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Dayton hoops legend Anderson finally living well again

Dwight Anderson plays in an over-45 team with The Dayton Oldtimers. Shown are (from left) Charles Johnson Sr., coach John Wortham, Anderson, Ronald Hunter, Regis McCollum, Willie Allen, Greg Hopson and Johnny McDole.

Teesha McClam/Staff Dwight Anderson plays in an over-45 team with The Dayton Oldtimers. Shown are (from left) Charles Johnson Sr., coach John Wortham, Anderson, Ronald Hunter, Regis McCollum, Willie Allen, Greg Hopson and Johnny McDole.

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By Tom Archdeacon, Staff Writer 11:54 PM Saturday, April 2, 2011

The room is quite small — just enough space for a single bed, a dresser and some shelves — and yet to Dwight Anderson it feels almost like a mansion.

There were a few pairs of tennis shoes tossed in the corner, some canned goods stacked on a shelf, a TV next to the bed, a couple of space heaters on the floor, and propped up on the dresser was a small plaque that had the figure of a basketball player bursting off the front of it and an inscription that read: “Buffalo Masters North American Championship ... 2011 All-Star.”

Although he’d been awarded that a couple of weeks ago in New York, Anderson was more intent on checking out the now clear-eyed view he has of downtown Dayton from the lone window of his fourth-floor room at the St. Vincent De Paul Center on St. Clair Street.

It certainly is better than the one he had the past couple of decades while drifting through the dreary, dangerous and sometimes deadly under-belly of this city.

Just 14 months ago he was spending his winter nights sleeping on an old couch in an unheated Hoover Avenue garage. There was no electricity, no running water, no view beyond his daily, drug-sated despair.

“Man, it’s nice to have a place like this,” he said with quiet sincerity as he turned from the window. “A place to lay my head down with lights, running water. ... It’s been sooooo long.”

This is the same guy who once rolled through town in a Mercedes 300 SD Turbo Diesel. He had money and clothes and promise.

Anderson is considered the greatest basketball talent Dayton has ever produced. He was Juwan Staten and Chris Wright and Adreian Payne all rolled into one — and then some.

He led Roth High School to the state title as a sophomore and as a senior was a Parade All-American, averaging 38 points, 14 rebounds and 11 assists a game. Considered the No. 1 prospect in the nation, he packed Miami Valley gyms and drew a who’s who of college coaches to the city.

He went to Kentucky, made a splash there and then transferred to Southern Cal and starred again. Eventually he left, entered the 1982 NBA draft and was chosen by the Washington Bullets.

By then drugs were taking hold of him and they derailed his pro career after tryouts with a half dozen NBA teams, a stint in the CBA, where he was the league’s top scorer, a couple of seasons in the Philippines and finally a brief stop with the Dayton Wings.

The more he sank into the world of crack cocaine, alcohol and life on the street, the more he became a “ghost,” he said.

“I disappeared,” Anderson said. “I wasn’t in my right mind. I had no self-esteem, no faith in myself, except for getting high.”

As for basketball, he said those glory days bounced away, too: “I’d put that chapter away. I never thought about ballin’ again. I was gonna get high the rest of my life. If I did happen to play on the street, it was just for drugs.”

Last year I wrote a story on him that struck a chord with a lot of people, many of whom wanted to help him. But it wasn’t an easy task, said Pastor Marvin Arnold and his wife, Vivian.

In recent years, Anderson had been hanging out in the basement of another old building on Hoover that they eventually converted into their Bible Class Missionary Baptist Church.

They tried to reach out to him, but, as Arnold said: “Dwight wouldn’t buy into it. He was like a little puppy dog that’s been mistreated and is afraid to let you get close to him. But he kept coming around, so we kept praying that the Lord would keep him safe.”

Rehab in Houston

Two guys who answered those prayers were former Wilbur Wright, Dayton Flyers and NBA player Sedric Toney and Stivers High coach Eric Bradley.

Toney — who grew up idolizing Anderson — convinced him to move to Houston, where former NBA players and ex-addicts John Lucas and Dirk Minniefield (who Dwight knew from Kentucky) are heavily involved in drug rehab work.

Although Anderson tried to claim he already was on the road to recovery, Dwight Washington, a local attorney and his friend, knew better: “I saw Dwight right before he went to Texas and he said all the right things, but he wasn’t doing the right things. He was still using.”

As he boarded the plane, Anderson panicked: “It was like, ‘What, man? I can’t get high no more?’ And when they started me in a program out there, I wasn’t sold on it. The first couple of months I just wouldn’t open up.

“Eventually, though, they took me through some real stuff. There were times I cried, but they just sat there and they finally got me to talk about my pain. And when I started working the 12-step program, things really started to get clearer.

“The place was excellent. They have classes for meditation, processing, anger management and spirituality and there are meetings, meetings, meetings.”

Toney and Bradley paid some of his expenses, Anderson said, as did former NBA great Isiah Thomas and Minniefield.

After 13 months of sobriety, Anderson was allowed to return from Houston, although Toney initially was against his coming back to Dayton and the temptations of his past.

“What I neglected to understand was that Dwight needed to be around something noticeable to him,” Toney said by phone from his home in Cleveland. “Dayton, his hometown, was key.”

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