A pair of king-size suitcases, basketball, and a solitary goodbye. That was my final six weeks in New York in a nutshell.
I’m going crack open the shell, though not all of it’s easy.
I didn’t discuss my trip to Tennessee with my parents after coming home. They’d been unmindful of the whole recruitment process, and nothing changed after I decided on UT. Other than to tell them where I was going, I didn’t see any purpose in talking about it.
I remember catching a nationally televised Vols football game a week after my return, and feeling delighted that they represented my future academic institution.
“This football team’s from my school,” I said, gesturing at the screen. “They’re famous. One of the best.”
Mom and Dad seemed vaguely pleased. But they were disinterested more than anything, and I left it at that. I now believe they were as happy as they could be. Their capacity for happiness was limited, and I think distancing themselves from their emotions was part of how they got along.
I didn’t let their indifference blunt my excitement. Soon I’d be going off to college. There was a lot to do before I left.
At Fort Hamilton, Coach Kern and my guidance counselors helped me with the form-filling procedures for entry to UT and securing the full four-year scholarship I’d been offered. Meanwhile, my high school basketball season was over. With several weeks to go before I left New York, it meant a busy slate of summer basketball.
I’m not sure whether or not Gil Reynolds’s funding from the Restoration program had dried up—New York saw tough times in the early seventies, so it’s possible—but he wasn’t taking his team on the road much at that point. It left me available for Lester Roberts, who was assembling a team to play in three big youth tournaments—the Baltimore, Boston, and Philly shootouts.
Our squad was identical for the first two tourneys. Skip Wise, the sharpshooting guard I’d faced years before in Baltimore, was on it with me. Also Kenny Carr and Terry Tyler, two guys who went on to play in the NBA. Another top high school player, Bruce Campbell, rounded out the lineup. He never made the pros, but would have an outstanding college career.
I don’t recall which of those tournaments originated first, or if any one of them directly inspired the others. But I do know the Boston Shootout came about in response to racial tensions over the city’s school busing program. African American NBA referee Ken Hudson had convened a group of civic organizers to see if they could pull together the black and white communities, and that led to the Boston Shootout in 1972.
Within a couple of years, the Shootout became the premier high school tourney in the country. Over three weekends in June, Hudson’s tournament would draw the best players from all over the East Coast.
At the Baltimore series, our All-Tournament team, as Lester christened us, was quick to build up a head of steam. We took that tourney, and I was awarded the MVP.
Boston followed in June, and it would be a more important tournament for me than I knew.
Although he never said a word about it—not before the Shootout, not during my time with the Vols, not once afterward—Coach Ray Mears flew up from Tennessee to watch me play. I only found out about it over forty years later, when Tom Konchalski revealed he had been there… and that my performance in the series would be deeply stamped into his mind.
As for me, I just wanted to compete. Our team would be going up against the best high school and playground players in the nation, at the hottest amateur basketball event in the nation. One of the squads would be the All-America Boys Basketball Team, which was made up of kids named as top players by Parade magazine. Though I’d averaged 25 points and 28 rebounds a game in high school, I was never chosen for the team.
Enter the chip on my shoulder.
The truth is, I don’t remember many specifics about my individual performance in Boston. Odd as that must sound—I’ve just mentioned the series was very important for me—it often happened when I was playing at my highest level of ability. And I’d established a personal standard of dominance against All-Americans.
At the Boston Shootout, I was in the Zone.
This might a good time to explain what I mean by the term. It’s probably somewhat different from how other athletes use it. In the Zone, your perception of time and space changes. You don’t have to look for seams in the defense. You know where they are because you feel them. Not see, but feel. So when you make a move, you know where everything around you is coming from. It’s in slow motion. And because it’s in slow motion, your execution is refined. You can navigate wherever you want.
When I was in that space, the game was like abstract art. With figurative art, you see the objects being represented, and you can identify them. But abstract art is different. It’s doesn’t necessarily connect to a visual reality.
So for me being in the Zone was an abstract state. And the pieces around me, meaning the other players, were all part of the feeling. It was a knowingness of placement within every moment of the game… my placement, my teammates’, and the opposition’s.
In Boston, I was at peak performance. I’d arrived at that abstract place. It wasn’t about separate moves or plays, but rather my knowingness of the game as it unfolded on the court.
One thing I do recall—and only because it briefly removed me from the action—was taking an unintentional elbow to the eye from Mike Mitchell, who went on to play at Auburn University and eventually became an NBA All-Star with the San Antonio Spurs. The open cut above my eye wouldn’t stop bleeding, and I was forced to leave the floor and take care of it.
Mike had done nothing wrong. If you didn’t play a tough, physical basketball in Fort Greene, you would find yourself watching from the sidelines. I got stitched up and reentered the game after the next time-out. It was no big deal to me.
But it was for Ray Mears. I think he realized right then what Brooklyn-bred toughness was all about. It showed him what kind of player I was and gave him a better sense of what I was bringing to his team.
As I said, I never knew Coach Mears was in the gym. Unlike Stu Aberdeen, he must have left his orange-and-plaid ensemble back in Tennessee. I wouldn’t have missed him in the crowd if he’d worn it, not even if we’d been playing in the dark.
At any rate, our team won the tournament, and I was once again named MVP. We’d beaten the leading high school players in the country, so that trophy was pretty special.
In August, the All-Tournament games went to Philly. We won our third series in a row, and I picked up another MVP.
When I left for Tennessee later that month, I had a different mind-set than I’d had during my recruitment visit. I always felt I was an outstanding player. But that great run of championships and MVP awards was the sort of experience that cements confidence. It had validated me—validated my talent—in my own eyes.
I still didn’t know if Coach Mears really envisioned me as a starter with his Vols. But I knew I could make it hard for him to see things any other way.
I DIDN’T HAVE MANY CLOTHES or other belongings, but used the money I earned from a part-time job to buy two king-size suitcases. I’ve always felt it was better to be overprepared than underprepared, and not just when it related to basketball.
I’ll never forget getting ready to leave the familiar surroundings of Fort Greene to begin a new phase in life. I was going off to an institution of higher learning. Starting college.
I had never discussed it with my parents. For them, it was enough that you graduated high school and found a steady job. They did not look beyond those modest aspirations for their children.
I’d excitedly begun packing the night before my Friday departure. The next morning, I showered and dressed in a very quiet apartment. Dad had gone to work without saying a word about my future. My brothers and sister were either at summer school or out with friends.
It was just me and my mother at home.
Mom did not offer any advice or encouragement as I put some last-minute items into my suitcases. No conversation passed between us. Except for the bags, I could have been heading out for a typical day of classes at Fort Hamilton. Before leaving the apartment, I paused, looked over at her, and said goodbye.
I was waiting, I suppose. Still waiting for something more from her.
