‘Win-win situation’ for Fairmont's Bias, Anderson

 Staff photo by Teesha McClam New assistant basketball coach Dwight Anderson (right) helps out in the weight room at Fairmont High School.

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Fairmont basketball coach Hank Bias (left) talks with the legendary Dwight Anderson, who has become an assistant coach after working his way back from drug addiction.

Staff photo by Teesha McClam Fairmont basketball coach Hank Bias (left) talks with the legendary Dwight Anderson, who has become an assistant coach after working his way back from drug addiction.

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By Tom Archdeacon, Staff Writer 1:08 AM Sunday, October 30, 2011

KETTERING — They both have been given a second chance at life and are teaming up in a partnership that, once totally inconceivable, now has become a heart-warming breath of fresh air for all involved.

Hank Bias, the successful basketball coach at Fairmont High School, nearly died 15 months ago. After a hip replacement surgery, a blood clot in his leg moved to his lung. He said he had a bilateral pulmonary embolism — actually five emboli in all — and emergency room doctors at the Kettering Medical Center had grave concerns about his survival:

“They told me to say goodbye to my wife and family. They didn’t think I was going to live.”

Dwight Anderson, the greatest basketball talent the Dayton area ever has produced, spent decades drifting through the dreary, dangerous shadows of the city, addicted to drugs and alcohol. He often was homeless, sometimes came face to face with violence and many who knew and loved him feared he would die on the streets.

Yet you’d never know any of this if you happened to walk into the open gym session at the old Barnes School in Kettering the other day.

The 52-year-old Anderson — fully energized and involved — chatted up several Fairmont basketball hopefuls before they took the court and then stood with Bias along the wall quietly offering suggestions to the coach for use when practices began in a week or so.

Later, after Anderson had drifted to the far end of the gym, Bias couldn’t help but smile about what had just transpired: “This is what it’s all about. Dwight has all those nuggets of information in him. He’s got lot to offer. Not a little — a whole lot.”

Anderson will be a full-fledged assistant coach for Bias’ basketball team this upcoming season. Word of this out-of-the-blue union is just leaking out and it already has the Miami Valley basketball fraternity abuzz.

And for those wondering just how the venture is working, let Tyree Fields, Fairmont’s other new assistant coach this season, cut to the bottom line:

“It’s a win-win situation. The team is good for Dwight and he is good for the team.”

And good for the head coach, too, said Bias:

“To see a guy with a fresh outlook and just so much enthusiasm over just being back in the gym brought energy to me, too. Every day is a blessing to me now. When you lay there and they tell you this is it and then you survive, well, that changes you. I’m just glad to be here. I’m a walking miracle and I know I better do something with the gift.

“So for me to give Dwight another opportunity and watch him blossom again — c’mon, in the grand scheme of things, that’s the least someone can do. Opportunities like this are what life should be about.

“And as far as his past problems — I know about them and the team does too — but I don’t even know if it should be part of the conversation. That guy here in the gym with us is the one we know now. And, quite honestly, that other stuff I really don’t give a rat’s (rear end) about it.

“That’s one of the problems in today’s world. People can’t let go or they want to label people and keep them in a box.”

Fame was fleeting

Thanks to the help of several people with Dayton ties — and now his own resolve — Anderson said he’s been clean and sober for more than 18 months. And that’s enabled him to jump out of that “box” in the same gravity-defying fashion that he once used to soar over taller defenders who tried in vain to stymie the high-flying, fast-break dunk attacks as he lived up to the nickname, “The Blur.”

As a sophomore, Anderson led Roth High to a state title. Two years later he was a Parade All-American, averaging 38 points, 14 rebounds and 11 assists a game and was considered the No. 1 high school recruit in the nation.

His games became social events here. Gyms filled with local fans and Who’s Who of nationally-known college coaches all vying for his services. He ended up at the University of Kentucky and made an instant splash, but within a year and a half — after clashing with coach Joe B. Hall — he transferred to the University of Southern California.

He averaged 20 points a game for the Trojans over the next season and a half, but as the 1982 NBA draft approached, his extravagant lifestyle and drug use had become a concern.

Eventually the self-destruction derailed his pro career and he ended up back in Dayton, where his life spiraled downward.

“My disease — alcohol and cocaine — left me numb to the world,” Anderson told a group of at-risk youth one morning last weekend at Trotwood-Madison High. “God has a plan for everybody and he took me to the very bottom before I could start becoming the best man I could be.”

Two winters ago Anderson was still living in a garage on Hoover Avenue that had no heat or running water and just an old couch he used as a bed. Finally several folks — including former prep rival Cliff Pierce, Chaminade Julienne assistant coach Richard Kidd, former Dayton Flyers star Sedric Toney, Stivers coach Eric Bradley, the Rev. Marvin Arnold and his wife Vivian and St. Vincent De Paul Center program manager Westley Anderson — got him off the street, into a year-long rehab program in Houston and now with a support system in Dayton.

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