“It just gives me a warm feeling, looking at the cards and reading them,” the junior center said. “When I look at the stuff on the back and how they describe them, I can visualize them playing in my head. It tells me how far the game has come and how thankful I am to be playing this game.”
Searcy grew up surrounded by a family of basketball aficionados in Romulus, Mich., just outside Detroit. And the card collection first belonged to an uncle, Johnny Payne.
“When I was 3, 4 years old, he’d say, ‘Devin, this is so-and-so. This is Clyde Drexler and Earvin Johnson,’ ” Searcy said. “I think I asked him every year, ‘Could I have the box of cards?’ He’d say, ‘No, I’m not going to give it to you now, but when you get older, I will.’
“On my 18th birthday, my grandmother said, ‘Your Uncle Johnny wants you to have this box.’ I didn’t even know what was in it. I’d forgotten about it after being turned off so many times. I opened it up, and it had cards from pretty much any superstar who came through the NBA.”
Searcy has a rookie card of Shaquille O’Neal and several of Bird, Magic, Jordan and Dominique Wilkins. His favorite old-timer, though, is the backboard-shattering Darryl Dawkins, known as “Chocolate Thunder.”
“I like his personality,” Searcy said. “He named all his dunks.”
The card collection could be worth plenty of money, but Searcy isn’t interested in selling.
“I want my children to see them, and their children, too,” he said. “The way they were passed down to me, I want it passed down to them.”
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