Darkness to Light, page 6
Harrick’s trouble began shortly after he filed an outsized expense report for the dinner for thousands of dollars that caught the eye of the athletic department. At the time, UCLA’s athletic director, Peter Dalis, called it the biggest expense report he’d seen in fourteen years.
The whole thing centered around the fact that there were two more players at the dinner than the NCAA allowed. Dalis accused Harrick of falsifying the expense report to cover his tracks. Harrick fought the allegations and swore Dalis had it out for him. In the end, Harrick was dismissed. He wasn’t happy. He let his feelings be known at his farewell press conference.
“The punishment doesn’t fit the crime,” said Harrick. “Dalis has been after me for years. I’m not saying I’m not at fault. If it was unethical, I apologize. Sometimes I use poor judgment. But it’s no violation. I just feel the punishment is too much.”
Either way Harrick was out. And so was I. That’s why there was no UCLA hat in the bathroom that day.
Fourteen days after Harrick’s dismissal, I signed two NCAA letters of intent: one with UNLV and one with UConn. Signing two was highly unusual, but it bought me time and prevented me from having to make a decision then. Funny enough, the next day I played my first game for Redemption Christian in front of coaches from UNLV and UConn and rang up twenty-four points and fifteen rebounds.
But back in that bathroom, I had to make a decision. I came out holding the UNLV hat. I still didn’t want to put it on.
Then it was time to do the press conference, which would be my formal announcement to the world. Gary took the hat and put it in a custom-made Adidas bag. Then he started to prepare for the announcement. He called UNLV head coach Bill Bayno and his assistant Shoes Vetrone with the good news. But more importantly, he had to call Rick Pitino, who was fully expecting me to come to Kentucky and would not be happy with the latest development. But Pitino was nowhere to be found, and Gary was stressing like mad.
The press conference was to take place in the Pistons’ locker room with sports commentator great Dick Vitale conducting the interview. Gary walked up and saw Sonny and Dickie V talking. Now, Gary was decked out in a four-button suit with one of his trademark fedoras. Gary loved to roll in style. He must have had a dozen of those suits and twice as many hats. Vitale was adamant, however, that Gary take off the hat when on TV.
“You can’t wear that hat on TV,” exclaimed Vitale. “You’ll look like some kind of mobster or drug dealer.”
Gary, who was a vice president at Citibank on Wall Street, was furious and refused to take off the hat. All of a sudden, a three-way argument broke out about a hat. And it wasn’t even my UNLV hat! I guess it was a strange and fitting end to my recruitment.
After I made the announcement and did the interview with Vitale, it felt like a weight had been lifted off my shoulders. Everyone made plans for dinner to celebrate. Gary excused himself to use the bathroom. As he was standing at the urinal, Aunt JaNean stormed in and grabbed Gary by the throat. Gary’s pants were hanging down and JaNean was livid. What a mess.
“You’re in the men’s room! What the hell is wrong with you?” shouted Gary.
“This better be some kind of joke,” screamed JaNean.
She was angry that I didn’t go to Kentucky and that Gary’s fingerprints were all over the UNLV deal. But they made up two weeks later when it was announced that Pitino left Kentucky for the Boston Celtics.
And with that, my high school career officially ended, and the spotlight would only get brighter, the stakes bigger, and the pressure more intense.
I needed to go home.
Liza and I had stayed in touch, and when I got back to New York, we met up for a slice of pizza. Since my senior year was so chaotic and disjointed, I almost completely forgot the normal rhythm of the everyday high school experience.
“I can’t believe it’s almost over and prom is coming up,” Liza said, catching me off guard. I had completely forgotten about prom.
“Who are you going with?” I asked sheepishly.
“No one really.”
“Do you want me to go with you?”
“Yeah, sure. Okay.”
