The King of Basketball

Bernard King’s career was sidetracked by injury, and overlooked by the
masses
Genius Interrupted

By Robert "Scoop" Jackson

The sweat is separating on his forehead. Like oil from water. It
separates again, from his head to the floor. Drip. Drip. Some drops
hit the ground; the sound of droplets. For others, silence. Yet they
still fall. Separation.
He is wearing a soaked white tank top, black trim—old school. His
beautiful piteous skin is glistening, a deep shade of brown. His eyes
are squinting as he lifts his chin from his chest. He never wipes the
sweat away. To him it is not a distraction; it is simply part of his
soul escaping to touch the outside world. He looks cold into what is
looking at him. You. He becomes Rakim, without saying one rhyme.



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This article appears in the April 2004 issue of Hoop Magazine.
Like the infamous E.F. Hutton, when he talks, everyone listens,
because it never happened often when he balled. He always let others
speak about him. There is quiet on the set. Life is recited.

“You know, I don’t know why I never had a nickname back in the day,”
he says, head down again, sound of a basketball being dribbled some 10
feet away. “I guess you could have called me ‘The Executioner.’”

Another kind of silence overcomes the room, outside the room. One that
occurs when Gods speak. I did say Rakim, right? He continues,
explanation like Bible verses.

“You might as well have gotten yourself a priest, ate your last meal
and walked to the court blindfolded, because I tell ya [New York
accent riding thick] if you were assigned to check me...forget it! I
would bury you.” There is a pause, not a long one, but one that allows
breaths to be taken, caught and gathered. “I had a quick release. My
spin moves were too fast. Once I let the pill go, there was no stay of
execution, no court of appeal...”

His voice rises as the sound of the ball falls threw a net. The sound
of his life.

“You were done.”

So was he. Silence again overcame the room. The camera stopped
filming. He had spoken what everyone had felt for almost ten years,
but were never able to put into words. Bernard King then looked at you
in that camera for the last time. Still sweating, still dripping, he
said nothing more. He said goodbye. Forever.

His was not the story that was to be told. His baby brother Albert was
supposed to be The One. In the classic Heaven Is A Playground by Rick
Telander, the younger King is painted as the prodigy, the godsend,
God’s son. He, not Bernard, was New York City’s finesse, Brooklyn’s
finest. But hunger can drive different people in different ways.

University of Tennessee. Knoxville is directly 776 miles south of New
York. It was around the time when Rick Telander’s book was becoming
known in urban America that Bernard was making noise in rural. The
Ernie and Bernie Show is what it was being hailed as. All hailed the
King.

“I think we had a sort of cockiness and flair that hadn’t been seen
down South before,” says Milwaukee Bucks GM Ernie Grunfeld, a New York
native who was the other half of the show.

The NBA began to look like his route out of Brooklyn. While Albert’s
heaven was the playground, Bernard’s heaven was about to be an arena.
But hell also awaits those whose hearts and minds are sometimes
vulnerable to success, escapism, stardom and even love.

Here’s the story nobody caught. At the time Bernard entered the
League, Micheal Ray Richardson was beginning to paint a picture of the
black athlete that was the perfect duality of what W.E.B. DuBois
called The Soul. There was so much pain and turmoil inside of
Richardson once he stepped off the court, so much that it destroyed
his career. Yet New York loved him. On the streets in every borough,
from Brownsville to the Bronx, Marcy to Lefrak, Sugar was more than an
urban legend or cultural icon, he was a hero. The one often loved,
adored and sad to say, honored.

While Richardson was in New York playing behind Ray Williams, BK was
in New Jersey playing behind John Williams. Then Sugar started to get
out of control. His game blew up and so did his life. He started to
rule the basketball world.

Bernard was straight; trying to keep the demons under control, while
his game was angelically outta control. Fate must have felt that the
proximity of King in Jersey and Richardson in New York at the same
time was too much. Bernard was sent to Golden State, far away from
Micheal Ray, disassociation before birth.

With the Warriors, King played behind no one; he played along with
World B. Free and became a star. It seemed that almost (an important
word) everything Micheal Ray was publicly getting busted for, Bernard
was publicly getting away with. Not to synergize the two but life had
an idiosyncratic way of increasing the degrees of separation. Because
Richardson became the reason King would achieve greatness.



