John Drew obit

 

John Drew, one of Alabama’s greatest high school basketball stars, dies

 He was not on the list.

John Drew refused to come home. Now, he’s home.

Born in Vredenburgh, Alabama and one of the most dominant high-school basketball players in the history of the state, Drew died Sunday after a battle with bone cancer.

His passing was confirmed by Drew’s second-oldest son, Keith.

Drew was in Houston, where he lived with his wife, driving a taxi for a living, since not long after an 11-year NBA career ignominiously ended in 1986 due to drug addiction.

Drew holds three state AHSAA records from his years (1969-72) at J.F. Shields High School in Monroe County (career scoring average, 41.0 points per game, 1969-72; single-season rebounding, 764 in 1971-72; and single-season rebound average, 21.8 rebounds per game, 1971-72), and remains among the leaders in numerous others. They are single-game scoring (No. 2, 77 vs. Snow Hill Institute, 1971-72), single-season scoring (No. 3, 1,302 points, 1970-71), career scoring (No. 4, 4,018 from 1969-72), and single-season scoring average (No. 4, 44.0 points per game, 1970-71).

Drew remained a prolific scorer in the NBA, averaging 20.7 points and nearly seven rebounds per game.

He long ago should have been inducted into the Alabama Sports Hall of Fame.

No matter how his career ended.

No matter how much he wrestled with an addiction still endured by far too many.

He rarely returned to Alabama—not since 1991, Keith says—because he felt “he let everybody in his hometown down.”

“I told him,” Keith says. “‘Regardless of what you did and what happened, everybody still loved him and wanted to see him. But he was embarrassed and just didn’t want to come home.”

A few years ago, Drew was inducted into the J.F. Shields Sports Hall of Fame. “They wanted him to be there to receive the trophy, but he didn’t want to come because he was embarrassed.”

Keith said a mass was first discovered on his father’s shoulder a decade ago during a physical. “He said the doctor told him then that he needed to do something about it, but he never did anything about it.”

John Drew also kept the discovery to himself, even as pain sometimes made walking a struggle. “For the last two years, he complained about his back,” Keith said. “He could walk but it was just hurting so bad.”

“It started bothering him about five years ago, but he never told nobody about it,” Keith said. “About a month and a half ago when he began hurting so bad he had to be hospitalized for a couple of weeks. That’s when the doctor told him he had bone cancer, stage 4, and that there was nothing they could do about it. That’s when we found out about it.”

I began reaching out to Drew for this column last August. My years as a sports journalist at The New York Times coincided with much of his career and I interviewed him several times, chronicling much of his struggle with cocaine. He steadfastly turned down my requests, as he had turned down nearly all interviews since being the first casualty of the NBA’s then-new, harsh “three-strikes” drug policy in 1986. He was banned by NBA Commissioner David Stern after entering rehab for the third time.

When he broke into the NBA he was coached by Cotton Fitzsimmons and Bumper Tormohlen and teamed up with players such as  Lou Hudson, Dwight Jones and Tom Van Arsdale.

During interviews for a story in 1983, after Drew returned from his rehab stint, he was open with me about his drug use and efforts to stay clean. I even attended an AA meeting with him.

The 25th overall draft pick in 1974, Drew signed a five-year contract for $780,000, with a $40,000 bonus, quite a wad of cash for a kid from rural Alabama who attended tiny Gardner-Webb University. He told me he did not begin using drugs until his third NBA season during a road trip to Portland, but, as I wrote: “Word quickly circulated. Drew was cool.”

Drew was a high-functioning addict. Rumors about his drug use were rampant, but it seemed to have little impact on his play. In 1979-80, he averaged 19.5 points per game—though he was freebasing, he shared. ‘’I never played while I was high,” he said, ‘’though I did sometimes perform under the effects of what I’d done the night before. I did a pretty good job of covering it up, learned all the tricks of the trade, and lied to anyone.’’

He added: ‘’I never did drugs to kill any bad feeling, because I was hurt or because I had any problems,” he says. ‘’I did drugs because I liked them, and they made me feel good.’’

Drew was confronted about his addiction at the beginning of the 1982-83 season—his first with the Utah Jazz after eight seasons with Atlanta (in return the Hawks received that season’s No. 3 draft pick, Dominique Wilkins)—by Jazz head coach Frank Layden. He missed 38 games while undergoing rehabilitation at a center in Baltimore, Maryland.

Drew returned as the league’s Comeback Player of the Year in 1983-84 but relapsed the following season.

He said, in 1983, being forced to face his addiction was the “biggest relief in the world.” Yet it was still a beast that conquered him one too many times. And kept him from coming home.

After the banishment, he remained in the Atlanta area for a few years, struggling in the aftermath (He was arrested twice there in 1986, once for selling cocaine to an undercover FBI agent.)

Keith says his father thought one of the Hawks teams should have won a championship. Keith couldn’t recall exactly which one, though it was likely the 1978-79 Hawks, which lost to the Washington then-Bullets in seven games in the Eastern Conference Semifinals. Drew averaged 22.7 points per game during the regular season, but just 15.0 ppg in the series.

“He said the reason why they didn’t win was because of him and his addiction,” Keith Drew said. “He takes responsibility for that.” (The Bullets went on to lose to the Seattle SuperSonics in the NBA Finals; the first Finals I covered as a young reporter.)

Although John Drew felt so much shame about how his NBA career ended he couldn’t come home, he needs his home state’s prayers.

Keith Drew said his father has been in good spirits. “He’s at peace with it,” he said, adding, “He said if he had to do it over again, he wouldn’t change nothin’.”

After being traded by Atlanta for Wilkins, Drew played three seasons (1982–1985) with the Utah Jazz, retiring with 15,291 career points. He joined Artis Gilmore and Eddie Lee Wilkins as the only alumni of Gardner–Webb University to play in the NBA.

With Jason Kidd, Drew holds the NBA record for most turnovers in a regular season game (14). Drew set that mark with the Hawks in a March 1, 1978 game against New Jersey.

Drew spent the next two years with the Continental Basketball Association's Wyoming Wildcatters, becoming an All-Star in the CBA.