The Best American Sports Writing 2011 (33 page)

As for Nixon, he was back on the street. The DA had apparently forgotten to pay his hotel bill after a month, so he wandered off.

 

"I'm gonna get Lynne Abraham if it kills me." This is Pop's mother, Pearl Bronson, a middle-aged woman wearing gray Nikes and her braided hair back in a bun. "I truly believe that because Lynne Abraham did not arrest that son of a bitch, my son is dead," she tells me, eyes aflame. "Just like she pulled the trigger herself."

On January 28, three weeks after Abraham's press conference, one of her deputies prosecuted Pop for making a false report to the police. It was surreal, carnivalesque—like when Dick Cheney shot his friend in the face and the friend apologized for getting in the way of Cheney's bullet. The judge imposed six months' probation. Pop was already on probation for another case, and the conviction meant he had to go to jail; he was briefly handcuffed, then immediately released pending appeal.

Before that day, Pop seemed willing to let the system give him some measure of justice. He was suing Harrison in civil court for damages. Pearl overheard him one night talking on the phone; he mentioned Harrison's name, then said, "I'm gonna let it go, let my lawyer take care of it." But to be shot
and
prosecuted? Especially while Harrison walked the city a free man and the street was abuzz about how Pop had been punked? They were
laughing
at him. He told a friend, "He's not gonna run me out of my neighborhood."

Pop made it a point to eat breakfast every day at the Chopstick & Fork, a diner on 28th and Girard, half a block from Playmakers. Pop didn't live anywhere near the Chopstick & Fork. Even to sit down over some eggs and pancakes was an act of defiance.

On July 21, 2009, according to surveillance video captured from a nearby convenience store, Pop emerged from the Chopstick & Fork and walked to his car. He looked over his shoulder, then got into his car and made a phone call. Three minutes later, a six-foot-tall man in a black hoodie and white sneakers ran up to the driver's side and shot Pop multiple times through the window. Then the man sprinted around the hood to the passenger side and shot Pop again. The shooter fled.

Pop spent the next two months in Hahnemann Hospital, a tracheostomy tube jammed into his windpipe, able to communicate with his family only by blinking. He died on September 4, 2009.

According to multiple sources with knowledge of the investigation, the primary suspect in Pop's murder was initially Lonnie Harrison, Marvin's cousin. Acting on a tip, police searched Lonnie's apartment, looking for a gun. The apartment was a tiny room above Deborah's Kitchen, the soul-food restaurant on Girard run by Marvin's mother and aunt. But Lonnie hadn't been living there for a year. There was no gun or any other evidence to tie him to the murder, and no witnesses have ever come forward to identify Lonnie or anyone else as the shooter. On the convenience-store video, the shooter's face was obscured by shadow, making a positive identification impossible.

The cops recovered a second surveillance tape, but it, too, was inconclusive. It came from Playmakers. This tape, according to police, showed a man crossing in front of the bar on 28th Street just below Girard. Detectives felt certain that it was the same man they had seen on the convenience-store tape: the shooter, walking toward the scene of the crime. But just as the man got close enough to the camera to bring his face into focus, the tape went blank—and skipped the next three minutes. "There are no coincidences," says one police source. "For the previous hour, that camera picked up every movement, and then it happens to go blank just at that moment?"

 

In Indianapolis, when Marvin was still playing football, he ate most of his meals at a small cluster of fast-food joints off the highway. There was a Wendy's, a McDonald's, a sub shop, and a Chinese buffet. "This is me, right here," he once told ESPN's Suzy Kolber, who was riding shotgun in his car. "If Wendy's has a long line, I go right across the street to Mickey D's." He smiled, rubbed his hands. "That's how it works."

The Kolber clip is on YouTube, and it's an amazing thing, because you get to see Marvin in a rare affectionate mood. He's talking about the perfect order of his world, from his mealtime routine to the way he keeps his favorite snack foods secreted around his condo. "Pillsbury Doughboy," he sighs, hefting a tube of cookie dough in the freezer. "Me and him get along just fine." Everything is in its right place. He seems so
happy.

How, then, did such a careful man end up making such a mess? What happened to him back home in Philly?

It's a sunny afternoon in November, and I've gone to see a man I hope can give me some answers. I'm sitting in a white room in a prison I'm not allowed to name. I'm not allowed to name the prison because the man I've come to interview says he fears his fellow inmates might assault him if they knew he was the guy who snitched on Marvin Harrison.

