The Death of a Playground Legend

Jon Scheyer was heating up the United Center on a cold Chicago night in early January, with 31 points and 6 assists in a no-sweat win over Iowa State. Now a senior at Duke, the spindly 6-foot-5 guard displayed the same deft shooting stroke and high-motor floor play that made him one of the most decorated prep players in Illinois when he was at Glenbrook North High School.

Scheyer, a product of the information age, is remarkably famous for a 22-year-old. Newspapers, chat rooms and message boards tracked his every move in high school, in particular his recruitment. He was covered almost like a professional athlete: Several Glenbrook North games were televised while he was there, and now that he is at Duke he is on TV more than Oprah.

I tried to imagine Billy Harris with that kind of media exposure.

Two nights after Scheyer made his triumphant return to Chicago, Harris’ friends and family members gathered at the University of Illinois at Chicago Pavilion for a memorial to Billy the Kid, who died of a stroke Jan. 3. He was 58, and anyone who saw him play saw something special.

In Harris’ heyday, all we had were sketchy newspaper accounts and our own imaginations to help us envision Terry Hurley scoring 52 for Steinmetz or George Demos averaging 37 at Sullivan or Mo Reddick lighting it up at Morgan Park or Rich Bradshaw extending the line of excellence at Marshall.

Flashy numbers and exuberant word-of-mouth didn’t do Billy Harris justice. He had to be seen to be appreciated.

He had a defiant, almost angry shot, a line drive that he would release with a flick of his wrist at the peak of his jump from anywhere inside halfcourt. The net would respond with a haughty thwick before his feet touched the floor. There was no such thing as a bad shot in Billy the Kid’s world. And if three in a row stayed out, the fourth was going in.

“My range was 22, 25 feet,” said Demos, a North Side gunner from Harris’s era. “Billy’s was about 90.”

Harris was an all-city performer at Dunbar High School and a star on some very good early 1970s Northern Illinois teams, once dropping 35 on Long Beach State at Madison Square Garden. Two years of pro ball with the San Diego Conquistadors of the American Basketball Association followed.

But Harris really made his bones on the playground courts and youth center gyms near the Robert Taylor Homes, where he grew up in a building at 39th Street and South Federal Avenue. That’s the reputation that defined him.

A playground court is where a city kid goes to establish an identity, develop self-esteem, announce his presence in a tough, challenging world. On the playground, Billy Harris ruled.

“He was like Muhammad Ali — he was a talker, but he backed it up,” said Sylvester Monroe, a Taylor Homes neighbor who became a correspondent at Newsweek magazine.

Mark Sibley, a standout guard at Northwestern in the early 1970s, would venture into the city in the summer, seeking tougher competition to prepare him for the Big Ten. Harris befriended him, and Sibley was flattered.

“He was the best player I ever saw,” Sibley said. “I was there on serious business — I wanted to get better. Billy saw that. He took me under his wing, brought me to his house. He told me, ‘Mark, you’re the only white guy who ever came down here and played the game on our terms.’ That meant a lot to me.”

Walt Perrin, the Utah Jazz’s vice president for player personnel, was Harris’s teammate at Northern Illinois. He said Harris was “the best shooter I ever played with, maybe the best I ever saw.” He added, “If they’d had the 3-point line back then, he might have averaged 50.”

Such recollections brought knowing nods and warm smiles from the Dunbar Mighty Men and DuSable Panthers and Wendell Phillips Wildcats and other Harris contemporaries who gathered on Jan. 8 to say goodbye to Billy the Kid.

But jumpers and dunks were only parts of the story. The service also celebrated a life that endured a few rough patches after basketball but had turned almost fairy-tale sweet toward its end: Harris had reconnected with his wife, Marianne, become a star salesman at North Side Toyota/Scion and was the proud patriarch of a large extended family that treasured him.

And “after basketball” is strictly relative. “Billy was the leading scorer in our alumni game when he was 50,” said Mike Korcek, a Northern Illinois media relations director who retired.

No N.B.A. ball — “The league was different then,” Perrin said — but also no what-might-have-been recriminations. Just fond memories of a warm, vibrant man who touched a lot of lives in a lot of ways, including Monroe’s. His book, “Brothers,” is a poignant, achingly real account of a group of young men growing up and coming of age in the Robert Taylor Homes. Billy Harris was one of them.

“Billy used to tell me, ‘When I become a million-dollar bonus baby, everybody I know is going to be a million-dollar bonus baby,’ ” Monroe said, referring to Harris’s generosity. “I don’t know if he ever became a million-dollar bonus baby, but everybody who knew him was better for it.”