I had two really good friends in high school. One I will refer to as "Big B". He was a 6'5" hairy beast with a deep voice that sounded like thunder. I had known him since the mid 70's, we went to the same grade school, were from the same neighborhood, and he was a rec rat like myself. The other friend, known as "Big Swan", I met in high school. He was originally from Rock Island, Illinois, but his mom moved the family to the ICE to escape the recession that hit the Mississippi river towns in the mid-eighties. Big Swan was a 350 pound 6' tall black kid who was gifted on the football field and was even recruited by some big colleges when he still played for Rock Island. Moving to a new city and a new school (a predominantly white school) had its adverse effects on Swan. He had a contagious laugh that compelled me to befriend him. I admit that the fact that he was an African American had a lot to due with my initial feelings of wanting to befriend him, which is one underlying sub theme in my stories and in my path to self discovery. I loved basketball. The best basketball players were black. Therefore black people were in my mind somehow "cooler" than white people. One of my favorite old movies exemplifies this type of mind set of racial or national glorification of a people or a culture due to the love of a sport. The movie is called "Breaking Away" and is about a cyclist from Bloomington Indiana who pretends to be Italian because Italians are the best cyclists in the world. The reason I am pointing this out is because it has a lot to do with my decision to go to the University of Dubuque to play basketball. The b-ball team there had a lot of black inner city athletes and this was an important aspect in my decision to apply and attend the school.
When I first started writing my stories I wrote about my personal slam dunk life history, from the first dunk and onwards. Then the other great basketball stories began to spill out and I had all the stories divided up into geographical locals. The Dubuque stories are being written down for the first time here, and I am going to try and tell that tale in chronological order, but since this is a Blog, I may just post the stories as I remember and as I am inspired to write and tell them.
Big B, Big Swan, and I moved to the old river city of Dubuque in the winter of 1990. Big B and I were enrolled in school at UD while Big Swan planned on getting a job and possibly applying to the small university at a future date. I was moving from a small town in Wisconsin where I had been going to a junior college for one semester. We rented a five story duplex in Dubuque located on one of the steepest roads I have ever seen. We brought with us to our new crib a truck load of beer and food we had confiscated from Swan's former place of employment. The food and beer went fast. Big B and I did not officially join the basketball team in what was then the middle of the basketball season so as to save our eligibility for an entire year. We did lift weights with the team and participated in other functions with the guys, but that year we mainly settled for playing intramurals and post season pick up games. We went to every varsity basketball game and years later we laughed about our attire: we wore turtleneck shirts and gold chains. I think a lot of folks in Dubuque and at the school were intimidated by the three kids from the ICE, which was not our intention and we tried to make other friends. At that time I was focused on becoming the best basketball player possible more than anything else (fortunately school came easy for me so I did not need to put a lot of effort into it in order to do fairly well). My old slam dunking mentor from the ICE, who I will call "Shot", the kid who introduced me to noon ball at the downtown IC rec center etc... had given me some hip weights to help train and increase my jumping ability. During that first semester in Dubuque I would strap on the hip weights in the evening and step outside to do some jump rope and then run that big monster hill which was just outside the door and a few steps to the right. Big B and Swan were often inspired by my dedication and they joined in every now and then. These were the guys I used to run secret work outs with in high school at our grade school football field, so they knew the routine and understood my desire and dedication.
