MIAMI -- Here come those good tears again, so many of them that the napkin in Kenny Anderson's hand breaks apart as he dabs at the sting in his eyes. He graduates from St. Thomas University next month, finally, at the age of 39 -- a full two decades after taking his first college class.
"Going to be so emotional," he says.
Mom won't be there. She died suddenly a few years ago of a heart attack. His mentor won't be there, either. Howie Lawrence passed away a long time ago after working three jobs, including driving a cab, to help pay Anderson's high school tuition. Lawrence was just a family friend who cared, one of the few people in Anderson's life who gave without expecting anything back -- except for maybe wanting to see a day like the one approaching with that graduation May 15.
"If Mom and Howie saw me now," Anderson says softly, napkin to eye. "Being a good father. Going to school. Mentoring kids. Taking care of my own. They'd be so shocked and so proud. I'm doing something I didn't think I could do. It took me a while, but I finally learned their lessons."
Professional basketball?
"Easy," Anderson says. "Always easy."
The last four years without basketball?
"So hard."
He was always a prodigy, one of the best players the asphalt city of New York ever produced. Recruiters showed up at his sixth-grade games. He did things in high school that hadn't been done since Lew Alcindor. And he became, at the time, the youngest player in the NBA. He wasn't any kind of ready, of course. That's why he recently had to declare bankruptcy after earning more than $60 million in contracts.
"As an athlete, everyone always holds your hand," he says. "Nobody has been holding my hand the last few years. I do for myself. I challenged myself. I sacrificed. I did something. I do the bills now. I wash dishes. Laundry. I'm the nanny."
From The Man to The Manny. From New York playground legend and being an original gangsta to the suburbs in Pembroke Pines, Fla., and his corner booth at the Original Pancake House. Imagine that. Couldn't see clearly amid all those big lights. Had to crawl around in the darkness to find perspective. Helps that his third wife, Tasha, a clinical social worker at a Miami hospital, isn't like the others. Just before dying, Anderson's mother told him, "Keep that. That's a good woman."
The Andersons can afford a maid now -- they live in a $400,000 home and Kenny drives a Cadillac Escalade -- but Tasha won't allow one in their home. She believes in doing for yourself. That is one of the many reasons Kenny is just a few steps from that graduation stage.
"I see so many of the guys in the league chasing cheers, women, money, acceptance, the press -- the shiny things, as I call them," he says. "That was me. Traveling, playing, partying, VIP. It's empty. I want to be a role model. Before I'm gone, I want to help somebody like people helped me. Not a million kids. Three. Two. One. I want one kid to be able to say, 'Kenny Anderson helped me.' That's the stuff that matters."
He runs a basketball academy in Cutler Ridge (kahoops.com) that focuses on life lessons and seminars, not the more than 10,000 points and 5,000 assists he had in a career that spanned 14years. He wants his degree in organizational leadership so he can be a college coach. He is so very tired of being a cliched cautionary tale. His journey never came with maps or manuals. He had to fall down before he could learn how to get up.
"I've always had a big heart, but I always gave the easy way," he says. "I didn't really know how to give."
For a decade, the basketball tournament back home in New York, which grew from 12 to 62 teams and included a barbecue, cost him $40,000 out of his own pocket annually. Mom would handle all the details, including paying kids cash to help with all the work that had to be done. She had the dream house on Long Island, but she couldn't help herself. She would return to the projects on the weekends. Ghetto loyalty, Anderson calls it, and it has bankrupted many an athlete.
"I didn't listen to my advisers," Anderson says. "I just couldn't say no to my family and my community. They made me. They watched me and protected me, the prodigy. How could I say no when someone who helped me as a kid needed a few thousand dollars because he was going to get evicted?"
This is how Antoine Walker somehow goes through $110 million in a decade. Ron Artest grew up a few minutes from Anderson, and ESPN The Magazine once ran a photo of all the people he was supporting. The photograph folded out beyond the confines of the oversized magazine. Artest is a bit nuts, having once filled out the application to become a Circuit City employee while a millionaire member of the Chicago Bulls because he thought it'd be fun to work with electronics and get the discount.
Deadspin.com recently ran a story by a reporter who had visited Artest at his home. Dog feces was all over the rugs -- which were replaced monthly -- and a bunch of Artest's friends from the projects staying there. They had promised each other as kids that if one of them made it out, all of them would.
"I'm an athlete who made bad decisions, but how many times are people going to write and say that?" Anderson says. "Time for a new chapter. I helped a lot of people, too. I touched a lot of people, too. I miss basketball. I can't lie. But it's not overwhelming anymore."
He'll get together with the boys sometimes and the big bill will come, and he can't help but laugh.
"Your turn now," he'll say.
There are still daily challenges, of course. He is always listening to parenting shows on the radio and consulting with Dr. Phil on TV because he was verbally abused as a child, and he sometimes loses his patience with his own kids. It is funny to hear him tell stories about going to his children, head down, apologizing to them for his language and asking them to please be patient with him.
His kids will be in the audience May 15, cheering for a graduate a little older than the rest.
"You know what?" Anderson says. "That day is going to be a lot better than when my name was called second in the NBA Draft and they put on my hat on stage. A lot better."
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