“Bye,” she said. That was it.
I went out to the elevator and pressed the call button. When the door slid open, I entered the car without a backward glance. I didn’t feel anxious about leaving home. There wasn’t the slightest tinge of melancholy or sadness in me. I knew I’d never live there again, and wouldn’t miss it.
Sadness? I was ecstatic.
Downstairs, I pushed through the glass lobby doors and turned past the spot where, a few short weeks before, Stu Aberdeen had stood waiting for me, all decked out in orange and plaid. Then I walked to Park Avenue, alongside the buildings where I’d grown up, and hailed a taxi.
It was nine o’clock in the morning. My plane would leave at one. Four hours and counting.
When a cab finally showed up, I lifted my bags into the trunk and took a final look at the basketball court where my dreams came to life and I developed the skills that opened the way for me to attend college.
Thank you, I said silently. Thank you.
Thirty minutes later, I was at LaGuardia Airport.
Fort Greene was in my past.
I never looked back.
MY STATE OF MIND aboard the plane was very different than it had been on my first recruitment trip. Not only was I not nervous, but I’d managed to buckle up without a hitch. Bernard, the jet-setter.
Okay, not exactly. But with five flights under my belt, I felt more comfortable in the air. My run of tournament wins and MVP awards had bolstered my confidence that I’d be able to fit in with the Volunteers basketball team. Finally, I knew what to expect in Knoxville. I wasn’t going on a visit this time, but heading off to my new home for the next several years.
My first weekend on campus was a lot of fun. I was assigned a room in Gibbs Hall, the athletic dormitory that exclusively housed members of the football and basketball teams. My roommate hadn’t yet arrived, and there wasn’t much to do until Monday’s freshman orientation, so I unpacked, got acquainted with some of the other students, and wound up being invited to a black fraternity party.
Boy, did I have myself a time. Back then, TV shows like Soul Train and American Bandstand would start new dance crazes faster than you could keep up. The big one that summer was the Bump, and we could get extremely creative with it. As to how creative, I’ll leave it alone… other than to say that I met a pretty Southern girl with imagination to spare, and that it was quite the kickoff to my freshman year at the University of Tennessee. After that night, I never dreamed it would be anything but a great experience.
I spent the rest of the weekend relaxing and learning my way around campus. Then, on Monday, everything shifted into high gear. The coming days were taken up by meetings with academic advisors, the process of matriculation and choosing a study program, tours of the buildings, and filling out rafts of forms. I chose the College of Communications. Broadcasting had always interested me and I thought I could excel at it.
Gradually, my teammates started to arrive. My roomie, Mike Jackson, was a sophomore from Nashville. Besides being a nice guy, Mike was a solid, reliable guard, and we got along well from the start. Though his race didn’t matter to me at all—I only cared about a guy’s playing ability and will to win—he was the only other African American on our Vols squad.
Then there was Ernie Grunfeld. As big-city kids, we hit it off right away. Ernie was coming off an outstanding 1973–1974 season in which he’d averaged over 17 points a game. His performance had made him one of the best freshmen in the Southeastern Conference, and now he knew he’d have help at the offensive end going into 1974–1975.
We both expressed excitement about playing together, and I recall wondering aloud how it was that we’d never run across each other in New York.
“Hang on, B, you’re wrong,” Ernie said. This was one of our first conversations on campus. “Our high school teams scrimmaged.”
“Scrimmaged?”
“Right. Against each other,” Ernie said. “It was an exhibition game.”
I shook my head. “Nope. Never happened.”
“How’re you so sure?”
“’Cause I’d remember if it happened,” I said. “But I don’t, so it didn’t.”
“But I do,” Ernie insisted. “So it did.”
I was getting lost.
“All right,” I said. “We scrimmaged. Accepted. What’d you think of how I played?”
Ernie shrugged. “I don’t remember,” he said.
“But you just told me…”
“I remember our teams scrimmaging,” he said. “Remembering how you played is something else. Though I can vaguely picture you being there that day.”
I looked at him. “Vaguely?”
“Kinda, yeah.” Ernie shrugged. “I mustn’t have been too impressed.”
I didn’t say anything for a minute. Ernie shrugged again.
“So,” he said. “Now I reminded you of that scrimmage. You remember me?”
I gave him a look.
“No,” I said.
“No?”
“Not at all,” I said coolly.
We cracked smiles. That’s just how it was between us. Ernie and I clicked the way only two kids from the New York playgrounds could click. While we outwardly had very different backgrounds, we shared the heart and grit that comes from battling your way up through tough times and persistent obstacles. I was a black kid from one of the poorest and most dangerous sections of Brooklyn; the single white family there moved out when I was in elementary school. Ernie was a Jewish kid from Forest Hills, a solid middle-class neighborhood in the borough of Queens. But that doesn’t tell his whole story.
Ernie was born in Satu Mare, Romania, to Holocaust survivors. In 1963, when he was nine and his older brother, Leslie, was seventeen, his parents immigrated to New York to escape anti-Semitism. They didn’t have much money, but scraped enough together to open a fabric shop, where they worked long hours to feed their family.
Not long after the Grunfelds came to this country, Ernie’s brother died of leukemia. It was major blow to Ernie, who idolized him. Ernie spoke almost no English and didn’t fit in at school. The loss left him without his best friend.
Maybe being on the basketball court helped Ernie channel his emotions. Maybe it was an escape. And maybe feeling like an outsider gave him something to prove. It was all those things for me, and I think we’ve always had that in common. But what’s unquestionable is that Ernie became a fierce competitor. He hated giving in. To injuries, to other players, to anything.
“I never get hurt and I never get tired,” he’d say.
No wonder we were a good combo.
A writer, I believe from Sports Illustrated, once called us “Thick and Thin.” It was a suitable description. Ernie and I stood at almost the same height—he was six feet six, an inch shorter than I am—but we were built differently and had very different games. I was long limbed and quick as a whip; he was thick around the chest and waist, with legs so strong they could have been made of concrete.
Good luck if you were an opposing player who wanted to outpace or outmaneuver me. Better luck if you tried using your weight against Ernie. Our skills and physical strengths were complementary. Neither of us was going to wear down. Neither of us could be blocked. We both had high basketball IQs, knew how to handle the ball, and could get around any defense you threw at us.
It would be a while before we played in a meaningful game together, though. One reason was because the collegiate basketball season started in November, and NCAA rules prohibited official practices until October. That left us with a month before we could work out at Stokely with our team coaches.
Those first weeks at school were a happy time. I focused on settling into my classes and went out with Ernie and his best friend, Jerry Finestone, on weekends. We’d go to parties on campus or hit the student hangouts on Cumberland Avenue—the Strip as we called it. Running straight along the north end of the campus, it was lined with bars and restaurants.
