C. Bruce Johnson - All or Nothing, The Victor Page Story

All or Nothing: The Victor Page Story

By C. Bruce Johnson

ebook Edition

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ISBN 13: 978-1-61813-022-8
ISBN 10: 1-61813-022-6

By C. Bruce Johnson

Preface

One of the great things about this country is that no matter where you are born or who you are, most of useven us poor folkare convinced that we have a shot, albeit a long one, to make it big; to get rich or famous, and sometimes both. Sports, drug dealing, the lottery, or musicmaybe even education, it doesnt matter, just find a way to escape from what we were born into. I believed this. My two brothers who went to prison for robbery and drug dealing believed this. My mother, a domestic, who at age 52 got her undergrad degree from the University of Louisville, believed it.

Like me, Victor Page was sold on the American dream. Neither of us had fathers growing up. But there were plenty of male mentors, good and bad, to choose from. The talented top tier, like Victor, were always under pressure to both stand out and fit inharder than actually succeeding was figuring out how to handle the constant reminders from everybody in the home and hood that he was considered everybodys ticket out. With his kind of basketball talent, Victor was going to be able to take care of a lot of people. What a lot of us, including Victor, didnt anticipate while we were coming up, fighting our way out, is that while you can use that God-given talent to escape your environment, some of us can never get away clean. People, places and things are constantly trying to pull us back, hurt us maybe even defeat or destroy us!

I became a journalist, in part, because I wanted to understand and chronicle these sorts of challenges. And after covering some of the most dramatic stories of our times in various realms, Ive come to believe that some of the best stories and best lessons in life are found in the world of sports. Who or what determines the final score, the wins and the losses? Wheres the safety net when there is no family or community left to help pick up the pieces? Whats left when all or nothing was the only plan from the beginning? My book is an examination of what happens when an elite university with a wildly successful basketball team and a Hall of Fame coach intersects with a poor black kid with huge talent and few inner resources. This is the story of Victor Pages incredible life and enormous and yes ultimately squandered talent. It was never meant to be just a basketball story.

Hoya Saxa ! Hoya Saxa! The crowd chanted from Healy Hall on the campus of Georgetown University, the oldest Catholic and Jesuit school of its kind in the United States. In 1789, John Carroll secured the sixty acres to build what would become one of the nations most prestigious institutions. The school grabbed its name from the nearby community, which had been home to thousands of the District of Columbias African-American residents. Now, however, it has become a haven for many of the citys rich and famous.

Hoya Saxa, screamed another group of celebrants, a few blocks away from the universitys campus on M Street Northwest; the thoroughfare was the central location for Georgetown neighborhoods nightlife and tony shopping district. The entire community seemed swamped with basketball fans. Cars stalled or simply were abandoned in the middle of the streets as motorists became caught up in the festive moment. Bar owners and restaurateurs opened upstairs windows of the red brick townhouses in which their establishments were located; some of those buildings were two centuries old. Patrons, infected by the excitement, hollered like drunken sailors, to passersby on the street below. The words coming from their mouths during March Madness in 2007 didnt quite sound like Hoya Saxa, however.

Shouts and cheers raced toward the Potomac River; the fervor was so pitched some bystanders huddled in doorways, fearing they would be trampled.

The crowd wasnt comprised of only students. There were old-school fans and alumni. Local folks also waded in; for many, their sole connection to the university was its mens basketball team. Even gangster drug boys, whose presence had dogged some of the most famous Georgetown players for years, rushed back that night, after watching on national TV the home team snatch victory from one of the toughest college teams in the countrythe North Carolina Tar Heels.

Georgetowns all-American junior forward Jeff Green, an eventual first round National Basketball Association pick, sank a seemingly impossible bank shot as time ran out and the horn sounded ending the game. The team had ended someone elses dream but resurrected its own. Coach John Thompson IIIcalled JT 3was still very young and fairly inexperienced at the tournament level. But, he had proven himself a more than adequate replacement for his fatherthe legendary Hall of Fame coach John Thompson Jr.

Big John, as the father was known, shaped Georgetowns basketball program with sheer determination, creativity and a whole bunch of chutzpah. Hired in 1972, he inherited a team that ended the prior season winning a mere three games. He built it into one that won seven of every ten games played. There were four NCAA final four appearances, three national title games and eventually the NCAA national championship in 1984, making Johnson Thompson the first African-American coach to win it all! Twenty-six of Thompsons players were drafted into the National Basketball Association. Not surprisingly, that kind of record cultivated a national following. Inner-city youth began wearing black and grey jerseys, with the same T-shirts sleeves protruding underneath, like Georgetown players.

Success rarely is achieved without assistance. Big Johns record dazzled because of top recruits like Eric Sleepy Floyd, Patrick Ewing, Allen Iverson and Alonzo Mourning. The Jamaican-born, Massachusetts-raised, seven-foot Ewing was easily the biggest catch and the most dominating player in all of college basketball while at Georgetown. With Patrick at the center position, the team won that NCAA championship title, and could have won a total of three crowns. But, Villanova University played a perfect game in 1985. North Carolinas freshman Michael Jordan collected an errant pass from Freddy Brown in 1982, as time ran out in the title game. Nevertheless, Hoyas Paranoia became the battle cry, as Georgetown crushed opponents in those glory years, leaving enemy bodies bruised and spirits broken.

When Thompson retired abruptly in 1999, citing marriage problems, his top assistant and a former player Craig Esherick briefly took over. The basketball gods had little patience with him, and he little success at recruiting the countrys best players. His last season (2003-2004), before he was fired, ended with the team winning only thirteen games while losing fifteen.

In 2004, when JT 3 arrived, everyone hoped for the teams restoration. The win over North Carolina three years later was their answered prayer. It was hard not to celebrate the return to glory.

NOT far away from Georgetown, on 17th and I Streets, a thirty-something black man, with an unfashionable eye-patch, watched the game and the revelry on the flat screen HD television anchored just above the bar. He had been throwing back complimentary drinks for hours; he wasnt quite inebriated but the signs of excess were beginning to show. A mixture of pride and nostalgia consumed his face and haunted his mind. He mouthed the words: Hoya Saxa! What did that mean, anyway?