The basketball team that we went to watch during that first year at UD was awesome! Div. I athletes up and down the roster. I really mean D. I athletes galore, for several actually played at big schools before transferring to the tiny UD. The team was led by two players who later became my good friends, one became an eventual roommate, and they both became my JV coach the next year. They were both black kids from the inner city. "D Rog" was a guard from Hammonds Indiana, a suburb of Gary. The other was called "Big Moe" or just "Mo" after the NBA legend Moses Malone. Mo came from the inner city of New Orleans. Mo was glossed as the Larry Johnson of Div. III by UD's head coach (LJ was a former college dominant force from UNLV at the time who after college also had a respectable NBA career). I learned a lot from watching, playing with and against, and being coached by these two cats. Their basketball stories are greater than mine, and I can only tell a small snippet of their basketball legacy, of the time when their paths crossed mine in this long winding trail of life. The thing that was so cool about D and Mo was that they both could dunk like basketball comic book heroes. The coach at UD had mad recruiting connections in Gary, New Orleans, and Chicago, and many of the other players on the team were from those places as well. One such player I will call "Allec Hasbeen", a former Div. I player (at the University of Oregon) who was also from New Orleans. He was a lanky 6'2" guard who dunked on a daily basis in real games and in practice. Another player I will call Rye Hubb, also from New Orleans who was another former Div. I athlete, from the University of New Orleans (a school once coached by former Iowa State coach Tim Floyd who also ended up coaching the NBA's Chicago Bulls in the post Phil Jackson / Michael Jordan era). Rye was a lefty 6'2" shooting guard who I saw dunk in a UD game, and he had a twin brother who shot right handed named Bry Hubb who played on Big B and my intramural team while waiting for eligibility status to play on the school team. Another slam dunking player from Gary was a point guard I will call Rue. And how can I forget that cat from Chi. named Square. The team also had some Iowa farm boys that could throw down. The starting center was a 6'9" player from Makoquita I will call Spock. He became the assistant coach for the school's team which I played on two years later. He was a pretty good player (and great rebounder) considering he was from Iowa and all. "Zeke" was a dark skinned brother from Rockford Illinois who played mostly JV his first year, and Ike Lambert from Hazel Green Wisconsin "starred" on the JV with the Rockford native. Darby was a smooth as silk point guard with crazy handles and mad hops from Gary Indiana. And least but not last the 6'8" white hick from Indiana Brute Mahone. There were a few other guys on the team that first semester of spring 1990, but they all graduated or transferred or quit, so I really never got to play with them ever (except for a kid named Trellis who stayed around in school after his eligibility was up and worked in the athletic office). There was also a player from Morton Illinois on the squad that Zeke called 'Boulder Head', and the last player to round out the team that Big B and Swan and I watched that year and then played with the next year was a 6'2" guard named Mac who was from small town Iowa and like Spock was born and raised in Makoquita.
The one person who stands out in all my years at UD was D Rog. But really D Rog and Moe both together probably make up my greatest UD memories. But again, another kid who came to school and joined the team my first year of actually being on the team in 1991, Brag Havatake, also holds high status in my personal UD basketball legacy, especially considering he moved to the ICE and worked at the same job as me for a summer and was the last person I knew from the old UD scene, but his whole story must come later. And I can't mention D-Rog, Big Mo, and Havatake and not mention Ike Lambert without him being upset at being left out, but his story too shall come later. Back to D-Rog. This was the real nick name the kid went by, so anyone on the scene from back in the day will know who it is (I left all the nicknames the same but made new names for all the ballers and characters who didn't have one). D-Rog was an awesome player. Smooth, light skinned brother with pointy ears, looked like an elf warrior slashing through defenses on the way to the hoop for two, and he could shoot the rock from behind the arc too. From Gary Indiana but played for a school in a suburb called Hammonds, D-Rog said he wasn't recruited out of high school by any D. I schools. But like myself he grew about 4" after high school. To try and explain how good at basketball this player was, after his senior year D-Rog tried to join a traveling team called "Athletes in Action" but the Div. III roster was full. So he got a try out for the Div. I team. Not only did he make the team but he ended up leading the team in scoring. After coaching the JV team with Mo my first year of playing, D-Rog played a year of pro ball in Czeckloslavakia. D-Rog left his mark on the record books at UD and on the head coach who during the years after playing hired him as an assistant coach, at least up until I lost track of everyone from the old UD scene and even after coach took the head coaching position at cross town rival Clark College. I went to D-Rog's hometown of Gary with D-Rog and Mo over Easter break one time, so I heard a lot of stories about D-Rog. The team's player program my first year had like a two page writeup about D (and Mo) on the first few pages. Big B and I got to play against and with D-Rog and Mo in semi-organized pick up games our first semester there after their season ended. Which reminds me of how their season did end. UD had an awesome team; first place in the Iowa conference most of the year. But there