For me, the environment was new, fresh, and exciting. I felt a freedom, a lightness, that I had never before experienced in my life.
But I’ve mentioned obstacles. Late that month, I suddenly ran into one that became a defining moment for me at school. It was like pulling to a short stop on the open highway.
My freshman English professor had assigned the class its first paper. I don’t recall the topic now, but I felt I had done a decent job. When it was returned, I was stunned to see it all marked up in red. No, stunned doesn’t describe my reaction. There isn’t a single word that could.
How had it happened? I’d believed all along that I was getting a good education in Brooklyn’s public schools. But I was not. I was not. That unsettled me.
Attending Fort Hamilton in Bay Ridge helped prepare me for being a minority among Tennessee’s larger white population—of its thirty-five thousand students, only a thousand were African American. But my inner-city grade school education had not given me the educational tools I needed to thrive in a higher-learning institution. Additionally, as an introvert, I was socially unprepared to move out into the larger college culture. Coupled with the reality that I’d been educated to get a blue-collar job, the transition was devastating to me.
For the first time since my arrival at Tennessee, I felt out of place. The person who’d arrived in June to have a day named in his honor was someone else. Bernard King, the basketball player. He looked like me and sounded like me. But he was an outer shell. Tough, strong, but still a shell. The wearer of my Game Face.
Underneath, I was Bernard, the Fort Greene kid with low self-esteem. Alone in a strange place, I felt unequipped for the challenges ahead.
I kept those thoughts to myself. Didn’t share them with anybody. When Ernie went into town that weekend, I told him to go on without me. I didn’t give him a reason.
As I’d always done, as everyone in my family was conditioned to do, I took it to the back room.
This is a problem, I thought. This is a serious problem.
How would I rectify things? It wasn’t like a foul call in basketball. I couldn’t review the tape and hope it would be reversed. Nor could I improve my writing skills overnight. But my basketball scholarship meant nothing if I failed my courses. I could either maintain the required grade-point average, or flunk out and go back to Fort Greene. And I’d promised myself I would never do that. I would not allow it.
Needing a plan, I met with my counselors in the athletic department to work one out. Since I wasn’t required to declare a major until midway through my sophomore year, I reluctantly dropped the core communications curriculum, acknowledging I wasn’t ready for it. Instead, I concentrated on electives that would allow me to maintain my GPA, while working with a tutor to improve my academic skills.
That eased my anxieties. But abandoning my major was painful. The reality that I had not been properly schooled as a young person bothered me. I never forgot that rude awakening.
In September, the Vols started basketball practices, and my excitement about it swept aside any lingering stress. Collegiate rules prohibited official practices at the arena, so we would go to a recreational gymnasium on campus.
I was elated to finally get on the floor with my teammates. Though the school’s general student population shared the gym, we arranged to meet there when we could control one of the courts and hold scrimmages against each other.
Then, it was on to our workouts at Stokely, where I first met Coach Ray Mears. He was a tight-schedule sort of man who would block out our practices to the minute—precisely fifteen minutes for this drill, ten for that, five for something else. Once a drill was in progress, he’d stand with his hands behind his back like a general watching his troops on parade. His idol was George S. Patton, and I think he deliberately mimicked his stance.
I remember Coach Mears and his assistants leading us through a series of stretches and warm-up exercises to start our practice. They were easy but different from those I’d done in high school—or with Gil Reynolds. Thinking they would elevate the team’s conditioning, I was happy to learn them.
Not so for the basketball drills. From the onset, I knew they would do nothing to enhance my skills. In fact, I worried they’d cause me to backslide.
We had six baskets in the gym. Coach Mears had the guards and forwards line up at one basket, the centers at a second. That left four baskets unused while most of us stood around and watched.
“Okay,” he barked at the centers, a basketball against his hip. “I want to show you some big man drills!”
Big man drills? Big… man… drills?
What on earth were big man drills?
I would find out soon enough. Slowly, mechanically, the players positioned themselves under the rim and put up the ball. It was like watching basketball robots. Robots programmed to execute moves from a basketball instructional book. One written for grade schoolers.
An eye on the clock, I crossed my arms and waited.
Then waited some more.
Ten minutes later, I was still waiting.
The basketball robots seemed to be taking their time.
It was a jolt to my sensibilities. I was accustomed to working swiftly. To executing drills at game speed. Whether practicing by myself in the playground, at Fort Hamilton, or with Gil, it was always movemovemove…
On my very first day at Stokely, I was growing roots. I remember thinking, Is this what I’m going to do for four years?
At last, I peeled off from the group and went over to Coach Mears, who was standing with his back to me. When I tapped him on the shoulder, he spun around and looked straight up into my face.
“What d’you want, King?” His voice was brusque.
I gestured around the gym.
“Coach, we have six baskets here, and we’re only using two of them,” I said. “How about I go over there to that third basket, and I work by myself?”
He screwed up his features. I’d find out later on that he was shocked anyone would approach him in the middle of practice. For him, everything was strictly regimented. We weren’t supposed to stop.
After a few seconds, he nodded and tossed me the ball. I had the sense he’d been wondering what this new kid from New York was all about.
“Okay, King!” he snapped, pointing across the floor. “Go on over to that basket!”
I worked out at a fast clip, shooting, rebounding, moving… doing more under the basket in twenty minutes than the other guys had done in that entire practice.
Mears watched me work on the court, his shoulders square, hands folded behind him. I think he saw I wasn’t like any other player he’d coached before, and didn’t know exactly what to do about it. Change doesn’t come easily to someone who’s had success doing things a certain way, and he’d been a winning basketball coach for over a quarter century.
I should perhaps mention here that I was only the third African American ever to play for the Vols. It wasn’t coincidental that the numbers were so small; for a while, major universities shied away from recruiting inner-city players, labeling them as streetballers who couldn’t incorporate their games into organized systems. No one voiced this in public, but word had traveled around. Like most generalities, it wasn’t entirely fair or accurate.
I didn’t play that way. My style wasn’t freelance or showy. I was a conservative player when I walked into Gil Reynolds’s gym, and he’d only reinforced that type of game. Gil had a system he’d developed over many years. You played within it or were out the door.
I want to distinguish between conforming to a system and converting to a new style of play. My style of play was all about speed, aggressive physicality, and explosiveness. It was about finding ways to score, whether by attacking the basket or drawing fouls so I could get to the free-throw line. But I could adjust that style of play to fit any system. It was the essence of being coachable. Of being a team player. For me, those qualities were one and the same.
Coach Mears got a close look at my style of play at our initial practice. But that was just half the equation. The other half was how I would adjust that style for the team. In his mind, it was still an open question.
He got his answer at our first intra-squad scrimmage. When I made 23 of 24 shots, it dawned on him that he’d have to change.
