By Wayne Drash, CNN
Memphis, Tennessee (CNN) -- With just over three minutes left in the state championship, Coach Penny Hardaway called a timeout.
He didn't like what he was
seeing. Down by 15 points, his middle schoolers were quitting. It stood against
everything he had instilled in them:
Don't use the inner city as an
excuse to fail.
You can overcome your circumstances.
Always dream big.
You can overcome your circumstances.
Always dream big.
The former NBA All-Star and
greatest basketball player in Memphis history huddled his team of 12 together.
He looked them in the eyes. He could see his reflection from 25 years ago: young
teens from the city's roughest projects longing for positive mentors.
"Just give me all you got," he
told them.
He was thinking a fight to the
finish would let the players walk out with their heads high, their pride intact,
even if they lost.
But what happened next defies
explanation, is beyond description. A boy playing for his ailing father did
something extraordinary. A man who grew up without one, who'd come to serve as a
surrogate dad to a dozen boys, watched in awe.
Hardaway, now 40, made more than
$120 million in a pro basketball career
that spanned 16 seasons. Yet one of his crowning achievements came not as a
player but as coach to the seventh- and eighth-graders of Lester Middle School,
the same school that gave him a shot in life.
A coach's miracle
Five months earlier, Desmond
Merriweather lay in a hospital bed in Memphis. He'd battled colon
cancer for more than a year. Chemo, radiation and multiple surgeries had
done little to stop the cancer's spread.
Doctors gave the Lester Middle
School head coach 24 to 48 hours to live. His pastor, the Rev. Larry Peoples --
"a prayer warrior" -- stood at his bedside and bowed his head. Family and
friends gathered in the room.
Merriweather, 37, had returned
to his old neighborhood -- gang-infested Binghampton -- to coach basketball.
He'd moved the year before from Jackson, Tennessee, where he'd lived since
earning his college
degree. He wanted to mentor middle school kids in the blighted neighborhood,
to keep them from going down the wrong path.
"I wanted to show them that your
heart is bigger than what you think it is."
But it seemed he wouldn't live
to see this season.
Merriweather on courts where he and Hardaway played: "I can't even put into
words how much Penny means."
Merriweather doesn't know quite
how to explain what happened. He had gone through surgery and then was given his
death sentence. The doctors had said something about complications.
"The only thing I can remember
is waking up," Merriweather says.
Gradually, he emerged from
danger. He attributes his recovery to the power of prayer, although he's still
fighting the disease.
"When the doctors gave up on me,
I never gave up on myself. I'm a fighter. I knew I had to come back to my son
and my daughter and my wife -- and most of all, my team."
He asked God to give him one
more chance, to return him to the hardwood floors of Lester Middle. The boys
needed him. More than anything, he longed to coach his 13-year-old son, Nick,
for another season.
Among the hospital visitors was
his boyhood friend, Anfernee "Penny" Hardaway. Merriweather had tagged along
with the rising star at school, at outdoor courts, at the neighborhood gym.
"When we were growing up, we
would see people get shot in the park -- just a whole lot of crazy, chaotic
things," Merriweather says. In Hardaway, Merriweather saw a young leader who was
going to make it.
"I want to do something for your
kids," Hardaway told the ailing coach.
As Merriweather recovered,
Hardaway started peppering him with questions. What type of team do you think
you're gonna have? How good are they?
"I didn't want to brag or
anything, but I knew we had a good team," Merriweather says.
He invited Hardaway to meet the
players one afternoon in October. "I came over and saw the team and just
instantly fell in love," Hardaway says.
In an era when stars parachute
in, smile for the cameras and then leave, Hardaway did just the opposite. He
began driving his Bentley, Cadillac Escalade and Range Rover down the streets of
Binghampton. Residents rushed from their homes, waved and cheered.
He'd pull into the school on
Carpenter Street, nicknamed "C Street" because it's known Crips territory, one
of four gangs that dominate the neighborhood.
He'd show up for team practices
even before Merriweather arrived. Hardaway started first as a volunteer. Still
weakened from cancer, Merriweather soon delegated his duties. Hardaway became
Coach Penny. He coached for free, with Merriweather remaining at his side.
Hardaway talked to the team
about discipline, about class, about dignity. If you wanted to play for him, you
had to focus on school. He instituted a mandatory tutorial program.
He'd arrive early in the
morning, stick his head in the classrooms, make sure his boys were behaving. He
quizzed teachers about the players' progress reports: What areas do they need
help in?
"I wanted to make sure they
understood that education is more than sports," Hardaway says. "A lot of these
kids go from home to home to live. I had to make sure they're doing their
homework, make sure they're going to class, make sure they're not sleeping in
class. ... It's all to make them know that I do care."
Grades jumped from a 2.5
grade-point average -- about a B-minus or C-plus -- to nearly 2.9, a solid B.
Hardaway's goal is to have each of his players graduate from college one day.
(In 2003, while still in the NBA, he quietly earned his college degree from the
University of Memphis.)
Hardaway first donated uniforms, but he realized it was his time that the
kids valued most.
