University of Nevada Las Vegas - Sweepea: the story of Lloyd Daniels and other playground basketball legends

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Copyright 1990, 2016 by John Valenti, III and Ronald Naclerio

An earlier version was published in 1990 as Sweepea and Other Playground Legends

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First Atria Paperback edition July 2016

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Interior design by Paul J. Dippolito

Cover design & photograph by Rodrigo Corral Design Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Valenti, John, 1960

Sweepea : the story of Lloyd Daniels and other New York playground basketball legends / John Valenti with Ron Naclerio

pagescm

2015050461

ISBN 978-1-5011-1667-4

ISBN 978-1-5011-1668-1 (ebook)

For Elizabeth, the love of my life, and for my son, Jarek, whos honest and caring and tough as nails

And in memory of Nicholas "Nicky" Mann, a big-hearted kid and passionate basketball fan, whom illness took far too young

(John Valenti)

Its one thing to tell a man he must lift himself by his bootstraps. Its another thing to tell a bootless man he must lift himself by his bootstraps.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

A man got to survive. When you aint got no money and you need clothes and food to eat, you dont think about it. You got to survive. Got to survive, got to eat, got to have sneakers.

Lloyd Daniels, Jr.

Its hard to believe more than a quarter century has elapsed since Sweepea and Other Playground Legends was first released, in November 1990.

Issued by a small, independent New York City publisher, we thought it a good story and felt like the luckiest guys in the world when it went into print.

This was the era before cell phones and home computers were common; before the invention of the World Wide Web, let alone Facebook and Twitter, blogging, email, and YouTube. Before e-books. Hard-core basketball fans, sports fans, had heard of Lloyd Sweepea Daniels, a prodigy from the playgrounds of New York. But, more often than not, theyd heard just the basics: the rumor, the legend. Nothing more.

If you hadnt seen him play in personand only a select few hador caught some mention in one of the basketball or sports magazines, maybe an item in the local newspaper, much of his story remained unknown. As were the stories of players hed played against. As were the stories of the environment theyd survived.

The telling proved incredible. Interest spread like wildfire. More than a hundred newspapers, magazines, and journals wrote about the book. It received praise from the New York Times Sunday Book Review. People and Sports Illustrated wrote about Lloyd. There were radio and television appearances coast-to-coast, including one on Good Morning America with Charles Gibson, Joan Lunden, and Spencer Christian. Lloyds grandmother appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show.

Other authors cited Sweepea , the book, in their books.

A young father with daughters who were rising tennis players in Compton, in inner-city Los Angeles, mentioned the influence of the book in a national article.

The feature by Sonja Steptoe about Venus Williams, ten, and her sister, Serena, nine, appeared in Sports Illustrated on June 10, 1991. Near the end was a paragraph about Richard Williams teaching his daughters not only about tennis but about life.

He opens a desk drawer in his living room and pulls out Sweepea and Other Playground Legends , a book detailing the troubled basketball career of Lloyd Daniels, a former New York City playground star, Steptoe wrote. They said he was Magic [Johnson] with a jump shot, but he didnt go to class and then drugs took him, says Richard. That will never happen with my kids. Venus has already read this book.

Word from other readers whod been moved by Sweepea came to us more directly: navy man ABF-2 James D. Martinez wrote to share how the book kept him tied to home aboard the aircraft carrier USS John F. Kennedy in the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert Storm. A fan from Florence, Italy, sent a handwritten note to say he was reading Sweepea for the second timein a month. New York State prison inmate Joe Hammond, a legend known as the Destroyer on the fabled blacktop of Rucker Park, mailed me a letter, inspired to offer a bunch of stories I might not have known.

Might not have believed, had it not come from the forces mouth.

Then there was Kevin Ross, the former Creighton University star, whod ignited a national controversy when hed returned to elementary school once his college eligibility to play for the Bluejays had been exhausted in 1982admitting he was a functional illiterate. Id only seen a newspaper photograph of Ross squeezed into a childs school desk before all six-foot-nine, near three hundred pounds of him, a dog-eared copy of Sweepea in hand, came walking into the studio at WGN Chicago, where I was to appear on a radio show.

First adult book hed ever read, he told me. Loved it, too.

All that said, weRon Naclerio and Iwere moved when Todd Hunter, an editor at Simon & Schuster imprint Atria Books, told us the publishing house wanted to reissue Sweepea . The story of Lloyd Daniels, of the players hed played against, of the streets theyd come from, of the world that had shaped them, remained a good one, Todd said; a compelling one. One that still held value for the readers of a new generation.

This generation, to which the stories remained largely unknown.

What we have done, then, is to update Sweepea while working hard to leave the manuscript as untouched and original as possible. That is, weve included new text in an effort to add to the telling without altering the flow and feel of the book. We wanted to keep the original as original as possible, to let it remain a period piece, a slice of historical reference, a testament to a time that no longer exists. From back when basketball could be as pure as the streets and playgrounds were impure; when word on the street was spread via word of mouth, not by text or tweeting or hashtag this. That is, from back in the day.

To do soand we hope weve succeededweve held some developments since the book was first published until the Epilogue, specially added for this new edition. It helps answer questions unanswered where the original manuscript left off.

The story of Sweepea has age behind it now; however, that doesnt mean its message is old. A quarter century later it remains a cautionary tale, its lessons invaluable. The need for education; for dedication and perseverance. The need to know when to walk away. For your own good; for the good of yourself. The need to choose your friends well.

We kindly thank our literary agent, Monika A. Taga, for believing and for bringing this project back to life; Todd Hunter for believing, too. I also want to thank the love of my life, Elizabeth, Beth, for her supportnot to mention for putting up with meand my parents, John and Dot, for teaching me and my brothers, Jim and Rob, well. My son, Jarek, was born the day I got the first contract for this book, back in 1989. Hes done me and his late mother proud. Of course, theres my best friend, Tony Mills, Antone, whos been there through thick and thin, and Newsday cohort Neil Best, who first proofread Sweepea as a favor more than twenty-five years ago. He said it was good. High praise, if you know Neil. Thanks to Benjamin May, whos crafted a documentary about the life of Lloyd Daniels titled The Legend of Sweepea , and to Matt Caputo, a regular Queens guy and gifted writer, editor, and filmmaker, whos worked for the Daily News and SLAM , and who once hunted me down on a street in Elmhurst just to tell me Sweepea was his favorite book of all timebegging me, then pushing me, to get it back into print.