At a coaches’ meeting afterward, an assistant named Gerald Oliver gave him an extra push.
“Bernard knows what he’s doing,” he said. “When it comes to what’s best for his game, we don’t need to teach him anything.”
Mears didn’t argue. Oliver had confirmed what he already knew. And to his great credit, Mears quickly altered our practices and his system.
I didn’t realize the effect I had on him until many years after. It truly never entered my mind. My focus was on helping the Vols win, not changing the culture or the system. I thought: This is how I play. This is how I work out. This is what got me here. And ultimately it makes me a better asset to the team.
From that point on, our practices were faster paced. The elementary moves under the basket were removed from our set. The University of Tennessee Vols were playing a different game.
“We changed our brand of basketball,” Mears said later on.
And that brand was very exciting to me, our coaching staff, and eventually our fan base. Ernie and I were a perfect tandem. With him on the left wing and me on the high post, we could split team defenses and score almost 50 points a game. As we entered the preseason exhibition season, word about us got out. Tennessee was historically a football school. We understood that. But we were entertaining, we were good, and we were selling out every game in advance.
That gave us instant swagger. We could hardly wait to get the season underway with Ernie and me leading the charge.
But things wouldn’t go as planned. Just six days before the start of our season, Ernie went down in an exhibition game.
Hard.
IT WAS SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 24. We were having a final tune-up against the Western Kentucky Hilltoppers, one of our main conference rivals, on our home court. As Ernie was driving to the basket for a layup, he lost his footing and hit the floor.
CRASH.
Every man on our squad held his breath. It wasn’t like Ernie to show pain. But you could see it all over his face as the coaches and medical staff clustered around him.
The court at Stokely had a Tartan rubberized surface with extreme traction. No basketball player likes playing on that kind of floor. Wood is far more forgiving. You slide on wood. It has bounce. But when you make a move on rubber, it can trip you up. If you fall, it has no spring, no give. It can cause injuries.
I didn’t think about Ernie being hurt as he was brought to the University of Tennessee Hospital. When you’re in the thick of battle, you have to stay focused, do whatever you can to win.
I scored 22 of 25 shots that game. It gave my teammates and coaches a boost—one we’d all need after we got the news about Ernie’s injury. The X-rays revealed a simple fracture of his shooting arm, and there was no telling how much time he would miss. It depended on how quickly he healed.
Ernie frowned glumly when we saw each other. He’d never been injured before. Now his season was in jeopardy.
“It’s broken right here,” he said, tapping his cast. “Just above the wrist.”
I shook my head. “What bad luck,” I said.
We couldn’t hide our disappointment. As his friend, I felt for him and understood how tough it would be watching from the sidelines. And from a team perspective, I knew we faced a challenge. Ernie was an All-SEC player. There was no replacing his production or court presence. And we had stiff competition in the Southeastern Conference. Alabama, Kentucky, and Auburn had been great the year before, and were improved teams going into the season. The rest of the conference was also more competitive.
After the game, Coach Mears told reporters that my roommate, Mike Jackson, would man the left-wing position until Ernie’s return. A junior named Austin Clark took over right-wing job, and Rodney Woods, a senior, would be our point. Bob Brykalski, a seven-footer, had the low post, but he was nursing an ankle sprain that made his ability to stay on the court a big concern.
At the same press conference, Mears officially named me a starter. I’d had a dominant preseason, so that was no surprise.
“He has everything it takes to become a big star in this game,” the coach said about me.
I appreciated his comments, but stardom wasn’t on my mind. Ernie was our leading scorer. Now I knew that responsibility was mine to start the season. I’d have to shoulder the offensive workload.
Our season opener was at home against the Wisconsin Badgers. I went into it wanting to make it clear we’d be okay in Ernie’s absence. Though I didn’t need added motivation, I wound up getting some anyway.
As our teams gathered around the jump ball circle to shake hands before tip-off, one of the opposing players—I guessed he would be responsible for guarding me—leaned in close and whispered something I will never forget.
“If you let me get mine, I’ll let you get yours.”
I couldn’t believe it. I’d been in more youth tournaments than I could count, and never heard anything like that from a player’s lips. How could he think so little of himself and debase the game in that way?
How could he want to trade off in points?
All those thoughts raced through my head in under a second. I was shocked and disgusted. But I didn’t show it.
My voice flat, I said, “I’m gonna get mine anyway.”
And I kept my word. At the age of seventeen, and in my first collegiate game, I totaled 42 points and grabbed 15 rebounds… and that was before fouling out after thirty minutes of play. It remains the highest-scoring debut in Tennessee history and stands as the ninth-highest scoring performance by any Vol player.
That Saturday night we won 85–65, and I got mine.
THAT FIRST VICTORY CAME at a considerable price.
After the game, I felt some soreness in my knee and then noticed it swelling up. A medical exam later that week revealed that I’d torn knee cartilage.
The Stokely Tartan had struck again. At one point in the game, the bottom of my sneaker had caught on the rubber floor and led to the injury.
The doctors told me I’d need open knee surgery to remove the damaged tissue, but said I could wait to take care of it in the offseason. Since the tear probably wouldn’t worsen if I played with it, my staying on the court depended on my ability to handle the pain.
That left me with an easy decision.
With Ernie out for the foreseeable future, I wasn’t going anywhere.
IN BASKETBALL, the competition is always feeling you out, putting your toughness to the test.
Once, when I was playing some older guys at the Farragut Houses, the neighborhood bully shoved his elbow into my stomach so hard I doubled over, gasping for air.
I can see it as if it was yesterday. I was on the far side of the court, in the center of the lane. The court was fenced in, and when he hit me, that fence blurred in my vision. I’ll never forget that.
I used the same hit once, when I was in the NBA, to send a dirty player a message.
You close your right hand, making a fist. You take your left hand, open palm, and you place it against that fist. And you take your right elbow—now you’ve got leverage—and BAM! Right in the stomach.
The kid at Farragut was a lot older and bigger than I was. The neighborhood bully.
I did nothing.
He got the better of me that day. He knew it. I knew it. I can still see his face.
I promised myself afterward that I’d never let it happen again.
The Vols’ second matchup of the 1974 season was a nonconference road game against the Michigan State Wolverines.
I was tested that Saturday night.
Michigan’s two top players were its co-captains, Joe Johnson, a guard, and C. J. Kupec, a center, who’d also played tight end on the varsity football team. The year before they beat Bobby Knight’s Hoosiers to become Big Ten champions, so they were entering the new season with attitude and a head of steam.
With the Vols coming to face them on their home floor, Michigan’s head coach, Johnny Orr, would have shared several things with his team. He knew Ernie was out of commission. He knew that left me as our top scorer. He knew I’d dropped 42 points against Milwaukee, and he’d have gotten scouting reports on my excellent preseason. It’s also likely his team had read Ray Mears’s positive comments about me, as well as a magazine article ranking me as one of the nation’s fifteen best college prospects. And they all knew I was a freshman.
