I May Be Wrong But I Doubt It - Charles Barkley [65]
I had a coach at Auburn, Roger Banks. He was Sonny Smith’s assistant when I was in college. And because he had coached John Drew at Gardner-Webb, I got to meet Drew and be like a little brother. And we’d talk about basketball and life. He was giving me a ride once in his car—I’m talking about a $75,000 Mercedes—and he said to me, “Son, I snorted up about twenty of these. I’ve messed up so much money. I’ve got kids all over the place.” He told me, “Look, I’ll work with you on your game, but if you’re going to listen to anything I say, listen to me when I tell you not to do drugs.” I’m sitting there thinking, “Damn.” He told me about one Friday night when he got a big pile of coke, got naked, and snorted it all up, and didn’t wake up until Saturday just in time to make the game. I was a freshman or sophomore at Auburn when I heard this story. And it had an unbelievable effect on me.
But after a while, I didn’t see John again, and I mean for years and years. I just didn’t know where he was. His last year in the league was 1984–85, which was my rookie year. He was only thirty years old that season but he played in just nineteen games for Utah. And then it was like he just disappeared.
Anyway, I was still playing in Philly—I don’t remember the exact year but I was with the 76ers through the 1992 season—and we were on the road in Houston one night, we were right in front of the hotel at the Galleria. And this homeless guy walks right up to me and grabs me. I mean, the guy is just a bum, dirty and shabby. And he’s a big guy and he’s really on me, so I rear back to knock the shit out of him. But first I look. It’s John Drew. I was in total shock. I mean, I don’t even know what I said to him. Here’s a man who was a two-time NBA All-Star, a guy who had a productive eleven-year career who must have come in contact with all kinds of people, and he was homeless, a bum on the streets. I gave him all the money I had in my pocket, which must have been several hundred dollars, maybe $500. And then I went up to my hotel room and cried. I couldn’t get over it then, and I still can’t get over it. And I haven’t seen him since, don’t know where he is, can’t find him. I don’t know anybody who knows where he is. It just shocked me so bad. Even though you know somebody’s life can go bad when he’s on drugs, you don’t think it can go that bad. And I keep thinking back to when I was in college, him virtually begging me not to do drugs and not do the kind of stuff that would throw my life off course.
Man, you can find physically talented guys anywhere. It’s as if they grow on trees. A whole lot of people have talent. And so many of them don’t know how to use it, or they put themselves in positions where they sabotage their own careers. I was thinking about doing another book, a where-are-they-now type book on all the guys I’ve been with and around, who played from high school to the pros. I really wonder where they all are now. Just ’cause a guy has talent doesn’t mean he’s going to make it. We assume guys are going to “get it” and they don’t. J. R. Rider is an example of a really talented guy, smart guy, too, who never got it. Richard Dumas was way, way up there in terms of talent. Oliver Miller. Kenny Green from Wake Forest. One day a week, Kenny Green was the best player in the world in practice. He was so scary-good you’d say to yourself, “If this guy ever gets it, he’ll be dangerous.” But they don’t get it. They’re too immature or too something to ever “get it.”
When I first got to Philadelphia in the summer of 1984, Moses Malone told me, “You can come in here every day and work your ass off and still not make it. But I can guarantee you if you come in here and don’t work you won’t make it.” The second thing he told me was, “There are going to be big decisions you’ll have to make and you don