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.