It only made sense that they’d key their defense on me. Any team would’ve done the same.
I was ready.
It was a punishing battle. Kupec outweighed me by thirty pounds, and he and Johnson were all over me on defense, swinging their elbows into my chest and sides.
But I didn’t forget the lessons I learned in Brooklyn. Guys wouldn’t mess with me. I wouldn’t allow it. I didn’t back down and gave as I received. If an illegal elbow was thrown at me, I’d give one back. Otherwise you developed a reputation. Before you knew it, the scouting reports on you would say, “Hit him and he’ll disappear.” That’s exactly the kind wording you’d see. “Hit him and he’ll disappear for the night.”
Early in the second half, Johnson got called for a foul against me under the boards and took an angry step in my direction. I didn’t back off. The next thing I knew we were shoving and bumping chests.
The referees broke it up before things got out of hand, and Orr and his assistant coach had to be restrained from stepping onto the court. But things calmed down.
The Vols played a solid game that night, and we were ahead for most of it, holding a 7-point lead with fifteen minutes left in the game. But Michigan got hot down the stretch, and we made some mental mistakes. Also, I missed some opportunities to score from the line because I’d gotten into foul trouble.
In the end, Michigan defeated us 78–74.
I didn’t like it. I hated to lose. But I’d hauled down 13 rebounds and led both teams in scoring with 34 points. The Wolverines would remember that. Word would spread that I couldn’t be intimidated.
I’d passed a test.
There were more to come.
OUR NEXT FOUR GAMES were one-sided victories for the Vols. During that run, I was the highest-scoring college player in the nation, averaging over 30 points a game.
The team’s confidence grew. We were a very cohesive unit, and we were holding our own without Ernie.
In the short time since I’d landed in Tennessee, my life had changed tremendously. There were stories about me in the papers. Everyone on campus recognized me, and the same was true in Knoxville. Up in his radio broadcast booth, John Ward, the Vols’ legendary play-by-play announcer, took to calling me “King of the Volunteers.” I got a kick out of that.
What I was doing as a seventeen-year-old freshman had caught people by surprise, but it honestly didn’t surprise me. I’d played against older kids my whole life, so competing against upperclassmen was nothing exceptional. I just cared about winning and enjoyed seeing our fans charged up. I’d gone from playing in front of a few hundred people in high school gyms to performing before sellout crowds of almost thirteen thousand at our home arena, with students camping out at the box office to buy tickets before they disappeared.
The excitement was fantastic.
Then, around the middle of December, we got some great news. Ernie’s arm had healed faster than the doctors originally expected, and his cast was about to be removed. Coach Mears penciled him in to rejoin us before the end of the year, providing he came through a team scrimmage without setbacks.
Though he’d picked up some rust during his layoff, Ernie was cleared to play and returned to our active roster for a December 31 home game against the University of Vermont. It was our first nationally televised game of the season—ABC was broadcasting it on time-delay—and the crowd was in wild New Year’s Eve form. With all the anticipation around Ernie’s return, Stokely Athletic Center was jumping that night.
We pounced on Vermont from the start and won 115–66. I scored 40 points, but Ernie was the main attraction. When he stepped onto the court, taped wrist and all, the ovation around us was unbelievable. Our fans brought every kind of noisemaker you could imagine and let loose as if they were in Times Square to see the ball drop.
In fifteen minutes of play, Ernie went 6 for 9 from the floor, hit 4 of 6 from the free-throw line, and scored 16. But the main thing was that he got out there and didn’t feel any pain.
Ernie was back. We were finally going to play meaningful games together. And the timing couldn’t have been better.
In two weeks, we were playing the Kentucky Wildcats on their home floor—our first meeting of the season. Kentucky was one of the storied basketball colleges in the conference and the Vols’ longtime rival. Our records within the SEC were tied at 2–2. It was going to be our biggest game so far.
The Vols were ready to make a statement.
AS AN INCOMING FRESHMAN PLAYER, I had heard a lot about the Tennessee-Kentucky rivalry. But hearing about it and experiencing it were two different things.
A solid bunch from top to bottom, the Wildcats had a bruising front court with six-foot-ten freshman Rick Robey in the low post, and Mike Phillips and their star performer, Jack Givens, as forwards.
I knew going up against that front line was another test. This time, though, I’d be taking it under a spotlight. And not alone.
The Ernie and Bernie Show. That’s what they’d dubbed us in Tennessee. We didn’t make it up. Mears loved catchy slogans, and he’d worked on it with the Vols’s public relations department.
It caught on fast with everyone but my mother. “I named you Bernard,” she said when she heard it.
I didn’t argue with her.
As we arrived at Rupp Arena, I was glad Ernie was finally with us. With some added games on the schedule for the holiday break, he’d had three games to strengthen his arm and get back his rhythm and stamina. He was close to a hundred percent.
I wasn’t at all nervous that cold January night. Going back to my childhood tournaments, I’d never felt nervous before a game. In the visitor’s locker room, I lowered my head and mentally prepared for what was sure to be a very physical contest. I visualized success against that formidable Kentucky front line, saw myself ferociously driving down the lane for layups and dominating the boards for rebounds.
I was intense as I entered the tunnel, my Game Face on. Around me, my teammates were pumped up, bouncing on their knees like they had springs in them. We knew Kentucky’s reputation. They were a powerhouse, one of the country’s top teams. But Ernie and I could combine for 50 points on a nightly basis. When you have a pair of scorers like us, you’re in every single game. Nobody’s going to blow you out. We could compete against anyone and win.
Then it was game time. Boos and curses rained over us as we stepped onto the floor. They were louder than any crowd noises I’d ever heard. Until that moment, I hadn’t understood the full depth of hostility between the Vols and the Wildcats. The bitter contempt didn’t stop at the student bodies of our respective schools. It seeped through to our athletic departments.
Both teams were well coached. Ray Mears and the Wildcats’s Joe B. Hall were legendary. As you might expect, the game was close, with the advantage swinging back and forth. We fell behind by 7 points early in the first quarter, cut the deficit to one, then fell behind by a dozen. By halftime, we came to within 7, but then the Wildcats pulled ahead again, taking a 14-point lead.
We kept up the pressure. I had a very good second half, Ernie got red hot, and we tied the score at 65–65. Then, with just under eight minutes left in the third quarter, Ernie nailed a couple of free throws to put us on top by a point.
Then the momentum turned. Kevin Grevey, a guard who later played for the Washington Bullets and Milwaukee Bucks, was Kentucky’s high scorer. But their bench made the difference. It was deep, and one of their strongest assets. Late in the game, a player named Dan Hall came off it to make two big shots and a couple of rebounds that helped push the Wildcats to a 6-point win.
