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Dayton hoops legend Anderson gets another shot at redemption

Cliff Pierce (left) and Dwight Anderson (right) were one time basketball rivals during their high school years in Dayton. Anderson was a basketball phenomenon from Roth High School. He went on to play at Kentucky and USC and then went to the NBA where his career was derailed by alcohol, drugs and homelessness.

Lisa Powell Cliff Pierce (left) and Dwight Anderson (right) were one time basketball rivals during their high school years in Dayton. Anderson was a basketball phenomenon from Roth High School. He went on to play at Kentucky and USC and then went to the NBA where his career was derailed by alcohol, drugs and homelessness.

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Dayton Daily News Archive Dwight Anderson, #11, USC Guard, 1981

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Dwight Anderson, now 49, was a basketball phenomenon from Roth High School. He went on to play at Kentucky and USC and then went to the NBA where his career was derailed by alcohol, drugs and homelessness. He started playing basketball as a youngster at McCabe Park in Dayton.

Lisa Powell Dwight Anderson, now 49, was a basketball phenomenon from Roth High School. He went on to play at Kentucky and USC and then went to the NBA where his career was derailed by alcohol, drugs and homelessness. He started playing basketball as a youngster at McCabe Park in Dayton.

By Tom Archdeacon, Staff Writer Updated 2:36 PM Monday, February 1, 2010

DAYTON — The most unbelievable basketball performance I’ve seen in a long, long time didn’t come in some college hoops arena or up in the NBA with LeBron and his cohorts.

It happened one windy, bitterly cold afternoon in West Dayton this past week on a mostly forgotten patch of red asphalt at McCabe Park along Home Avenue.

Dwight Anderson — once celebrated as the greatest basketball talent this city has ever produced and lately a self-described “ghost” who has drifted in and out of Dayton’s dreary, sometimes deadly underbelly — had returned to the court of his youth for the first time in decades.

“I used to live right down the road there,” he said pointing to an empty patch of land where all the houses but one had been torn down.

The court was in similar shape. The playing surface was full of cracks. One of the two goals was missing its rim.

Cliff Pierce — now something of a guardian angel to Anderson, though 35 years ago he was bedeviled by him on this very same court — carried a mostly deflated basketball from his car, lumbered to the one good hoop and took a couple of shots. Then he flipped the ball to Dwight with a “Let’s see if you still got it.”

Anderson, his unshaven jaw showing flecks of gray and white, had no sleep the night before. He was wearing a heavy winter coat that had been given to him and a pair of borrowed sneakers.

He said he hadn’t played any basketball in a long time, but he still moved out beyond NBA 3-point range. The wind was in his face. It was beginning to snow. The ball was so flat it couldn’t be dribbled.

He needed just two shots to dial in his range and then: Swish ... swish ... swish ... swish ... swish.

Moving side to side, grinning, calling for the ball, he hit 8-of-9 shots from long range.

“How many guys 49 years old are gonna do that?” Pierce gushed incredulously. “How many NBA guys could do it on any court? Much less these conditions?”

So much for ghosts.

This was like the time Anderson, then playing for the University of Southern California, was the MVP of the Aloha Classic in Honolulu after hitting 26-of-33 field-goal attempts.

It was a reminder of his senior year at Roth High when he averaged 38 points, 14 rebounds and 11 assists a game, was a Parade All-American and the No. 1 college prospect in the nation.

“He’s still our G.O.A.T.,” said Pierce, using the Greatest Of All Time acronym. “In other cities that’s up for debate, but not here. Not by those who ... know.”

Miami RedHawks coach Charlie Coles — himself a Miami Valley hoops legend — doesn’t argue:

“Dwight’s physical gifts — his flair for the game — he was a once-in-a-lifetime talent. All those guys we’re watching in the pros now, Dwight was as good as all of them with the exception of LeBron (James). You notice I didn’t say (Dwyane) Wade or Kobe (Bryant)? And the only reason I said LeBron is because he’s taller.

“Oh my God, Dwight was good.”

Former Dayton Flyers coach Don Donoher — who recruited Anderson before the Roth star chose Kentucky — was just as complimentary:

“He was like a sprinter on a basketball court. His ability to drive to the basket was like no one else. He could blow by anybody. They called him The Blur.”

Pierce learned that nickname firsthand. The summer before his sophomore year at Fairview High, he had a teammate who was bused over from Anderson’s neighborhood:

“I kept hearing about this guy my age, so I decided to find out just who he was. I wasn’t driving age, so I got on my Huffy 10-speed and rode all the way from Philadelphia Drive to McCabe Park.

“About 20 minutes later, here comes Dwight. Then some other guys showed up and we played a game and I realized everything I’d heard was true ... The more I went against him, the more I realized ‘I’m in a bad, bad place.’ ”

Pierce, grinning as he recounted their first meeting, was talking figuratively and only in a basketball sense.

But in the years to come, Anderson, quite literally, would go one-on-one with some of the worst predicaments life had to offer.

Drugs kill a dream

Nineteen years ago, I visited Anderson at his family’s home on Westwood Avenue, where they’d moved after Home Avenue. His NBA dream had been derailed by then and — while affable as ever — he had gone through a downward spiral brought on by drugs, alcohol and self-doubt.

We sat on the porch, the same porch on which he had lived for a while when his parents — at wits end over the chaos he was bringing into their lives — had banished him. They wanted him close, but no longer trusted him in the house, so they changed the locks and put his bed and a lamp out there.

“I’d even sold some of the trophies and pictures and balls I’d set the scoring records with — just took them from the house so I had money on the street,” Anderson said, shaking his head.

That sounds almost sacrilegious because many were roundball relics.

“I remember a few of us going down to the big B/C All-Stars Camp in Milledgeville, Ga.,” said John Paxson, the Alter High and Notre Dame star who played 12 seasons in the NBA, won three titles and is now the Vice President of Basketball Operations for the Chicago Bulls.

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