and see what would have happened? Sure, but the thing that was most important to us—particularly the seniors—was that we win the game. When Coach Hall reinserted me and the other starters with twenty-three seconds left on the clock, Coach Hall said, “Nobody shoots the ball except Jack.” He had never said that before during any game. I thought, “Why is he saying that?” That power dunk by James with four seconds left was the perfect way to end the game, though, because he was so important to our team’s success. The final score was 94–88. When the final horn sounded, the first thing I remember feeling was intense relief, like a thousand pounds had been lifted off my back. I remember the thrill of cutting down the basketball nets. I made sure I was last because I got one of the nets for a keepsake and Rick got the other one. Everybody else cut a piece of it to keep. As I stated earlier, finishing as a runner-up to the national championship my freshman year was wonderful; I thought it couldn’t get any better. But winning it all against Duke brought on totally different feelings—a deep

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sense of accomplishment and pride in bringing the championship back to Kentucky. The fans had been so supportive of me and the team. Being named the game’s most outstanding player was a great way to end my career, but winning the championship felt a whole lot better. On our way back to the locker room after the game, when all the celebration was done, Coach Hall approached me out of nowhere. He put his arm around me and said, “Now you see? All that bitching at you all these years, you see where that got you, don’t you?” He started to laugh and walked the other way before I had a chance to reply. That was his way of saying, “That was a great game.” But it was also his way of saying, “You couldn’t have gotten here without me giving you a hard time these four years.” He was still riding me as we were walking off the floor. That was a good moment for me. I knew that was his way of saying, “Thanks for all you’ve done, and thanks for helping us win this championship.” I don’t remember much about the plane ride home other than that there was a festive atmosphere. Everybody was having fun, enjoying the moment and the thought of winning the first NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship for UK in twenty years. Coach Hall and others were smoking cigars up near the front of the plane. We were counting the minutes till we got home because our flight from St. Louis had been delayed by a couple of hours because of a mechanical issue. Our plane didn’t land at Blue Grass Field until just after three thirty in the morning, but it was amazing how many fans had gathered to welcome us back: an estimated seven to ten thousand in and around this small airport! Once we entered the terminal, police escorted us to a second-floor balcony, where we showed off the NCAA Championship Trophy and received wild cheers and applause from the packed crowd below. In fact, cheering went on for several minutes before anyone had a chance to speak into the makeshift PA system. The reception was an unbelievable sight, beyond anything I could have imagined. The fact that so many people from all corners of the state wanted to be there at that hour of the morning illustrates the fans’ intense devotion to UK basketball. Some had parked their cars on Versailles Road past the New Circle Road overpass, so they had walked a couple of miles to be part of the occasion. They say that Kentucky fans bleed blue. It really showed that day. A bus shuttled our team back to Wildcat Lodge, but the driver had to take back roads because so many people had parked along Versailles Road.

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I don’t remember getting any sleep that night or the next day, but I’m not complaining. Our classmates and the Big Blue Nation wanted us to hang out with them, and there was a rally that night at Memorial Coliseum, where an estimated fifteen thousand fans and dignitaries treated us like rock stars and our championship banner was unveiled. The reception we received from fans at the airport and at Memorial Coliseum—at least twenty-five thousand combined—was an amazing part of our championship. It was a long couple of days but a perfect way to end my UK playing career. It couldn’t get any better than that. During the final weeks of the 1978 spring semester and throughout the summer, I made a large number of speaking engagements, and I could start charging for appearances. Our team also launched a barnstorming tour, playing ball at high school gyms throughout the state—some in areas I’d never been to. We signed autographs for at least an hour before and after each game. We played thirty-two games in less than a month, all against a Marathon Oil Amateur Athletic Union team coached by Scotty Baesler, a former UK basketball player who went on to become mayor of Lexington. We played a game almost every weeknight and sometimes two games on a Saturday, all in the middle of cramming for final exams and, for me and my fellow seniors, preparing for postcollege life. To me, earning an arts and sciences degree with an emphasis in business administration from UK and taking part in the commencement ceremony was on par with winning the national championship. It was a big source of pride for me and my family. As a kid growing up, I never thought I would have an opportunity to attend college or be able to afford it. Of my older siblings, only Michael and Anthony earned a college degree before I did. The situation was similar among members of my extended family, so when anyone in our immediate or extended family earned a college degree, it was a big deal, something to celebrate and be proud of. During the commencement ceremony, I received the Algernon Sydney Sullivan Award, which is given to two students of each graduating class to honor persons who demonstrate the “spirit of helpfulness and an awareness of the beauty and value of the intangible elements of life.”2 This is a coveted civic award for people who do work in the community outside of their schoolwork, so I was surprised and grateful to be honored in that way.

10 Life in the Pros

On June 9, 1978, the Atlanta Hawks selected me as the sixteenth player in the first round of the NBA Draft. But unlike today, there was no fanfare for this event: no press conference, no ESPN, no national TV cameras. I was sitting at home and got a call from the Hawks’ general manager, Michael Gearon, who said, “We look forward to seeing you in a few months. Come on down. Be ready when you get here.” Norman Blass, an attorney based in New York City, negotiated my contract with the Hawks, which was a six-year deal worth $600,000—essentially $100,000 a year—with three years guaranteed. So, after Uncle Sam got his cut, there was not a lot of discretionary income left. I later negotiated a contract with Converse for $25,000 per year to wear their shoes. Nowadays, if I’m the sixteenth player chosen in the NBA Draft, I might be signing a contract worth $2.5 million a year. And that shoe contract might be worth several million dollars. It’s different money. So, though the money I made was good, it was not a life-changing situation. I later found out it’s the second contract when the money gets really good, but I didn’t get a chance at a second contract. I didn’t have much time to celebrate my NBA contract, because the morning after the draft, I boarded an airplane with my Kentucky teammates for a trip to Japan, where we played seven exhibition games in fourteen days—all against the Japan national basketball team. Rick, Mike, and James decided not to go, but the rest of us played games in Tokyo, Nagasaki, Niigata, and Osaka. Coach Hall and the UK athletics staff arranged the 133

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trip with help from Mototaka Kohama, the Japan national basketball team head coach, who spent much of the 1977–78 season with the UK men’s basketball team, learning everything he could about the sport from Coach Hall and his staff. We referred to him as Coach Moto. I had never been on a trip outside of the country, so I was excited about the opportunity. It was also sort of nerve racking because my teammates and I would be on a plane for so many hours just to get there. I remember how clean everything was when we arrived in Narita International Airport. Officials from the Japan Basketball Association (JBA), dressed in suits and ties, hosted a reception for us at the airport. It was a very formal welcome. From there, we boarded a bus for a two-hour ride to Tokyo for our first game. The houses, apartments, buildings, and cities leading into Tokyo seemed to be connected. What struck me most was the glow of Tokyo’s city lights, which could be seen from at least thirty miles away. They lit up the whole sky, because the population of the Tokyo metropolitan area at that time was about twenty-eight million. It was so different from anything we had ever seen before. The hotel we stayed in was the tallest we’d ever been in, by far. Our rooms were at least forty floors above ground level, and there were several floors above us. It was unusual and a little scary to be up so high. The following afternoon, we were in our rooms when the building began to sway back and forth; it was an earthquake! We gathered in the hallway near the elevators, scared to death. The squeaking of the swaying building was unnerving. Some of the Japanese hotel guests in the hallway with us encouraged us to stay calm. Others, with frightened looks on their faces, got on their knees and prayed. The elevators were inoperable, so that made us worry more. We later found out that our hotel and other buildings in the city were designed to withstand earthquakes, but we didn’t know that at the time. Not long after the swaying stopped, an announcement came over the hotel intercom system indicating that it was safe to take the elevators down. I couldn’t wait to get out of that building! We had some aftershocks after that, but they weren’t nearly as intense as that first quake. That evening, the JBA hosted a reception for us where sushi and other hors d’oeuvres were served. Much of the food was unfamiliar to us, so we were hesitant. I was hungry, though, and spotted a tray with pieces of bread and

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what appeared to be a small stack of shaved ham. I approached the waitperson carrying that tray and gestured that I would like some. He gave me a funny look while I picked up what I thought was ham, placed it on the small slice of bread, and put it into my mouth. That “ham” turned out to be ginger for the sushi! It created the worst spicy taste in my mouth, so I spit it out in my napkin, hoping no one would see. I didn’t sample any food that wasn’t recognizable for a long time after that! It made me less eager to try new food there. I unexpectedly made the first advertising contract of my career during this trip. After a press briefing with the media, a representative from Asics asked if I would wear their shoes during the game in exchange for compensation. The university was under contract with Converse, but since I had graduated and was technically no longer a member of the team, I was able to negotiate a $10,000 contract to wear Asics shoes in the games. I didn’t discuss this with Coach Hall or anyone on the coaching staff, because I didn’t want it to be shot down. That was big money for me because I hadn’t started to collect a salary from the Hawks yet. It was one of those situations where I’d rather ask for forgiveness than for permission. Luckily, Coach Hall didn’t have any problem with the deal. Plus, the Asics were more comfortable than the Converse shoes our team wore! This opportunity is an example of how my teammates and I could have benefited from the name, image, and likeness (NIL) policy that the NCAA adopted in June 2021. We could have made some good money back in our day for autographs, appearances, and endorsement opportunities. Instead, we received fifteen dollars per month each academic year, which was described as laundry money. That sure didn’t go very far to enhance our college experience! That’s why I support the NIL policy from the player’s perspective. The colleges and universities and the NCAA are making so much money from TV contracts. Even head coaches sign lucrative deals and make big money on top of their big salaries, but the players get nothing. Some NIL critics say, “Yeah, but they’re getting a free education.” If I were a current college recruit, my response to that would be, “Recruit me to your program. I’ll arrange my own NIL deal, and I’ll pay for my own education, or I can get grants. If someone offers an NIL deal where I’m making upward of one to two million dollars per year, I would rather pay for my own education as opposed to passing up any opportunities created by the NIL.” Eventually, I believe that NIL policy will require

I averaged nearly eight points per game during my rookie season with the Atlanta Hawks. (Author’s collection.)

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further regulations—ideally by an independent organization, not by the NCAA—so that players are fairly represented. Now, back to my story. I think all of us were surprised by how the Japanese people received us. They love their sports, and they treated us like rock stars. It seemed like we got more attention there than we did when we traveled in parts of the United States for road games. On sightseeing tours, kids would follow us around, point at how tall we were, and ask to have pictures taken with us. To the Japanese, our presence in their country was a spectacle, and those who were able to get tickets to the games seemed to cheer for us more than they did for the Japan national basketball team. They were there for one reason: to see the NCAA Champion University of Kentucky Wildcats. It was uncommon for them to see a team of our caliber play. We won all seven games; none of them were close. After our long journey back to Lexington, my time wearing a Kentucky uniform now over for good, I switched focus to my pro career. I didn’t follow professional sports much as a kid or in college, so the NBA was all so new to me. I wish I’d been more prepared for what to expect, but I wasn’t ready for the basketball side of the NBA, even though I’d been cocaptain of a national championship team and I’d been named the game’s most outstanding player. I wasn’t prepared for the difference between college and the NBA, the difference in talent level. It was unexpected. That affected how I played. I also wasn’t prepared for the harsh coaching style of Hubie Brown. As tough as I thought Coach Hall was, Hubie was even tougher. At that time, the NBA was a coach’s league. The coaches had all the power, all the control. Now it’s just the opposite. The league is built around marquee players like Lebron James, Kevin Durant, and Anthony Davis. Hubie didn’t want you to like him; he wanted you to respect him. He wanted us to know that he was in control, and he made it clear that he didn’t want to get to know us and that he didn’t want to be our friend. When we were in a hotel for a road game, no player was allowed to stay on the same floor as him. He didn’t want to see you come in or go out, and he didn’t want you to see him come in or go out. Those were the rules, and that’s fine, but I needed a coach who was a little more positive and a little less abrasive. We got along fine and had no big disagreements; it’s just that his style of coaching was not good for me. Sometimes that happens. Although I didn’t take criticism from

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Coach Hall personally while at UK, I didn’t know enough about the NBA to realize that I shouldn’t have taken it personally at that time either, but I did. It’s a business. It’s a job. It was like having a performance evaluation all the time. If you didn’t perform, it got worse instead of getting better. It took me a lot of time to get used to that. It was difficult. Hubie gave me opportunities, though. I was on the bench behind John Drew, an NBA All-Star who averaged twenty-three points per game during the 1978–79 season. I got playing time, but it’s my fault that I didn’t take more advantage of those minutes and build on them. Despite Hubie’s tough demeanor, he had the best basketball mind of any coach I played for or covered during my broadcasting career. He would grab his clipboard during a game and come up with ways to handle defensive players, stop offensive players, or create offense seemingly out of the blue. For example, during the 1980 NBA Eastern Conference Semifinals, we faced the prolific scorer Julius “Dr. J.” Erving and the Philadelphia 76ers. They won the best-of-five game series, but we were able to push it to five games because Hubie came up with a strategy. Instead of allowing Dr. J. to elevate and to get into his shooting motion, he instructed us to foul him before he could start to shoot because he was struggling from the freethrow line. As it turned out, he missed free throws that enabled us to stay in that series. During my later career as a broadcaster, I’d run into Hubie, who was broadcasting games as well. Just by talking with him, I learned to view basketball games in a totally different way than as a player. At UK, I was used to having much of my whole day mapped out for me. That kind of structure was a bad preparation for the NBA, where the only time that was programmed out other than for games and travel was a two- or two-and-a-half-hour practice, which usually started at 11:00 a.m. For the rest, we were on our own. That’s difficult when you’ve been kind of told what to do all day, every day. When I first moved to Georgia, I lived about twenty miles outside of Atlanta in a small city called Stone Mountain, an area that I later learned had a history of racial tension and white supremacist activities. I personally did not encounter any racism while living there, but that explains why none of my teammates chose to reside in Stone Mountain. A pastor friend of mine, Ed Cunningham, who was also a big Wildcats fan, talked me into living on that side of town. It was easy to commute from there to Atlanta,

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but it was away from all the other guys, whom I could have interacted with. I was isolated. So, when I returned to my apartment, I’d go back by myself. There was nobody there. None of my teammates lived there. Other guys had families, their own things going on. I didn’t have a Bill Keightley type of a guy patting me on the back and handing me a Snickers bar, or a close friend to hang out with like James Lee or Mike Murphy, who was one of the student managers for UK’s men’s basketball team. On the Hawks, I was closest to forward/center Danny Roundfield, whom we called “Rounds.” He had been on the team that we beat at Central Michigan during the tournament my freshman year. He was a few years older than me and kind of took me under his wing. He encouraged me and taught me some of the dos and don’ts as an NBA player. For example, when traveling with the Hawks and playing games on the road, Rounds warned me about activities that I didn’t want to be a part of. One of those was drug use, which a lot of players in the league were involved in at that time. Fortunately, Rounds was not one to use drugs, so by taking me under his wing, he led me away from that, and I chose not to hang out with those guys. Rounds also advised me to stay away from the crazy parties that some of my teammates attended when we were traveling. Now and then, I’d catch up with girls I knew while I was on the road, including some I had met during my career at UK. So I went out and had fun as well, but everybody on the team had their own obligations on the road, and that cut down on the time we could spend together. That limited my opportunities to get to know some of the guys better. It was like being in college, where we were on the same team and going for the same goal. But it was also like working at any other big corporation. We were there together from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., but at 5:00 p.m., I got in my car to go one way, and my coworkers went another. We had our own lives. Sometimes, there were guys working to take away your playing time, so that can factor in too. It was hard to get to know the guys and feel good about spending a lot of time together because we may not have had anything other than basketball in common. I never used an alias when we stayed at hotels on the road, so sometimes UK fans would call my room and invite me to dinner or ask for game tickets. I tried my best to accommodate these requests. It became a running joke with my teammates, who would ask me before games how many tickets I needed for the UK fans. They and other NBA players were surprised by

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the coast-to-coast support I received from Kentucky fans. They’d bring me cookies or items to be autographed. During my second year with the Hawks, I relocated to the Buckhead section of Atlanta, into the same condo complex as John Drew. So I eventually got to know some of the guys, but I missed the structure that I’d experienced at UK. I know that’s part of growing up and becoming a man, but it takes some time to adjust your schedule. Looking back, I wish I had spent more time in the offseason shooting and getting stronger, all the things that guys do now as part of their summer workout. In my era, it was routine to get away from the game during the offseason and do your own thing, and workouts during the NBA season were more team focused. As soon as practice ended, everybody left and went their separate ways. These days, players spend extra time focused on individual workouts, lifting weights or improving their ball handling, shooting, or overall conditioning. I regret that wasn’t the trend in my day. Because the NBA season was so long, you could lose a lot of games quickly. At UK, if you lost a couple of games, it was like the world had ended. I took losing too hard. In the NBA, you don’t have time to linger on one game, because you might have another one the following night. You might lose both of those and travel to another city for another game the next night. You don’t have time to sulk and feel bad. You can’t get too elated over a win either, because you don’t have time to celebrate. You need to be able to forget about all that and move on. Looking back, I wish I had been more selfish on the court during my brief NBA career. At UK, if you were dribbling downcourt and one of your teammates was open, you had to get him the ball. In the NBA, if you were dribbling downcourt and one of your teammates was open, you had to be selfish enough to look the other way and tell yourself, “Yeah, he’s open for a good shot, but I have a good shot too.” To make it in the NBA, you have to be a little bit selfish, more about “me” than the team. You see it more nowadays than ever before. I wasn’t there long enough to adjust to that kind of thinking, and I’m glad I wasn’t. I also lacked confidence. I never felt like I was good enough to be in the NBA, which was tough and kind of strange considering the success I’d had at UK and Bryan Station, but it was a good learning experience because it taught me that if you don’t think you’re good enough, you’re not

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going to be good enough. That’s one of the most valuable lessons I learned during my basketball career, and I apply that mentality to this day as I try to succeed in everything from being a father to closing a business deal. That mindset influences everything I do. My rookie season with the Hawks ended with a record of 46–36, and we finished third in the NBA’s Central Division. I averaged about eighteen minutes per game, 2.9 rebounds per game, and 7.7 points per game. That summer, I returned to Lexington to work in the insurance profession with Ben Kaufmann. I also dealt with a big change in the personal side of my life. In a conversation with Lamont’s mother, she confirmed that I was Lamont’s father—something that I’d suspected all along because her own mother kept me informed about how she and Lamont were doing. So this was more of a confirmation than a revelation. I think she waited until my UK career was over to tell me in order to protect me from all the talk and bad press that likely would have occurred if it became known that a star player on the UK basketball team had a son out of wedlock. That was not as socially acceptable then as it is now. I’m sure her mom didn’t want her daughter’s name in the newspaper either. I believe that she had my best interests at heart when she waited to tell me that Lamont was my son. I thank her for that, but I still wanted to know for sure before I carried out my responsibilities as his father morally and financially, so we ordered a paternity test. It came back positive. I was the father of a boy who was now five years old, so I started doing my part financially. I couldn’t make up for the lost time with Lamont, but I started to spend more time with him. When I wasn’t out of town playing basketball, I’d take him out to eat and drive him to his T-ball games and, later, to his Little League games. His mom and I continued to be friends, and we remain on good terms to this day. I didn’t blame her for the situation, and she didn’t blame me. I also didn’t try to fight my financial obligation in terms of child support. I did what I was supposed to do in that regard. I wish I had been able to spend more time with Lamont as a kid, but I was away from Lexington for about seven months out of the year, playing basketball. The good thing is, Lamont and I grew closer and closer through the years, and today he participates in family functions just as my other children do.

This photo of Lamont was taken around the same time that I learned he was my son. (Author’s collection.)

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After playing in Europe, I returned to Lexington and got my start in broadcasting by calling basketball games with Dick Gabriel (center) on WVLK-AM radio. (Courtesy of the Lexington Herald-Leader. Photo by E. Martin Jessee.)

After my second season with the Hawks, the newly formed Dallas Mavericks NBA franchise selected me to join their team in the 1981 expansion draft. They released me during the preseason, so I returned to Lexington to work with Ben Kaufmann. I was collecting my guaranteed third-year salary from the Hawks, so that helped. I stayed in shape by playing basketball around town and by playing racquetball at Lexington Athletic Club (LAC), and the following summer I landed a tryout with the Chicago Bulls. That didn’t pan out, so I went to play overseas: first for a team in Forli, Italy, and then for a team in Belgium. I enjoyed my time in both countries, but neither was a good fit for me. After my time in Belgium, I returned home to start a coal brokerage business called Kentucky Star Coal Company. I also broadcast boys’ high school basketball games and Transylvania University men’s basketball games on WVLK-AM radio in Lexington with Dick Gabriel, a longtime Kentucky sports journalist, and I started to date Linda Thompson, a Paris, Kentucky, native who worked at the LAC. We competed against each other at the club for at least six months before I got

Coach Moto (left) recruited me to join the Akita Isuzu Motors basketball team. (Author’s collection.)