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Bernard King: His Royal Highness.
Noren Trotman/NBAE/Getty Images
The trade: Bernard King for Micheal Ray Richardson, 1982. This is
where the life of “one of, if not the, greatest Knick of all time”
begins.

It was the week of April 17th when he lost his mind. Some will say he
had done this before—in Tennessee, in Jersey, in Oakland—but on the
other end of the spectrum, where his faults took over his virtues.
Alcohol was the main one. It did things to him, changed him into
someone different when he had that oil, that “Remy in his system.”

“He did some scandalous things,” New York Post columnist Peter Vescey
would confess. “[Things] I won’t even talk about.”

But one week nullified all; buried the demons. The abuse King gave the
Detroit Pistons (without justifiable bragging or boasting) was worse
than any abuse he ever put on himself. There had been similar
performances, but none like this. Dr. J in the final ABA Finals in
1976 was the last time anyone had seen anything like it, but
still...this was...

Isiah Thomas explains: “What he did to us I had never seen before. We
caught him in the middle of a three-year stretch where he was playing
better than any small forward in the history of the game. It wasn’t
like he was scoring 45 points and taking 40 shots, he was scoring 45
on us only taking 22 shots!”

1984. The year before he led the League in scoring. The year before he
was supposed to get the MVP. The year where he solidified the truth
that he, not Larry Bird or Magic Johnson, was not just the best, but
the greatest basketball player alive. The year before the injury that
would change not only his life, but the landscape of basketball. Yes,
many still have Jerry Wachter’s frozen moment, that Sports
Illustrated, BK on the cover, fingers broken and taped, flu pouring
out of his body, wreaking havoc, wreckin’ shop. “His Royal Highness”
it read. Most keep it in cellophane, framed. He means that much to
them. They are not alone.

Let Isiah Thomas tell it. He was the one who watched a mind get lost,
it was he who saw the episodes unfold, shot after shot falling game
after game, some never blessing rim or glass. He saw a man score 213
points in five games, missing only 40 percent of the time. Zeke—who
himself played so well that week that Bernard’s teammate Rory Sparrow
said, “God placed his hand on Isiah and said, ‘You shall play
basketball and you shall play great,’”—20 years later, still in awe.

“In the final game against us in that series, I think he scored 50
[editor’s note: 44] and Kevin McHale told me—because [the Celtics] had
to play the Knicks in the next round—‘There’s no way he’s scoring 50
on us. We won’t let him.’ I said to McHale, ‘OK.’ In the first game
against Boston in the next series, I think Bernard scored 60.”

One name puts this performance in perspective: Kobe Bryant. Nine
games. Forty-plus points every time. Nothing like anyone had ever
seen. The most dominant offensive performance (according to the media)
this side of MJ or Wilt. Incredible, right? This is why Bernard King
is so culturally revered, because no one of circumstance or substance
remembers. Or cares. Or gives a damn just how sick BK was. They let
the drama of his life, the abuse of substance, what he did off the
court shape their memories, not just opinions.

To understand just how beyond-Kobe Bernard was, return to the scenes
of the crime: NYC vs. Detroit, 1984. He did in a playoff series—where
the pressure is much greater—exactly what Bryant did, only better:
King averaged one less point per game (44 to 43), while shooting 60
percent as opposed to Kobe’s 49 percent. King averaged five less shots
per game than Kobe (27 shots per game to Bryant’s 32). He only once
shot the ball over 30 times (In Game 2 he shot 35 times, the most
attempts all season), while Kobe had five 30-plus shot games (in one
game Kobe shot 41 times). King also did it without the use of a
three-pointer, meaning it was there—but he never used it. Then once
that playoff series was over, King averaged 30 (including two more
40-point games) in the next series, (which they lost to Boston in
seven games), when his game was considered off!

Which leads to only one question: What’s up with the love? He had
scoring stretches that lasted seasons, not just games.

1978: 24ppg (as a rookie)
1982: 23.2
1984: 26.3
1985: 32.9 (led League)
1990: 28.4

Not to mention, his shooting percentages unheard of by anyone under
the age of 7. “You were surprised whenever he missed,” Vescey says.
“And he’d scare the [heck] out of anyone who had to guard him.”

He was a genius interrupted. Ball games written in stanzas as opposed
to chapters. The universal love that evaded his career was found
scrolled inside a book penned by his peers.

“From my standpoint, and understand I’m one that believes the game of
basketball is all about matchups,” Julius Erving expresses, “Bernard
King was the toughest matchup of my career. And I say that from the
heart.”