was some great talent and some damn tough teams playing D. III ball in and around Iowa that year. A school near Waterloo Iowa called Wartburg College had a couple seven footers on their roster. Simpson College had a deep team with great shooters and shared the top spot in the league with UD most of the year. Platteville in Wisconsin, a mere 30 min. away from Dubuque, were the defending Div. III national champions led by head coach Bo Ryan. D-Rog and Mo's last game was against Simpson for the Iowa Conference title and a guaranteed invite to the Div. III National Tournament. Big B, Big Swan, and I were at the game in the jam packed confines of UD's little gymnasium sporting our gold chains outside our turtle necks as usual. We were jacked up that the team might make it to the playoffs, even though we weren't even playing on the team yet. The game saw UD with a 16 point lead at one point in the first half, but those sharp shooting guards of Simpson College shot their team back into the game and pulled out the victory. What a bummer it was and I gave D-Rog and Mo a razzing about that game many times there after. I had a lot of late night deep talks with D-Rog when he was one of my roommates in a house I rented the year he and Mo coached our JV team, or maybe it was the year after that he lived there. We did a lot of razzing on the road trips in the van and we drank many a 40 oz. (at least I did anyway) and chiefed many a fat blizzunt. He was a master roller. He and Mo and a couple of other cats came down to the ICE a couple of times. One of those times I took them to watch the second quarter of a football game at my high school where we stood outside the gate just for the second period and watched future NFL star Tim Dewight score about 4 touchdowns in a half an hour of real time. I took them out on the town and I even took them to some local dives I liked to hang out at (better beer and better pool tables) like Joe's Place and Mike's Tap. They thought I was a little weird after that and they left me at Mike's Place and headed back to the college bars and the young hot babes. The trip I took with Mo and D to Gary was one of the most memorable experiences of my life (story to be told at another time). I miss that fool D-Rog, and Big Mo too.
Big Mo was a 6'5" heavy set dark skinned brother from New Orleans, and was 'The Larry Johnson of Div. III" according to UD's head coach. Mo didn't say a lot, but when he spoke you listened. For his big size he could really jump. He dunked and blocked shots like Charles Barkley. It was awesome to see him play in his prime. I actually learned more moves from him than from D-Rog (maybe all the coaches were right and I was actually a post player and not a guard). Mo told me one time that on his walk to high school back in New Orleans he had to walk through a park where there were several basketball courts and always games going on. He said he didn't make it to school much because of the seduction of playing basketball instead. He wasn't recruited heavily because of his lack of height (for a post player at the D. I level) and his heavy build. Mo left his mark on the UD record books and he ended up playing pro ball in Ireland. He talked about his overseas experience and said it was too scary living with bomb threats and the violence of Northern Ireland. One thing D-Rog said about Mo and really about the great UD teams that they played on was that Mo was good for a guaranteed 20 points 10 boards a night coming from the post. That must have been a nice luxury to have. Big B used to have to match up against Mo a lot in pick up games and he too learned a lot from the big guy and even commented once that he really liked to play against him. Big B would have learned so much more had he not transferred to the U. of Iowa back in the IC the year Mo and D coached our JV team.
Once the season ended that first semester we were there, weight training and pick up games started right away. One of the first days playing I got into a squabble with the 6'8" hick from Indiana Brute Mahone. He had been smarting off and had been throwing some elbows, and upon taking it strong to the hoop he hammered me with a tough foul. I chimed in with a "I should have dunked it on ya" for good measure and then it was on. He pushed me, I pushed back, then Big B stepped in and put the Brute in his place. When I think of this memory and how the other players might have seen it, Big B and I must have been a menacing duo, and with the 350 lb. Big Swan completing our threesome posse from the ICE, we must have been somewhat intimidating to everyone. Big B and my rep had even attracted the attention of coach and we were called into his office (more than once). For the record I never thought Big B was tougher than me, he just liked to fight and intimidate more than me, and I found that aspect of our 15 or so year long experience on the basketball court to be wildly amusing (as long as he was on my team, which he was most of the time except for at noon ball at the Robert A. Lee). As far as Brute Mahone goes, he pulled that crap with everyone and in every game he ever played in, and every ball player knows someone like him.

I loved to shoot on my own and one day I was in the athletic facility at UD my first semester there working on my shot, and two of the basketball players were in the office doing work study. They were Rue from Gary, Indiana and Ike Lambert from small town southwest Wisconsin. I saw that they were kind of checking out my game and my workout as they sat in another room behind a large plexi-glass window. I wanted to impress them I guess, or at least I didn't want to look too lame doing my shooting work outs, so I started throwing down some dunks. The adrenalin must have been flowing pretty good because I was doing two handed between the legs Dominique Wilkens reverse dunks. In later years Ike said he remembered that day and he and Rue were impressed with my hops and with my dunks.