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up the nerve to ask her out because she was so attractive. To this day, Linda tells people that it shocked her when I asked her out because even though we had played racquetball against each other for many months, she had no clue that I liked her; I’d never said anything to indicate that. We bet on a game of racquetball and agreed that if she beat me, I’d buy dinner, and if I beat her, she’d buy dinner. I won the match, but I still bought a take-out dinner from Sir Pizza, and we ate pizza while watching a UK basketball game on TV at her house on Bob O Link Drive. That was our first date. Once Linda and I started going out regularly, we became close quickly, but we didn’t rush anything. She needed time. I did too. In fact, at that time I was a sworn bachelor. I liked being single, and I wasn’t thinking about getting married. It wasn’t something I wanted to do. She was a lot like me in that she needed her space; she didn’t have to be with me twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. The more we spent time together, though, the closer we got and the more time we wanted to be together—which is the way a love relationship should develop. Linda is white, and while interracial dating was not as common at that time, her parents had no issues with us seeing each other. They were really good people. Then, in the summer of 1982, I received a phone call from Coach Hall, who asked me if I’d be interested in playing pro basketball in Japan. “I sure am!” I told him. A few days later, I got a phone call from Coach Moto, who, in addition to his job with the Japan national basketball team, had become head coach of the Akita Isuzu Motors basketball team. He made me an offer to join his team for about the same salary I made with the Hawks. I accepted. Another reason I wanted to go there was that I was trying to figure out the best way to ship coal from Eastern Kentucky to Japan. Coach Moto agreed to connect me to some trading companies that would help promote my other business. So it was a business decision, not just a basketball decision to go there and play. Japan’s professional basketball teams are owned by large companies in the country, like Toshiba, Isuzu, Toyota, and Honda. They recruit players coming out of college to join their teams, and the larger companies tend to sign the best athletes. When I played there, most were Japanese, but every team in the country could have two foreign players on the roster, and only one of those players could be on the floor at a time. The teams recruited players from all over the world, just like the NBA does nowadays. In fact, Fred Cowan was playing for the Toshiba basketball team in Tokyo, and

During my tenure with Akita, my former UK teammate Fred Cowan (left) played for rival Toshiba. This photo is from one of our matchups. (Author’s collection.)

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LaVon Williams had just finished playing for the same Akita Isuzu team I was joining. Technically, players became employees of whatever company owned the team. They didn’t necessarily hold a nine-to-five job until after they retired from basketball, but they represented the company and had to go into the office every day. Akita, the capital city of Akita Prefecture, Japan, is a relatively small town in the northern part of the country, an area that not many pro players wanted to live in. It was the equivalent of playing in a small basketball market in the United States, like Orlando or Charlotte, as opposed to playing in a large market like LA or New York. In Japan, the best players coming out of college wanted to be in Tokyo, Kyoto, or Osaka—the big markets—not only for the media exposure but to secure advertising and product-endorsement opportunities. The good thing about being in Akita, though, was that its residents supported the Akita Isuzu Motors basketball team, much like people in and around Kentucky support the Wildcats. The difference was, not many of the league’s top players wanted to live in Akita, so their team hadn’t enjoyed any success. So, for Akita Isuzu Motors to add a player of my caliber to the roster was a national story that got a lot of attention. People couldn’t believe that I was coming from the United States to play for Akita Isuzu. I should mention that from a talent standpoint, the JBA wasn’t on par with the NBA, but there were some very good players in the league. My teammates on Akita Isuzu were more like National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics players or NCAA Division II players in the United States because it was a small-market team that hadn’t enjoyed much success. This created an unusual situation in which there was a big difference between my skill set and those of my teammates. They immediately recognized that I was a good player, and they appreciated the difference in my skill level—so much that at times they just stood around to watch me play. I soon learned that my teammates held preconceived notions of former NBA players and major college players. In their minds, if I had played in the NBA, won a national championship in college, and been the most outstanding player in that game, then I couldn’t be a good guy; I must be self-centered. As we spent more time together and my teammates got to know me, those preconceived notions faded out, and they grew to respect me because they realized I was the opposite of what they’d expected. That surprised them,

It was a thrill to be featured on the January 1983 cover of the Japanese magazine Monthly Basketball. (Author’s collection.)

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I think. After we started to win games over the next couple of seasons and we could tell that the team itself was getting better, my confidence started to rise. So did theirs. The success of the team was kind of placed on my shoulders, and I enjoyed that. I was a starter from the beginning. When Japanese teams invest in a player from another country, they don’t bring you over there for five or ten minutes a game. They bring you over to play almost every minute of every game. There was never any question about my role. I was there to play and to lead them. As for my relationship with Linda, we had started dating each other exclusively by the time I accepted the offer to play in Japan, but we hadn’t advanced our discussion to anything long term. I can’t say that either of us knew what would happen with our relationship with me being on the other side of the world for several months, but we both agreed to try to make it work. We kept in touch through letters and phone calls. Some of those phone bills were unbelievably expensive, especially with the exchange rate from the US dollar to the Japanese yen. I wasn’t a big letter writer, but I became one. That’s one thing that proved to me how serious our relationship was. In fact, I still have some of those letters. “How are you?” I wrote to Linda in a letter dated December 18, 1983, soon after I left Lexington for Japan. “I hope [you’re] better than I am. I miss you terribly. It’s only been a few days, too. I know it’s going to get better, though. It has to. I know it can’t get much worse.” In another, undated letter, I wrote, “Boy, I sure miss you. The weather has been so nice, great fishing weather. I’ll sure be glad when we can go. This great weather makes me miss you even more for some reason. I guess because I like the outdoors so much and I know you do, too.” Some of the players on my team tried to fix me up with dates, but it was always in a group setting, so I never had a thought about getting involved in a relationship with anyone in Japan. Women there sought me out because they knew I was single. I had opportunities to date, but I didn’t know how long I would be playing there. More importantly, I had a relationship with Linda, and we were building on that, even though it was from far away. We maintained strong feelings for each other despite long stretches of separation, and when I returned to Lexington on holiday breaks or at the end of the season, it was like we picked up where we’d left off, and the desire to be together grew even stronger when we were apart. That proved that we were meant to be together.

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The Akita Isuzu Motors team provided me with a nice one-bedroom apartment to live in. I was fortunate; other single players on the team lived in furnished company dormitories that resembled old Holmes Hall at UK. Most of the guys liked to come over and hang out in my apartment to get away from the company housing. The team also gave me a car to drive. That took some getting used to because they drive on the left side of the road there and traffic was usually busy, even though the population of Akita itself was probably 225,000 at that time. People from smaller surrounding cities in Akita Prefecture also traveled there to shop and dine, which caused more traffic congestion. I had a tough time adjusting to the whole situation, not just moving from Kentucky to Japan but dealing with the time change and living in a country where I didn’t speak the language. The only English TV channel there was CNN, so I spent a lot of time watching that network. But my favorite thing to watch on TV was the national sumo wrestling competitions that took place at various times of the year. Sumo wrestling is Japan’s national sport, very formal and ceremonial. I didn’t have to know what the broadcasters were saying to understand the object of each match. I caught on fast. I even got to meet a few of the wrestlers. I also took some Japanese-language classes, which made a big difference in adjusting to the culture. During one afternoon lesson at my teacher’s house, a strong earthquake hit off the coast of Japan. It first sounded like a train approaching from a distance. The closer the seismic waves got, the more things started to shake. I still remember the look on my tutor’s face as the rumble of that 150

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While playing basketball in Japan, I signed a modeling contract with Sakai, a company that made sports gear and apparel. This picture appeared in one of their catalogs. (Author’s collection.)

“train” kept getting louder, to the point where it felt like the house was going to shake off its foundation! It was the craziest thing I’d ever experienced. It probably lasted less than one minute, but it seemed more like ten or fifteen minutes as we rushed to get out of the house. We were safe, but that earthquake triggered a tsunami that killed several people along the coast. Over time, I learned to speak basic Japanese, which made day-to-day interactions with people easier and allowed me to follow more of what was being said on TV shows so I could watch something besides CNN. My teammates also taught me certain Japanese words and phrases, including curse words and local slang, which helped me better communicate with them. My language interpreter, Judy Koskegawa, attended our practices, team meetings, and games, so she helped when things got lost in translation. She had attended college in the United States, so she was fluent in English. I also had to adjust to the food while living in Japan. Eating raw fish didn’t appeal to me at all. I love some of it now, but back then I couldn’t get into it. The only way I wanted my fish was the way Gran used to fix

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Sakai created and sold a five-hundred-piece puzzle with my likeness. The inscription reads “Always try 100% to be the best basketball player you can be. If you make a mistake don’t give up. Work on your weaknesses and always continue to try to become a better player.” (Author’s collection.)

it, which is fried in cornmeal. Most of the larger cities in Japan had chain restaurants that were popular in the United States, like Red Lobster, McDonald’s, Kentucky Fried Chicken, and Taco Bell, so until I found Japanese food that I liked, I could always have a meal at one of those places. One day, Coach Moto treated me to a meal at one of Akita’s famous restaurants. He ordered me a steak dish with vegetables called Shabu. It was served with a couple of raw eggs as a dipping sauce. I mixed up the steak and vegetables in a bowl and dipped them in the raw egg before each bite. That was a new experience for me because I’d never eaten raw egg before, but I learned to love that dish. That became my go-to meal. Meanwhile, Coach Moto had ordered a dish that was served in an iron kettle with vegetables on the side and a hot plate.

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“What is that?” I asked. “Very good!” he replied. Curious, I raised the kettle lid, and a bunch of little fish that looked like tadpoles jumped out of the kettle and onto our table! We collected the squirmy fish with our hands and put them back in the pot, and I slammed down the lid. “Please don’t tell me you’re going to eat that!” I said. “Oh, very good,” he replied. “Very good.” The server turned on the hot plate. After the kettle heated up long enough for the fish to die, Coach Moto stirred in all the vegetables and started to enjoy his meal. He tried his best to get me to eat some of those tadpole-looking things, but I refused. I should mention here that the kindness of the Japanese people made my experience living and playing in that country even more special. Not many African Americans lived there, especially in Akita, so that brought a lot of attention to me immediately, especially from the mama-sans who owned the restaurants and stores that I frequented. I felt welcomed everywhere I went in Japan, whether I was by myself or with my teammates. The pro basketball season in Japan was divided into two parts: a spring season, from April to June, and a fall season, from August to October. It was split this way because the Japan national team competed against international opponents during the summer and winter months. I loved this schedule because it allowed me to come home to Lexington every three or four months to spend time with Linda and my family and to broadcast high school and college basketball games. Also, when my work visa required an extension, the team covered my travel expenses to the US Department of State offices in Honolulu, where my renewal was handled. That usually took a week or two to process, so the opportunity to explore Oahu and the other islands while I waited for my papers was a nice perk. Linda flew out from Lexington to join me in Honolulu for one of these “mini vacations.” We enjoyed our time together so much that it confirmed what we’d thought all along: our relationship was strong, and it had long-term potential. Pro teams in Japan only played one game per week, which made the season about twenty-five games long, split between the spring and the fall. We always played games on Sunday. Saturday was a travel day for road

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This shows the Akita Isuzu Motors basketball team and staff before we traveled to Tokyo, where we captured the JBA national championship game against Nippon Mining on January 8, 1984. That’s Coach Moto on the lower left. (Author’s collection.)

games, Monday was a rest day, and we practiced the rest of the week in the gym at a local college. I had a player-coach role on the team, so during those practices, I worked one on one with my teammates to help them realize and maximize their potential. The good thing was that the main players on our team had been together since I first arrived in 1981, so not only did they improve individually, but our team began to gel on a whole new level. We also spent a lot of free time together. Each of my teammates had his favorite place to hang out, whether it was a particular watering hole or restaurant, so I’d often go along to get to know them better. When we entered these places, the mama-sans, owners, or managers treated us like royalty because of our popularity in the Akita Prefecture. We’d get the best seat in the house and other special treatment. Eventually, my teammates started to get that kind of attention on their own. Over the years, we formed a good relationship that helped us become comfortable with one another on and off the court, so by the time the 1983 basketball season rolled around, we were tight.

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Thanks to steady progress, our team culture began to change. We started to win more games and to draw attention from some of the top Japanese players coming out of college. We didn’t land any of those big recruits during my time there, but they started to visit and to take us seriously. We also began to draw larger crowds and to sell out many of our games. My teammates enjoyed this new level of attention. It made them play harder, and their attitudes began to change. They started to believe in themselves, to play with more confidence, and they built on that. They kept learning as our team developed a winning culture. Because of the team’s long history as a subpar squad in the JBA, once we started to knock off some of the league’s best teams during regular-season play, we became a crowd favorite as the underdog in most of those games. The number of people who cheered for us at neutral-site games was unbelievable. This led to national publicity and lots of stories in the media about the rise of our program. My teammates never expected to draw that kind of attention, so that was a special treat for them, particularly when postseason play rolled around. Japan’s national basketball tournament is a single-elimination event based on a seeding system, more like the NCAA Tournament than the NBA playoffs. Because of the caliber of the Japanese players in comparison to the perceived talent level of the guys on our team, we weren’t projected to win many of the games, but we shocked a lot of people by making a Cinderella run to the national championship game in Tokyo against the Nippon Mining team on January 8, 1984. The pageantry of the championship game was special. During player introductions prior to tip-off, we marched around the floor of the arena and waved to the sellout crowd, like athletes do in the opening ceremony of the Olympics. Then, players and coaches on both teams received gifts for participating. I still have some of mine, including a samurai sword, a medallion, and a hand-painted folding fan. We defeated Nippon Mining handily 65–48. I scored nineteen points and pulled down thirteen rebounds in that game, and we ended the season undefeated at 14–0. Over those games, I averaged thirty-two points and 12.6 rebounds per game, which led to me being named the JBA’s National Player of the Year. It’s a special honor to win a national basketball championship in two countries. In the early 1980s, basketball in Japan was just on the rise. There

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weren’t many foreign players in the league yet, so for Coach Moto to take a chance on me like he did was unbelievable. In the scheme of things, winning the national championship in Japan didn’t rank as high for me as winning the NCAA Tournament in the United States did, but I received more national attention there than I did after winning the 1978 NCAA title as a Wildcat. I secured a modeling contract for Sakia, a Japanese company that made sports gear and apparel, and I even made the cover of Japan’s edition of Sports Illustrated, just like I did in the US edition after Kentucky beat Duke in 1978. As for my Japanese teammates, they’re still considered superstars, especially those who continue to live in the Akita area. They’re recognized everywhere they go, kind of like former Kentucky basketball players who settle in the Commonwealth are. Winning the national championship in Japan changed their lives on a level that rivals winning a championship in the United States. For example, if you play on a Kentucky high school team that wins the state championship in basketball, people talk about those teams like it was yesterday. Those guys go on to be mayors, city officials, business owners, and high school or college coaches. It’s the same way for Japanese players who win a championship in their country. In fact, in 2021, one of my former teammates, Taku Umetsu, was hired to be the head men’s basketball coach at North Asian University in Akita and the affiliated high school, Meiou High School. After our championship, the team wanted me to stay, but when I returned to Lexington, more TV broadcasting opportunities started to open up, including calling games for the University of Kentucky Basketball Network with Rob Bromley and Bob Domine, as well as college games—and even an NBA game now and then—for ESPN, CBS, and Jefferson Pilot Sports. Also, the JBA began to schedule its season more in line with the timing of college and NBA seasons in the United States, which would have made it impossible for me to play in the JBA and broadcast games in the United States. Most important, Linda and I continued to progress in our relationship, so it was in the cards for me to end my pro career in Japan and return to Lexington. I was satisfied because I’d achieved championship success at the collegiate and pro levels. The championship with Akita Isuzu helped build my self-confidence, so in the back of my mind, I hoped for

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another shot at the NBA. I was still young. That opportunity didn’t come, so I had to move on with my life. I really enjoyed broadcasting, and my Kentucky Star Coal Company business started to take off. In fact, we even shipped a few barges of coal to Japan. In part, some of those opportunities came my way because I’d played basketball at UK. I was well known. But I quickly learned that if you don’t take advantage of opportunities, they disappear. Your window of time is limited. I thought the 1978 championship was still relatively fresh in people’s minds, but one of the hardest things for me to accept was that in some ways, people have short memories when it comes to Kentucky basketball players. I helped integrate the program, served as cocaptain of the 1978 national championship team, and scored the second most individual career points of any Wildcat, behind Dan Issel,1 but other players had followed me. It was their turn to be in the spotlight in Rupp Arena, and I had to accept that. When you play basketball at Kentucky, you get the impression that everything is always going to be taken care of for you, that you don’t have to worry about what job you’ll have after college. In some cases, that’s true. But many former Wildcats find it difficult to adjust from being in the limelight to fading into obscurity seemingly overnight. I have counseled many former UK players who come to me and say, “Man, I’m struggling. What can I do? How can I get past this stage and figure out a way to be successful?” I tell them, “Look. Playing basketball at the University of Kentucky automatically opens a lot of doors for you. You can call any business owner, government official, or basketball coach in the state of Kentucky and ask if they have a job opening for you. It gets you in the door. But once you get in the door, it’s up to you to close the deal. You cannot rely on your celebrity alone as your ticket to success. You have to prove to that business owner, politician, or school looking for a basketball coach that you’re capable of doing the job. You have to prove that you can learn their business. If you don’t, that opportunity is going to go away.” Other guys come to me for advice because they haven’t enjoyed success after basketball or they don’t like the nine-to-five grind. They’re sometimes looking for a handout. Once you reach a certain age, I tell them, you have to learn how to take care of yourself. You have to figure out a way to succeed at something other than basketball. Many guys struggle with that.

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Among the biggest supporters of our marriage were Linda’s parents, Bob and Edna Thompson (left), and my mom, Betty Givens. (Author’s collection.)