The loss was upsetting, but that wasn’t the worst of it. As I exited the floor, jeering Wildcats fans started pelting me with oranges. It took a moment before I realized what was going on. Then it struck me. Orange was our school color.
I was the best scorer in the SEC. King of the Volunteers. This was Kentucky’s version of a freshman initiation.
If someone hadn’t tossed a lit cigarette into my hair, I would have ignored them. At first, I was too shocked to believe it. But then my afro started to burn. I could feel it and smell it. I pulled the cigarette from my hair, turned toward the spectator in what seemed like slow motion. Even the fans around him looked stunned.
The guy stood there staring back at me.
It is one thing to be passionate about your team. But what he’d done was dangerous and belligerent, and what I saw in his eyes was pure malice. I tried to go after him, but felt several restraining hands on my arms, guiding me to the locker room.
By the time the press entered, I’d calmed down about the incident. I wasn’t about to forget it, though. Our team hadn’t made the statement we’d desired. Not that night. But there would be others.
As the reporters assembled at my locker, I spoke to them in slow, measured words.
“The Wildcats outplayed us,” I said. “They were the better team today.” Then I paused and made a vow. “As long as I am playing for the University of Tennessee, Kentucky will never beat us again.”
I don’t know if the people in that room took me seriously. I’m sure some thought my words were emotional, resulting from my disappointment over a tough loss. But what they thought didn’t concern me.
I knew. I knew.
Eventually, so would everyone.
HIS NAME WAS JACKY DORSEY. He was a freshman forward with the University of Georgia Bulldogs, and a Parade magazine All-American.
Georgia fans, and certain members of the press, were calling Dorsey the best rookie in the Southeastern Conference. Some Georgians were magnanimous enough to say I was almost as good.
Coach Mears made sure I knew. He posted his stats and the articles in the shower room. He also put our stats on the wall, side by side. I’m first in scoring. Dorsey’s first in rebounding. Like that.
Mears understood the competitive drive. He gave us material to read as we prepared to scrub clean. He believed in getting his guys fired up.
Let’s just say it worked. I grew tired of looking at the comparisons.
When I checked the schedule, I saw that February 1 was the date of our first game against Georgia. We’d be on the road. The Georgia arena would be packed with thousands of fans. The game would be locally televised. As one newspaper said, everyone watching in their living rooms would zero in on the matchup between Dorsey and me.
Sometimes I’d decide to be dominant, take my game up a level. Georgia was one of those times.
Jacky Dorsey, the best freshman in the conference? I intended to end the debate once and for all.
That night, a group of Georgia fans were waving a banner at tip-off. A very large banner. It said Jacky Dorsey was number one. They needed several pairs of hands to hold that banner up over their heads.
I scored 31 points by halftime, and that banner sank like the Titanic.
I finished that game scoring 42 points and pulling down 18 rebounds. Ernie also had a terrific night and canned 29. Together we combined for 71 points, 2 more than the whole Georgia team.
The final score was a 105–69 blowout, Vols over Bulldogs. Dorsey only scored two in the first half until Coach Mears emptied the bench to rest our regulars. Though the game’s outcome was decided by then, Bulldogs coach John Guthrie left him in to play our second line, possibly because he’d started the night edging me out for the SEC’s high-scoring average. If he could hit enough buckets against our backups, Dorsey would hold onto his top position.
The added 2 points he scored before the final buzzer weren’t enough. It left me averaging 27.9 points to Dorsey’s 27.7 for the SEC lead.
One newspaper story the next day read:
VOL DUO DESTROYS BULLDOGS
Not since General William Tecumseh Sherman in 1865 have Yankees wreaked as much devastation on Georgia as Bernard King and Ernie Grunfeld did here yesterday…
You could almost say we did it in a New York minute.
Then something very unfortunate happened.
UT had a brief intercession in early February, so the Volunteers traveled straight from Georgia to Alabama for our next game against the Auburn University Tigers. It was February 3, just two days after our victory over the Bulldogs.
I was in my hotel room a few hours before the game when the phone rang. Coach Mears was at the other end of the line.
“I need to see you,” he said in a heavy voice. “Right away.”
I held the receiver to my ear. This can’t be good, I thought. Mears usually spoke in a growl or a snarl. I’d never heard him sound that subdued.
After a second, I said, “Okay. I’ll be right over.”
I hung up, wondering what was wrong. The team was playing exceptionally well. I’d come off a great game. I couldn’t figure it out.
When I got to his room, I saw that Mears wasn’t alone. Stu Aberdeen was with him, and he looked as grim as the coach had sounded. It was the only time I ever saw Stu when his gaudy orange blazer seemed a bad fit for his mood. There was nothing bright about his expression.
Mears waved me into a seat and got right to it.
“Your junior high school transcript’s been called into question,” he said. “Someone wrote a letter to the NCAA suggesting it was revised.”
I couldn’t believe my ears. His words seemed unreal.
“Revised?”
“Altered to raise your GPA,” the coach explained. “The junior high record counts toward your overall average. And based on what they’ve been informed, the NCAA’s begun an investigation into whether you had the grades to be accepted to the university.”
Stu leaned forward in his chair.
“They’re sending people to New York,” he said, “so they can look at the original transcripts.”
I was quiet a minute. I felt like I’d walked into a bad dream.
“You said somebody wrote a letter,” I asked Mears. “Do you know who?”
He shook his head. “That hasn’t been disclosed,” he said. “But you have to ask yourself who’d stand to benefit.”
I understood what he meant. If a college team has interest in recruiting you, it can ask your high school to send along your transcripts. Once it reviews them, the team knows whether or not you meet the academic requirements for a Division One college—in other words, a school with a major basketball program.
There wasn’t any way I could know how many schools saw my transcripts. You usually weren’t informed unless they followed through. If there was a question about my grades, it would have explained why so few Division One basketball colleges tried to recruit me.
I’d thought all along that my high school GPA was acceptable. In the first half of my senior year, Coach Kern told me I needed to buckle down in my studies, and I’d attended night school at Erasmus High. Every single night, besides practice and playing, I took the bus there and worked hard to raise my grades. Before the end of the year, I’d pulled up my average.
But now it hit me that a lot of universities must have passed on me early because my GPA wasn’t right. I got it right by graduation, but some of those schools didn’t circle back. They didn’t know.
I could see how somebody in an athletic department would think: Here’s a seventeen-year-old kid, putting up these mega numbers. Playing at a much higher level than everyone else. He wasn’t an All-American in high school, and he’s playing better than the All-Americans the blue-chip colleges recruited. How does he land at the University of Tennessee?
The truth was it happened because of Tom Konchalski. If it hadn’t been for him, Tennessee might not have been interested in me. But he only brought me to Stu Aberdeen’s attention late in the school year. By then, my GPA was okay.
