Jesus Ascends

In this week’s two-part ESPN documentary, Earl the Pearl rises again just in time for Easter.

by Tim Whitaker

If you’re old enough, you remember Earl the Pearl.

If you’re real old, you remember the Pearl when he played for Bartram High in the early ’60s, back when his nickname was Thomas Edison because of all the moves he invented.

If you’re a little less old, you remember stories of Pearl and his game in the Philadelphia schoolyards and playing in the legendary Baker League. You stayed tuned in through his explosive four-year college career at the historic black Winston-Salem State University, where he averaged 40-plus points his senior year playing for the celebrated coach Clarence “Big House” Gaines.

Funny, in the early days, they called the Pearl “Slick” for what he could do with the rock. (He’s the inventor of the now long established “spin move,” where his quickness would always leave defenders guarding air and looking silly.)

In 1977, Woody Allen wrote "a fan’s notes" in Sport magazine to express his adulation for the Pearl.

Over time, though, because what he did on a basketball court could no longer be explained in mortal terms, they started calling him Black Jesus—and then, simply, Jesus.

In 1967 the Baltimore Bullets drafted the Pearl. There he became a scoring machine, averaging 24 points a game. He won the Rookie of the Year award, and in one game dropped 56 big ones against the Lakers.

He’s famously quoted from around that time: “The thing is I don’t know what I’m going to do with the ball and if I don’t know I’m quite sure the guy guarding me doesn’t know either.”

“Earl brought the street game to the professional level,” says Sonny Hill, Philadelphia’s iconic basketball impresario and founder of the Baker League. “They had to like it. It was exciting and it brought in fans.”

In 1971 Monroe was traded to the talent-heavy New York Knicks (Bill Bradley, Clyde Frazier, Willis Reed, etc.). Rather than stay a scoring machine, he became like the critical sideman in a talented jazz quintet—improvising, spinning, wheeling and more often than not dishing off to one of his talented teammates for the deuce, letting them take the bow.

Of course he’d score too, if need be.

In the 1973 season, it all came together for the Pearl. The Knicks won the NBA championship, and New York City went batshit.

New Yorkers still talk about 1973 and that team as though it happened yesterday.

Decades later, in Spike Lee’s He Got Game, Denzel Washington tells his son (Jesus Shuttlesworth) that he was named after Monroe’s “Jesus” nickname. And in Mighty Aphrodite, Woody Allen’s character wants to name his new son “Earl the Pearl.”

New Yorkers actually believe Jesus belongs to them.

We’re here to shill for Black Magic, the two-part, four-hour Dan Klores documentary airing on ESPN this week. It shouldn’t be missed. Black Magic not only chronicles the monumental influence of African-Americans on basketball with undeniable proof and footage, but it tells of the injustice that befell the players and coaches of historical black colleges before change finally came in the late ’60s.

Earl Monroe is a co-producer of Black Magic. Which may be one reason this documentary isn’t all cool-looking sleight-of-hand moves.

It shows the taunts and ugliness players and coaches were forced to endure, not to mention all the talent—like Sonny Hill and John Chaney, just to name two Philly hoopsters—who never got a chance at the big time.

In Black Magic we learn about a Sunday morning basketball game played 60 years ago in secrecy for fear of the consequences in Durham, N.C., between Duke medical school students and a team from the North Carolina College for Negroes. The College for Negroes won 88-44.

“We watch college basketball today,” says Sonny Hill, who still talks about the wonders of players like Earl Monroe and John Chaney on his Sunday morning WIP radio show. “The influx of black players is enormous. Out of 12 or 14 players on major college teams, there are often 10 black players on the roster today. So that gets you thinking about how good those black college teams must’ve been before blacks could play in big white schools.”

And Hill’s got one more point to make before ending our conversation about Black Magic, which he calls “timeless.”

He brings up a list ESPN recently put together of the top 25 college basketball players of all time.

“There’s not one black college basketball player on the list,” Hill says. “Think about that. Not one. That’s impossible. It’s a disservice. White media and white folk didn’t get the opportunity to see the level of ball at black colleges. They should fix that. Put it in your piece. Maybe Philadelphia readers can tell ESPN to fix that injustice.”