In my case, broadcasting helped me transition from my pro playing career because I enjoyed the work, it kept me close to the game, and it enabled me to travel. Another factor that helped ease my adjustment was my relationship with Linda, which got more serious. In fact, in April 1985, I asked her to marry me. We went out to dinner one night at a fancy restaurant in the Civic Center shops at Rupp Arena. After dinner, we walked across the street to Triangle Park, which is on South Broadway between West Vine and West Main. It was a nice evening. With the splashing of the park’s water fountains in the background, I got down on one knee, gave Linda an engagement ring, and proposed. She said yes, which was great! We set our wedding date as October 5, 1985. By that time, Linda and I had picked Trinity Baptist Church in Lexington as our new home church because it appeared to have just as many Black members as white members. Diversity was important to us. However, in our premarital counseling sessions with Trinity’s pastor, Bob W. Brown,

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he anticipated that some people would object to our mixed marriage—not just family members but people throughout Lexington and the state of Kentucky. We chose Paris Church of Christ, which had been Linda’s home church growing up, as the site for our wedding ceremony. Four ministers officiated: Burt Smith, who was the head pastor at Paris Church of Christ; Dick Moffet and Rhodes Thompson, who were Linda’s uncles and pastors of their own congregations; and Reverend Albert B. Lee. My brother Michael was the best man, and Linda’s best friend from childhood, Susie White, was the maid of honor. There was tension in the atmosphere of the church that day, but it had nothing to do with the bride or the groom having cold feet. We sensed that some family members on both sides of the aisle probably did not approve of our interracial marriage, just like Pastor Bob Brown had predicted. Other members of my family and Linda’s family didn’t attend the wedding, because they didn’t believe in different races mixing in marriage. There were also wedding guests—Black and white—who felt that way. Some of them thought our marriage would be over after a couple of years. No one in our families directly expressed concern to us, and it really helped that the people who supported us the most were my mom and Linda’s parents, Bob and Edna Thompson. They never had a negative thing to say. I think it helped that Linda’s paternal aunt had adopted two interracial children. If it had been different, if they had reacted negatively, then things might have changed. We might not have been able to make it, because Linda is very close to her mom and dad. Fortunately, we had family members on both sides who supported our marriage. They didn’t try to get in the way. They worked hard to make sure that we both felt welcome in our new families. During our wedding ceremony, Linda’s uncle, Dick Moffet, alluded to this in his remarks. “We celebrate more than God’s gift of marriage today,” he said. “In the coming together of Black and white, Linda and Jack model for us and with us the wider gift of God to the whole creation. I speak of the marvelous gift of God’s shalom in Christ. If I may be permitted to paraphrase the Apostle Paul, there is neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free, neither male nor female, neither Black nor white, for we are all one.” That seemed to break the ice a little bit, but still, my relatives were not used to hanging out with white families, and Linda’s family was not used

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to being with Black families. Thankfully, over time our respective families worked through this. They came around to a point of acceptance as we all got to know and learn from one another. After Linda and I honeymooned on the Hawaiian island of Kauai, we returned to Lexington to start our lives together. She decided to sell her home on Bob O Link Drive, so we began married life in my condo on Dunbarton Lane. Linda worked as an office manager for the Secret Service in Lexington while I continued my broadcasting career and worked to expand Kentucky Star Coal Company. During this time of my life, I felt pressure to keep up with the Joneses. I wanted to be the big dog and have the best of everything: a luxury car, nice furnishings in my condo, and the means to dine out at restaurants whenever I wanted to. Most of this frame of mind was caused by my celebrity as a former UK basketball player. I think that some people expect us to live posh lives and own nice things. I bought into that way of thinking. The trouble was, after I finished playing ball in Japan, my income did not match my spending. I didn’t know better, so I began to borrow money from the bank—a little here, a little there, until I became overextended. I was careless. A few weeks after our honeymoon in Kauai, we learned that Linda was pregnant. Our lives changed forever with the birth of our son Jeremy on May 26, 1986, at Central Baptist Hospital in Lexington. I love Linda as much as you can love someone, but having a child gives rise to a new level of love. It’s a fantastic feeling. Linda, who was the youngest in her family, had not spent a lot of time around babies, so motherhood took some adjustment. Her mom and dad raised her, while my older brothers and sisters looked after me and my younger siblings. As I grew older, I babysat my younger siblings, which sometimes meant changing diapers and warming up the milk bottle and feeding them. I was familiar with the day-to-day tasks required to take care of a baby. Linda wasn’t. For example, the first time she gave Jeremy a bath, he pooped in the water. So, probably for the first three or four months of his life, I gave him almost every bath, until Linda got the hang of it. One day during Jeremy’s infancy, I held him and noticed that his diaper was wet, so I sat down in my recliner to change it. He was so small that it was easy to just place him on my lap. When I removed the wet diaper, he

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peed straight up in the air, and it showered all over me. Linda, seated on the couch next to me, started to laugh. “Get up and get me a towel, please!” I begged. As I raised his legs to place the new diaper, a stream of diarrhea spattered on my chest and into my nostrils, which made Linda laugh even more. “Get me a towel, something to clean this up!” I pleaded. After I changed the diaper and cleaned Jeremy, I held him up so that his eyes met mine. I smiled, said something like, “You’re still my boy!” and gave him a kiss. Just as I planted that kiss, he puked right in my face. So I got an attack from almost every orifice that day just while changing Jeremy’s diaper. Ah, fatherhood! I don’t remember seeking out advice on fatherhood as a new dad, but some of the people close to me served as good role models, particularly Linda’s dad. I resolved to actively participate in Jeremy’s early development rather than to be an absent father like my dad was. Lamont went through that too because I didn’t know for sure that I was his father until he was about to start kindergarten. I wanted better for Jeremy, so I tried my best to make sure I was there for him. Having a son enriched life for me and Linda, but a new financial struggle began to brew that tested our resolve. Between late 1986 and 1988, the coal business in Kentucky dried up. Before I talk about that, I’ll explain how my coal brokerage company worked. Kentucky Star Coal Company was designated as an 8(a) program by the Small Business Administration.2 I did business with a lot of government agencies, primarily military bases that used coal for their physical plants. Most of my coal suppliers were small mining operations in Eastern Kentucky who had the ability to produce ten thousand to fifty thousand tons of coal per month, but they didn’t have big clients to send the coal to. As a broker, I formed relationships with government entities and companies in Kentucky and in other states in the region who were interested in buying Kentucky coal. I would pay the supplier one price for coal, then sell it to an end user at a different price for a profit. For example, if I had a contract with Kentucky Utilities for fifteen thousand tons of coal per month, I might pay the miner fifty dollars per ton and then sell it to Kentucky Utilities for sixty to sixty-five dollars per ton. After paying shipping costs and other expenses, I would still make a profit in the range

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of two to five dollars per ton. This income afforded me a lavish lifestyle to support the “keeping up with the Joneses” mentality that I was caught up in. When I say the coal industry dried up between late 1986 and 1988, I mean that the smaller mom-and-pop coal-mining operations I’d been working with either were bought out by mega coal-mining companies or received more money for their coal from those companies than I could pay. As a result, my main contract with Kentucky Utilities came to an end, and it became difficult to find new business. Such was the cyclical nature of the coal industry at that time. It would go well for long stretches, then stop, but I hadn’t been in the business long enough to understand that. So when it happened, it caught me by surprise. The problem was, I had a $500,000 line of credit with a bank that I’d used to pay for the coal because the mom-and-pop mining operations couldn’t wait months to be paid. Once I received payment from the end user, I would replenish that line of credit to cover the next shipments. This approach was working well, but when the coal industry dried up, I had used about $400,000 from that line of credit to pay for a certain amount of coal, and I never got that money back. Add my debt from personal bank loans to the mix, and I was in a real financial mess seemingly overnight. It was a true low point for me—mentally, emotionally, and financially taxing. It caused many sleepless nights trying to figure out how to deal with being overextended, wondering how it would affect my future with Linda and Jeremy, wondering if I’d be able to keep the condo I owned and the Mercedes I drove. The situation caused me so much stress that in early 1987 I developed a bleeding ulcer and passed out one night when I got up to go to the bathroom. Thankfully, Linda heard me fall and called 911; otherwise, I might not have survived. The ulcer caused significant blood loss, so I spent a few days in the hospital, where I received about five pints of blood. I kept the stress bottled up inside, but my body told me that I couldn’t hide it. Luckily, I was on Linda’s health insurance; otherwise, that would have created another financial strain. I began to work out a bank settlement without a steady income, so life remained difficult. I made good money broadcasting basketball games, but that was only for about half the year. Linda was not able to cover all my expenses on her income alone, so some months I didn’t know where the

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mortgage and car payments were going to come from. As bleak as things appeared, I was always provided with the money needed to keep from going bankrupt. I also had faith that ultimately things would be all right. Part of that was because Linda and I were active in Trinity Baptist Church in Lexington; we were growing spiritually as a family and had positive people around us. Without question, my Christian faith carried me through. For example, during this rough stretch, a paycheck from the Hawks arrived in the mail. It was part of the deferred salary that my agent had arranged in my contract, but I viewed this as God’s grace because it appeared when I needed it the most. Looking back, Linda and I should have started our married life in her house on Bob O Link Drive, which was paid for. If I hadn’t been caught up in keeping up with the Joneses, in wanting to portray an image of living high on the hog, we could have lived there and would not have suffered so much financially. That would have been the smart thing to do. It was a tough learning experience, but I learned my lesson. It made me understand that I needed to be smarter with my money and my spending. It made me change my thinking about living a lifestyle that was above my means. These days, I try to avoid placing myself in situations that could trigger an unhealthy level of stress—especially when it comes to money matters. I carefully weigh the pluses and minuses of big decisions, always with input from Linda. That is important because she often looks at things differently than I do. One rule we have is that we don’t make any major purchases without talking about it together beforehand.

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Raising Jeremy brought so much joy to our lives that when he turned two, we decided to try to have another child. Linda got pregnant, and things were progressing well as far as we knew, but one day in the spring of 1988 when I was in Eastern Kentucky on coal business, Linda phoned me in my hotel room with a heartbroken tone of voice. She informed me that she had been rushed to the hospital because she had miscarried. She had only been pregnant a few months. I checked out of the hotel and drove to meet her in the hospital. We just held each other and cried. It was a difficult loss, another tough situation that hit at a time of financial struggle. Linda handled it better than I did. I felt bad that I was away when she had to go to the hospital. After consulting with the doctors, Linda and I decided that the best way of dealing with the miscarriage was to try to have another child when they gave the all clear, so that’s what we did. We were determined to have another child. We also received assurance from friends and family members who had experienced miscarriages and gone on to have successful pregnancies. On April 28, 1989, our second child, Jaimie, was born. A girl! We didn’t find out the gender until she was born. It’s funny that before Jeremy’s birth, I thought for sure the baby was going to be a girl, and I turned out to be wrong. I felt just as strongly this time that our baby would be a boy, yet I was wrong about that too. I was pleased with being wrong both times! Three-year-old Jeremy was my buddy, my mini-me, but having a girl was a completely different experience. What stood out to me was how tiny she 164

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was as an infant. Immediately, I felt like I needed to be her protector. I don’t remember feeling that way when Jeremy was born, even though I’m sure he was just as tiny. Jaimie had me wrapped around her little finger before she was a week old. We were also grateful that she had a big brother to look after her. Soon after Jaimie’s birth, one of my producers at Jefferson Pilot, Jimmy Rayburn, asked me if I had contacted anyone at the NBA’s new expansion team, the Orlando Magic, about being their color analyst. I wasn’t aware of this new franchise, but the prospect certainly interested me. Jimmy suggested that I call the Magic’s general manager, Pat Williams, the NBA Hall of Famer and former 76ers general manager from the legendary days of Julius Erving and Moses Malone. To my surprise, I reached Pat by phone within a matter of days and asked him if he would consider me to be the team’s color analyst. “Yes,” Pat told me. “Talk to my assistant. She’ll get you a plane ticket. You come down, and we’ll talk to you about that.” I cannot tell you how ecstatic I was after I hung up the phone! I would have run down to Florida to have an opportunity to talk about this possibility; that’s how badly I needed the job. Pat was a prolific author, so I picked up a couple of his books before I traveled to Orlando to meet with him. In one of the books, I learned that he and his first wife had adopted several children starting in 1983, so when we met in person, I told him how impressed I was by that. I also asked him about his previous management jobs, including with the 76ers. So I had lots to talk to him about besides possibly being a color analyst for the Magic. I think that helped me get the job, but it wasn’t easy, because other candidates were in the running for it. “Believe me, I won’t hire anybody until I talk to you one way or the other,” Pat said at the end of our meeting. “I’ll tell you if it’s you; I’ll tell you if it’s somebody else.” A month went by, then another. I was on pins and needles waiting to hear something, so I decided to call Pat for an update. “I want you to know that you are in the running for this job, but I want to hire a play-by-play guy first, so don’t worry about this,” he told me. It was almost like he was hinting that I had the job. But until he said so, I didn’t want to get my hopes up and have them crash down on me.

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My broadcast partner for Orlando Magic games was Harry “Chip” Caray III (left), the grandson of longtime Chicago Cubs announcer Harry Caray. (Author’s collection.)

A few weeks later, Pat called to tell me that I was selected for the color analyst job! The play-by-play position went to Harry “Chip” Caray III, the son of broadcaster Skip Caray, whom I knew from my time with the Hawks, and the grandson of Harry Caray, the longtime announcer for the Chicago Cubs. Chip had recently graduated from the University of Georgia, so he was young and new to the business. We clicked from the start and complemented each other well. I flew back to Orlando on September 1, 1989, to find a place for our family to live. After a few days of visiting homes that I couldn’t afford, I chose to rent a three-bedroom house for $800 per month in Windermere, which is part of the Orlando metropolitan area, and returned to Lexington to pack up our belongings. A few weeks later, we hit the road on I-75 southbound to our new home—the first time Linda had lived anywhere outside of Kentucky. Jeremy was three years old, and Jaimie was only five months old. The transition was difficult, especially for Linda, because once the Magic’s training camp started in early October, I was gone during the day, attending team practices to become familiar with the players, head

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This family photo was taken a few years after I started my job with the Orlando Magic. (Author’s collection.)

coach Matt Guokas, and his staff. I hadn’t been following the NBA closely, so I considered it my responsibility to learn all I could about the guys on our team. Meanwhile, my financial problems continued. One morning, I walked out the front door of our house to find that the Mercedes I had been leasing was gone. I called the local police, convinced that someone had stolen it from the driveway. “Are you up to date in your payments?” the law enforcement representative asked. “No,” I replied. “I’m two or three months behind.” The representative recommended that I call the leasing company. I did and found out that the Mercedes had been repossessed because of my

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missed payments. It was embarrassing to lose a piece of property that way— shameful, really—but I soon came to view it as a blessing because it was one payment I didn’t have to make, an obligation that disappeared. That car payment was nearly as much as our monthly rent! I came to realize that I could get along just fine without a luxury car. We were down to one vehicle for the family—Linda’s Nissan Maxima. That created its own challenges, but at a Magic practice a few weeks later, I struck up a conversation with Bruce Rossmeyer, a major supporter of the team who owned a Toyota car dealership and a Harley-Davidson motorcycle dealership in Daytona Beach. Out of the blue, he asked if I would do some radio and TV advertising for his car dealership in exchange for a new Toyota Forerunner to drive. I gladly accepted! When something unsolicited and outside your control comes your way in a time of need, I consider that a blessing. Bruce’s offer was another blessing from God, no question. It showed me that even though I thought I was in control of everything, I wasn’t. God was in control and continued to bless us, even during those difficult times. It took a couple of years to settle my financial obligations. Fortunately, I had a steady salary from the Magic, with health insurance and other benefits. So now, when the first of the month rolled around, I no longer awoke in the middle of the night wondering where our rent was going to come from. I could tell myself, “I get paid tomorrow.” Drawing a paycheck every two weeks was a comfort, a security blanket. Throughout the Magic’s first few seasons, Chip Caray and I broadcast every home game and road games against major opponents like the Los Angeles Lakers, the New York Knicks, the Boston Celtics, the 76ers, and our rivals, the Miami Heat. But as the team became more popular, we began to broadcast every game. That was tough because Jeremy was six and Jaimie was three, and it fell on Linda to look after them while I was away. During this time, several people from a church we had been attending, First Baptist Church of Windermere, became an important source of support, including Pastor Mark Matheson and his wife, Carla, and parishioners Charles and Buffy Wimmer and Mackie and Jodie Branham, among many others. They took it on themselves to help Linda or the kids if they needed anything while I was away, and we developed close friendships with them. Ultimately, we joined that church, and Mackie and I taught a boys’ Sunday school class,

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which brought back memories of my youth at Greater Liberty Baptist in Lexington—snacks and all. I also helped coach the church basketball teams that Jeremy and Jaimie played for. These teams were part of Upward Sports, a Christian ministry program designed to introduce young kids to basketball. At halftime, we would read a Bible verse and talk about it before starting the second half. Jeremy was a gifted athlete, but he didn’t like basketball as much as Jaimie did. From day one, you could tell that Jaimie had the attitude to play. There were more boys than girls on her team, and I remember one game when I caught her pouting during a time-out. “What’s the matter?” I asked. “They won’t throw me the ball,” she said, referring to the boys on her team. During our time-out, I said, “Guys. You’ve got to throw everybody the ball.” Once play resumed, one of Jaimie’s teammates threw her the ball, and she immediately made a shot. From that time on, they knew to throw her the ball. Jaimie had earned their trust, and she became a solid basketball player. This stretch of time was good for our family. It reassured us that choosing to live in Windermere was the right decision. It started to feel like home. As a matter of fact, after renting our house for three years, we decided to buy one. My debt had been settled, and we were on solid financial ground. I remember being tempted by my “keeping up with the Joneses” mentality again because I worked in an industry surrounded by influential, wealthy people. The principal team owner of the Orlando Magic at that time was William “Bill” DuPont III, a UK alumnus who was also in the horse business in Lexington. Linda and I got to know Bill and his wife, Pam. The players, the ownership group—seemingly everyone associated with the team—was a high-dollar person. As a result, in the back of my mind I was thinking, “Man. I would like to have this big house or this nice car.” Some of our friends at church lived on lakes and had boats. My desire for “bigger and better” was short lived, though. I now understood that that mentality had contributed to my financial problems, and those hardships taught me a lesson. I learned that fulfillment in life didn’t come from material goods. It came from family, friends, and the relationships that we were building. That was much more important than what I did or did not own. I also thought back to my younger days growing up at Aspendale and remembered how

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happy I had been while living with my mom and siblings in a three-bedroom apartment with one bathroom. We hadn’t owned much, but I’d been content, and it was important to remember that. Part of this change in thinking came from joining a men’s group at First Baptist Church, a spin-off from our Sunday school class that included Charles Wimmer, Mark Johnston, Steve Hammond, and Carter Speers—men around my age who were all successful in their careers. We met every Tuesday morning at seven o’clock for breakfast. It started out as a men’s Bible study group but evolved into much more than that. We read inspirational books like The Man in the Mirror: Solving the 24 Problems Men Face, by Patrick Morley, which became important to me. One of the lessons I learned from that book was that I’m living a lie if I’m not truthful with myself about the circumstances I face in life. That was difficult for me to come to terms with because I had to admit to the lifestyle I was living, my shortcomings, and my faults and work on correcting those before I could become the person I wanted to be. Before long, all of us in the group started to share the personal struggles we wrestled with in life as adults in their forties, and no topic was off-limits. I opened up about my previous financial struggles and the times I still felt tempted by my old “keeping up with the Joneses” mentality. I quickly learned that other guys in the group were dealing with their own difficulties, ranging from problems with finances and family relationships to job security. Here I was thinking I was the only one going through tough times in middle adulthood! It helped to know that these successful men struggled too, so they became a key source of support for me, a sounding board. For example, one time we all brought our checkbook registers to examine and talk about our personal spending habits. Were they focused on family or material things? It forced all of us to become more realistic about our spending and lifestyle choices. No matter what we discussed from week to week, we always left our meeting committed to praying for one another and for one another’s families. Joining that group was one of the best things I did as a Christian adult. To this day, I enjoy being in a men’s group where I can discuss life issues openly. Before Linda and I started to look for a new home, we crunched some numbers to calculate how much house we could afford. We also prayed

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about this and arrived at the figure of $220,000. Early in our search, a four-bedroom house in Windermere attracted our attention. The asking price was $269,000—well above our limit—but we made a low counteroffer of $220,000. To our amazement, the owners accepted our offer! I don’t know what I would have done if they’d come back to us with a higher asking price. This home was more than fifteen hundred square feet larger than the one we’d been renting. It was a dream house for me, so much more house than I’d ever had, and the lot included a swimming pool, as well as orange, lemon, and avocado trees. This was another blessing, without a doubt. It came from praying, carefully considering our financial situation, and being patient and content. When moving day arrived in December, I was on an extended road trip with the Magic to the West Coast, so I missed out on the heavy lifting. We didn’t factor hiring a moving company into our monthly budget, so the guys from my men’s group and other friends from church helped Linda and the kids pack and move our belongings into our new digs. Their generosity was impressive. The mark of a true friend is someone who helps you move, and we had so many good friends! During the offseason that year, we took a family vacation that ranks as one of my favorite trips. We traveled for about three weeks in an excursion van lent to me by a company that I did advertising for. The only place we had to be at a certain time was a family reunion with Linda’s relatives in Grand Lake, Colorado. For the rest of it, we went at our own pace. Our first stop was back home in Lexington, where we visited family and friends. Then we headed northwest with Linda’s brother John; his wife, Elaine; and their kids, Emily and Alexandra, who followed us in their car. Emily was Jeremy’s age, and Alexandra was Jaimie’s age. We drove through Michigan and Minnesota and out to the Badlands and Mount Rushmore in South Dakota. From there, we traveled to Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, we went whitewater rafting down the Snake River, and I went fly-fishing for the first time. All along the way to Colorado, if there was a place we wanted to stop, we did. We weren’t rushed, even on the return drive home to Florida after the family reunion. Around that time in my broadcasting career, I started to receive invitations to speak at various events around Central Florida on behalf of the

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Magic. Fans knew the players, of course, but Chip and I were in the public eye more often because we were seen on TV, so we became faces of the franchise. As the team got more popular, so did I, especially in the Black community. At Christmastime, I wore a Santa Claus suit and handed out presents to kids at a community center in a low-income area of Orlando. It became an event I looked forward to every year because of the relationships I built with the kids and the families who hosted the event. Interestingly, the further I got away from my time at UK, the less people knew about my college career. I had become more known as the broadcaster for the Orlando Magic as opposed to the former All-American from UK. This also meant sometimes weathering criticism of my broadcasting style from fans and local sportswriters, which comes with the territory when you’re in the media. One day, I received a package in the mail from Tom Windram, a Magic fan. It contained a handwritten letter that began with a string of compliments, like, “I love how you broadcast games. You make great points. You look great on TV.” Then he leveled a jab. “I have one issue with you,” Tom wrote. “You have terrible ties.” I finished opening the package, which included a spiffy necktie that I wore for my next broadcast. In my handwritten reply, I wrote, “Thank you so much for your letter. I appreciated your comments. Anytime you come across a tie you think I’ll look good in, please send it to me.” I soon learned that Tom sold men’s clothing to high-end clothing stores across the Southeast for a living, including Dawahares clothing stores in Lexington, so he became my go-to guy for tie fashion. The Sunshine Network, which carried the Magic games, contracted with a men’s clothing store in Winter Park, Florida, which provided the TV broadcast team with three to five new suits at the beginning of each season. So anytime I got a new suit, I visited Tom and asked him to select a few matching ties. He might show me four or five ties that I could wear with one suit to bring out a different pinstripe color or some other feature. Before long, we started to fish together and developed a friendship that continues to this day. He helped me better understand that how you present yourself, right down to the tie, makes a difference in broadcasting. Even today, I have hundreds of ties because of that letter Tom sent me.