I was happy she agreed because I felt like I could make it up to her for leaving Christ the King without even telling her. She was totally in the dark when I left and found out through friends. She had no idea about the drama I was going through and didn’t forgive me for months. I was embarrassed that I was flunking out, so I just couldn’t face telling her. I really wanted that moment at prom with her. I had such great memories at Christ the King and made so many good friends that I deeply hoped to end on a happy note. I needed to feel normal, and going to prom was just about the most normal thing I’d ever do in high school.
The prom for the graduating class of 1997 was held at a fancy hall in Flushing Meadows, Queens. When I saw Liza in her dress, I thought she looked like an angel. Royal blue was her favorite color, and she had spent the day getting her hair done. I was so excited to see friends I hadn’t seen for so long that it felt like we spent the entire night catching up. People peppered me with questions about UNLV, but I didn’t want the night to be about me. I wanted one night where I didn’t have to be that Lamar Odom. There was a professional photographer in the back, and we took several pictures to freeze the moment in time. At the end of the night, everyone got out on the dance floor to cut loose one more time.
I officially ended my high school experience slow dancing with my arms wrapped around the girl I intended to marry.
11
I left for UNLV in June 1997, not long after graduating from high school. I was cleared to play academically and couldn’t wait to meet my new teammates and get on the court. UNLV’s roster my freshman year was a bomb squad that featured three future NBA players and a couple guys who ended up playing overseas. Smooth-shooting small forward Tyrone Nesby would be a teammate of mine with the Clippers. Keon Clark was a lanky seven-foot shot-blocking terror. Louisiana-bred point guard Greedy Daniels was one of the fastest players in the country. And my former Christ the King teammate Kevin Simmons rounded out what prognosticators considered a surefire Sweet 16 team that would bring UNLV back to relevance.
One thing I forgot to mention.
During my senior year, it was arranged that someone would take my SATs for me to ensure my college eligibility. I rarely studied or devoted time to schoolwork, but of more concern, I just wasn’t a good test taker. My inability to concentrate always seemed to get in the way when I sat down to take a test. The SATs were an enormous obstacle, which I dreaded.
The test confused me. There were so many things in the test booklet I simply didn’t know because I had never been taught them. But even still, I couldn’t concentrate when sitting down at a desk with a No. 2 pencil, trying to fill out A, B, C, or D.
I had never been diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The world I came from didn’t even know it existed. But if you described it to me at sixteen I would’ve known exactly what it was.
But then again, I’ve lived my entire life undiagnosed. I was judged by my performance on a playing field that I shouldn’t have been on. Anytime I was presented with work that confused me or I wasn’t prepared for, an alternative was set up by someone who had a stake in my future. I said yes to those alternatives every time.
The guy who took the SATs for me didn’t get caught, but he did make a crucial mistake that would ultimately end my college career at UNLV before it started.
“He scored too fucking high!” raged Gary. “A 1200? Are you fucking kidding me? Lamar’s a C student! What, is he going to the Ivy League?”
Back in the spring of 1997, just before the Roundball Classic, I was asked to do a favor for an old friend of Sonny Vaccaro’s, former UNLV head coach Jerry Tarkanian. He was trying to resurrect his career at Fresno State after a bitter divorce from UNLV five years earlier. Tarkanian wanted me to make an official visit to Fresno State. No one had any delusions that I would sign with Fresno; it was just to show people, especially high school players, that Tark could still recruit with the best. Getting the number-one player in the country to commit to an official visit would do the trick.
I never made the visit, and of course, Tarkanian was not pleased that I spurned him. Several weeks before the start of classes at UNLV, a Sports Illustrated article reported that the NCAA was calling into question the validity of my SAT scores. This was not good. It was highly unusual for an SAT score to be looked into once a player signed a letter of intent and enrolled in school.
In my mind (then and now), there was only one conclusion: there had to be a snitch. To a man, although we couldn’t prove it, everyone in my circle believed Tarkanian dropped a dime and ratted me out to the NCAA as payback for not giving him a courtesy visit. It was his way to hit back at UNLV . . . and me.
UNLV rescinded my scholarship. This was one of the darkest days of my life. All these years of shrugging things off and taking the easy way out, avoiding confrontation and not wanting to do the work, finally came back to bite me.
