The Sporting House

Swee’Pea was his nickname, given to him on the playground courts of New York because of his uniquely oval-shaped head, its eerie resemblance to the baby from Popeye cartoons. But in Vegas I never heard him called anything but Lloyd. We said it with force, with a bit of awe. To us, he was Lloyd.

I first saw him in the summer of 1986. This was before he got busted at a Vegas crack house, before he got kicked off a college basketball team that he hadn’t yet joined, before everything started going to shit and he still was one of the most exciting high school players to come along in years. Summer tournaments were just starting to be a cottage industry, and the Las Vegas Invitational brought in summer-league all-star teams from all over the country, during the stretch of the recruiting season when college coaches were allowed to watch high schoolers play. Games ran from 10:00 a.m. until nearly midnight.

For the most part, the days were desultory, filled with undistinguished action: a backdrop of pounding dribbles, referee whistles, squeaking sneakers, a scoreboard buzzer going a bit too long. The bleachers would be half-filled, some players from the previous game guzzling Gatorade and changing into clean, oversize tees, a cluster of parents at once watching the action and checking to see if any college scouts were watching (and often, during lulls, comparing the merits of various hotel buffets).

But when the New York Gauchos—and specifically Lloyd Daniels—played, the bleachers were packed. In fact, bystanders stood in groups at the corners of the court, leaned against the brick walls. At first glance, the Gauchos seemed a ragtag bunch, wearing tight green uniforms the color of well-used pool tables. However, for me, who rapped along to “8 Million Stories” by Kurtis Blow and Run DMC and had all but memorized Rick Telander’s chronicle of New York City street ball, Heaven Is a Playground, the team’s grimy, lackluster attitude only added to my anticipation. Just what had come to us from the mean streets of New York?

I was among the fans checking the names on my folded Xerox of a roster, trying to figure out which dude had been labeled “Magic Johnson with a jump shot,” the street-raised hooping genius whose troubles—four different high schools in three states without graduating—had been chronicled in the New York tabloids, the one who’d once defiantly told a reporter, “I ain’t allergic to school. I just don’t want to go.” Word had spread that UNLV was eager to sign Lloyd—and during one of his last high school games, he’d...