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Shaq posed for this picture with my daughter Jaimie (left) and my niece Alexandra Thompson. (Author’s collection.)

In June 1992, LSU’s seven-foot, one-inch star center Shaquille O’Neal became the undisputed face of the Magic after the team selected him as the number one pick of the 1992 NBA Draft. The anticipation of signing him was as big as draft day itself. Everybody knew it was going to happen, so the excitement about and the interest in the Magic magnified 100 percent—not just locally but nationally. Shaquille O’Neal, better known by his nickname, Shaq, was a true rock star. He developed such a following that during travel for road games, throngs of people would gather outside our hotel, waiting to see the team get off the bus and go inside, trying to get an autograph from or a picture with Shaq. I don’t care if it was two o’clock in the morning or two o’clock in the afternoon; those fans would be there. It was unbelievable. Shaq played awesome basketball from day one, but what I remember most is his outgoing personality. Shaq was like a big kid, a teddy bear kind of guy. He liked to laugh. He liked to have fun. He liked being around our

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fans. He also changed how big men were played in the NBA. Because Shaq was a poor free-throw shooter, referees allowed defenders to intentionally foul him, a strategy that became known as “Hack-a-Shaq.” I think I would have been in a fight every game if I was fouled as hard as Shaq was! He just did his thing and kept his cool somehow. I admired that about him. Shaq owned a house on Lake Butler, where my family and I often rode our Sea-Doos. One afternoon, Jeremy, Jaimie, and I were tooling around on that lake and rode by Shaq’s house to see if he was out. We spotted him and waved. He waved back and gestured for us to stop by. My kids loved Shaq, so we got to say hi and talked for a bit. Before we left, he told us he would be out riding his own Sea-Doo and said to watch out for him. About a half hour later, we were on the lake, and a sixth sense kicked in; I could tell something was about to happen. In my peripheral vision, I spotted a Sea-Doo bolting directly at us. As it got closer, I could tell it was Shaq wearing a hockey mask like Jason Voorhees in Friday the 13th. Imagine how a guy seven feet, one inch tall and close to three hundred pounds smothers a Sea-Doo! I thought, “Man. If we collide, we’re dead!” Before Shaq’s SeaDoo got too close for comfort, he made a sharp turn and sprayed us with what seemed like the entire lake before motoring away. The force of the spray knocked us off our Sea-Doo, but we just laughed. That illustrates the kind of guy Shaq was. The 1994–95 season was historic for the Magic. We defeated Chicago in the East Regional Finals. That was the season Michael Jordan returned to the Bulls after quitting baseball in March 1995, so we caught them at a good time. Their former power forward Horace Grant was now a key member of our team. We closed out that series in game six to earn a spot in the NBA Finals against the Houston Rockets, which featured Hakeem Olajuwon, Clyde Drexler, and Robert Horry. Besides Shaq, we had guys like Penny Hardaway, Horace, and Dennis Scott, who was a sharpshooter from three-point range. Our team had not fallen behind in a series during the playoffs that year, and we had home-court advantage going into the series against Houston. The marquee matchup was between Shaq and Hakeem Olajuwon, who was a superstar at the center position. Nick Anderson had a chance to win game one for us at the charity stripe, but he missed four free throws in a row after being fouled twice with fewer than eight seconds on

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Prior to an Orlando Magic game, my son Jeremy tries on my headphones for size. (Author’s collection.)

the clock. From that time on, Nick’s confidence was gone for the series. It seemed like the confidence of our whole team fell a notch, too. The Rockets swept us in four games. We were a young team that had made it to the NBA Finals, so the following season looked promising. But the Chicago Bulls swept us 4–0 in the 1996 Eastern Conference Finals. In addition, Shaq’s contract was up, and NBA players were starting to sign big-money deals. That summer, the Orlando Sentinel conducted a reader poll that asked if Shaq was worth $115 million for seven seasons.1 When polling closed, 91 percent of the 5,111 respondents had voted no. I’m not sure whether that poll factored into Shaq’s decision to leave, but the Los Angeles Lakers offered him $120 million for seven seasons, and he was gone. It was that simple, and it was awful. The Magic organization from that day forward has never been the same. In my opinion, the Magic should have offered Shaq $200 million for seven seasons. He was that valuable to the success and popularity of the team. Soon after Shaq’s departure, Chip Caray left his play-by-play post to call major league baseball games. David Steele, who had been the Magic’s

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radio play-by-play guy, came over to join me. Along with that, I was calling games for ESPN, the NCAA Tournament, and TNT. My broadcast career was going well. I became so inspired by the Magic’s transformation into an NBA championship contender that I created a formula I call the “MAGIC of Success,” which I often discuss during speaking engagements with business leaders, civic groups, churches, and youth. The M in MAGIC stands for motivation. Be motivated to be the best you can be every day. For example, even though Michael Jordan was arguably the best player in the NBA during most of his career, he routinely arrived at practice two hours earlier than his teammates. He ran through a full workout on his own before the regular workout with his team. Then he’d stay after practice and work on individual skills. If the best player in the NBA is more motivated than everybody else, why wouldn’t you be that motivated to be the best in your vocation? A stands for attitude. Always be positive no matter what obstacles you face. In my motivational speeches, I tell stories about growing up in Aspendale and facing obstacles that could have caused me to develop a negative outlook on things. G is for goal setting. Set your goals high and work every day to achieve them. When I’m asked to speak with students and young athletes, I point out how easy it is to be satisfied with being mediocre. However, if you’re satisfied with being mediocre, that’s all you’ll ever be. The I in MAGIC stands for “I can.” If you don’t believe you can do something, nobody else will. Here I refer back to setting goals high, such as not being satisfied with a C in the classroom when you know you can make a B or an A. But if you don’t believe you can, then you won’t. Your teachers won’t believe it; your parents won’t. Tell yourself, “I can do this!” Finally, the C stands for committed with a Christlike attitude. Try to do things the right way instead of just going through the motions. I not only work these MAGIC principles into motivational speeches but also share them with my own children as I help them navigate a path to success in life. It’s something I draw on when I struggle or when personal or professional challenges come up. When Jaimie was nine years old, one of her friends from the Upward Sports church league, Alexa Deluzio, invited her to try out for a traveling basketball team known as the Orlando Comets, which competed in leagues

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around the Orlando area. Alexa was already a member of the team. While dropping Jaimie off at practices and games, Linda and I became friends with the parents of her teammates, especially Alexa’s parents, Don and Sherri Deluzio. One day, I was asked if I’d be interested in sharing some of my basketball knowledge with the 9U team (9U stands for nine years of age and younger). Since games were played during the Magic’s offseason, I started to attend Comets’ practices. James Thomas was the head coach, and Garfield “Gar” Blair was the assistant coach. One of the girls on that team was Katreesa Rollins, the daughter of Wayne “Tree” Rollins, who played center for the Orlando Magic. Katreesa was tall like her dad, and one of my responsibilities was to help her and the other centers and forwards with inside moves and post-up defense, all the things inside players needed to learn. Ultimately, James and Gar invited me to join the coaching staff, which I was excited about. As our team improved, we started to compete in United States Specialty Sports Association (USSSA) tournaments throughout Florida. The USSSA is a school grade–based program that provides opportunities for teams to compete in tournament competitions that lead to area, state, and national championships. There were USSSA teams all over the country, kind of like the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU). We liked the USSSA because their tournaments were in Florida, usually in the Orlando area. In most years, the Comets finished among the top four teams in the USSSA National Tournament. After a few seasons as an assistant coach, I was asked to move into the head coaching position. James Thomas moved on to coach his son’s team, but Gar remained as assistant coach, a role that he enjoyed. We added new girls to our team every season because some moved to different cities or states or decided to join other teams, but the nucleus of this team stayed together from the time they were nine to the beginning of their college careers at age seventeen or eighteen. It was special to spend so much time with Jaimie this way as she grew up, but when I became head coach, I wanted to make sure that our relationship didn’t become bogged down by basketball, so I set some boundaries. I told Jaimie that during basketball time, from the moment we got into the car to travel to practice or to a game until we arrived home, she was to think of me as Coach Jack. But in

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the off times, I was Dad; I would not talk basketball unless she brought it up, because I couldn’t talk with her teammates during the off times. I also knew how important it was for her to take a break from basketball; I didn’t want her to get burned out and think of me as her coach twenty-four seven. It forced her to separate Jack Givens as a dad from Jack Givens as a coach. Even though we had that rule, hardly a day went by that Jaimie didn’t want to talk basketball or challenge me or Jeremy to a game in the driveway. Still, that “rule” made it easier for me to coach her because she understood that I was Coach Jack when we were together with her teammates or in a basketball frame of mind—including both the times I was hard on her and the times I complimented her. I treated her teammates the same way. They came to understand “coach speak” from “Jack speak.”

13 A Matter of Reputation

Each year during tryouts for the Comets, I explained to prospects that my assistant coaches selected the team. I offered my opinion but left it up to them to select the final roster. I also made it clear that since our team was so successful, there might be only one or two spots available for new players. One fourteen-year-old girl tried out for the team a couple of times, but our coaches didn’t think she was good enough to make the cut. The girl, who is white, played for a rival to the First Academy’s high school team—which Jaimie and four other girls on the Comets played for. One June day in 2004, the girl’s mom called me to ask how her daughter could qualify for a spot on the roster. “What can she work on?” she asked. “Can you help us help her get better?” “Here’s the scenario,” I said. “The coaching staff picks the team. I coach the team they bring to me. That’s how we work. I would be willing to meet at a gym or court with you all, though. I’ll put her through some workouts so maybe she can work on some things that might help her to be a better player.” Her mom sounded happy with that offer and pointed out that there was a basketball goal and small court at their house, so she offered that as an option, which was fine by me. We decided on an afternoon for me to go by their house. “If another player could be there, that would be great because it makes it easier for instruction to have somebody to work out against,” I said. 179

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“I’ll have my son stay,” she said. “He could use some pointers also.” I often volunteered my time to boys and girls as they learned the game, so this was not out of the ordinary for me. That’s part of being a coach and forming relationships with players. When I arrived at the girl’s residence at our set time, only she and her grandmother were home. I asked where her mom and brother were. She said they’d had other stuff come up. I didn’t think anything of it. There was a basketball goal at the back of the house, so we worked through some drills there as her grandmother looked on from the back porch. When we finished after thirty minutes or so, my shirt was soaked with sweat from the ninety-five-degree Florida summer heat. “You look hot,” the grandmother said to me. “Would you like to get in the pool to cool off?” “Sure,” I said. I hopped in the pool by myself, splashed around for a couple of minutes, got out, and dried off. As I was getting ready to leave, the girl walked by me close to the pool’s edge, so I playfully pushed her in the deep end. “I can’t swim!” she yelled. I jumped back in and grabbed her by the arm with one hand. I placed my other hand around her waist and helped her to the shallow end of the pool, which was the only interaction we had in the water. I got out and dried off, and the girl’s grandmother showed me to her brother’s bedroom, where I changed into a dry shirt. I left and headed home. After my visit that day came allegations that I had touched the girl inappropriately in the genital area while walking her to the pool’s shallow end. A few days later, she called me and asked, “Do you remember you did this?” “No, I don’t remember doing that,” I insisted. “What are you talking about? Can I please come over and talk with you and your mom and dad and discuss this so we can get this over with? Because it just didn’t happen.” The meeting with the girl and her parents never transpired because a few days later, while I was driving to watch a late-afternoon summer league basketball game, Linda called me on my cell phone. “I don’t know what’s going on, but there are police here, and they’re saying allegations have been made by someone that you touched them inappropriately,” she said. “You need to get home.” I immediately turned around and returned to our house, where police officers and detectives were waiting for me. So were some members of the

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local news media. When I arrived, the officers confiscated my cell phone and two computers, and they asked me to go down to the station to answer some questions. I obliged, and they allowed me some time to speak with Linda before I left. Prior to this, I had not told her about the girl’s accusation on the phone a few days earlier, because in my mind, there was nothing to tell. Do I now wish I had told her about it? Yes. But I had not. So I relayed that accusation. We prayed about it together, then I drove down to talk to the police. After detectives questioned me at the police station, they charged me with sexual battery, handcuffed me, and placed me under arrest in the local jail. The next morning, my friend Don Deluzio bailed me out on a $25,000 bond, and I drove home from the police station. Not only was being accused of sexual battery strange and unexpected, but it also came as a direct hit to my character, the first time my character had been questioned. It felt like an unexpected gut punch, bizarre and out of the realm of anything I’d experienced. It tested me like no other time in my life, but it taught me important lessons about myself, my family, and my friends. Linda was my number one supporter. When I arrived home from jail, she just stood over me and prayed. She understood how much the allegations upset me. I was confused by how and why this was happening. She had seen me through our financial troubles, but in this situation, she was even more of a fighter, a protector. “This too shall pass,” Linda told me. “If the whole world second-guesses this situation, I have full trust and confidence in you.” That reassured me. She fought for me and with me the whole way. My kids did too. In fact, they went out of their way to express their love for me and pride in being around me. Lamont also traveled down from Lexington to spend some time with me as a gesture of support. While I waited for my day in court, the Magic placed me on a one-year paid leave of absence. With life in limbo and time on my hands, I decided to enroll in classes to obtain a real estate license, which took me about six months to complete. After that, I decided to pursue a real estate broker’s license, which I also completed. I never knew if I would pursue a career in the real estate business, but I figured that having those credentials could open some opportunities for me in the future. In the meantime, I continued

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my head coaching job with the Comets. I had the full confidence of the Comets players and their families. One of the first persons to reach out to me after my arrest was David Yuth, the lead pastor of First Baptist Church Orlando, which we had been attending since Jaimie’s sophomore year at the First Academy, a high school affiliated with the church. “We trust in you,” David told me. “We’re here for you. We want you to get out and come to church and worship with us.” I was welcome to attend worship services, but I struggled to be out in public without feeling embarrassed or ashamed to be seen. I limited my time out of the house to attending church, coaching the Comets, and attending Jeremy’s and Jaimie’s high school basketball games. In fact, one of the real blessings to come out of this situation was that for the first time, I was able to attend every one of their high school basketball games. During previous years, I’d attended as many games as I could, but invariably, conflicts had come up with my broadcasting obligations for the Magic. Now, I was free to cheer in the stands along with other parents for the entire season. I often kept team stats or ran the clock for Jaimie’s games at the First Academy. I didn’t fully understand how important it was to my kids that I attend their games until I had this unanticipated opportunity to do so. For example, my leave of absence from the Magic correlated with Jeremy’s senior basketball year at Circle Christian School. Coaches and players would come up to me after games and say things like, “Mr. Givens, when you’re here, Jeremy is a different player.” So while I’m glad I was able to watch all his games his senior year, I also learned how tough it was on Jeremy that I’d missed so many of them in previous years. I felt bad about that. I coached Jaimie with the Comets, so I saw her play in the summer months, but my situation also enabled me to attend games she competed in during her final two years of high school—which she told me she was grateful for. Still, the criminal charges against me and the pending trial were weighing me down. About eight months after my arrest, my spirit was broken. I lacked confidence. I didn’t want to go out, didn’t want to be seen. One day, I received a phone call from Bill Mitchell, a Kentuckian who was an associate pastor at First Baptist Church Orlando. Bill’s son Josh played high school basketball with Jeremy, and they were good friends, so I knew Bill well. “I want you to meet with me in my office,” Bill said on the phone that day.

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“Sure,” I said. Bill became an important sounding board as I processed how these charges were affecting me. All my life, people had looked up to me, and I’d received attention for good things I had done or was doing. Now, all I could think was, “Are they only looking at me because of these allegations, this junk?” One day during a meeting with Bill, I became emotional, crying and saying things like, “Why is this happening? I just can’t deal with it.” Bill stopped me and said, “Jack. Slow down!” “But, Bill . . .” “No,” he said. “I want you to open your Bible to James, chapter 1, and read verses 2 through 4 out loud.” I collected myself and read those verses, which go like this: “Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.”1 “Read them again,” Bill instructed. I repeated the text. “Okay. What do you think is the most important word in what you just read?” “Perseverance,” I offered. “That’s a good word, but that’s not the one I’m looking for,” Bill said. “What do you think?” “How about faith?” I asked. “That’s a great word, but read the verses again.” After I read verse 2, he said, “Stop!” I knew he wanted me to say the word joy, but to me, there was no joy in what I was going through, so I refused to say that word. “Trials is the word,” I offered. “That’s good, but that’s not the word. Read it again.” After I was halfway through repeating verse 2, he said, “Stop! I want you to look at that phrase. It states, ‘Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds.’ It doesn’t say if or maybe; it says whenever. What makes you think you’re so special, to think that you’re not going to go through tough times? Do you think God cares that you won a national championship at the University of Kentucky?”