UNLV head coach Bill Bayno cried when he told his assistant Shoes Vetrone the news. Shoes broke down, too. But neither of them had the courage to deliver the information to me themselves. They sent another assistant, who I had almost no contact with, to drop off an official letter.
Barry “Slice” Worsen was a thirty-seven-year-old assistant from Brooklyn who once had a walk-on role in the movie Glengarry Glen Ross with Al Pacino. He had this thing where he called everybody “judge.” He knocked on the door and I answered. He spoke in a low, quiet voice. It was awkward because I had never dealt with him directly before.
“Hey, judge, I’m sorry to have to do this,” he said as he handed me the envelope, “but this is for you.”
I couldn’t talk my way out of this one. Nobody could. What made these days even more difficult was that Gary and Sonny, the people who were in this with me, who knowingly risked my career, wouldn’t even speak to me. I sat in my apartment in the dark alone for days and cried. It was 116 degrees outside, but I was in the coldest place on earth. I tried for two days to get ahold of Gary and Sonny with no luck. Where were they?
They had to know what was going on—this was too big not to know. But why weren’t they reaching out to me? I felt like I didn’t have a friend in the world and was without a clue as to what my next move would be. I felt betrayed. I felt small, mad, angry, upset. But mostly, I felt alone. Without a future on a college team, my life was broken. I couldn’t go anywhere. I didn’t have a car. I didn’t have any money. My feelings of abandonment, which I was constantly fighting off, overtook me. I was supposed to be this big-time basketball star, and guys like that don’t go to people with issues about their feelings. I wasn’t allowed to be vulnerable. So, I once again turned inward and self-medicated with weed.
One of the few people who was there for me in those dark days was David Chapman, a prominent Las Vegas dentist and businessman, as well as a UNLV booster who had a burning passion for all things Rebels. Soon after my dismissal, I moved out of my apartment and into David’s house. He gave me a place to stay, put money in my pocket, and reassured me that everything would be all right.
One night, while wallowing in my own pity, I decided I needed a pick-me-up. David let me borrow his car, and I just drove to get my mind off everything. The fact that I didn’t have a license didn’t really matter to me. I picked up a couple forty-ounce beers and went cruising. I was looking for company. A young, handsome guy in a high-end BMW? Forty-ounce beer in his lap? Nothing left to lose? What could go wrong?
Feeling impatient and not in the mood to sweet-talk my way into someone’s heart, I was ready to pay for my company. After a short while I picked up an attractive young woman and we began to hit it off.
It was too good to be true. She was an undercover Las Vegas cop. She arrested me as soon as I started negotiating her fee.
It was a heck of a few days for the nation’s top recruit: kicked out of UNLV, abandoned by friends, arrested for solicitation. With my head held low, I called David to bail me out. My voice was shaky and weak, and it cracked as I explained what had happened. It was the first time I was ever arrested. I felt like a failure.
I knew the shady dealings with UNLV were going to follow me around until I went pro. But since I had already missed the cutoff to declare for the NBA draft, I didn’t have much of a choice but to stay in school. Not only did scandal follow me around, it also caught up with Greg. When he arrived at St. Francis in Queens to play ball his freshman year, the NCAA’s investigative team paid him a surprise visit and questioned him for six hours.
They wanted to know about the gear that UNLV had been sending us while we were at Redemption. They had pictures of Greg wearing the clothes. The thing about cash is that when it disappears, it’s untraceable. The same cannot be said about a hooded sweatshirt.
Greg’s coaches prepped him for his NCAA interview with one simple piece of advice: if you’re about to tell a lie, just say, “I do not recall.” He did not recall forty-nine times.
12
I needed to get out of Vegas as fast as humanly possible. My UNLV experience had been a complete disaster. I needed a new start.