Bernard King had only three moves in his arsenal,” Mark Aguirre said
to a reporter once. “But you couldn’t stop any one of them. He would
just kill you, not softly either.”

“He was unstoppable.” The words of Alex English flow. “I hated to see
him coming on the break on the wing because I knew. He was a small
small forward but he was so strong. But he also had an inner strength.
I believe, myself, Bob McAdoo and Bernard King should not have been
left off of the NBA’s 50 Greatest Players. Of all of us, he should
have been [on] there.”

His friend for life, Grunfeld finishes the testimonial. “He always had
his best games in the biggest moments, even in college; and
unbelievable moments in the Garden. He had great mental toughness. He
was a very, very special player and still a good friend.”

There’s the love. His people knew.

Everyone heard the pop. I, instead, felt it.



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After tearing his ACL, King won Comeback Player of the Year with the
Washington Bullets in 1990.
Dale Tait/NBAE/Getty Images
I was there that day. With my sister, Mia. Sitting not far from the
Bulls bench, anticipating the exposure of the truth, anticipating
something historic. After missing the entire season with that knee
tear, while the other suffered the same fate with an ankle injury, it
was the matchup between the future and the now: Michael Jordan vs.
Bernard King.

After scoring 12 points in the first six minutes of the game, it
happened. My eyes closed as I saw him go down under the basket. I felt
the sharpness of it; I felt the finality of it. As they carried him
off the court, I looked at my sister. She saw it in my eyes. Bernard
King’s career had just ended.

ACL tears create tears; no one is supposed to come back the same from
them. For most athletes, depression sets in, manifests itself into the
psyche. Weak individuals fold; allow the curse to control the gift.
For too many GMs and head coaches in the League, Bernard King was
about to be the next victim, the next one to throw it all away. They
knew his kind. No one returns from ACL tears. Not even kings.

It is usually the ones with the greatest weaknesses that have the
strongest resolve. They do things no one else can. “One of the most
significant things [Bernard] did, of all athletes in any sport, is
when he came back from his injury and returned to All-Star status,”
Erving says.

In a Bullets uniform, BK mounted a four-year comeback that would not
only get him the NBA Comeback Player of the Year (1990), but back to
the status as one of the most feared players alive.

From 17.2 ppg in ’87 to the 28.4 in ’90, he ruled. Every critic he
ever had finally silenced, their words resting in peace. Never to be
heard on another professional basketball court again.

His forever has ended in Atlanta...for now. He has a new wife, new
baby, new business. He travels often, building his Costum Crown
empire. He lays low. Appearing every now and then on ESPN Classic, to
talk about one of his performances or laughing about his role in the
movie, Fastbreak. Or for an honor in his name at the Garden. Or
showing up to pass on the game to a young player as a favor to his
friend Grunfeld.

He was contacted to tell his story for this story. He never called
back.

Understandable. Years ago he told this exact same magazine, “I
realized that if I drank there would be no career, there would be no
life. There’s not much more you can say after that.” Again, truth.

His game was luxury as a Birkin handbag. As exotic as Zane, he could
get warm like Kane, vintage as Louis Roederer champagne. Inside/Out.
Both places he was amazingly unstoppable. And that’s an
understatement. Peter Vescey put it best: “Bernard King could score 30
effortlessly, 40 whenever he wanted, and 50 when it was serious.” They
say he invented the term “game face” without the word ever coming out
of his mouth.

His legacy rests on a piece of paper: that SI cover. Over the years it
has become the greatest lasting image of what he did, all he meant. An
invalidated career, validated for a minute, one week to be exact.

It was not the word “Highness” on that cover that made the statement
that explained his impact. It was something else. The subtext read:
Bernard King Raises The Game To A New Level. Not “his” game, “the”
game. There in three small letters lies the essence of why he is so
endeared. He raised the game of basketball to that next level, brought
it to where he was at.

Yet his contribution goes unrecognized by the powers that be, not just
because of some of the illicit things he did but because he never won
a championship, never won MVP, never played for the Celtics, wasn’t
considered top 50, and is not (yet) in the Hall of Fame, even though
it’s been over 10 years.

But we know. To Bernard King the word “the” instead of “his” makes a
great difference in his life, in proclaiming his greatness with a
basketball in his hand. It says a lot. It acknowledges the truth.