He lectured the team about life
in Binghampton. He'd walked the same streets, lived in the same projects. Of the
12 players on the team, nine don't have fathers in their lives. At least six
live in cramped one- and two-bedroom apartments with more than six siblings.
"Don't use not having a father
as an excuse," Hardaway barked. "There are a lot of people who came out of
adverse situations and made it. Use it as motivation. Use it to drive you."
Hardaway, who grew up without a
father, became the players' surrogate dad. He told them not to be so angry, "to
believe in yourself and believe in what you're doing."
"Whenever they got disappointed
or whenever I tried to discipline them, they would go into a shell, and they
responded negatively every time," Hardaway says. "I'd tell them: You're using
that as an excuse."
Merriweather, with Hardaway's
backing, met with the Bloods, Crips, Vice Lords and Gangster Disciples. The
message: Keep your hands off our kids. The gang leaders agreed. They wanted the
boys of Lester Middle to succeed, too.
To build camaraderie, Hardaway
hosted the players at his sprawling mansion in suburban Memphis. He wanted to
show them a side of Memphis they'd never seen: that if you work hard, you get
rewarded. He held team sleepovers to build family. He taught them little things:
tuck in your bed, fold your clothes, do your laundry.
"I can't even put into words how
much Penny means," Merriweather says. "He has this presence about himself. When
he comes into the room, he just lights the room up."
On the court, the Lester Lions
roared. Some games were laughably lopsided: 69-6, 70-8, 67-4. Starters typically
played only half a game because they demolished teams so badly.
College recruiters drooled over
the stat line of 6-foot, 4-inch center Robert Washington: an average of 23
points, 17 rebounds, five blocks per game.
Hardaway strived to build his players' confidence and to be a positive role
model for them.
The stat Hardaway and
Merriweather boast about most comes from the classroom: Washington has gone from
a 2.0 GPA to 2.9, the most improved student not just on the team but in the
entire school.
"Penny loves me," the
eighth-grader says shyly, "and I love him."
Around Binghampton, Penny earned
a new nickname: "Coach Carter," after the 2005 Samuel L. Jackson movie about a
successful businessman who returned to his old neighborhood to coaching glory,
demanding nothing but greatness.
The grandmother who
instilled love, demanded excellence
At his peak, the 6-foot-7 Penny
Hardaway was a hybrid guard: Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson and Larry Bird all
rolled into one. He couldn't be stopped.
He starred in college at the
University of Memphis (then Memphis State) and was the No. 3 draft pick in the
NBA in 1993. He was immediately traded to the Orlando Magic.
At the age of 22, he signed a
whopping $65 million contract. The kid from the Red Oak and Tillman Cove
projects slept on his first king-size bed in a five-bedroom house. Up to that
point, he'd slept only in twin beds, his long legs hanging off the end.
"I was blessed to get the
contracts I had," he says, "for something I would've done for free."
He teamed up with Shaquille
O'Neal and took the young Magic franchise to the NBA Finals in 1995, only to
fall short of the championship. The next summer, he won a gold medal on the 1996
Olympic team.
Hardaway became the face of a
Nike ad campaign. In the ads, Chris Rock famously voiced "Lil Penny," the
trash-talking alter ego of the humble Hardaway. "You can't guard me. The Secret Service couldn't guard me," Lil
Penny once boasted.
But Hardaway almost became a
statistic of Binghampton before his career ever took off.
The summer before his freshman
year in college, he and a friend were robbed at gunpoint. The car sped off but
then stopped. Gunshots rang out. One bullet ricocheted off the pavement and
struck his foot.
"I still think about, man, what
would've happened if I got hit somewhere else. I could've passed away. I
could've been paralyzed. Anything could've happened."
Hardaway lived in this tiny apartment in the gang-infested Tillman Cove
projects his senior year of high school.
He would later pick the
gangsters out of a police lineup. He didn't fear retaliation "because I knew I
was doing the right thing."
Such courage was drilled into
him by his grandmother.
A sharecropper from the cotton
fields of Blytheville, Arkansas, Louise Hardaway crossed the Mississippi River
and moved to Memphis, seeking a better future. She settled in Binghampton,
purchased her own home. She cooked in the Memphis school system for years and
worked as a nanny and maid.
As Louise Hardaway neared
retirement in 1976, her daughter -- Hardaway's mother -- said she wanted to
pursue a singing career and was hitting the road with her young boy.
"Oh, no, you're not," Louise
Hardaway said. "You're not going to have him going from town to town. He stays
here with me."
Reflecting back on that day,
Hardaway marvels. His grandmother "had worked her butt off all these years, had
her home paid off and now was finally going to get a chance to relax. And then I
got dumped in her lap when I was 5."
Louise Hardaway demanded
excellence. A strict disciplinarian, she wasn't going to have her grandson fall
prey to gangs. She taught him to love the Lord, to rise up when others failed.
She coined the nickname Penny, because he was pretty as one.
During his formative years, he
knew his mother from postcards she sent from the road: California, Alaska,
Hawaii. He never had a relationship with his father, who lived in Chicago. By
the time he was 18, Penny Hardaway had only seen him about three times.
