A Working Class Hero - basketball players

Basketball Digest, Summer, 2001 by Irwin Soonachan

Marc Jackson travelled a long way to get to the NBA

MARC JACKSON'S KINDLY nature is well documented, but his little brother, seven-year-old Basil Taylor, sometimes gets miffed when he has to cut their playtime short. Because even while Jackson is at home in the Philadelphia area during the offseason, he doesn't take time off.

"He has been a little sad or upset many times when I wouldn't stay home and play with him more because I wanted to work out," Jackson says. In fact, one former coach says that Jackson hasn't skipped a workout in nearly a decade.

Basil is too young to understand why his brother, who calls him every day during the season, has such a conscientious work ethic. He is barely old enough to register that while many people pay their dues, few have paid them like his brother has. He almost certainly is too young to grasp that only someone with his brother's dedication could have beaten such long odds to succeed in the NBA.

Forget for a moment that Jackson, at 26, is the oldest rookie ever to be a favorite for rookie of the year awards, and that as the 38th pick in the 1997 draft, he is by far the lowest draft pick to win BASKETBALL DIGEST'S Rookie of the Year Award. Disregard that by NBA standards, his foot speed and ability to get his 6'10", 263-pound frame off the ground are questionable. To truly understand how remarkable it is for Jackson to be in the NBA, let alone to have consistently put up big numbers--he averaged 13.2 ppg and 7.5 rpg this season--against All-Stars such as his idol, Karl Malone, and Kevin Garnett, you have to flash back to the 1980s.

Back then, Jackson tipped the scales at 300-plus, a Philadelphia teenager living in a home that had no heat, no running water, and a roof that was slowly caving in. "We weren't blessed with a silver spoon," he understates.

Jackson had one thing going for him, at least: In Philly, there are plenty of people who understand basketball. At age 10, he started working out with a friend whose father, Walter Byrd, was a Temple University standout who played part of a season in the ABA. Jackson credits Byrd for starting him on guard drills that would develop the soft hands, ball-handling skills, and outside touch that later became the basis of his game.

In high school, the father of another childhood friend, future Toronto Raptors point guard Alvin Williams, introduced him to Sonny Hill, an apostle of Philadelphia basketball if not its patron saint It would prove a fateful meeting.

Hill played basketball in the days before the NBA was fully integrated and founded the Sonny Hill Community Involvement Basketball League, a youth league that has produced a long line of NBA players, including current All-Stars Kobe Bryant and Rasheed Wallace.

John Hardnett, Jackson's coach in the Hill League, remembers his skeptical first impression of the future star. "When I first saw him, I thought there was no way in the world this kid was ever going to be a basketball player, because he was heavyset and he didn't have a lot of coordination," Hardnett says.

But creating pro basketball players has never been the point of the Sonny Hill League. "Our program uses basketball as a vehicle to reach young people and mold them into better human being," Hill explains.

So Hardnett, perhaps seeing the potential of Jackson the person more than Jackson the basketball player, took him in. Every day after school during his sophomore and junior years of high school, Jackson went to Hardnett's house for a hot meal and a place to do his homework "He took care of me on and off the court," Jackson says.

That, at least, is how Jackson recounts the experience. Hardnett remembers a different chapter. After Jackson's junior year, Hardnett injured his back and was unable to walk for six months. Jackson, mature beyond his years, didn't slip out the back door.

"Before school, Marc would come over to my house, cook for me, walk my dogs, and clean the house," Hardnett says. "After school, he would come back to the house, clean up, and cook. The same thing I did for him when he was a younger kid, he did for me."

Jackson also was maturing on the court. Hardnett credits Jackson's "extremely hard work" for his becoming a high-scoring high school star. He was recruited by several small Division I basketball teams and ended up at Virginia Commonwealth University.

After one unhappy year, Jackson came home to attend Temple University. Following the NCAA-mandated year on the shelf following his transfer, he become an instant starter and poured in more than 16 points and nine rebounds per game for the Owls. Temple coach John Chaney was giving him videotapes of Malone, and his game was rapidly taking on Mailman-like dimensions: a deadly midrange jumper, deft passing, and a bruising playing style.

However, Jackson's family was in trouble. Basil was an infant, and his mother needed help. "After some games at Temple I'd bring his mother milk and things for the baby," Hardnett says. "The baby always had a cold because they didn't have any heat. He always had a runny nose or a sore throat. In most houses you take your jacket off; in Marc's you would put another one on."