I didn’t know where I was going to go, and after a thawing-out period, I was back to working with Gary Charles and Sonny
Vaccaro on my next move. Gary had eventually reached out to me after the UNLV disaster, and in my mind, even though I forgave Gary and Sonny, I never truly forgot.
Because time was short, my options were limited. It was late August 1997, and most schools had already committed their allotment of scholarships. Besides, few would touch me given what had happened.
So, an old face came back into the picture. Sonny got on the phone with Jim Harrick, the former UCLA coach, who was now the head coach at the University of Rhode Island in the Atlantic 10 Conference. After a few more phone calls and filling out the necessary paperwork, I was off to Kingston, Rhode Island. But there was a catch. There’s always a catch. Gary wanted Rhode Island to hire Jerry DeGregorio as an assistant coach. After the Vegas fiasco, both Gary and Sonny wanted someone to look after me on a daily basis to make sure I stayed below the radar. That someone was Jerry.
He and I got along well, and I really felt like he had my best interests at heart. He was like the white father I never had. Jerry got set up at Rhode Island, and Sonny had his fingerprints all over everything. They hired a lawyer to help with the admissions process.
Once all of Gary’s wrangling and dealings with the lawyer were done, there was still one more step. In a meeting with the university president, Dr. Robert Carothers, some basketball staff, and a handful of alumni, I was quizzed on various topics, from my background to what I could bring to the table if I was admitted. The meeting felt strange to me, as if all these people were prodding me with questions because they didn’t believe in me. After answering everything, I could see they were not convinced. They had one of the best players in the country in their meeting room, but it wasn’t enough.
Then, they asked me to write an essay about my life right there in the room and then read it back to them. It was clear to me that they didn’t think I could read or write. I was humiliated. This grade-school exercise disgusted and embarrassed me. After all I’d been through, all of the low points, each day seemed to bring me a step closer to rock bottom. After reading a page and a half of my handwritten essay, I just stopped. There was an awkward silence in the room as people looked around at one another, shocked that I could read.
As humiliating an experience as that was, I made it through and was admitted to Rhode Island as a non-matriculating (unofficial) student. I had to sit out the first semester of my freshman season and maintain a 2.4 grade-point average to be eligible to play in the spring. Even though I agreed to the conditions, being without basketball for the first time in my life sent me on an emotional tailspin.
I was so depressed that for the first time, I had to get professional help. I went to a doctor who put me through a series of tests. He then put me on Prozac, an antidepressant, to treat my depression and anxiety. I knew I was down, but I thought I was just sad. Even when things were looking up, I’d still feel like I was in a haze, and I couldn’t figure out why. I just thought it was my mood. I really didn’t know or understand what depression was. I could feel the positive effects of the Prozac as the weeks went by. It calmed me down and kept me sane. I stayed on the drug the entire semester.
Once I finally got settled in at school, the pickup games in Keaney Gymnasium, our 3,800-seat home court, provided a much-needed distraction. I really wanted to experience campus life, and I became a social butterfly. Every day we’d eat at the Ram’s Den, the food court, in Memorial Union on campus. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, we’d hit the local college bars.
I didn’t particularly like going to class, but my African American Studies class kept me engaged. I felt like a regular college kid. Soon I began to realize how much better the quiet, leafy green splendor of Kingston was for me than the bright lights and pulsating heart of Las Vegas would have been. Rhode Island’s small-town, close-knit vibe was exactly what I needed, even as I continued to isolate whenever I felt alone or overwhelmed.
I’ve had separation anxiety since my mother died, although back then I didn’t know there was a name for it. I hated to be alone. The feeling that no one was around and that I’d been abandoned could easily trigger the pain of my mother’s death, which constantly lingered, haunting both my dreams and my waking hours. To this day, I find it ironic that when things get the darkest, I choose to be alone. I retreat to where no one can find me. At URI, this happened often enough. I’d hide in my room or at a friend’s on the other side of campus. Anywhere to be away from the mess my life had become.
It was when I was back on the court with the ball in my hands that I felt somewhat like my old self. And I absolutely loved being around the guys on the team.