Someone on the outside wouldn’t have known the timeline. It might have appeared as if my grades were manipulated.
“I’m going to New York with the NCAA officials,” Stu said. “Hopefully I can get things straightened out.”
I sat there looking at their faces, speechless. I knew what was coming before Coach Mears spoke the words.
“Bernard, we can’t play you in the meantime. I’m sorry.”
It was still hard to believe. Two days before, I’d left Georgia on a high. But I’d suddenly crashed to earth. The thought of not being able to play, that I might lose my scholarship… the sense of inadequacy I’d felt since receiving that marked-up English paper in my first weeks at Tennessee…
I hadn’t cried since I was a child. Now I dug my knuckles into my eyes to stop the tears, but couldn’t do it. My Game Face cracked, and I tasted salt on my lips.
My suspension started with that night’s game; the decree had come down from somewhere above Coach Mears’s head. I sat out as my team lost 51–62, and I remember the coach stewing afterward. Though Auburn was physically larger than we were, the Vols were ranked the better team. In his eyes, they got a lucky break.
“We played a superior ball game! When you’re outweighed by twenty pounds and out-heighted by three inches… we just couldn’t play any better!” he barked to the press.
The next morning Aberdeen flew to New York, where he and the NCAA representatives went to Fort Hamilton and Sands to reexamine the original transcripts. They checked out okay. Two days after my suspension, I was cleared and reinstated.
I was relieved beyond my ability to express, but my benching at Auburn hurt us. We’d entered the season’s home stretch right behind Kentucky and Alabama for the SEC title. With an easier schedule than either team, and face-to-face matchups against both of them, a win against the Tigers would have pulled us closer to the top of our conference and made us the odds-on favorite to win the championship.
Instead, we lost to them and then took another two defeats after I returned to the roster—including our showdown with Alabama. My suspension had knocked me off stride, but there was another issue.
The right knee injury I’d suffered early in the year was giving me trouble. I had a very high pain threshold, so that part was manageable. But as our season wore on, my knee would repeatedly fill with fluid. The swelling made it hard to bend.
Our head trainer had started draining it before and after every game. Occasionally, it would balloon during a game, and he’d have to drain it in the locker room at halftime. I’d wince as his needle went deep into my knee joint, then wait as a mix of blood, pus, and water flowed out through the transparent tube. When all the fluid was drawn, he would tightly wind adhesive tape around my knee to compress it.
Over the past few games, the inflammation had been hampering my ability to jump, run, and move laterally on the court. It had become so bad that Coach Mears was thinking I might have to be sidelined.
In my own mind, there was no chance I’d sit. Our losing streak left us facing the most important game of our season. On February 15, Kentucky was coming to Big Orange Country for our first game since they’d beaten us on their home court. If we were going to overtake them and stay in the SEC Championship hunt, I had to keep my promise.
The Wildcats couldn’t be allowed to defeat us again.
THE VOLS’ REMATCH AGAINST KENTUCKY was played on a Saturday afternoon in front of a loud, passionate, sellout Tennessee crowd.
It was surprisingly mild for February, the fifty-one-degree weather making life easier for the students who’d slept out, waiting in line for available tickets. The Ernie and Bernie Show had instilled pride and excitement in our fans. We didn’t intend to let them down.
Our preparations for the game started the previous day, Friday, with Coach Mears and his staff going over how we’d defend Kentucky’s schemes, then running us through offensive sets in the gym so we could fine-tune our timing and positioning.
Mears had been responsible for some controversy after our road loss in Lexington, claiming the Wildcats used a “karate defense” against us and hinting that the officials had turned a blind eye.
“They won’t get away with it in Knoxville!” he barked.
Kentucky’s head coach, Joe Hall, disagreed with him. Angrily.
“Our defense is aggressive… not dirty!” he said. “Ray Mears is just trying to create a psychological situation favorable to his Vols!”
Hall’s opinion hadn’t come out of nowhere. With Coach Mears, you could always count on some creative motivational gimmicks.
I’ve mentioned that the coach admired General Patton to the point that he adopted his physical bearing and mannerisms. What I haven’t said is that he had the soundtrack from the 1970 film Patton looped into our locker room before practices and games.
As a proud American, I’ve always loved our country. I happen to think the movie was pretty good. But listening to that soundtrack every single day rattled my brain!
Finally, I decided to quiz my teammates about it, asking if the crashing cymbals and snare drums were making them as nuts as they made me. They all said yes. Then I polled them on whether they’d prefer a mix of more popular music.
Everyone chimed in at once. Resoundingly.
“Anything!”
“Seriously, B…”
“We’ll take anything!”
Armed with that unanimous agreement, I passed the message along to Coach Mears in his office.
He seemed bewildered. “Wait,” he said. “Are you telling me the boys don’t like the movie Patton?”
“They think it’s great, coach,” I said. “George C. Scott… wow!”
“Then what’s wrong with the soundtrack?”
“Nothing, coach,” I said. “The soundtrack is also great.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“Well, I wouldn’t call it a problem,” I said. “It’s just that they’d like some… musical variety.”
“Variety?”
“Respectfully, yes. Contemporary music. To get them going before games.”
Mears squinted at me for a long minute. Then he shrugged. “Okay, King. I’ll see what I can do.”
Within a couple of days, we found a jukebox installed in the locker room. It was loaded with the most up-to-date forty-fives.
I guess the coach saw it as a way to keep his troops happy.
Mears had another interesting team mandate involving our sneakers. I’m not sure where he picked it up. He’d served in the army in the 1950s, so maybe it was a carryover from boot camp.
After every practice and game, we had to stow our sneakers side by side on the second shelves of our lockers, toes pointing outward. The tongue of each sneaker had to be folded back, on top of the laces, and the outer laces had to drape down over the left and right sides of the shoe. I’m not sure what to say about that requirement, except that none of us really minded. We just saw it as keeping our leader happy.
For the upcoming game against Kentucky, Coach Mears pulled out all the stops. In the entrance to our locker room, and between the lockers and shower, we found Kentucky blue mats with the name WILDCATS printed across them in large white block letters. The mats covered the floor where they were placed, so you couldn’t step around them as you entered or left the shower, but had to walk straight across the lettering.
I had no need for extra motivation, especially for that game, although my pregame routine was always the same. The Friday before a home game would be a long one after classes and practice, and I never ventured into town to relax. Instead, I would eat dinner in the cafeteria, then retreat to my dorm to rest and study the written scouting report.
Before going to bed that night, I’d filed all the Wildcats’ plays into my memory. I woke up the next day in game mode, joining my teammates and coaches for an early-morning film session, followed by our traditional milkshakes, oatmeal cookies, and green Jell-o.