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He wasn’t finished. “Do you think God cares that you’re a broadcaster for the Orlando Magic?” Bill continued. “Sure, God made all that happen, but you’re no different than anybody else. God said, ‘whenever you face trials of many kinds.’ That means we must face things that are trying, that are tough. It’s not about what you’re going through. It’s that you are going through it. So how are you going to deal with it? You are feeling sorry for yourself and blaming others. You have to get over that because you’re not going to get better with yourself until you accept the fact that God is using you at this time in this way for his glory.” I cried like a baby right there in Bill’s office. He was so on point. “Jack, this is the last time you’re crying in front of me,” he said matterof-factly. Then he asked me another pointed question. “When is the last time you prayed for this girl and her family?” “What do you mean?” I replied. “Have you ever thought about what they’re going through?” “Heck, no.” “Well, right now, I want you to pray for this kid and her family. We don’t know why she said this, but that is not the issue. The issue is, they need prayer just like everybody else.” So I prayed for them right there on the spot. And I left Bill’s office with a whole new outlook on my situation. Let me tell you: no one had ever talked to me like that. Not Coach Hall, with his tough style of coaching. Not Hubie Brown, with his tougher style of coaching. Not even my mother, although she would give me that look that spoke louder than words if I was out of line. It was a revelation. My whole disposition changed; I felt like the old Jack Givens for the first time since the charges had been filed. I started to go out more. I was proud again, comfortable in my own skin, assured that everything would turn out okay because of God’s grace. Before that, I had internalized everything. I was blaming myself for getting in this situation, crucifying myself in a way. Bill was an angel in disguise. He helped me understand that when things go bad, there are promises in God’s word that allow you to have confidence. The guys in my men’s groups also provided support. They prayed for me and tried to build me up, but my true change in demeanor only

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came about because Bill challenged me in his office that day. Several other friends helped me feel more comfortable venturing out in public again, including Danny Brown, a former football player for Wichita State, who made me join him in restaurants now and then for chicken wings and a beer—just to hang out. He was like my bodyguard, a protector. Another friend, Kentuckian Bob Harvey, loved to play golf in the Orlando area and invited me to play almost every week. He’d say things like, “We need you today, Jack. Come on out.” My far-extending UK family also had my back. At one time or another during my ordeal, I received phone calls from former UK classmates, coaches, teammates, and student managers with words of encouragement like, “Hang in there; you’ll be all right” and “This is crazy.” Freddie Cowan came down for a visit, and we fished together. I even heard from former Wildcats I hadn’t played with, like Jim Andrews, Jerry Hale, and Ray Edelman. Former Lady Wildcat basketball players, including Valerie Still and Tayna Fogle, also called me with words of support, as did former UK football players, including Jerry Blanton, Art Still, and the late Dallas Owens. Many UK fans also sent me letters and posted well-wishes on Facebook. I only recall one friend who reacted negatively to me in public. I arrived at a high school gym to watch a basketball game and spotted him in the stands. When I walked over to sit close to him, he got up and moved. Who knows what other people were saying out of earshot, but now for the first time I really didn’t care. But no one ever confronted me personally. Another source of support during this phase was a Bible app I listened to during my morning walks. Each day it played Old and New Testament verses, which not only provided me comfort and assurance but also helped me gain a certain understanding. As serious as the charges against me were, in my mind they were nowhere near as stressful as the financial struggles I’d gone through years before. I don’t know why I felt that way. Maybe it was related to my change in thinking after the talk with Bill. All I know is that after listening to the many promises in the Bible, I heard this message: “You’re going to be all right in this.” Still, I grew impatient as I waited for the trial, and I remember thinking, “This has gone on long enough. When is this ever going to be over?” On one morning walk while listening to the Bible app, I was nearing the end of the book of Job, which teaches that

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suffering can happen in our lives even when we do nothing wrong. I’m not comparing the magnitude of Job’s suffering to mine, of course, but I could identify with the situation he had been placed in—having his faith tested despite trying to live a principled life. Shortly after I listened to the last verses of Job on that app, my attorney, Michael Snure, called to inform me that my trial would start in early September 2005. It was as if God wanted me to complete the book of Job so I would know that despite all I was going through, I would be restored to a better place. I considered that a sign of hope, and the timing amazed me. Around this same time, the prosecuting attorneys contacted me to offer a plea deal: a misdemeanor charge with no jail time and no sexual battery–related charges on my record. I discussed this with my most trusted advisers: Linda, my men’s group, and several people whose opinions I valued, including my brother Lawrence, who was the assistant police chief for Lexington at the time, and my sister Paulette, who also worked in law enforcement. Every one of them advised me not to accept the plea deal because it would make me look guilty. “Jack, have you not figured out that this whole situation is not about you?” my friend Don Deluzio asked me. “This is in God’s hands, and through this, God’s glory is going to be shone.” Michael Snure punted the decision to me. “If I could guarantee you which way a jury is going to go, I’d be a much more successful attorney than I am,” he said. “There is no way to predict what a jury is going to decide. This decision has to be yours.” Ultimately, I turned down the plea deal. I had given a lot of thought to it, but the final decision was an easy one. Even though I felt confident the jury would clear me of all charges, like Michael said, there was no way to predict their verdict. Before the start of my trial in Orange County, Florida, an army of supporters surrounded me. My mom flew down from Lexington—even though she hated to travel—and my brother Michael flew in from California. My childhood friend Nate Pass also joined us. Jeremy was “the Man” during this whole process. On the morning of every trial day, he walked into our bedroom to get dressed. “Dad, what are you wearing today?” he’d ask. “What suit of yours can I wear?” “Get in the closet and pick out what you want,” I’d say.

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Jeremy was slightly taller than me at six feet, six inches, but I was physically larger, so no matter which suit he picked, it would look big on him. One morning, as we stood together getting dressed, I pointed out how baggy my suit looked on him. “Dad, I don’t care,” he said. “I want to be just like you right now.” Jeremy would not let me want for anything. He drove us to the courtroom and then to lunch after our court appearances, and he made sure I had everything I needed. The first day of my trial was September 6, 2005. I don’t remember much about the proceedings; I was present physically, but in my mind, it was like someone else was on trial—a weird feeling. When I took the stand for the first time, my attorney led with a question that caught me off guard. “Jack, did you do this?” he asked. “Of course not,” I replied. “I didn’t do this, Mike. I would never do this.” Later that day, I asked Mike why he’d led with that question. “I asked you that because I knew what your answer was going to be,” he explained. “I wanted it to be answered just the way you did.” Another thing I remember from the trial was that every girl from my Comets team attended. They sat right up front and supported me 100 percent. One more unforgettable memory from the trial was when Jaimie took the stand to testify. Mike, my attorney, stood next to her in front of the court and pointed to me. “Who is that guy?” he asked. “That is my daddy,” Jaimie replied. She spoke those words from the heart with such pride and a facial expression to match. Even today, when I think back to that time, the way she said that brings tears to my eyes. During the discovery phase of the trial, my attorneys learned that my accuser had previously levied similar charges of unwanted advances against at least three other unsuspecting men who were cleared of any wrongdoing. We hoped that this pattern of behavior, which was included as evidence in the trial, along with several inconsistencies in my accuser’s testimony, would convince the jurors of my innocence. But no one can predict what verdict a jury will render. My most important day in court came on September 9, 2005. After nearly three hours of deliberation, the jurors acquitted me of all charges. I remember the jury foreman uttering the words not guilty, but it felt like someone else was on trial. They were talking about someone totally different

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from me. It may sound strange, but the emotions I felt after being cleared of the charges resembled the feelings I experienced after the 1978 NCAA National Basketball Championship: “The time had run out on the clock. The game was over, and we were victorious.” Later that day, we hosted a celebration at our house for my dearest supporters, including the guys from my men’s group, the Deluzio family, and Danny Brown. I thanked everyone, and we enjoyed some of my mom’s home cooking. After our guests left, I went outside by myself, turned on the waterfall by the pool, and sat in a lounge chair to reflect on my situation. I thanked the Lord for bringing me through. “Lord, I don’t know what’s going to happen from this point on,” I prayed. “But I am ready for the next stage that you have for me.” When the Magic leadership put me on that one-year paid leave of absence, they invited me to contact them once the trial was over to explore the possibility of returning to the broadcasting team, but by that time, I had become used to flying under the radar. I felt more comfortable out of the spotlight, so I decided not to pursue a comeback with the Magic. In the meantime, Marc Watson, a UK alumnus whom I had met a time or two at Magic games, heard about my acquittal and called to ask what I planned to do for work. Marc was a real estate developer and a former engineer for Universal Studios. I had no solid job leads, I said, but I told him that I’d earned my real estate license and real estate broker’s license while waiting for the outcome of my trial, which seemed to intrigue him. “That’s interesting,” Marc said. “I’d like to take you and Linda to dinner sometime to discuss this and to meet my wife, Sherre.” “Sure, Marc,” I replied. “You tell me when.” I was anxious to get started on something new; I’d been in a state of uncertainty for so long. During our dinner meeting, Marc said that he was president of University City Property Management Company, which was developing about three thousand acres of commercial and residential properties in southwest Orange County, situated right in the middle of Universal Studios, Disney, and Sea World. Because of its location, the land was considered some of the hottest property in the Orlando area. Marc invited me to be the project’s resident broker, with a salary slightly more than I was making with the Magic.

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“Hold it, Marc,” I said. “You don’t have to ask me again. When do I start?” This opportunity for a fresh start with such a high-level job boosted my confidence at a time when I needed it most. I now understood that everything was going to be okay, that there was life for me after all I had gone through since my arrest. As a bonus, Marc and I quickly formed a close friendship outside of work. Linda and Sherre became fast friends too. The four of us have spent countless hours together over the years, and we remain close to this day—on the level of family, really. From a business standpoint, Marc and I started to deliver the expected returns on investment. In fact, we sold some parcels of land for as much as $1 million an acre, which I could not believe. The project also included residential property, from apartment complexes to high-end condominiums and single-family homes. Earning a steady income again brought me peace of mind, but the pride I felt in landing the job overshadowed that. This, plus the renewed sense of purpose I gained from that talk with Bill Mitchell and the relief of finally having the trial behind me, made coaching the Comets even more rewarding. I had not put Jaimie in the starting lineup, because I didn’t want people saying that she was only starting because her dad was the coach. Looking back now, I think that I could have handled it differently and started her, but the perception of favoritism concerned me. It caused some slight tension with Jaimie, who knew she was good enough to start, as well as with Linda, who had been around the game enough to know that her daughter was good enough. Neither one griped about it much. They trusted in my ability to coach, and the team’s success made it easier for them and me to deal with. One day, I had a heart-to-heart talk with Jaimie about the situation. “Here’s what I want you to think about,” I said. “Would you rather be on the floor during the first four minutes of the game or the last four minutes of the game?” She thought about it some and replied, “During the last four minutes.” I then showed her snippets of video replays from our last three or four games. “Who was in the game at the end?” I asked. “I was,” she said. “In my mind, the best players are going to be on the floor in the final minutes of a game, and not necessarily in the first few minutes of the game.”

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After a brief pause, she said, “Okay, Dad. I see what you mean.” Things changed when we reached her U16 year in 2006, though, which marked her last season with the Comets. By that time, it was just me and Gar coaching the girls. Before the U16 season started, Gar came to me and said, “Tell me something. Why won’t you start Jaimie?” “I don’t want people to think that the only reason she’s starting is because she’s my daughter.” He looked directly at me and said, “You know what? You’ve got to get over that. Don’t punish her by not starting her when she’s worked so hard all these years. She deserves to be starting!” After Gar put it that way, I moved Jaimie into the starting lineup, and it worked great. Her teammates supported the switch. In fact, five or six of them came up to me and said, “Coach Jack, it’s about time you started Jaimie. She should have been in there a long time ago.” It made me feel good that Jaimie’s teammates recognized her talent and went to bat for her. It was also good to know they didn’t have the same concerns I did about the appearance of favoritism. Jaimie reacted to the change by saying, “Dad, now that I’m starting, I don’t want that to mean I’m not going to be in there the last four minutes of the game.” She kind of nailed me on that! By that time, the Comets were an AAU team sponsored by Nike, which provided us with warm-ups, uniforms, shoes, and some money earmarked for travel to Nike tournaments. It wasn’t enough to fully sustain us, but it gave us a cushion. In addition, for a few summers the major universities in Florida hosted elite basketball tournaments for us to compete against other top teams in the state and throughout the Southeast. As a result, coaches from women’s basketball programs at Florida State University, the University of Florida, and the University of Miami took interest in a few of our players. This made us a unique and special team. Because of our success, girls from all over the state of Florida wanted to be a part of the Comets organization. Not only were we winning games, but we were getting kids exposure to college basketball coaches that they otherwise may have missed out on. In the summer of 2006, our Comets team won the U16 AAU National Championship at the Disney Wild World of Sports Complex in Orlando as an underdog to Fencor, a Nike-sponsored team from Delaware. Their

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In the summer of 2006, the Orlando Comets captured the U16 AAU national championship. (Courtesy of Garfield Blair.)

star player, Elena Delle Donne, went on to play for University of Delaware and as of 2023 was still playing in the WNBA. Winning the AAU National Championship put us in an elite class, but it also meant the breakup of the team’s nucleus of players who had been teammates since they were nine years old: Jaimie, Alexa Deluzio, Brooke Thomas (daughter of Comets founding head coach James Thomas), Briyana Blair (Gar’s daughter), and T’erea Brown. Of the eleven kids on that team’s roster, each one received an NCAA Division I basketball scholarship offer and competed at that level. For example, Jaimie played for Florida Atlantic University; Alexa played for Florida State University; Krystal Thomas played for Duke and had a long career in the WNBA; Brooke Thomas played for Wake Forest; Stephanie Thomas played for Clemson; Briyana Blair played for the University of Miami, then transferred to the University of Evansville; and T’erea Brown played for Stetson University. Not too shabby!

14 Back to the Bluegrass State

The development project Marc Watson and I had been working on was progressing smoothly until the Great Recession—which included the stock market crash of 2008—blindsided us and the rest of the world. Construction slowed to a snail’s pace. Several banks failed. Those that remained tightened their credit lines. Millions of people lost their jobs. Marc returned to Universal Studios to work on big projects, including a new water-themed park. He offered me a job there, but Linda and I talked things over and decided to explore job opportunities back in Kentucky so we’d be closer to our aging parents, other family members, and friends. Once we made up our minds to relocate, one of the first people I called was a good friend of mine, Billy B. Wilcoxson, a UK supporter since my own Wildcat days and a former member of the university’s board of trustees. Billy served as a financial adviser for many athletes, including Sam Bowie, Tayshaun Prince, and John Wall. He was very connected. “Billy, I want to move back to the state of Kentucky, and I need a job,” I said. “What would you like to do?” Billy asked. “I have my real estate broker’s license, but it’s not valid in Kentucky, and frankly, I don’t want to have to go through the work, time, and preparation for becoming a broker in Kentucky,” I said. My dream job, I continued, would be to join an organization, maybe a bank, where I could represent that company, interact with their customers, build relationships, seek new business for the company, and help to develop the business. 192

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“Give me a little while, and I’ll see what I can find,” Billy said. After I hung up from that call, I figured it would take a long time because that kind of a tailored position doesn’t grow on trees. But I wasn’t in a situation where I wanted to wait very long; I needed to get back to work. About one week later, Billy called to say that a company in Union, Kentucky, owned by Blevins Bowlin and his son, Kerry, had a job for me, and he gave me Blevins’s phone number. “What do you mean?” I asked, a little shocked. “Just give them a call,” Billy said. “They want to offer you a job.” “Well, what will I be doing?” Billy laughed and said, “Well, what did you tell me you wanted to do?” After I repeated what I’d said in that first phone conversation, he said, “Damn it, that’s what you’ll be doing!” After my conversation with Billy, I placed a phone call to Blevins Bowlin to introduce myself. “I’ve been expecting your call,” he said. Then he posed the same question that Pat Williams had asked me when I was being considered for my broadcasting job with the Magic: “When can you come up for a visit?” “I could come in anytime,” I said. “Talk to our office manager,” Blevins said. “She’ll get you a flight, and you come up and you see us.” With that, I flew up to Lexington and drove north to the Triple Crown Country Club in Union, Kentucky, where I met with Blevins and Kerry. Together, they had started the Bowlin Group, which they described as an infrastructure services organization that provided technical, construction, and maintenance services to clients in power distribution and electrical industries, wireless communications, and broadband and fiber construction industries. Some of their clients included Duke Energy, Cincinnati Bell, Time Warner Cable, Owen Electric Cooperative, and Verizon Wireless. “This all sounds great, but I know nothing about this line of business,” I told them candidly. “Jack, we understand you know nothing about the business,” Blevins said. “But what you do know is people. We’re bringing you in to benefit

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A few years before the COVID-19 pandemic, I enjoyed a game of golf with Michael Jordan at a course in Las Vegas. He is a true competitor! (Author’s collection.)

both you and us. Your responsibility is to call these companies and try to get us appointments with their executives, and we go to the appointments.” “We have plenty of experts in our company,” Kerry added. “We know the business. We’re not expecting you to know the business. We’re expecting you to get us meetings with various companies that we can work with.” “Okay. I can do that,” I said, and I accepted the position created for me as vice president of business development and external affairs—a job I continue to hold as of this book’s publication. Relocating to Kentucky was one of the best moves of my life. The timing was perfect; so was the job opportunity. I viewed it as another blessing that showed up in my life; it pointed to someone in control who has a whole lot more power and smarts than I do. Sometimes it’s overwhelming to look back on these many blessings that have come my way, the interrelationships they’ve developed. In fact, the move back to Kentucky made me reflect on the twenty-three years our family lived in Orlando. Settling there with my family in 1989 forced me to reinvent myself. I went from mainly being known as Jack Givens, the former Kentucky basketball player, to becoming a popular broadcaster for the Orlando Magic. Then I enjoyed success as a

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real estate broker and head coach of the Orlando Comets. So those years in Orlando forced me to expand on who I was—something that may not have happened if I’d stayed in Kentucky all my life—and I would not change those years one bit. I returned to the Commonwealth of Kentucky with new skills, hopefully some wisdom that comes with growing older and dealing with life situations, and a view of myself as so much more than a former UK basketball player. However, just because I think of myself differently now doesn’t mean that I’m not a realist. I’m not erasing my history. I fully understand that being propelled into celebrity because of my playing days at UK created and continues to create opportunities that I would not have otherwise had—including my job with the Bowlin Group. I’m certainly grateful for that. On one of my early days with the Bowlin Group, I personally introduced Blevins and Kerry to a potential business customer and described them as my bosses because in my mind they were. After we met with the potential customer, Blevins took me aside and said, “Here’s one thing I want you to do differently.” “Oh boy, here we go!” I thought. “I wonder what I did wrong.” “Whatever you do, don’t say that I’m your boss,” Blevins said. “I want you to say, ‘We work together,’ because this is a team. We are partners in this.” Kerry told me the same thing. That philosophy resonated with me and is the main reason I’ve stayed with the company. Blevins, Kerry, and I are partners and brothers to this day. Several years ago, our company was part of a consortium that secured a $400 million project with the state of Kentucky. A representative from one of the companies we partnered with on that project wanted to hire me away from the Bowlin Group for a higher salary, a larger company car allowance, and some other benefits. I seriously considered the offer but called a meeting with Blevins and Kerry before I made a final decision. I told them about the offer and said that it intrigued me. “Are you going to give us an opportunity to at least match everything this company wants to offer you?” Kerry asked. “Of course,” I said. “I love it here.” “We’ll match everything they offered you, and we’ll go even higher on the salary,” he said. When he said that, I told myself, “I’m supposed to be

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I love being a grandpa. Here I’m pictured with Zariah when she was an infant. She’s grown up so fast! (Author’s collection.)

here. They like me just the way I am; they want me here.” Since then, other companies have tried to coax me away from the Bowlin Group, but I don’t budge—not only because I have a good relationship with Blevins and Kerry but because I now own stock in the company. It’s an opportunity that God formulated, and it continues to grow today. Three other blessings came in the form of grandchildren born to Jaimie: Zariah in 2009, Jaylen in 2011, and Kash in 2019. I’d always heard people joke that if they could have skipped their own kids and gone straight to the grandkids, they might not have had kids. It was kind of like that for Linda and me because we couldn’t believe the magnitude of what those grandkids meant to us. It was a different level of love. Since Jamie was a single mom at the time Zariah and Jaylen were born, she and the kids lived with us for Zariah’s first six years of life and Jaylen’s first four and a half years of life, so in many ways Linda and I took on the role of both parents and grandparents to help raise them. It was awesome to form such a strong bond with Zariah and Jaylen during their developing years, but it wasn’t always easy. Jaimie worked as a bartender and server at Jeff Ruby’s Steakhouse at Belterra Casino

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in Florence, Indiana, which was about a forty-five-minute drive from our house. Her shift usually didn’t end until ten or eleven o’clock at night, so by the time she got home, the kids, Linda, and I were asleep. This meant that many parenting duties fell to Linda and me while Jaimie was at work, but most of that responsibility fell on Linda. Raising kids again wasn’t always as smooth as we might have wanted, but we adjusted. We made it work and enjoyed every minute of those years together. For much of 2015, Jaimie dated Kevin King, who was a fellow bartender at Jeff Ruby’s Steakhouse. Their relationship progressed to the point where he proposed to her in 2016. She accepted, and we were excited for her, the kids, and our whole family. What mattered most was that Kevin loved the kids more than I had even hoped for. He is a special guy and in many ways an answer to prayer. When he informed me that he was going to ask Jamie to marry him, I told him that Jamie was very capable of taking care of herself and that the big concern was the kids. Kevin told me that he loved Zariah and Jaylen as if they were his own. I knew he was telling the truth by the way I’d seen him interact with them. Although the kids’ biological father loved them very much, he lived in Florida and didn’t get to spend much time with them. That same year, Jaimie started working for a social gaming company called Zynga, which allowed her to work from home and enabled her, Kevin, and the kids to move into their own apartment. This eased the burden of raising grandkids for Linda and me. The story of how Jaimie started working for Zynga goes back to a Thanksgiving afternoon we spent at the Lexington home of our good friends Joe and Benita Kaminkow, to visit and have hors d’oeuvres. Joe was a partner with Zynga and had owned and sold a few other large companies during his long career in the gaming industry. He created slot machines for casinos all over the world, including those in Las Vegas, as well as pinball machines, including the Michael Jordan pinball machine from when Joe lived in Chicago and had front-row seats to the Bulls games. The basement of Joe and Benita’s house was like an arcade, with slot machines, pinball machines, pool tables, and even a bowling alley. During our visit there, Jaimie was absorbed in a game of Candy Crush on her phone when Joe approached her. “What game are you playing?” he asked. She showed him her phone screen.

