The NBA Owes Money to Grandparents

Kendrick Perkins (Boston Celtics), Anfernee (Penny) Hardaway (former NBA star), Baron Davis (Los Angeles Clippers) and even legendary Phoenix Suns star and current mayor of Sacramento Kevin Johnson were all raised by grandparents. There’s a phenomenon among professional basketball players of being born to parents incapable of providing for them. The list of reasons for this range from the inexperience of teen parents to abandonment and beyond. I shouldn’t even speculate.

At any rate, I’ve read excerpts and full length articles that make cursory references to the grandparents who foster life lessons and opportunity for some of the NBA’s most prominent stars. My skills never landed me an NBA contract but after recently losing my paternal grandmother to esophagus cancer, I reflected on how important she was to my drive, my locus of appreciation for family and the will to fight in the face of exhaustion.

As I continue to process the loss of my “Nana” I can only imagine how important the grandparents of the aforementioned superstars must have been. Unlike the men I mentioned, I was not raised solely by grandparents. I had a loving mother growing up who worked extremely hard to “connect the ends” so-to-speak. But it’s no mystery why a man like Baron Davis feels that he owes Lela Nicholson everything. She positioned him for success he now enjoys. The biography of an athlete who calls a grandparent “mom” or “dad” normally illustrates less than ideal circumstances inclusive of but not limited to sub par housing in a neighborhood replete with crime and poverty. There’s often but one buffer separating the future NBA star from the paradigm of a survivalist, resorting to illicit forms of lucrative assent. Mrs. Nicholson was the buffer for Davis the same way Betty Coulter was for me. On the other side of the tracks you better have more than your parents telling you where the most traveled paths lead.

As I thought about the stories I’d read about basketball players and other athletes who have had the blessed intervention of grandparents, I thought with pseudo piety, “Where the heck are the parents? I bet they came running when Jr. made it to the pros.” But then I realized that perhaps my musings were fodder for a separate discussion or at minimum a blog of a different day. What matters is that the family bears tremendous significance in society and because of the layers within it, lives are saved and men who should sell crack become mayors with altruistic commitments to the communities they serve.