The inter mural team Big B and I got on with Bry Hubb and two cats named Eric and Gerb was a fun team, and we ran shop on everyone and won every game by twenty points or more. I was jumping as high as ever in my life and I was actually averaging about two dunks a game, until disaster struck, a basketball players Nemisis, a rolled ankle. The play occurred in the game against the football players. A kid named Chris Streets (one of the only real names I will use in my stories), a former basketball player for UD two years prior, stuck his foot out as I drove the lane, I stepped on it and then I went down hard. My ankle was purple half way up to my knee the next day. I don't think I ever fully recovered back to where I was from that injury, and it was just one of the many ankle injuries I suffered on the hard wood and the blacktop during my basketball "career". I was dunking so often back then I can't even remember them all. During that period, that first semester at UD, and after using the hip weights and running up that big ass hill outside our crib I was jumping so high that I was catching ally oops and rebounds and throwing them down two handed. I remember the night after the injury back at our pad with Big Swan and Big B in the living room watching one of our only nine video taped movies (no TV reception) while I lay in the tub so depressed I didn't even bother to ice or elevate.
I wish we would have stayed in that house but Swan had a hard time landing a job in the city of cross burnings. Eventually we got kicked out of the duplex and Big B moved into the dorms and roomed with Spock while Swan and I found another very interesting, unique and quite memorable pad. It was located above a bar called Murph's South End Tap, just meters from the shores of the old Mississippi. The first summer in Dubuque was a weird one. Swan landed a job at Wendy's and made some friends. I split time between Dubuque and the IC. Big B decided to transfer to The U of Iowa. At the end of the summer Swan got a new pad with a friend from work. I was looking forward to the upcoming semester and basketball season. The coach at UD was running a style of play called 'Loyola Maramount'. It was high speed, run the opponent into the ground, run and gun basketball. Over the summer he sent us a t-shirt that said "Run for your teammates" on the back of it and a big basketball and "UD"in big letters on the front. He also sent us a workout schedule. It stressed lifting weights but especially running. The next semester, fall 1991 I think, I shacked up with Ike Lambert and a cool as hell cat from Chicago named Spike in a co-ed dorm located right on the tiny UD campus. The first week of school the team had to do a timed five mile run from the school and down Grand Ave to the "old Firehouse" (as coach called it). No wonder Big B didn't come back. That run practically killed some of the guys trying out for the team. According to NCAA regulations we weren't even supposed to be practicing yet. But I liked the fact that being on the team was a year round commitment. It may have been Division III but the coach ran it like a Div. I program.
The new year brought on a whole new crop of faces. Black B from East Chi and White B from Bloomington Ill., Morris Vankinscoff from Chi., the "Mad Russian" Cray Murphy from Bellvue, the red headed "Period Baby" Todd Huddard, local boy Brag Havatake from Dubuque Hempstead high school, a Morman kid who left after the first couple weeks, and a short and plump sharp shooter named Rundy who's dad was a high school coach and friends of UD's head coach. Spike, my room mate, was new to the team but not to the school. There was a whole other cast of characters that played in pick up games but not for the team. They included cats with names like Big Bake, Main, JT, Scooby, and Shaft. The first day of pick up games we were all trying to intimidate each other with a spontaneous pre-game dunk off. Black B and Morris Vankinscoff threw down some impressive dunks. Morris later said he had never dunked like that before. Havatake could jump out the gym, but his dunks weren't quite as nasty as the other guys. I guess I held my own. I was the only off the stride jumper besides Zeke and to a lesser extent my roomie Ike Lambert. I played mostly JV that first full year. The senior 6'9" center Spock, his townie friend from Makoquita the 6'2"Mac, Zeke, Ike Lambert, the Kid from Morton, and Black B were the mainstay of the team that year. Darby was ineligible. The rest of the freshman class played JV and whipped up on the varsity team every day in practice. We eventually all got playing time on varsity and all had our moments, but our original JV team, before injuries to the varsity broke us up, was a scoring machine. We were putting up 150 points in many a game. D-Rog and Mo looked like pretty good coaches. That year was a great learning experience. It had its ups and its downs. Life in the dorm was fun. I had two great roommates in Ike and Spike. They were two of the most honest and sincere dudes I have ever met. I don't think that they think or thought the same of me. Ike had led his small town team to the championship game at the state tournament in Wisconsin. They lost that game by one, but Lambert cemented his legacy as one of the best players to ever come out of the area. Spike was a black kid from south Chicago. His dad worked for the railroads. Spike loved the Bull's and said he was inspired to go out for the UD team because he would see a basketball in my backpack every day during World History class my first semester. Another kid on the team but not playing due to the fact that he was recovering from a broken leg that he suffered that summer lived down the hall from Lambert and Spike and I. His name was Johny Duke and he became a very good friend of mine.