Hardaway's life became wrapped
around Lester Middle School. The teachers embraced him. He played basketball all
day after school, on the hardcourts outside Lester. Gunshots pierced the
night.
Hardaway became the top-ranked
high school basketball player in the nation. His father always promised to come
see him play but never did.
"I would wonder every now and
then, as any kid would, what my father was doing, wishing my father was here,"
he says. "But I would snap out of it really quickly and just keep doing what I
needed to do."
Neighborhood elders took him in,
protected him. They saw a gem in Penny.
And that's why he feels so
compelled to intervene now. "I believe in giving back. I lived the dream. God
blessed me to live the dream."
His grandmother died in
September at the age of 95, a month before he began coaching at Lester Middle.
"She'd be saying, 'That's exactly what I taught him to do.' "
He's giving back in other ways,
too. He hopes to break ground on Penny's FastBreak Courts in suburban Memphis this year. The
$20 million facility will house seven basketball courts, including a 2,000-seat
arena, as well as an auditorium, a rehabilitation clinic and classrooms to tutor
kids. He's teamed with a foundation aimed at promoting youth sports and fighting
childhood obesity.
"I'm hoping that by leaving the
neighborhood and going to the suburbs, the kids can at least start
dreaming."
He has other business ventures:
a barbershop and beauty salon in downtown Memphis and a turf business based in
Miami. Nike continues to make his Foamposite shoes, which fetch hundreds of
dollars -- sometimes thousands -- among "sneakerheads."
He's been gone from the NBA
since 2007. The latter half of his career was plagued by pain. For basketball
enthusiasts, Hardaway's career has always been marked by "what ifs," an
amazingly talented player whose full potential was cut short by constant knee
and lower leg injuries.
Championships, by which the game
measures greatness, always eluded him.
The boy nicknamed King
stands up
The game of basketball teaches
life lessons: work with others, study to succeed, understand your teammates to
win.
Hardaway's goal for the year was to build brotherhood and teach the kids
what it means to be family.
In the huddle during the
championship, the Lester players hung their heads. Down 51-36 with just over
three minutes left, the game appeared out of reach. Fayette East had beaten them
by one point earlier in the season and was having its way in the title game.
"Just give me all you got,"
Coach Penny repeated one last time.
The neighborhood has a saying:
"Binghampton, stand up." After a season of brotherhood, the Lester Lions weren't
about to roll over now.
When the team hit the court,
something magical happened.
Nick Merriweather had seen his
father battle through cancer. His dad had gone through another round of chemo
days earlier. It was time for Nick to stand up.
Coach Penny had told him before
tipoff that his shot would be on target tonight, that his team would need him.
He averaged about eight points a game, yet late in the fourth quarter, he'd yet
to score.
Coach Penny considered pulling
him.
At 4-foot-11 and just 95 pounds,
Nick was outmatched in height, weight and speed.
But not in heart.
Nick launched a three-pointer.
Swish.
The crowd roared. Dad struggled
to stand. He clapped and pumped his fist.
The defense clamped down. Lester
Middle got steal after steal. Fayette East players withered under pressure.
And the smallest kid on the
court wasn't done. He hit another, then another, then another.
Nicknamed "King," Nick played
like one. He nailed four three-pointers in a span of about two minutes. Others
chipped in, too.
"God, you're amazing," Coach
Penny thought.
The game wasn't sealed until the
final seconds, when Robert Washington -- the school's most improved student --
battled for an offensive rebound off a missed free throw and put the ball
in.
The Lester Lions won the West Tennessee State title 58-57, finishing 29-3 for the
season.
The players went bonkers; many
cried.
Hardaway ranks it as one of his
greatest achievements. "Standing on the sideline, I couldn't help them make a
shot. I couldn't help them play defense," he says. "It was out of my
control."
Weeks after the game, the
players still greet Hardaway with high fives and hugs as he walks into the gym.
He'd always given money to the school and neighborhood rec center. But this
year, he's learned, "money isn't everything."
"Giving the time is just as
important as giving the money," he says. "When you have an example who's lived
in the same neighborhood, lived in the same apartments, walked the same
hallways, that is motivating, and it drives them. Attitudes change."
Coach Merriweather hasn't
stopped smiling. Late at night, he closes his eyes. He replays the game in his
mind, over and over and over again. "I can't believe this really happened."
It's given him strength. "I'll
never stop smiling until next year starts."
Nick Merriweather doesn't say
much. He fights back tears when he tries to talk about his father's struggle.
Yet, like his dad, he grins broadly when asked about the game. "I caught fire.
Yes, sir," he says. "He told us to give it our all, and that's what we did."
Hardaway plans to return next
year. He and Merriweather have something special planned, though they won't say
exactly what.
Hardaway laughs when asked what
Lil Penny would say of what transpired. He pauses, then breaks into the voice of
his alter ego: "I told you my man was gonna come back! Everybody said he wasn't
gonna come back. I told you he was. I told you."