The athletic dormitory is connected to Stokely via a short, glass-walled skywalk. I always chose to go down to the lower level and walk into the arena through the parking lot. The locker room was on that level, and I could reach my cubicle unnoticed. I didn’t want fanfare from the students who would line up below the skywalk to cheer us on. I preferred not to speak to anyone before a game. I was already in a different mental space.
At my locker, I suited up, putting on my left sock, then my right sock. I wore three pairs of socks because of Stokely’s unforgiving Tartan floor; since I was flat-footed, they helped cushion me when I jumped for a ball.
When I was fully dressed to play, I closed my eyes, folded my hands on my lap, bowed my head, and visualized. My knee had been drained but was throbbing with pain, and I had to go deeper into my mental reserves of toughness and intensity.
I silently told myself there was no way a team led by Ernie and me would let Kentucky walk into our house and beat us. It didn’t matter that the Wildcats were ranked fourth in the nation and held the top berth in our conference. All our home games were televised. We had classes to attend Monday. We weren’t losing to them in front of UT’s fans and student body.
Elsewhere in the room, Ernie was kidding around with the guys, being his usual gregarious and funny self. But he was no less determined than I to win the game.
Ernie was a great basketball player, friend, and teammate. We never had conversations about Kentucky. We didn’t need to. We counted on each other to play our best. We were winners, unaccustomed to losing.
The team reflected our combined attitudes, Ernie relentlessly battling away while I led the charge across the floor, pumping my fists, exhorting my teammates to push harder. We would back down from no one on the court.
Now I suddenly heard our coaches gathering us together and knew my preparations were over. Opening my eyes, I got up and joined my teammates.
We headed into the tunnel, Coach Mears yelling out his encouragement.
It was just minutes before game time.
THE ENTRANCE TO THE COURT was shaped like the letter “T” and covered with a huge sheet of orange paper. As we waited in the tunnel, I moved to the front of the squad and said aloud, with fire in my voice, the words I’d been silently repeating at my locker.
“We don’t lose to Kentucky!”
Then I heard John Ward introduce me and went busting through the paper onto the floor. I was always first, my teammates following me through the big T as their names were called over the PA system.
Stokely blared with sound and light. The brass band was marching around the arena, going up and down the aisles, playing our school fight song, “Rocky Top,” while the fans cheerfully sang along at the top of their lungs:
Oh Rocky Top, you’ll always be,
Home sweet home to me,
Good ole Rocky Top,
WHOA!
On the floor, the cheerleaders waved their orange-and-white pom-poms as we went through our warm-ups. We put on a show like the Harlem Globetrotters—no-look passes, over-the-head reverse dunks, trick shots, a display of basketball wizardry that brought the crowd to its feet.
Good ole Rocky Top,
WHOA!
The Kentucky players were introduced next, the cheers from the stands turning to lusty boos as they emerged from the tunnel.
Ernie and I traded glances. We understood the game’s significance. And we knew what we had to do.
Our team was pumped, and we showed it right from the tip-off, shooting at over 63 percent in the first half. But Kentucky also came to play, and the Wildcats’ big three, Kevin Grevey, Jack Givens, and Rick Robey, had outstanding games.
We made sure we were better.
All five of our starters hit the double digits in points. Ernie poured in 29; and Mike Jackson, 24; with our center Doug Ashworth and guard Rodney Woods combining for 26. I bucketed 24 of my own and dominated the backboards, grabbing 20 rebounds.
At halftime, we led 56–44. Then we pulled ahead 74–60.
But in the third quarter, Givens scored 10 and the score became 74–70. Robey also got hot.
They inched closer in the fourth, making a comeback push.
80–78.
88–86.
We didn’t fold. The game was very physical, and I was in foul trouble for most of the fourth. But I stayed inside and wrestled down rebound after rebound, repeatedly hurling the ball off to Ernie, who’d go 11 for 12 from the free-throw line.
In the last few minutes, we moved ahead 98–92.
But it was Grevey’s turn. Among the game’s best shooters, he made a pair of jumpers, one from deep in the court. The Wildcats were coming on again.
The score was 98–94. Then 99–96.
With the clock down to about three minutes, Jackson got to the line and gave us a little space.
101–96.
Then Givens. A jumper. 101–98. They were breathing down our necks again…
In the last few seconds, Ernie drew a foul. Positioned himself on the line. Eyed the basket. Bounced the ball.
It went in. Swish. All net.
I felt the crowd’s roar in my belly. In my bones. Felt the floor trembling under my feet.
The score was 102–98.
Ernie shot again, made the basket, and the horn sounded. Game over.
Final score, Volunteers 103, Wildcats 98.
The roof blew off the arena.
We’d knocked Kentucky out of a tie for first place in the SEC, leaving them a game behind Alabama. And we’d done it scoring in the triple digits, something no Vols team had ever managed against them.
Oh, did we celebrate. The Vols were for real, and our fans had helped bring it home.
“Coming off a three-game losing streak, and having Rodney Woods and Bernard King injured… this has to stand with our biggest wins in my thirteen years here,” Coach Mears told the press.
He was happy.
The same couldn’t be said for Joe Hall, though you had to give him credit for composure and decorum. Sometime during the second half, he’d gotten hit in the head by an orange lobbed from the stands.
“I’m all right,” Hall told a newspaperman before hurrying into the locker room.
If it hurt, he didn’t let on.
WRITING ABOUT THE RIVALRY, I get pumped and feel like suiting up to play. Even after all these years, it comes back to me like it was yesterday. But when I get up for a glass of water, reality sets in. My body reminds me that playing is in my memories.
I’m also reminded that all my memories of Tennessee aren’t happy ones. Some are deeply painful. It would be easy to ignore them, but they’re part of my story. If I’m to tell it fully and honestly, they mustn’t be pushed aside.
I’d turned to basketball to channel my energies. That was why I’d been recruited by the university. But off the court, away from the cheers, I was still in an academic environment I no longer felt altogether part of. Still an introvert. And still barely eighteen years old.
After a winning ball game, it was customary for our team to go upstairs and walk across the windowed walkway leading from Stokely to Gibbs Hall, where the lobby would be filled with individuals who came to congratulate us for our performance. There were students, members of the athletic department, Knoxville VIPs… all kinds of people.
I wasn’t at ease with that. For me, it was an awkward situation. I did it once, early in our season, and realized I didn’t like it. I needed time to decompress after the intensity of a game.
My routine leaving the arena became the reverse of what I did when I entered. I would always go out the back exit, walk around the corner, get to the dormitory, walk in its back door, and head straight upstairs to my room.
Bernard, the shy, socially awkward loner from Fort Greene, was still inside Bernard King, the basketball player. I couldn’t balance the two personas. Couldn’t make myself feel whole.
It wasn’t going to get any easier.