Regular Reader wrote:
long time guy wrote:
Joe Orr Road Rod wrote:
For me it would have to be a DePaul guy, maybe Teddy Grubbs or Howard Nathan.
Teddy Grubbs. Sonny Cox never forgave The Meyers for screwing over Teddy Grubbs. I remember when he killed UCLA as a Freshman. I was about 7 at the time. One of my best friends is from his old neighborhood. Dude was good but got on drugs and lost his mind. You'd still see him walking around the summer leagues even while he was fucked up. By all accounts the Meyers tried to help him but he just didn't want to be helped
I remember being puzzled about his story until I realized why older guys who knew him really didn't want to talk about him. Looking back, it's really weird how guys were perceived to have fallen off the radar because of drugs. In my old neighborhood, I still see some of those kind of guys and am always taken aback at how completely out of it they still seem.
Efrem Winters always struck me as verging on the same bizarre fate. I distinctly remember seeing him in Champaign and being disturbed by what was seemingly happening to him (or what in part he was doing to himself).
I'd heard his story some years ago but I have forgotten it. I know a lot of King guys that were of his era. Still see them from time to time. Can't remember his deal but Grubbs was a legend and considered a "can't miss" guy. That era produced a number of guys that turned to drugs and just were done in.
Grubbs was from over in the ABLA housing projects area.
Another guy that didn't pan out from a little earlier than that was Arthur Sivels. I grew up with his son and when I was younger guys would talk about him like a god. I didn't believe them because you can hear a lot of Bullshit from people when they just feel like talking. Then one day I bought this one of those old VItale preseason books and they had a section on playground legends. There were 5 from Chicago and he was one of them. They did the bio on him and I realized that he really was the business.
I met him when i was about 15 or 16 and he still had it. He was about 40 at the time and you could see the damage that drugs had done to him. He still had the vision and passing abilty that I'd read about. Its funny because he told his son that I'd played 21 with him before that at one of the parks around the crib. He told him I was talking shit to him. I said yeah that sounds about right.
_________________
The Hawk wrote:
This is going to reach a head pretty soon.