Robert Nixon's jeans are scuffed. His hands are folded in his lap. His glasses give him a sort of professorial, beatnik vibe—a pudgier version of Cornel West. He calls me "sir." In fact, Nixon is deferential to the point of meekness until the moment I ask him about Pop's murder. Does he think it was meant to send a message to any other potential witnesses? "Are you kidding?" Nixon says, startled. "Do
you
think it was a message?" Nixon shoots a look to his attorney, Wadud Ahmad, a powerfully built black man who is sitting in on our interview, and the two of them explode into howls of laughter, as if I just asked the dumbest question in the history of white people.

Nixon is here on a misdemeanor drug conviction. Perversely, he says he's glad for it. "That's probably the best thing that happened to me. That's how fucked-up my life is with this. [Jail is] the safest place for me." Nixon says he would move himself and his family to another city if he could afford it, but he can't. He's now suing Harrison in civil court, claiming damages from the shooting.

Nixon's civil suit is only one of several dangling threads in Marvin Harrison's life. There's also the civil suit filed by Pop, which is still alive even though Pop is not. If the lawyers in the two civil suits get a chance to depose Marvin Harrison, Harrison's words could, in theory, be used against him by prosecutors down the line. In January, Lynne Abraham stepped down after almost 20 years, making way for the incoming DA, Seth Williams, a young, passionate reformer with a grassroots political base. (Williams, who is black, has not commented on the Harrison case.) Harrison could avoid the depositions by settling the cases. As of press time, though, he hadn't done that. Nor had he announced his definitive retirement from football, though no team has demonstrated much interest in his services, given his declining stats and aging knees.

Say this for Marvin Harrison: he tried to be his own person. He succeeded on a level that most of us can only dream of reaching. But he either never realized or flat-out denied the destabilizing effect of his presence in a poor and desperate part of the city. Much as he insisted that he was a normal working person like any other, he was never going to be seen that way. He was always going to be a target for the hopes, resentments, and ambitions of other people, a reality that rippled and swirled around him in unpredictable ways. And the proof is still there, scattered across the city, for anyone who cares enough to look.

"Can I see it?" I ask Robert Nixon.

There in the prison, Nixon pulls up his shirt. I spot it immediately. A dark bruise, oval-shaped. Remarkably clean-edged. Dark-bordered and slightly lighter in the center. Six inches from his jugular. I press my index finger into the bruise's soft center. I can feel the bullet. So close. So lightly embedded. As if I could pop it out with the slightest scrape of my fingernail. Not a hustler's tale, not a prayer uttered and revoked, but a truth awaiting a seeker.

FROM
ESPN.COM

T
HE RIM AND DARRYL DAWKINS
used to have a relationship. They would meet at night, in crowded gyms across America, and each time, young, crass, muscle-bound Dawkins would beg the rim to go home with him. He'd taunt it, attack it, and swing on it, but the rim always had the last laugh—until the 1979 night in Kansas City when he tore a backboard to a thousand pieces.

The closest witness, Bill Robinzine (God rest his soul), had to have his head checked for glass. Dawkins's 76ers teammate Steve Mix rushed to the locker room, dug out a camera, and snapped pictures. Their coach, Billy Cunningham, bitched and moaned about the 90-minute delay. Dawkins, thrilled to see the rim fractured on the floor, did what he does best: he gave his slam a formal name.

If You Ain't Groovin' Best Get Movin'—Chocolate Thunder Flyin'—Robinzine Cryin'—Teeth Shakin'—Glass Breakin'—Rump Roastin'—Bun Toastin'—Glass Still Flyin'—Wham Bam I Am Jam!

It was a night the earth moved, just a little, and the NBA was never the same. The league ushered in breakaway rims later that season, and hanging on to the basket became taboo and/or a technical foul. It was the Dawkins Rule—he would live in infamy now—and young Darryl celebrated the moment by crowning himself "The Master of Disaster."

But time moves on, ruthlessly, and 30-odd years later, 53-year-old Darryl Dawkins is standing in an obscure Pennsylvania gym, glaring at a basket, thinking the strangest, damnedest thing:

I'm not sure I can dunk.