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“How did you get this far on this game?” Joe asked. “I’ve never seen anyone do that; you must have cheated somehow. What did you do?” “No,” Jaimie said. “I just play it a little bit here and there.” “I might have a job for you,” Joe said. “Doing what?” Jaimie asked. “Our company’s coming out with a new game called Harry Potter: Puzzles and Spells,” he said. “Maybe you could play this game for us, do reviews, try to get to where you are with Candy Crush, and see what happens. I’ll call you Monday.” The following week, Joe offered her a six-month-long job pilot testing the game’s prototype on an iPhone, an iPad, and other devices, as well as asked for her feedback on its strengths and weaknesses, things she’d do differently. She accepted the offer and started at twenty dollars an hour, forty hours per week. “If we use your feedback, we’ll offer you a full-time job,” Joe told her. That’s what happened, and today Jaimie is senior supervisor of life cycle marketing for Zynga. When Zariah was six, Jaimie and Kevin built a house close to ours in Georgetown, so these days we see our grandkids as often as they want to see us or as often as we want to see them. We make every effort to attend sporting events they participate in. When Jaylen turned five, Jaimie called me one day to ask if I could help coach his T-ball team. “Sure, I’d love to,” I told her. “I’ve never coached baseball, but I’ll do what I can to help out.” A few hours later, she called to ask if I would be the head coach of Jaylen’s T-ball team. I told her I hadn’t been around baseball since I was in the tenth grade at Bryan Station, but I suggested a twist on her proposal. “Here’s how we’ll work this,” I suggested. “I’ll do all the coaching, but technically you are going to be the head coach. I’m going to be the assistant coach because I don’t want to have to deal with parents. I don’t want to go to meetings—all the stuff I had to do when I was head coach of the Comets. You deal with all of that.” She agreed to that arrangement, and it worked well in my view. Coaching baseball for boys and girls that age was like babysitting. It wasn’t about teaching so much as keeping the kids from digging holes or chasing butterflies during the ball game—just keeping them focused, helping them to have a good time and enjoy it. We applied the same daughter-father coaching approach to Jaylen’s basketball teams also.

My granddaughter Zariah surprised our whole family by making the Scott County High School golf team as a seventh grader. (Author’s collection.)

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As for Zariah, she played baseball and basketball for a couple of seasons but decided that she didn’t care for team sports. I knew she was a good athlete, so I suggested that she try golf or tennis. Zariah knew I liked to play golf, so one day she came to me and asked if she could try it. She was in fifth grade. “Sure,” I said, and off we went to the golf course. To my surprise, she really enjoyed golf and caught on quickly. She even started taking formal lessons. Since I’m the only one in our family who plays golf, I’m happy that Zariah likes the sport so much, because that gives us some bonding time together, which we both enjoy. While playing in a summer golf league in Lexington with other girls, Zariah decided that she liked the friendships and camaraderie that go along with team sports, so as a sixth grader, she started playing volleyball for her middle school team. Then, before entering seventh grade, she announced that she wanted to try out for the golf team at Scott County High School. “You’re just in the seventh grade,” I said. “I don’t think seventh graders can play varsity golf.” “Oh no, Papa,” she said. “I already looked it up.” She had searched the website for Scott County High School and noticed wording that indicated that middle schoolers were eligible to try out for the golf team. Also, one of her middle school peers played golf for the Scott County High School team, so she knew it was possible. Zariah tried out for the squad, and sure enough, she made the varsity golf team as a seventh grader. I’m so proud of her! Shortly before Jaimie started to work for Zynga, Jeremy completed his cyber security degree at Gateway Community College. One day, he asked me if I knew anyone at Owen Electric Cooperative. He’d noticed a job opening in their IT department, and he wanted to apply for it. Owen was one of the Bowlin Group’s customers, but Jeremy didn’t know this. “I know some people there,” I said. “I wonder who you’d be interviewing with.” He told me the name of the president and CEO and asked if I knew him. “Yeah,” I said. Jeremy then told me that he’d also be interviewing with Rusty Williams, the company’s senior vice president of operations and technology. “Do you know Rusty?” he asked.

When my grandson Jaylen was about nine, he found my cowboy hat and basketball net from the 1978 NCAA championship game and said, “Papa, I want to be just like you when I grow up!” (Author’s collection.)

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“Yes,” I said. “I know both of them.” “Do you think you could talk to them to see if I could get an interview?” “Yeah, I can tell them.” “Well, when can you do it?” “How about tonight?” I replied. “I’m going with them both to the Kentucky 1A State High School Basketball Tournament to watch Rusty’s son, Carson, play.” Carson was a forward for Owen County High School. “What do you mean?” I told Jeremy that I had worked with Carson on his footwork and basketball skills a few times during the last couple of summers. Carson went on to be named Kentucky’s Mr. Basketball in 2016. Jeremy applied for and got that job at Owen Electric Cooperative on his own merits. He was the right person at the right place and the right time. These days, both he and Jaimie seem happy with their lives, which makes Linda and me happy. It’s rewarding to see. They also live close by, which is a plus. Life for us now largely revolves around our kids and grandkids. Our youngest grandchild, Kash, is two and a half years old as of this writing. At this stage of development, it’s hard to know what he will be like, but I anticipate that he will follow in the footsteps of his big brother and big sister. He’s my little buddy. He loves his Papa and his Gigi. Linda and I also enjoy spending time with Lamont and his family, who live in nearby Lexington. Lamont’s daughter, Chloe, is close to Zariah and Jaylen in age. She plays in a summer softball league, and we attend as many of her games as we can. I count my blessings in life, but I’m not immune from loss and grief as I grow older. In late April 2015, I received a call from Candy Phillips, the wife of Mike Phillips. She informed me that Mike had died from a fall inside their Madisonville home. Losing him was very difficult for me and my teammates from the 1977–78 Kentucky championship team. We had a relationship that went far beyond basketball, especially as the years kept passing by. Mike, Rick, James, and I arrived as UK freshmen in 1974 and spent a lot of time together over the next four years and also well after that. We were like brothers. Losing Mike forced me and the rest of my former teammates to reevaluate our own lives and come to grips with our own mortality. It also caused us to value our team reunions even more. We’re getting older, after all. Who knows when we might lose someone else from

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our group? Losing Mike also reinforced how special winning the 1978 NCAA National Basketball Championship really was; it’s an experience that few players go through in life. We attended Mike’s funeral and spent a lot of time together on both sides of the memorial service. The first team reunion after his passing was difficult, but having Candy and Mike’s son Michael there helped. Fred Cowan, who owns a silk-screen printing company in Madisonville, had Mike’s number, 55, printed on the UK hoodies we had made and passed them out to everyone on our team. We also told stories about Mike and had a lot of good laughs reminiscing. He wore black leather pants almost every time our team got together, so we talked about how we missed seeing him in those pants. On June 26, 2016, my youngest brother, Kenny, died from cancer at the age of forty-seven. When you consider the age difference of ten siblings from top to bottom, you naturally think that the loss process would go from oldest to youngest. It was tough to start with the youngest sibling. He had so much more life to live. Kenny played offensive and defensive line in football at Bryan Station, so he was big. He was just a good-hearted guy who was very likable. Kenny had served as a corrections officer at the Fayette County Detention Center, and at the time of his death, he was a security guard for St. Joseph Hospital/KentuckyOne Health. He and his wife, Kim, were building a family together. What I remember most about his final days is how cancer caused Kenny to lose weight, to the point where physically he was no longer the big bear of a guy we’d all known and loved. Watching him become so sick was difficult to process, especially for my mother. We all tried our best to come to grips with his situation. Shortly before Kenny passed away, he professed his faith in God and accepted Christ as his personal Savior. That was important to our family. After that, he said, “I’m ready to go.” The doctors wanted to try new procedures on him, but he said, “No. I don’t want to go through any more.” He accepted his circumstances. That really helped our family—particularly my mother—to know that mentally he was okay, that he wasn’t fighting the cancer anymore, that he was content. Coach Hall’s passing on January 15, 2022, also hit me and his other former players hard. He struggled with declining health in the last few years of his life, which required him to move into a Lexington-based nursing home. His downturn was difficult to accept because we always viewed him

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This family photo was taken before the 2022 Legacy Ball. Left to right: my wife, Linda; my daughter-in-law, Alex; my son, Jeremy; my daughter, Jaimie; and my son-in-law, Kevin. (Author’s collection.)

as larger than life. On January 14, 2022, I received word that he was failing fast, so I drove to Lexington for one final visit. When I entered Coach Hall’s room, his caregiver was trying to encourage him to eat. “Coach, guess who’s here?” she asked. After she said my name, he barely opened his eyes, and a slight smile came across his face. I walked over to the side of the bed and held his hand. The last thing I said to him was, “Coach, if you don’t eat, I’m going to make you get a wall,” which was the punishment he used to give us when we didn’t practice well. We had to go up and touch the wall at the top of Memorial Coliseum, touching every step on the way up, then touching every step on the way back down. When I told him that, an even bigger smile came across his face, and he squeezed my hand. He fell back asleep, stopped eating, and passed away early the next morning. I’m so

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thankful for that chance to say goodbye, and I’m sure he knew I was there. About a week later, I attended a celebration of life for Coach Hall with other former players, colleagues, and friends. Leonard Hamilton, now the head men’s basketball coach for Florida State, chartered a plane in the middle of ACC basketball season to be there. Coach Calipari also paid respects, as did former Louisville coach Denny Crum, Coach Hall’s longtime friend and cohost of the popular Joe B. and Denny Show. Four months later, my friend and former teammate Reggie Warford passed away after a series of health issues. Doctors had expected him to die at least twenty years before he did, so the fact that he exceeded expectations showed what a fighter Reggie was and how determined he was to live life to the fullest. Reggie was the same way at UK: a fighter. He proved people wrong when they said he would not succeed. At his memorial service, one of the things that brought me to tears were audio recordings of Reggie singing “I Can Only Imagine,” “How Great Is Our God,” and “Walk around Heaven All Day.” These were the songs that Reggie had sung when Linda, James Lee, and I drove to Pittsburgh a few years earlier after doctors said he only had a couple of months left to live. I remember turning around at the memorial service and looking for Reggie to appear. For a brief second, I thought, “Man, Reggie fooled us again! He’s not dead. This is supposed to be his funeral, but here he is, singing. Where is he?” Of course, he wasn’t there, but he sounded so alive and real that I thought he would appear. I certainly sensed his spirit during the service.

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Someone recently asked me if I would change anything about my life to this point. I joked that it would have been nice if the NCAA’s name, image, and likeness policy had been in effect in the 1970s. In all seriousness, as I think back on all that I’ve accomplished and experienced so far, I wouldn’t change a thing. I don’t view my life as being over or winding down, just because I’m old enough to start collecting Social Security. It wasn’t easy growing up in poverty, but I still view those as some of the best days of my life. My siblings and I didn’t have the nicest home, clothes, or belongings, and sometimes our mom did not know where our next meal was coming from, but we quickly learned that what truly matters in life are family and friends. It also taught us to count everything we had as a blessing. We didn’t have the same opportunities as kids from wealthier families did, but that didn’t stop us from having a happy childhood. We learned to enjoy the little things. I was loved and taken care of by the people around me. What more could I ask for? It made me appreciate even more the sacrifices my mother made for me and the rest of my siblings. At Bryan Station High School, I began to view people from other backgrounds differently than I had while growing up in the Black community of Bluegrass-Aspendale. Bryan Station’s student population was more racially and financially mixed. For the first time, I got to know Black people from financially well-off, middle-class families, which was inspirational to me. I soon realized that I could forge friendships with anyone, regardless of their race, income level, or background. That was an important lesson to learn, 206

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and I came to realize that people are generally more alike than different. Attending college at UK broadened my perspective of cultural diversity even more. Sure, there were racial tensions between Blacks and whites in the 1970s, but for me, the one constant that everyone saw favorably was Kentucky basketball. I viewed my time as a Wildcat as something that brought people together regardless of the color of their skin, the size of their bank account, or their occupation in life, as an opportunity to say, “We all have something in common. We’re playing basketball, and they’re cheering for one cause: to win games for the Big Blue Nation.” People might say, “Yes, but there are other issues that need to be addressed.” I get that. But at least it was a place to start. That underscored even more for me that humans are basically more similar to than different from one another. When I committed to UK in 1974, it never occurred to me that I would be the first African American All-American to sign with the program or that I would become the first African American SEC male athlete of the year for Kentucky in 1978. It wasn’t my goal to be a trailblazer from the standpoint of integrating the program. My goal was to make my mother and the rest of my family proud: earn a college degree, succeed as a basketball player, and make enough connections to get a good job and to live a good life. Reggie Warford was the second African American to integrate the UK men’s basketball program. Tom Payne was the first, and I thank him for making that big step, but Reggie was the first to stay for four years and to graduate, followed by Merion Haskins and Larry Johnson. They were the real trailblazers; I was kind of along for the ride in that respect when I first arrived at UK. I wanted to win a national championship, but I initially set modest expectations for my own playing career. Once I began to have success during my freshman year, though, and as Coach Hall and the other coaches thrust more leadership responsibility on me, I began to reevaluate what I wanted to accomplish at UK. I expanded my goals. I pushed myself to be better, and the success and accolades came. The fans deserve a lot of credit for this, no question. With their support, devotion, and passion, they played a big part in my success. I give thanks for all that I accomplished on and off the court during my four years at UK, and it was flattering to learn that some of the players who came after me set their goals on what I achieved. They viewed themselves

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as a younger Jack Givens—and it wasn’t just the Black players. Some of the white players said things like, “I want to be like you,” or “I like the way you shot the ball.” That as much as anything speaks to how integration changed UK men’s basketball program. Another sign came in March 1992, when I became the first African American to have his jersey retired in the rafters of Rupp Arena. Every time I step into that building and look up to see my jersey, number 21, hanging between those of my former teammates Kevin Grevey and Rick Robey, it amazes me. I also think of the many great former UK players who have not experienced the joy of having their jersey retired. In October 2021, I took my grandson Jaylen and some of his buddies to a UK game. The first thing Jaylen’s friends wanted to know was where my jersey was hanging in the rafters, so he pointed and proudly said, “There’s my papa’s name and jersey!” Every year that goes by, the honor means more to me. I thank UK for appreciating my play enough to put it up there. I’d also like to thank my teammates, who sometimes sacrificed their own game to help me be more successful. In the summer of 2020, when our nation was going through waves of civil unrest after the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, the faculty of UK’s African American and Africana Studies program sent a letter to President Eli Capilouto requesting that the university rename Rupp Arena. “The Adolph Rupp name has come to stand for racism and exclusion in UK athletics and alienates Black students, fans, and attendees,” they wrote. “The rebuilding of the arena and the convention center offer an opportunity to change the name to a far more inclusive one, such as Wildcat Arena.”1 I understand and respect that some people feel differently about this than I do, but my perspective is likely different from those of the men and women who drafted that letter. I was born and raised in Lexington. I grew up in the Bluegrass-Aspendale housing project fifteen minutes from the university. I played basketball at Bryan Station High School in Lexington, and I started in the very first Kentucky Wildcats game played in Rupp Arena. I also view my time at UK as some of the best days of my life. There’s an important historical angle to this topic too. Rupp Arena is home court to four of UK’s eight national NCAA title teams. Changing the name to something else would not only diminish the importance of the time I spent at UK

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In September 2022, James Lee and I emceed the inaugural Lexington African-American Sports Hall of Fame induction ceremony and gala. We were both inducted that year as well. (Courtesy of Woody Phillips.)

but also push the sense of that arena’s history out of the minds of young fans and future generations of the program’s players, fans, and supporters. There is a segment of our fan base that may not know that Memorial Coliseum was home court for the Wildcats before Rupp Arena opened in 1976 and that Alumni Hall was home court before Memorial Coliseum opened in 1950. The names of those arenas have not been changed, because they are hallowed halls, places where Kentucky basketball built its reputation for excellence and dominance. Similarly, the name Rupp Arena should remain, to preserve the program’s history for future generations. When I was a freshman, our starting lineup included five white guys: Kevin Grevey, Jimmy Dan Conner, Mike Flynn, Bob Guyette, and Rick Robey. From that day on, I never thought about that except to remind myself, “Hey, I’m on a basketball team with great players.” I didn’t think of it as a team with great Black players or great white players; I just thought of it as a very good team. But I do remember an SEC game during my sophomore year where, for the first time, there were five Black players on the court for Kentucky: me, James Lee, Larry Johnson, Merion Haskins,

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and Reggie Warford. We were standing around the free throw line, and I remember thinking, “Man, I never, ever thought that I would see this day.” Was it a conscious thought? Was it just a statement of fact? I don’t know. But I do remember as plain as day thinking about that. The good thing was, that situation became more common as my UK career advanced, and I didn’t give it a second thought. From the first game in Rupp Arena to every subsequent matchup I competed in there, I never went into a game thinking about the differences between Black and white players. Just like I never went into a game thinking about Adolph Rupp. My thought was, “We’ve got to figure out a way to win this game as a team.” When Rick Robey and I went out on the floor with Mike Phillips and James Lee, we were a team. I didn’t care about anything that happened the day before or ten years prior. All I knew was that as a team, our goal was to win each game, to figure it out. The one interaction I recall having with Coach Rupp occurred during my freshman year. He retained an office in Memorial Coliseum. He wasn’t in there much, but one afternoon I walked by his office door, and he spotted me. “Givens!” he called out in his nasal voice. “Yes, Coach,” I replied. “Come in here a minute,” he said. I stopped and walked into his office. “I want you to know one thing,” he said. “What’s that, Coach?” “I am so glad you’re here,” he said. “I am thrilled that you and James [Lee] are here.” I had no doubt in my mind that he was being 100 percent truthful. “Coach Rupp, I’m so happy to be here,” I told him. “This is a great opportunity, and I’m looking forward to my career here.” I view my time at UK as part of a much-needed change in mindset. As I mentioned earlier, I didn’t follow UK basketball as a kid, because I didn’t see anybody on the team who looked like me. I was fortunate to be part of a historical sea change of integration in the basketball program under Coach Hall, starting with my teammate Reggie Warford. We made history. We helped bring people together, regardless of their skin color. That’s why

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I would never want to see the name Rupp Arena change. If you take away the name, you’re stripping away the progress my teammates and I made in helping to improve how people from different races viewed one another, if only in a small way. It would also not be fair to Coach Rupp and what he accomplished at UK, whether I agree with the way he did things or not. He tried to recruit Black players later in his career but didn’t succeed until Tom Payne signed. The fact is, Coach Rupp guided UK to four national championships during his forty-two-year tenure and built a program that was recognized as one of the best in the country. He deserves respect for that in the form of having UK’s home arena named after him. Stripping away the Rupp Arena name would also be unfair to the players, coaches, student managers, and others who put their blood, sweat, and tears into keeping UK one of the winningest programs in college basketball history since the building first opened in 1976. It would also arguably diminish the legacy that Tubby Smith built in Rupp Arena by becoming UK’s first Black head coach in 1997 and guiding the 1997–98 Wildcats to a national championship. Tubby’s hiring was another milestone that solidified and helped expand the relationship between UK and the Black community in Lexington and throughout the entire Commonwealth of Kentucky and the college basketball world. It gave African Americans a sense of pride and caused some to follow the Wildcats with more interest than they had during any other time in UK basketball history. Now, I don’t know that the name on a building determines how a basketball player performs in a positive or negative way. In Lexington, the Wildcats play their games in Rupp Arena, but they’re playing for the university and for the Big Blue Nation. Was there racial prejudice back in my playing days? Of course. We were living in that era. Have I ever said some things and called a white guy something I wish I hadn’t? Heck yeah, I have. I’m not afraid to admit that. Do I still say things like that now? No! Just because my skin color differs from yours doesn’t make me a bad guy. Likewise, just because your skin color differs from mine doesn’t make you a good guy. It makes us people, and it gives us an opportunity to learn from one another. When I look back, that’s one of the best lessons I learned at UK. These days, I like to stay busy, and I still enjoy my work with the Bowlin Group and other ventures I’m involved in. In 2020, I formed a business

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In November 2020, Dave Baker (left) and I began to cohost a UK men’s basketball pregame radio show on the UK Sports Network. (Author’s collection.)

venture with Rick Robey and Kyle Macy called Seventy-Eight Distribution, LLC, with a goal of launching our own line of adult beverages. I’m excited to see how that goes. I’m also a partner in a business called Biogas Technologies that could revolutionize how stillage from bourbon distilleries is processed and turned back into food-grade products. In November 2020, I was invited to join Dave Baker as cohost of a UK men’s basketball pregame radio show on the UK Sports Network. I began my broadcast career calling UK basketball games, so to come full circle at this stage in my life has been an honor, and I’m grateful to JMI Sports for the opportunity. I’m surprised by how many people tuned in to the show and how many fans stopped me in public to say things like, “You made a good point,” or “I called in. Thanks for talking to me.” The Big Blue Nation’s devotion to the men’s basketball program continues to amaze me. Another broadcasting opportunity opened up in 2021, when my friend and former UK Hall of Fame basketball player Mike Pratt, who provided color analysis for Wildcat games on the UK Sports Network Radio with play-by-play man Tom Leach for twenty years, was scheduled to undergo a series of treatments for a recurrence of cancer. We knew that Mike was

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After the passing of Mike Pratt in the summer of 2022, I joined Tom Leach in broadcasting Wildcats basketball games on the UK Sports Network. (Author’s collection.)

hurting and going through a rough time, but he never complained about his situation. He didn’t want to draw attention to himself. In my role with Dave Baker, I would seek out Mike to compare notes about the next Wildcat game. Many years earlier, when I was doing the same thing for the Orlando Magic, Mike had provided TV color analysis for the Charlotte Hornets, so we saw each other on the road and had a long history of talking basketball. Anticipating that Mike might miss calling four summer exhibition games in the Bahamas to undergo treatment, JMI asked if I would step in for Mike if needed. “Sure,” I said. Unfortunately, Mike passed away on June 16, 2022, right before he was scheduled to undergo a series of alternative cancer therapies. It was devastating, a huge loss for the Big Blue Nation. Not long after Mike’s passing, JMI asked if I could commit the time to assume his former role as color analyst on a full-time basis. I told them I’d have to check with my work colleague Kerry Bowlin first. When I told

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They Call Me Goose

I was invited to do the Y during a home game against Texas A&M on January 9, 2018. (Courtesy of UK Athletics.)

