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.”
Even so, Anderson was nervous about his return: “I didn’t know if all that I learned would come back with me.”
What he hadn’t yet realized was how many people were here to help him and just how much he really had changed.
Still a scorer
Through various connections, Washington was able to contact Westley Anderson, a conscientious program manager at the St. Vincent De Paul Center and eventually Dwight (no relation to Westley) was able to get into the transitional housing facility that assists people in recovery, the homeless and others who need help.
Residents can live there up to two years and their stay — partially subsidized by the Dayton Metropolitan Housing Authority — is tied not only to finding work, but getting an education. Among the 38 men who live there, some are going to trade schools, while others are at Sinclair, UD and Wright State.
“Of course I have to stay away from my old places and old friends, but it’s not as hard as I thought it’d be,” said Anderson, who regularly attends AA meetings, as well as life skills sessions at St. Vincent’s. “I’m finding out this new person I am is stronger than the old one.”
Anderson has reconnected with Pastor Arnold and his wife and not only attends their church now, but works for them there and at some of their rental properties. He’s become a favorite around the church, so much so that folks there acknowledge his hoops past and call him “Player.”
He’s put that name to use on the court, too. Once back home he began showing up at the Dakota Center a couple of nights a week so he could practice with the heralded Dayton Oldtimers basketball team.
Coach John Wortham knew Dwight: “He had gotten trapped with his disease, but deep down he’s just a real, real good guy.”
Wortham allowed Anderson to join his over-45 team, though he said none of the guys cut him any slack: “They want him to get his life together, but they’re not going to cushion his fall. They just want him to do right and he’ll have everybody’s support.”
When the team played a league game in Pittsburgh, Wortham said someone wondered who the old, bald guy missing some teeth was:
“Dwight dropped 40 ’on ’em and said, ‘Know who I am now?’ ”
Anderson traveled with the team three weeks ago to Buffalo for the national tournament.
“He didn’t like it at first when I told him he was a sub, but he accepted his role,” Wortham laughed. “And when he got in, he scored like crazy. Nobody could believe he’d been playing just two weeks. We won the title and he was named an all-star.”
Back home now as he tries to re-claim his life — “and for any recovering addict, it’s still a day-to-day process,” Toney cautioned — Anderson has felt the embrace of his family again.
He’s even reconnected with his two children: Dwight Jr. and daughter Dawana, both in their late 20s.
He said it had been “maybe 20 years” since his daughter was in his life, but last Sunday she accompanied him to the worship service at Bible Class Missionary.
“People were ecstatic,” said Pastor Arnold. There wasn’t a dry eye in the house.
“And there’s something even bigger happening here now. There are guys out there he knew who are curious. They want to see if he’s really doing what he says he is, so they’re coming around the church, too.
“He’s drawing other people to the Lord. It’s pretty amazing, but he’s been blessed like that. There’s something pretty special about him.”
No wonder that All-Star plaque stays propped up on his dresser. It reminds him that in so many ways his small room is now filled with such big possibility.
About the Author