My first live game experience was an inter squad scrimmage, JV versus Varsity. D-Rog and Mo coached our team and the head coach led the varsity. I came out at the start of the game and put us up 5-0 with a quick three and a quick mid range two. After my first two shots I barely saw the ball again that game. Havatake came down gunning the rest of the game, and he was hitting everything too. We embarrassed the hell out of the head coach. I remember feeling numb after nailing my first two shots. My dream to play college basketball was coming true. That game influenced coach D-Rog's confidence in me, and even though I played like a nervous wreck in my first JV game, D-Rog had it in his head after our inter squad scrimmage that I was a shooting guard (and it sounded so good to hear him tell me that). I had happy feet the first real (JV) game, a feeling that really sucks let me tell you if you've never experienced it. I wanted it so bad (success on the court that is). My lack of real game experience due to the fact that I hadn't played basketball for my high school was one of my biggest handicaps in my UD college basketball experience. When playing rec league in high school with out a coach yelling all the time seamed like paradise compared to competitive NCAA college basketball. And fighting for playing time with other hungry talented back stabbing athletes was a lot of pressure for someone like me who wanted it so bad. Being told to play a position (power forward, what?) was not what I was used to. I think that my lack of success during my UD experience has been an issue that has haunted me (or possibly inspired me) to this day. I only played two and a half years and I feel I could have become an all conference player if I had stayed all four years, but I had too many set backs, pitfalls, demons, roadblocks, detours etc... Coming from a financially strapped middle class background and going to a private school and going into serious debt was a big factor. My love for fermented barley and hops was another. Maybe the biggest challenge for me was that I was an environmental science major when at UD and all my science labs were in the afternoon during the same time as practice. And then there is my sweet love for herb ( rrr... still in denial some twenty years later). And of course there was the women factor. Can I say their real names? Did all those players I knew from back in the day ever settle down? Do they ever reminisce about Big B and my crazy ass? Two street ballers from the ICE (or two fools (or one) from small big city Iowa, USA). Pour a little out for the homies who ain't here. Ain't nobody here with me now, as I am writing this story except these dogs, and a picture of my old pit bull Blunt, who I adopted during my final stint at UD. A picture of the team from my first full year at UD also hangs on my wall now as I am writing this, no others like it do I have hanging for me to see every day, save the picture of my Irish grandfather holding me on the day I was born. Being on a college basketball team like that, the one in the picture, was a lifetime goal that I had achieved, even though in the picture coach tried to degrade the JV by having us wear some small itchy janky ass uniforms in this team photo that hangs above the window that faces the small pond outside my 26' camper trailer. I occasionally look up and glance out the window as I write and edit this story. Fir and cedar trees shade the pond and form the background of my window pond scene. More often than not a blue heron sits in the trees above the pond or stalks down in the reeds on the ponds banks. It is quite a contrast from the concrete jungle where I had grown up.