Kerry about the opportunity, he looked at me and said, “What makes you think you have to ask me if you can do that?” “You’re president of the company, so before I commit to UK, I had to make sure that it worked with you,” I said. “Of course I want you to do that,” Kerry said. “Broadcasting has been your life for a lot of years. There’s no way I would get in the way of you doing that.” I have known Tom for many years, but we had never broadcast a UK game together until the string of four exhibition games in the Bahamas in August 2022. I’m surprised how many people tell me that when they watch UK games on TV, they turn down the sound of the TV broadcast and listen to Tom and me on the radio. Older UK fans refer to the time when Cawood Ledford did the radio play-by-play of UK basketball games with color analyst Ralph Hacker, and they listened to them the same way they listen to us: with the TV broadcast turned down. This reminds me of how far-reaching Kentucky basketball really is. You’d think I’d know that by now, but hearing fans refer to our broadcasts in that way makes me even prouder

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to have this position. As for Tom, the rapport he developed with Mike Pratt took twenty years to build, so for him to accept and adjust to me as the color analyst and not miss a beat speaks to his professionalism. Tom may be the Voice of the Wildcats, but he doesn’t mind sharing the spotlight. He makes me feel like an equal during broadcasts. To use a basketball analogy, Tom is a point guard, and he does a great job of getting the ball to me and allowing me to make a shot in the form of commentary. I know that our chemistry will improve as we get more games under our belts. Once every year or two, I’m invited to do the Y during a time-out at a UK basketball game in Rupp. In this long tradition, the cheerleaders spell out the first seven letters of the word Kentucky on the floor, and they bring out a former player, a coach, a celebrity, or someone else notable to join them and make a Y with their arms. Without fail, the crowd erupts with cheers and applause when that person completes the word Kentucky. Sometimes they stand on their feet. To an outsider, this may seem like a silly ritual, but for me, when I stand on that floor and extend my arms to make that Y, I hear loud chants of “Goose!” from the crowd, just like I did when I wore number 21 for the Wildcats. I wonder how in the world these fans still remember me after all these years. I played before many of them were even born! But they all have a love for Kentucky basketball. Even young fans appreciate the history of the program, the tradition. But the best part of doing the Y is looking up at the people cheering for me as they did when I was playing. That is the greatest feeling. It reminds me of when our team won the 1978 NCAA Championship against Duke. A lot of the national media said we didn’t have any fun on our march to winning the title. No fun, huh? Well, it can’t get any better than this.

Acknowledgments

Several people worked behind the scenes to help Doug Brunk and me complete this book. First, thanks to my former UK teammate Scott Courts, who acted as our unofficial agent once Doug first pitched the idea for this book. He lobbied both of us with text messages and cell phone calls until we sealed the deal. Thanks also to the talented staff at the University Press of Kentucky (UPK), especially director Ashley Runyon, publishing coordinator Margaret Kelly, and UPK editorial board member Gerald L. Smith for guidance along the way. We are also grateful to Joe Angolia of the Kentucky High School Athletic Association and Mike Fields, former sportswriter at the Lexington Herald-Leader, for providing background material about my high school career. We also want to thank the following people who helped us locate photos for this project: Becky Ryder, director of the Keeneland Library; Louise Begley, library media specialist at Bryan Station High School; George L. Fletcher, former student manager, UK basketball; Deb Moore of UK Athletics; Eric Lindsey, formerly of UK Athletics; Ben Godwin of Catapult Sports; Brian Simms of the Lexington Herald-Leader; Ruth Bryan, Sarah Coblenz, and Jason Flahardy of the University of Kentucky Special Collections Research Center; Lloyd “Pink” Gardner, former trainer for the ABA Kentucky Colonels; Matthew Clarke, executive director of the Design Trust for Public Space in New York City; Austin Simms, executive director of the Lexington Housing Authority; and photographer Woody Phillips, based in Lawrenceburg, Kentucky. 217

218

Acknowledgments

Thanks also to former longtime UK men’s basketball analyst Ralph Hacker for writing the foreword. Ralph is a member of the UK Athletics Hall of Fame and has known me longer than any other media personality I can think of. He also helped launch my broadcasting career by hiring me to call high school basketball games. I’d like to thank Doug Brunk for his help in completing this memoir. He asked questions that forced me to reevaluate situations in my past that I hadn’t thought about in a long time or that I didn’t think were important. Some of those circumstances turned out to be important after all. I especially want to thank my wife, Linda, for understanding the time commitment this project required and for supporting me through the process. Jack Givens • I never ran on a basketball court with Jack Givens, but the opportunity to team with him for this book is a privilege I don’t take lightly. I hold him in high regard, but it’s a tall order to entrust someone to help tell your life story in print. The good and bad times. Matters of the heart. Matters of faith. Our work on this book began about five months into the COVID-19 pandemic, which afforded us blocks of time to talk that we might not have otherwise had. It took two and a half years to complete the first draft of our manuscript and more work after that, but we stayed on task, and Jack never lost patience—or if he did, I never knew it! He also showed grace with my many follow-up questions and emails as we shaped more than 150 hours of conversation into written form. I am grateful to many people who provided me encouragement along the way: my mom, Genevieve Brunk; my brother, Bob Brunk; my sisterin-law, Debra Isaacs; my mother-in-law, Barbara Goran; and the rest of my far-flung extended family. My dad, Bill Brunk, passed away about three months after I started this project. One day, after he read an early version of the first chapter, he said, “I’d like to meet Jack Givens someday.” Unfortunately, that never happened, but his enthusiasm for this book inspired me. Thanks as well to the many friends who cheered me on, including

Acknowledgments

219

Rob Bolton, Tim Boyle, Dean and Ruth Cook, Kevin Cook, Todd Cook, Scott Courts, Dave Good, Scott Farmelant, Keith Finley, George Fletcher, Pernell and Tracey Francis, Bruce Jancin, Rick and Lisa Lofgren, Dean and Marcia Nelson, Wayne and Alice Rogers, Scott Rudolph, Colleen Rush, Jay Shidler, Tom Simpson, Dan Van Ommen, and Dave Weiner. My biggest champion on this project has been my wife, Vickie Brunk. I’m grateful for her support every day. Doug Brunk

Notes

1. Bluegrass-Aspendale 1. Matthew Clarke, “Voices of Home in Bluegrass-Aspendale: Constructing the Ideal,” Kaleidoscope 6 (2007): article 5, https://uknowledge.uky.edu/kaleidoscope/vol6 /iss1/5. 2. Kentucky Horse Park, “Isaac Burns Murphy,” Park Memorials and Statues, accessed May 27, 2023, https://kyhorsepark.com/equine-theme-park/park-memorials-statues/isaac -burns-murphy/. 3. “His Eye Is on the Sparrow,” composed by Civilla D. Martin and published in 1905, accessed May 27, 2023, https://hymnary.org/text/why_should_i_feel _discouraged. 4. “The Potter’s House,” composed by Varn Michael McKay, Schaff Music Publishing, Capitol Christian Music Group, Capitol CMG Publishing, 1990.

2. Growth Spurt 1. A native of Mayslick, Kentucky, Colonel Charles Young was the third Black man to graduate from the United States Military Academy at West Point and be commissioned as an army officer. He was also the first Black superintendent of a national park and the first Black person appointed to the rank of colonel in the US Army. 2. Barbara Benson et al., Changing Profiles of Entering Freshman at the University of Kentucky: A Report Based on the American Council on Education Cooperative Institutional Survey, 1967–1974 (Lexington: University of Kentucky, 1975).

3. Movin’ On Up 1. Alexander Wolff, “Court Is in Session,” Sports Illustrated, July 4, 1983.

221

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Notes

2. Under Coach Livisay, Douglass High was the runner-up in the 1953 National Negro Basketball Tournament held in Nashville, Tennessee, and the team won the Kentucky High School Athletic League Championship in 1954. 3. As Woodford County High School’s head basketball coach in 1964–65, Ed Allin became the first Kentucky high school basketball coach to start five African American players. Jerry Tipton, “Ed Allin, Former UK Player Who Was a ‘Trailblazer’ as High School Coach, Dies,” Lexington Herald-Leader, August 14, 2020. 4. Billy Reed, Transition Game: The Story of S. T. Roach (Lexington, KY: Host Communications, 2001). 5. Tom Parker was named Southeastern Conference (SEC) Men’s Basketball Player of the Year for the 1971–72 season. 6. After Tom Payne’s departure, two Black men, Darryl Bishop and Elmore Stephens, played basketball for the Wildcats during the 1971–72 season as walk-ons from UK’s football team. According to bigbluehistory.net, Bishop played in five games that season, while Stephens played in six. See Jon Scott, “Darryl Bishop,” Kentucky Basketball, last modified April 30, 2023, http://www.bigbluehistory.net/bb/Statistics/Players/Bishop_Darryl.html; Jon Scott, “Elmore Stephens,” Kentucky Basketball, last modified April 30, 2023, http:// www.bigbluehistory.net/bb/Statistics/Players/Stephens_Elmore.html. 7. Brian Bennett, “Tom Payne: Happy Ending a Long Way Off,” Louisville CourierJournal, April 4, 2001.

4. “Come to Kentucky!” 1. Logan Bailey, “Bryan Station Romps with Givens’ Big 30,” Louisville Courier-Journal and Times, March 18, 1974. 2. Mike Johnson, “A Dream Come True: Bryan Station’s Givens Mr. Basketball,” Sunday Herald-Leader, March 31, 1974. 3. Paul Williams, “OHS Succumbs to Givens, Bryan Station,” Messenger-Inquirer (Owensboro, KY), March 15, 1974. 4. Mike Johnson, “Bryan Station’s Title Dream Shot Down by Male,” Lexington Herald, March 16, 1974. 5. Stuart Warner, “Bryan Station’s ‘Old Gang’ Broken Up by Male High,” Lexington Leader, March 16, 1974.

5. “How Did You Get So Good?” 1. Vertner L. Taylor, a graduate of Dunbar High School, was the first African American graduate of the UK pharmacy program in 1960. 2. John McGill, “Givens, Lee Cast Lot with UK,” Lexington Leader, April 18, 1974. 3. Bob White, “Kentucky-Indiana All-Stars Win Again,” Louisville Courier-Journal, April 29, 1974.

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6. The Road to San Diego 1. Dave Kindred, “A Friendly Tap?,” Louisville Courier-Journal and Times, December 8, 1974. 2. Darrell Bird, “Relive Magic of UK Win over Unbeaten IU in NCAA Tournament,” Cats’ Pause, March 22, 2020. 3. D. G. Fitzmaurice, “Victory Especially Sweet for Mike Flynn,” Lexington Sunday Herald-Leader, March 23, 1975. 4. Ibid. 5. John A. McGill, “Kentucky’s Upset Spurs Celebration,” Lexington Sunday HeraldLeader, March 23, 1975. 6. Ibid. 7. Rick Bailey, “Givens Does It All as Cats Coast 95–79,” Lexington Herald-Leader, March 30, 1975. 8. Ibid. 9. D. G. Fitzmaurice, “Kentucky’s Wildcats Fall to UCLA 92–85,” Lexington Herald, April 1, 1975. 10. Rick Bailey, “‘McAdoo’ Washington Completes Sweep of State’s NCAA Hopes,” Lexington Herald, April 1, 1975. 11. Fitzmaurice, “Kentucky’s Wildcats Fall to UCLA 92–85.”

7. NIT Champs! 1. Tev Laudeman, “Inspired N’western Jolts No. 7 (?) Kentucky 89–77,” Louisville Courier-Journal and Times, December 2, 1975. 2. D. G. Fitzmaurice, “‘Breakless’ UK Falls,” Lexington Leader, December 2, 1975. 3. Rick Bailey, “Cats Falter in Second Half as Tar Heels Win 90–77,” Lexington Herald, December 9, 1975. 4. D. G. Fitzmaurice, “Cats Uncork Offense, Zap Gators 96–89,” Lexington Herald, February 22, 1976. 5. Rick Bailey, “Wildcats ‘Folding Act’ Never Came On Stage,” Lexington Herald, February 22, 1976. 6. Madison Square Garden’s current location on Manhattan’s West Side opened in 1968. It previously had been located at three other sites in the city, the first dating back to 1879. 7. D. G. Fitzmaurice, “Fowler, Lee Spark Cats to 67–61 Win,” Lexington Herald, March 14, 1976. 8. Ken Rappoport, “49er Stall Helps Foul-Plagued UK,” Lexington Herald, March 22, 1976. 9. Dave Kindred, “Team from Nowhere . . . UK Goes from 10–10 to NIT Title,” Louisville Courier-Journal, March 22, 1976. 10. D. G. Fitzmaurice, “UK Outlasts Badgers in Rupp Arena Debut,” Lexington Herald, November 28, 1976.

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11. D. G. Fitzmaurice, “It’s Claytor to Rescue as Cats Claw Keydets,” Lexington Herald, March 18, 1977. 12. Rick Bailey, “North Carolina Free Throws Knock Out Wildcats, 79–72,” Lexington Leader, March 20, 1977. 13. Ibid.

8. Rolling Along 1. Paul Borden, “Lee’s Monster Dunk Seals 109–75 UK Win over Soviet Union,” Louisville Courier-Journal and Times, November 12, 1977. 2. Mike Johnson, “Givens Is ‘Knighted’ as UK Wins the War,” Lexington Leader, December 6, 1977. 3. Al Browning, “‘One of Our Biggest,’ Says C. M. Newton,” Tuscaloosa News, January 24, 1978. 4. Paul Borden, “Starters on Bench, LSU Outlasts Kentucky,” Louisville Courier-Journal and Times, February 12, 1978. 5. Ibid. 6. Paul Borden, “The Season,” Louisville Courier-Journal, March 29, 1978. 7. D. G. Fitzmaurice, “No ‘Artistic Success,’ but Cats Subdue Rebs,” Lexington Herald, February 14, 1978. 8. Rick Bailey, “Seniors Show Their Best Stuff as Cats Romp,” Lexington Leader, March 5, 1978. 9. D. G. Fitzmaurice, “Wildcats ‘Bench’ Florida St. in NCAA Opener,” Sunday HeraldLeader, March 12, 1978. 10. Ibid.

9. Back to the Final Four 1. Billy Reed, “Tournament Time: Kentucky Passes over Arkansas,” Louisville CourierJournal, March 26, 1978. 2. “Sullivan Award,” University of Kentucky, accessed June 8, 2023, https://sullivanaward .uky.edu/.

11. Low Point 1. In 1986, Kenny “Sky” Walker finished his Wildcat career with 2,080 points, so I now rank third in all-time scoring, with 2,038 points. 2. 8(a) program eligibility is generally limited to small businesses “unconditionally owned and controlled by one or more socially and economically disadvantaged individuals who are of good character and citizens of and residing in the United States” that demonstrate “potential for success.” See Robert Jay Dilger and R. Corinne Blackford,

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SBA’s “8(a) Program”: Overview, History, and Current Issues, CRS Report, Congressional Research Service, last modified March 9, 2022, https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R44844.pdf.

12. Orlando-Bound 1. Brian Schmitz, “$115 Million Question: What’s Shaq’s Problem?,” Orlando Sentinel, July 18, 1996.

13. A Matter of Reputation 1. James 1:2–4 (New International Version).

15. The Ties That Bind 1. Faculty in African American and Africana Studies, “AAAS Faculty Letter to President Capilouto,” University of Kentucky, July 23, 2020, https://aaas.as.uky.edu/aaas -faculty-letter-president-capilouto.

Index

Page numbers in italics refer to illustrations. 8(a) program, 161, 224n2 Aaron, Hank, 29 AAU National Championship, 190–91 Abdul-Jabbar, Kareem, 57 Aberdeen, Stu, 58 Akita Isuzu Motors, 147, 150 Akita Isuzu Motors basketball team, 144, 154, 156 Akita town, 147, 150–51 Alcindor, Lew, 57 Aleksinas, Chuck, 106 Algernon Sydney Sullivan Award, 132 Ali, Muhammad, 29 Allen, Forrest “Phog,” 110 Allin, Ed, 41, 42, 43, 52, 222n3 Alpha Phi Alpha, 73 Amateur Athletic Union (AAU), 177 Anderson, Nick, 174–75 Andrews, Jim, 185 Arkansas Razorbacks, 122, 123–24 Asics, 135 Atlanta Hawks, 133, 136 Baesler, Scotty, 132 Baker, Dave, 212, 213

Ballard Bruins, 63 Banks, Gene, 127 baptism, 26, 29 Barlow, Bobby, xvi, 38, 41–43, 42, 47, 50, 52, 54, 56, 63, 64, 75 basketball programs, national powerhouse, 57–58 Beatty, Stewart, 52, 62 Ben Kaufmann, working with, 141, 143 Bennett, Brian, 46 Benson, Kent, 79, 81 Bernard, Mike, 30 Berry, Julius S., 46 Big Blue Nation, xviii, 87, 132, 211-13 Big Brothers Big Sisters of America, 89 Big Brothers of America, 89 Bishop, Darryl, 222n6 Big Sisters International, 89 Bingham, Kenny, 19, 20; death of, 203 Bingham, Robert, 19 Biogas Technologies, 212 Birch, Ron, 40, 41 Blair, Briyana, 191 Blair, Garfield “Gar,” 177, 190 Blanton, Jerry, 185 Blass, Norman, 133 227

228

Index

Blue Devils, 124, 125, 128 Bluegrass-Aspendale, 9, 21, 22, 32; early life in, 1–3, 2, 5; family in, 6, 8, 10–16; and food insecurity, 12 Bowie, Sam, 192 Bowlin, Blevins, 193–94 Bowlin, Kerry, 193, 194, 213–14 Bowling Green, 104 Bowlin Group, 193, 195–96, 200, 211 Branham (Mackie and Jodie), 168 Brewer, Ron, 123, 124 broadcasting opportunities, 143, 156, 157, 158, 168, 171–72, 176, 212–15 Bromley, Rob, 156 Brown, Bob W., 158–59 Brown, Danny, 185, 188 Brown, Hubie, 42, 137, 138, 184 Brown, John Will “Scoop,” 44 Brown, T’erea, 191 Bruins, 57, 86, 87 Brunk, Doug, xv Bryan Station Defenders, 41, 43, 48–49, 52–53, 53 Bryan Station High School, 37, 38, 40, 206, 208; Kentucky High School Basketball Tournament and, 52–63 Buckner, Quinn, 80 Calipari, John (coach), 81, 107, 205 Campbell, Robert “Soup,” 32, 33–34 Capilouto, Eli, 208 Caray, Harry “Chip,” III, 166, 168, 175 Cardinals, 86 Casey, Ancie, 60 Casey, Dwane, 93, 101, 102, 107, 118, 128 CBS, 156 Central Michigan, 82 Charles Young Community Center (Lexington), 28, 29 Charlotte Hornets, 213 Chicago Bulls, 143, 175