You evolve. Your body and mind change. A lot of players, coaches, and writers made predictions about "Chocolate Thunder," about how his life would turn out—and it's crazy how many were dead wrong.

They thought he'd never wipe that impish grin off his face. They thought he'd never get rid of his harem. They thought he'd never stop rhyming. They thought he'd make his name off Bill Robinzine forever. But the hell with them—he's nothing like they remember. In fact, they'll never believe what's in Darryl Dawkins's pocket as he's staring up at that Pennsylvania rim: a whistle.

It must be difficult to be stereotyped from the age of 14, to be serially labeled a Baby Huey, a man-child, the next Wilt, a coachkiller, a cutup, a bust. You can laugh or cry about it, but for the longest time, Dawkins chose denial ... and moved into an imaginary world. He called it Planet Lovetron, a place where critics, coaches, and refs were not permitted. He invented this planet in high school, brought it with him to the pros, and Lovetron was how he got through the scrutiny and ridicule.

In other words, it was all a show, an act. The Philadelphia 76ers took him fifth overall in 1975—the first high school player to be drafted and go directly to the NBA, a year after Moses Malone made the same jump to the ABA—and he signed his contract wearing a cream suit, a top hat, and a bow tie. By training camp, his hair was greased back, a la James Brown, and his dress suits were fire-engine red and Chiquita-banana yellow and even fuchsia. The veterans considered him a nut job—better that than have them think he was scared—but the team's second-round pick, Lloyd B. Free out of Brooklyn, was dying to know more.

"I said, 'Darryl, what's all that stuff in your hair?'" Free remembers. "And he said, 'No, I'm cool, I'm cool, I'm from Lovetron.' So I wondered where that place was. I said, 'Darryl, we're going to a party; you want to go?' He said, 'Yeah, bro, let's go, let's do this thing.' I said, 'Yo, I'm going to come get you in three hours,' and he had on a lime green outfit. Looked like a big leprechaun. I'm like, 'Wait a minute, Darryl, I'm not going to the club with you looking like that,' and Darryl said, 'No, I'm cool.' And he had on green shoes! I couldn't believe it. If you turned the lights out, you'd still see Darryl walking around."

Dawkins was 18 at the time, and this was back when 18 was really 18—no YouTube or Internet or 256 TV channels. He was 6-foot-11, 255 pounds, and naive, and when he saw veterans such as George McGinnis smoking cigarettes at halftime, he figured it was okay to walk over and grab a beer. They wagged a finger at him, so he just wagged one back. He always carried a gigantic boom box on his shoulder—on the bus, to the team hotels—and woke up one morning with a sore rotator cuff. He thought he had tweaked it in practice, so he went to see a doctor.

"Doc, my shoulder hurts."

"Is that your radio, Darryl?"

"Yes."

"How much does it weigh?"

"Seventy pounds."

"There's your problem."

He barely played as a rookie because his coach, Gene Shue, didn't trust him. How could he? Dawkins was eating chocolate bars on the bench.

If his coaches thought he was a fool or uncouth, it was because they knew nothing about him. They didn't know that, growing up in Orlando, Florida, he hadn't had indoor plumbing until he was in middle school. They didn't know he turned pro to buy homes for his mother and grandmother. They didn't know he was planning to send all seven of his brothers and sisters to college. They didn't know that after a Sixers home game, he saw a disheveled kid standing in the rain and drove the kid home to the slums. They didn't know that after the next game the same kid showed up and invited him back to the slums for dinner. They didn't know Darryl Dawkins had heart—and, problem was, Dawkins didn't either.

The players and coaches would talk among themselves:
If only he'd gone to college...

The kid, at 19, already was maybe the strongest player in the league, and they'd dream of the possibilities. They would see him hold the ball like a grapefruit, drain a 15-footer, and run the floor in four steps, and they'd expect him to abuse Wes Unseld, Bob Lanier, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. But he couldn't—he wasn't technically sound—and they all wondered what he would have looked like if he had gone to Kentucky like he was supposed to.

Dawkins heard the whispers, and they pissed him off. By his second season, he was the Sixers' backup center, averaging five points a game, and he was sick of being bashed. His peers around the league knew he was a beast, and in one particular game in Denver, he dunked the ball with such force that the net whipped, knotted, and sent the ball spinning back out of the basket. While the refs were deciding whether the bucket should count—which it did—Nuggets forward Bobby Jones smelled smoke.