For years, he and I would joke about it. Mostly because his famous, soon-to-be All-Star, soon-to-be-collecting-championships, soon-to-be-Hall of Fame-inducted son didn’t know how dope he really was when he balled on the Chicago streets before he took his talents to Europe.
But once Tony Parker Jr. won the first of his four NBA rings in 2003 (later named Finals MVP in 2007), his dad, Tony Parker Sr., finally had to concede Jr. was better. In honesty, Sr. knew long before (so did Jr.), but Big Tony was from South Side Chi. The ‘‘earning curve’’ (not learning curve) is different here when it comes to hooping. We bow to no one easily, and that includes to our own kids.
Tony Parker Sr. passed away recently. With him went not only the soul of a man but a part of the beautiful soul of the game he helped shape as this city’s distinctiveness. The best way to put it: He was cold. And ‘‘cold,’’ in basketball, is greater than being great.
TP Sr. was also my big cousin.
My cousin David Robinson was the best hooper of my era in our family. Tony Pruitt was the best of our era in the extended family. My ‘‘uncle’’ Meadowlark (yes, that one; Mr. Lemon was my godmother’s brother) was the family G.O.A.T. But growing up, ‘‘Pretty’’ Tony was the one we talked about and claimed as our ‘‘celebrity cuz’’ who made it ‘‘big time’’ the most.
He was of that Bo Ellis, Sonny Parker, Mickey Johnson, Lloyd Walton, LaRue Martin, Bill Robinzine crew of Chicago hoopers, all of whom were setting a new, post-Cazzie Russell standard of how Chicago hoopers hooped.
TP reestablished Leo High School in basketball in the Catholic League — leading the team to a CCL championship in 1973 for the first time in 30 years and remaining the first professional basketball player mentioned on the school’s list of distinguished graduates — so that Donald Whiteside wouldn’t have to do so a few decades later. And by the time the great Alfredrick Hughes — ‘‘Alfredrick Hughes The Great’’ is what we called him — got to Loyola University after TP, he knew he had some work to put in. TP had left a mark. Averaging 17.4 points for his career and finishing eighth in scoring and 17th in rebounding on Loyola’s all-time lists. As the great (DJ and hella ballplayer himself) Alan King said of TP on his Facebook condolences post: ‘‘He was a walking bucket in his day.’’ Facts.
TP was the one who played professionally in Europe, was hooping in France and Belgium and the Netherlands. TP was the one coming back home to visit with the exotic women. And when they didn’t come back with him, he had stories about them. He was the one who would hear his name chanted in stadiums and arenas, our international man of Black mystery, the one who walked with more civility in his civil rights because he smartly fled America. He was the one who, when you went anywhere with him during one of his visits to Chicago, wouldn’t have to say a thing because people would stop you and tell you (and him) the hoop and ’hood stories of his life — and what it all meant to them.
He never got the Rickey Green (Hirsch), Joe Ponsetto (Proviso East), Lloyd Batts (Thornton) props or media notoriety. But in the streets, on the blocks, on those courts where the nets were made of chains if there even were nets, his rep carried heavy. TP was so good that in some places — bars, barbecues and barbershop talk — in and around the city, they believed he early on belonged along the mythical, potential ‘‘next’’ Billy Harris mentions. At the very least, the poor man’s, non-Public League, non-Robert Taylor Homes version of ‘‘The Kid.’’
TP knew the game. Like, knew knew. Insight, intellect, instinct — embedded. Above coaching, analytics and instruction. Like a basketball savant who walked the earth with the sole purpose of contributing his wealth of basketball collateral for free. From France to San Antonio to Arizona to Vegas, back to Chicago to Evanston to all parts of Europe. Just being him. Spreading hoop wisdom of a sensei. Talking that beautiful Tony Parker Sr. ‘‘Chicago talk’’ along the way.
Our last true conversation wasn’t our best. It was after the ESPN ‘‘30 for 30’’ about Ben Wilson aired. TP called me and said it was his turn. My explanation to him as to why it couldn’t happen didn’t sit well with him. His Chicago pride took the front seat. As it should have.
‘‘He was a good guy who never changed from the day we met on the basketball court in 1969,’’ Dr. Walton, senior career counselor for the National Basketball Players Association, said to me about TP. ‘‘He was a 6-4 athletic and skilled basketball player always sharing a positive perspective about life, no matter what the circumstances were. His love for basketball was only surpassed by his love for his family.’’
What was unknown to most, even to sons Tony Jr., TJ and Pierre because they weren’t raised here, was that in our family in Chicago, their dad was our Billy Harris. He was that cold, that great. Even greater when he didn’t have a basketball in his hands.