Clay, Buck, 39, 40, 41, 43, 52, 60, 62, 63 Clay, James Cooley, 39, 40, 41, 43, 52, 60, 62, 63 Claytor, Truman, 93, 101, 102, 105, 107, 117, 118, 128 Cleveland, Charles, 81 coal business, 161–62 college life, 72–73 color analyst job, 165–66, 213 color TV, 25 Compton, Gloria, 54, 55 Conner, Jimmy Dan, 73, 76, 79, 82, 84, 86, 87, 92, 209 Converse, 133, 135 Courts, Scott, 106, 128 Covington Holy Cross, 50 Cowan, Fred, 106, 118, 128, 145, 146, 185, 203 criminal charges and reputation, 180–88 Crimson Tide, 81, 111–12, 123 Crum, Denny, 205 Cunningham, Ed, 138 Cunningham, Melvin, 35 Dallas Mavericks, 143 Dampier, Louie, 47 Danforth, Roy, 86 Danville (Kentucky), 10, 22, 23, 31 Davis, Anthony, 137 Davis, A. W., 58 Davis, Jonathan, 5 Davis, Walter, 81, 105 Delph, Marvin, 123 Deluzio, Alexa, 176–77, 191 Deluzio, Don, 177, 181, 186 Deluzio, Sherri, 177 Derby Classic, 68 Dirt Bowl, 35–36, 46, 51, 71; Super Sunday of, 36–37 Domine, Bob, 156

Index

229

Donne, Elena Delle, 191 Douglas, Leon, 81 Douglass Park (Lexington), 35, 36–37, 39, 51 Douglass High, 43, 222n2 Drew, John, 138, 140 Drexler, Clyde, 174 Duke, 124, 125–28 Dunbar Junior High School, 31, 32, 37 Dunn, T. R., 81 Dunn, Tyrone, 56 DuPont, William “Bill,” III, 169 Durant, Kevin, 137

Flynn, Mike, 73, 74, 76, 82, 83, 87, 92, 209 Fogle, Jerry, 60–61 Fogle, Tayna, 185 Ford, Phil, 81, 105 Forty Minutes to Glory (Brunk), xv Forty-Third District Tournament, 48, 56 Foster, Stephen, 71, 113 Fowler, Bob, 93 Frankfort Sports Center, 61 Frazier, Walt, 100 French, Jackie, xvii

East Lexington. See Bluegrass-Aspendale Edelman, Ray, 185 endorsements, 133, 135 Erving, Julius “Dr. J.,” 138, 165 ESPN, 156, 176 Etcheberry, Pat, 74, 75 Eyster, Bert, 91

Gabriel, Dick, 143 Gearon, Michael, 133 Gettelfinger, Chris, 106, 112, 128 Gilmore, Artis, 47 Givens, Andrew, 13–14, 38 Givens, Anthony (Gee), 15–16, 21, 22, 38, 53–54, 65, 73, 114, 132 Givens, Barbara, 15, 65 Givens, Betty (mother), 6, 10–12, 33, 40, 52, 54, 59, 64, 114, 158; disciplinary measures of, 11–12, 15–16 Givens, Charlie, xvii, 44, 69 Givens, Jaimie, 173, 174, 176–78, 182, 187, 189–90, 196–98, 204; working at Zynga, 197–98; raising, 164–65, 168, 169 Givens, Jeremy, 174, 175, 182, 186–87, 200, 202, 204; job at Owen Electric Cooperative, 200, 202; raising, 160–61, 164, 168, 169 Givens, Linda, 143, 145, 149, 153, 156, 162, 167, 168, 170–71, 180, 181, 189, 192, 197, 202, 204, 205; children with, 160–61, 164–65; marriage with, 158–60, 158; miscarriage of, 164 Givens, Lizzy, 84

Farmer, Tracy, 91 fatherhood, 160–61 Fayette County, 37, 90, 203 Ferguson, Scott, 89–90, 91 Ferrell, Doug, 56 Final Four, 84, 105, 121, 122, 123, 125 financial constraints, managing, 161–63, 167–69 First Baptist Church of Windermere, 168, 170 First Baptist Church Orlando, 182 fishing, 51, 91–92; with grandmother, 23, 25 Fiske, Charlie, 60 Fitzpatrick, Annette, 51-52 Fitzpatrick, Roger, 51-52 Florida Gators, 81–82, 94, 97, 112 Florida State University Seminoles, 116–18, 117

230

Index

Givens, Michael, 15, 21, 22, 38, 84, 132, 159 Givens, Paulette, 16, 186 Givens, Regenia, 11, 13, 33, 38 Givens, Reuben, 40 Gminski, Mike, 127 Gomelsky, Alexandr, 109 gospel songs, 6, 8 grandchildren, 196, 198–202, 199, 201, 208 Grant, Horace, 174 Grant, Travis, 30 Greater Liberty Baptist Church (Lexington), 26, 27 Green, Richard, 32, 33–34 Green, Steve, 82 Green Acres Park, 39 Grevey, Kevin, 73, 76, 84, 86, 87, 208, 209 Griffith, Darrell, 63 Griffith’s Market, 17 Grunfeld, Ernie, 104 Guokas, Matt, 167 Guyette, Bob, 73, 82, 86, 209

Harrison County, 60-61 Harvey, Bob, 185 Haskins, Clem, 58 Haskins, Merion, 46, 72, 76, 98, 101, 109, 207, 209 Hawkins, Bo, 31–32 Hawkins, Terry, 56 Hayes, Elvin, 57 Henry Clay High School, 15, 34, 36, 37, 60, 61–62 Herald-Leader (newspaper), 50, 56 Higgs, Kenny, 50, 62, 64, 112, 113 Hodge, Jim, 52 Hollow Creek, 37–39 Holmes Hall, 72 home ownership, sense of, 37, 38–39 Hoosiers. See Indiana University Hoosiers Horry, Robert, 174 Houston Rockets, 174 Hubbard, Carl, 41 Hughes, Brenda Garner, xvii Hundley, Ted, 40, 41, 44, 47–48, 50, 55, 56

Hack-a-Shaq, 174 Hacker, Ralph, 214 Hale, Jerry, 73, 185 Hall, Danny, 73 Hall, Joe B. (coach), xvi, 42, 66, 75–76, 79–83, 87, 88, 93, 94, 97, 99, 101, 103, 105–7, 110, 111, 113, 116, 118–25, 128, 130, 133, 135, 205; death of, 203–4 Hamilton, Joe, 44 Hamilton, Leonard (coach), xvi, 69, 70, 71–72, 76, 111, 116, 120, 205 Hammond, Steve, 170 Hampton, Doug, 60, 91 Hampton, John, 91 Happy Chandler, A. B., 113–14 Hardaway, Penny, 174

Indiana University Hoosiers, 79, 80, 82, 83, 84, 109 injuries, 122–23, 124 Issel, Dan, 47, 108, 157 Jackson, Anthony, 39, 52, 60, 116 Jackson, Marie, 110, 111 Jackson, Norman, 52, 60, 62, 63 Jackson, V. A., 110, 111 James, LeBron, 137 Japan; Akita, 150–51; food in, 151–53; national basketball championship in, 155–56; playing basketball in, 145–49, 155; pro teams in, 153–54 Japan Basketball Association (JBA), 134, 147, 155, 156 Jefferson Pilot Sports, 156

Index Jenkins, Jerry, 60 JMI Sports, 212, 213 Joe B. Hall Wildcat Lodge, 110–11 Johnson, Ervin “Magic,” 120 Johnson, Larry, 46, 72, 74, 76, 100–104, 102, 104, 109, 207, 209 Johnson, Odyncy, 52 Johnson Central, 50 Johnston, Mark, 170 Joneses mentality, 160, 162, 163, 169, 170 Jordan, Michael, 174, 176, 194 Kaminkow, Benita, 197 Kaminkow, Joe, 197–98 Kansas Jayhawks, 110 Kansas State, 100 Keightley, Bill, 90, 94–96, 95 Kelser, Greg, 121 Kentucky Colonels, 47 Kentucky High School Athletic Association Boys’ Sweet Sixteen Basketball Tournament, 49–50 Kentucky-Indiana High School AllStar series, 69 Kentucky Star Coal Company, 143, 157, 160, 161–62 Kentucky State High School Athletic Association, 64 Kentucky State University (KSU), 30 King, Bernard, 104 King, Kevin, 197, 198, 204 Knight, Bobby (coach), 80, 109 Koskegawa, Judy, 151 Kupchak, Mitch, 81 Lafayette, 49 LaGarde, Tommy, 105 Laimbeer, Bill, 125 Lamont, 59–60, 141, 142, 161, 181, 202 Lamp, Jeff, 63 Leach, Tom, 212, 213, 214, 215

231

Ledford, Cawood, 116, 214 Lee, Reverend Albert B., 26, 65, 69, 159; as role model, 66–67 Lee, James, xvii, 26, 29, 31, 34, 36, 37, 38, 50, 56, 58, 60, 62, 64–73, 65, 67, 74, 76, 77, 84, 88, 91, 97, 98, 100, 101, 102, 105, 106, 109, 113, 114, 115, 124, 125, 128, 130, 139, 205, 209, 210 Lee, Mary, 65 Lexington African-American Sports Hall of Fame (LAASHOF), xvii Lexington Athletic Club (LAC), 143 Lexington Junior High School, 31, 37 Ligon, Jim “Goose,” 47–48 Little Inn restaurant, washing dishes at, 21 Littleton, Pat, 52 Livisay, Charles, 41, 42, 43, 52, 222n2 Los Angeles Lakers, 175 Louisville, 84, 86 Louisville Courier-Journal, 46 Louisville Invitational Tournament (LIT), 61, 63 Louisville Male, 63 LSU Tigers, 112–13 Macklin, Durand “Rudy,” 112, 113 Macy, Kyle, 101, 102–3, 107, 110, 118, 120, 121, 124, 128, 212 Madison Square Garden, 100 Magic of Success formula, 176 Malone, Moses, 68, 165 Manhattan, 99–100 Man in the Mirror, The (Morley), 170 Marathon Oil Amateur Athletic Union team, 132 Marquette, 82 Matheson (Mark and Carla), 168 May, Scott, 79, 80, 83 McCombs, Walt, 102, 122, 123 McDaniels, Jim, 58 McDowell, Louis, 41

232

Index

Mears, Ray, 58 Memorial Coliseum, 61, 71, 77, 82, 83, 103, 109, 114, 132, 209 Memphis State, 128 Miami University Redskins, 118–19 Michigan State Spartans, 120–21 Midway High School, 43 Miller, Robert, 64 Mississippi State, 82 Mitchell, Bill, xvi, 182–85, 189 Mitchell, Charles, 41 Mitchell, Lucias, 30 Moffet, Dick, 159 Moncrief, Sidney, 123 Monroe, “Earl the Pearl,” 100 Moore, Donnie, 52 Morgan, Paul, 41 Morley, Patrick, 170 Mototaka Kohama (coach), 134, 144, 145, 152–53, 154, 156 Murphy, Isaac Burns, 3, 4 Murphy, Mike, 139 Naismith, James, 110 name, image, and likeness (NIL) policy, of NCAA, 135, 137 Nance, Lynn (coach), 46, 80 Narita International Airport, 134 National Bank of Cynthiana, work at, 90, 92 National Invitational Tournament (NIT), 97, 99–101 NBA Draft, 133 NBA Eastern Conference Semifinals, 138 NBA season, 140–41 NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship, 26, 131 NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament, 104, 116 NCAA Mideast Regional, 82, 84, 105, 118 NCAA National Championship, 92, 111

NCAA Tournament, 81, 82, 99, 176 Neal, Eddie, 41 nets, cutting of, 129, 130 Newton, Charles “C. M.,” 111, 112 Niagara Purple Eagles, 100 Nike, 190 Nippon Mining team, 155 Noplis, Perry, 52 North Carolina Tar Heels, 81, 94, 105 Northwestern University, 93–94 Notre Dame, 124, 125 O’Koren, Mike, 105 Olajuwon, Hakeem, 174 O’Neal, Shaquille, 173–74 Orlando Comets, 176–77, 182, 190–91, 191 Orlando Magic, 165, 169, 213 Orlando Sentinel, 175 Owen Electric Cooperative, 200 Owens, Dallas, 185 Owensboro High School Red Devils, 50, 62–63 Parker, Robin, 52 Parker, Tom, 45, 46, 222n5 Parsons, Dick (coach), 46, 76, 116 Pass, Nate, 12, 186 Payne, Tom, 45, 46, 207, 211 Peeples, P. G., Sr., xviii, 69 Philadelphia 76ers, 138 Philadelphia Big 5, 104 Phillips, Candy, 202, 203 Phillips, Mike, 73, 74, 86, 100–103, 102, 104, 105, 106, 110, 113, 114, 115, 117, 118, 119, 123–25, 128, 210; death of, 202–3 Phillips, Sam, 91 Pratt, Mike, 212–13, 215; death of, 213 Prewitt, Al, 38 Prince, Tayshaun, 192 Princeton, 104–5 Providence, 100

Index Raker, Lee, 63 Ramada Inn (Lexington), 39–40, 51 Ramsey, Derrick, 93 Rayburn, Jimmy, 165 Reed, Patty, 91 Reed, Willis, 100 Roach, “S. T.,” 44; as father figure, 69, 71 Robey, Rick, 65, 73, 74, 81, 86, 94, 96, 99–105, 101, 102, 104, 105, 106, 107, 113, 114, 115, 118, 119, 123, 124, 125, 128, 130, 208, 209, 210, 212 Robinette, Jane, 54–55, 54 Robinson, Jackie, 29 Rollins, Katreesa, 177 Rollins, Wayne “Tree,” 177 Rooster Tail spinnerbait, 91 Rose Lane Apartments, 91 Rossmeyer, Bruce, 168 Roundfield, Danny, 139 Routt, Alice, 51 Routt, Paul, 51 Routt, Sandy, 51–52 Runnin’ Rebels, 115 Rupp, Adolph, 46, 66, 93, 97, 110, 111, 210–11 Rupp Arena, 103, 104, 109, 113–14, 116, 157, 208–9 Sakai (company), 151, 152, 156 San Diego, 84, 86 Scott, Dennis, 174 Seaton Center, 106 senior day, 113–15, 115 Seventy-Eight Distribution, LLC, 212 Sharp, Jeff, 41 Shidler, Jay, 101, 102, 103, 104, 107, 110, 124, 128 Shy, Marie, 9–10 Shye, Carl, 40, 41 Singletary, Otis A., 72 Singleton, Eric, 56 Smith, Burt, 159

233

Smith, Dwight, 58 Smith, Elmore, 30 Smith, G. J., 73 Smith, Helen (Gran), 10, 22–23, 24, 51, 91 Smith, Jack, 6–8, 7 Smith, John, 84 Smith, Sam, 41 Smith, Tubby, 211 Snure, Michael, 186 Southeastern Conference (SEC) play, 81, 91, 104 Southern Methodist University Mustangs, 109 Soviet Union National team, 109 Speers, Carter, 170 Steele, David, 175–76 Stephens, Elmore, 222n6 Stephens, Tim, 101, 102, 128 Still, Art, 185 Still, Valerie, 185 Stout, Louis, 69, 71 Sunshine Network, 172 Sykes, Melvin, 41 Syracuse, 84, 86 Taku Umetsu, 156 Tar Heels. See North Carolina Tar Heels Tates Creek High School, 48, 49, 55, 56, 57 Tatum, Reece “Goose,” 46 Taylor, Glenn, 52 Taylor, Joan, 65 Taylor, Vert, 65–66, 65, 69 Tennessee Volunteers, 104, 113 Theus, Reggie, 115 Thomas, Brooke, 191 Thomas, James, 177 Thomas, Krystal, 191 Thomas, Stephanie, 191 Thompson (Bob and Edna), 158 Thompson, Alexandra, 173 Thompson, Kenny, 52

234

Index

Thompson, Linda. See Givens, Linda Thompson, Rhodes, 159 Thruston, Jerry, 50 Tkachenko, Vladimir, 109 TNT, 176 Tong, John, 50 Trinity Baptist Church (Lexington), 163 Tripuca, Kelly, 125 Turner, Bobby, 63 UCLA, 84, 86, 128 UK Invitational Tournament, 104 UK Sports Network Radio, 212 ulcer emergency, 162 UNC, 105 UNC Charlotte 49ers, 100, 101 United States Specialty Sports Association (USSSA), 177 University City Property Management Company, 188 University of Kentucky Basketball Network, 156 University of Louisville, 58–59 University of Tennessee, 58 UNLV, 113, 114–15, 122 Upward Sports, 169 US All-Stars, 68 Utah, 104 Vanderbilt (Vandy), 82, 96 Vick, Alan, 85 Virginia Military Institute Keydets, 105 Walker, Kenny “Sky,” 224n1 Wall, John, 192 Walton, Bill, 128 Warford, Reggie, xvi, 46, 56, 71, 72, 74, 76–78, 91, 96, 100, 101, 116, 207, 210; death of, 205 Washington, Bobby “Poo Cat,” 44, 46

Washington, Butch, 41 Washington, Herb, 35, 44 Watkins, Rosalyn, 39 Watkins family, 38–39 Watson, Marc, 188–89, 192 Weathers, Darrell, 19, 20 Weathers, Lawrence, 19–20, 20 Weathers, Robert, 19 White, Susie, 159 Wilcoxson, Billy B., 192–93 Wildcat Memories (Brunk), xv Wildcats, 82, 101 Wilkerson, Bobby, 80 Williams, Carson, 202 Williams, LaVon, 101, 102, 118, 147 Williams, Pat, 165, 166 Williams, Ronnie, 40, 41, 49, 50 Williams, Rusty, 200 Wilson, George, 46 Wimmer, Buffy, 168 Wimmer, Charles, 168, 170 Windermere, 169 Windram, Tom, 172 Wisconsin, 103 Woodall, Paul, 38 Wooden, John, 86–87 Woodford County High School, 43 Woodson, Mike, 109 Woolridge, Orlando, 125 WVLK-AM radio, broadcasting at, 143 Wyatt, Betty and Charlie, 12; Christmas at the house of, 13, 14 Wynn, Dorothy, xvi, 25, 26 Wynn, Stephanie, 25 Wynn, Stephen, 21, 22, 25 Wynn, Warren, xvi, 25, 26 “Y” gesture, 214, 215 Young, Charles, 221n1 Yuth, David, 182

About the Author

After earning 1974 “Mr. Basketball” honors from the state of Kentucky as a senior at Bryan Station High School in Lexington, Kentucky, forward Jack “Goose” Givens became the first African American All-American to sign with the University of Kentucky Wildcats men’s basketball program. He led UK to the 1978 NCAA National Championship with a forty-one-point performance against the Duke Blue Devils, helping to secure the program’s fifth NCAA national title—the first without Adolph Rupp as head coach—and was named the Helms Foundation College Basketball Player of the Year for the 1977–78 season. During his four-year college career, Givens scored the third most individual points in the history of UK men’s basketball (2,038). He also holds the record in UK men’s basketball for most field goals made (843) and most field goals attempted (1,683), and in 1992, his number 21 jersey was retired to the rafters of Rupp Arena, which is the ultimate honor for any Wildcat player or coach. Givens was selected sixteenth overall by the Atlanta Hawks in the 1978 NBA Draft. After a two-year run with the Hawks, Givens played basketball in Europe and in Japan. He then became a college and NBA television color analyst, including stints with the UK Basketball Network, ESPN, Turner Broadcasting System, and the Orlando Magic. He currently serves as vice president of business development and external affairs for the Walton, Kentucky–based Bowlin Group and is the men’s basketball color analyst for the UK Sports Network. In 2022, Givens was inducted into the inaugural class of the Lexington African-American Sports Hall of Fame. He

and his wife, Linda, have two children and four grandchildren. They live in Georgetown, Kentucky. About Doug Brunk

When he’s not writing about health and medicine by day or attending concerts by The Who and other musicians who inspire him, award-winning journalist Doug Brunk follows the Kentucky Wildcats men’s basketball program, a passion he developed during his childhood in Wilmore, Kentucky. Brunk is the author of Wildcat Memories: Inside Stories from Kentucky Basketball Greats and Forty Minutes to Glory: Inside the Kentucky Wildcats’ 1978 Championship Season. He holds journalism degrees from Point Loma Nazarene University and the S. I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University and lives in San Diego with his wife and their two dogs.

Race and Sports Series Editors: Gerald L. Smith and Derrick E. White This series publishes works that expand the boundaries of sports history. By exploring the intersections of sports and racial and ethnic histories through the racial dynamics of gender, culture, masculinity, sexuality, and power as represented in biography, community, film, literature, and oral history, the series opens a new analysis of American sport and culture.