Basketball in the IC

My first memory about the game of basketball is owed to a friend I had in grade school at Longfellow elementary in Iowa City. It all started sometime during the mid 1970's. Basketball was the favorite sport of my friend "Big Red". At that time my favorite sport was football. Sunday's and the NFL were almost as good as Saturday morning cartoons. Walter Payton was my sports hero ("Sweetness" was introduced to me by one of my mom's boyfriends named Rick). Big Red thought Dr. J was the greatest. One time when I was at his house I told Red and his older brother that I liked Magic Johnson better then Dr. J. They duly thwarted my absurd notion. Now, some 30 years later I know that Doc and Magic were both two of the greatest players ever and through the years I molded my game in each of their forms. We had basketball in gym class when I was in the sixth grade, which was my only formal experience being taught the game at an early age, and by a former high school and college wrestler of all people - but he deserves his props, Mr. Lepic was a great P.E. teacher. I had ball skills and more than held my own against all competition including older kids at the grade school age dodge ball, kickball, football, baseball, and soccer games and leagues I played in, but we didn't really play basketball in my neighborhood during elementary. It wasn't until I attended Central Junior High (which was the last year the 100 plus year old school was open in the downtown ICE) and went out for 7th grade basketball that I had a chance and a reason to practice, compete, and be taught the game. Around that same year an older kid from the neighborhood started teaching me to dunk at the low rims at the old Longfellow grade school hoops. That kid was four years older than me but ended up becoming one of the biggest influences and best friends in my life. "Jam ball" entered my life and became an obsession as I grew and entered high school. Sometime around the age of 15 the kid that taught me to dunk had me go with him to noon time open rec at the Robert A. Lee Community Rec. Center. It was actually only open for adults but he told the other guys that I was his little bro. On that Mon., Wed., or Fri. I was introduced to "noon ball." I was hooked. We played from noon until after midnight during the summers when I was in high school except for one week each summer (after the age of 16 for me) when most of our crew would all go on Ragbrai which was a 500 mile bike ride with around 10,000 others across the state of Iowa; this was one of our secret weapons for jumping. Basketball in the IC was one of the best things in my life. We played at the schools, in the parks, at the rec centers, at the U. of Iowa Field House, in our driveways, in my basement... I have written all the stories of my personal slam dunk life history from the IC and including most of the legendary basketball memories from my childhood and young adult years. What has not been written yet is the stories from what I call "The Dubuque Years." This is where I took my game that I learned from playing on the streets of the ICE and put it to the test against and with a vast talent pool of players from such places as Chicago, Gary Indiana, and New Orleans. This was possible for the reason that somehow through the long trail of twists and turns and fate that make up our life I, and an old friend from the ICE crew, a friend going all the way back to Longfellow elementary and the Robert A. Lee rec center, ended up attending a small Division III school called the University of Dubuque. We both played on the basketball team which was our only official NCAA experience. My dream, like so many other young basketball players, was to play Division I college basketball. At the Div. III level I had to attend a private school and thus had to take out a huge amount of student loans due to the fact that Div. III schools don't give out athletic scholarships. This was my only option to play college ball for a four year school in the state of Iowa. In retrospect UD in Dubuque was the next best thing to playing for a Div. I school. The roster for the basketball team was littered with D. I caliber athletes that for one reason or another ended up at this small obscure school. The coach had connections in the above mentioned urban areas was one reason for this, and it was a big reason. I went on a recruiting trip to the school with a teammate from a Wisconsin junior college I was attending (another story already written). The JC teammate had mad game and was a point guard from inner city Milwalkee. We saw a dunk fest on our recruiting visit, which happened to occur right after part of the movie "Field of Dreams" was filmed on the UD campus. I wanted to be at a school where I could compete and learn the game from some real hungry and talent ridden urban city athletes, and also from talented small town athletes too, who were good usually because they felt they had something to prove. UD was the place for this.

Let the pre-workout lifestyle begin

I've had a life goal for many years. I want to be able to slam dunk a basketball on a regulation 10' hoop when I reach 40 years old. I am 38 now. When I turn 39 I plan to start training in earnest to reach my goal of dunking. That would give me a full year to put some spring back into these old legs. I've been riding my bike up and down this long and narrow and hilly island I live on a couple of times a week. I stretch daily (or I try to) and yesterday I shot some baskets on my own personal gravel court. I made plans to meet another kid at the activity center (aka the school) in two weeks at Monday night basketball. It will probably only be the two of us there, or maybe just him if I fail to show. So if this is actually the start of my training it gives me 16 months until I reach 40 and another 12 mo. after my birthday while I am technically still at the age of 40. I am 6'4" tall, so dunking is no cake walk even for a former high flier like myself. I would like to record video of the day of truth when it comes (Jan 30, 2010). God willing I will live long enough to see that day and many more thereafter.