The way Michele (Telfair) Ramsey remembers it, there were two ways for a junior-high-aged girl to stand out in Canyon, Texas in the late 1970s — either become a cheerleader, or a basketball player.
She was neither, but set out to become the latter. It was a process that was laborious and only partially successful, but one that ultimately played a part in a Hall of Fame career — just not her own, that’s all.
A little background. She and the rest of the Telfair family — her parents, Dan and Laurie, and her older sister Jackie — moved in 1976 from Fort Bragg, NC, to Canyon (pop. 10,000), which sits in the Northwest part of the state, just outside Amarillo. Dan, a lifelong military man, had accepted a position as an ROTC instructor at the college in Canyon, West Texas State.
That first year, as a seventh-grader, Michele learned about the junior-high hierarchy, and who sat at the top. Cheerleader or baller — that was the route to “street cred,” as she put it over the phone recently, from her home in Houston.
Which is why she repaired to the gym at West Texas State the following summer, and started shooting around by herself.
One of the first days she did so, a pattern emerged. She would miss, and the ball would skitter away. Then again. And again.
Finally it bounced off in the direction of the court where some of the college guys were playing pickup, and was retrieved by one of the players. Skinny guy, a little over six feet tall. Big hair.
Upon returning the ball to her, he offered to help her with her game. She wasn’t averse to that, certainly, but hadn’t quite caught his name. That led him to point to the side of his face, to one of his cheeks.
Which is how Michele came to know Maurice Cheeks.
It would be incorrect to draw a straight line from that moment to the one that came just over a year later, when the Sixers took him in the second round of the 1978 NBA draft, one of the most astute selections they’ve ever made. That resulted in an 11-year run as the point guard in Philadelphia, a 15-year pro career and yes, an eventual spot in Springfield, Mass. But certainly it led to his first moment in the sun, the first widespread realization of what he was, and what he could be.
That came in a now-defunct all-star game known as the Pizza Hut Classic, on April 1, 1978, in Las Vegas. There Cheeks dismantled the College Player of the Year, Marquette’s Butch Lee, scoring 11 points and playing the ironclad defense that would become his NBA calling card. Lee finished with six points, on 2-for-16 shooting. Two-for-freakin’-16!
So impressive was the skinny kid with the big hair that he was runner-up for MVP to his teammate on the West squad that day, Minnesota center Mychal Thompson, who put up 13 points and 17 rebounds in an 88-84 victory. (Thompson, that year’s first overall pick, enjoyed a solid 13-year career, mostly with the Blazers and Lakers. Also, you may have heard of his son, Klay.)
Here’s the thing, though: Cheeks might not have even played in the game, were it not for Michele and her mom. After he agreed to coach Michele — after he spent countless afternoons teaching her the finer points, after he invited her to his practices, etc. — they grew close. And once Maurice passed muster with Dan Telfair, who understandably expressed reluctance about a friendship between a college-aged guy and a junior-high girl, he became a regular at the Telfairs’ home. Sometimes he came over for a meal, sometimes to do his laundry. Sometimes it was just to watch soap operas. (Michele recalled that one of his favorites was “Days of our Lives.”)
Michele’s basketball career never quite got off the ground; she was a deep reserve as an eighth-grader, and would later devote herself to tennis and track and field. Nor was Cheeks’ final season at West Texas State anything to write home about. While he was named All-Missouri Valley Conference for the third straight season, the team limped home at 8-19.
Laurie, by then separated from Dan, took her daughter to all the home games. While driving home after one of them they heard coach Ron Ekker say in a radio interview that the best way for Cheeks to get a good look from pro scouts was in fact at the Pizza Hut Classic, whose rosters were determined through fan voting. Thus inspired, Laurie and Michele began rounding up ballots and handing them out at games, along with pencils that had Cheeks’ name on them. They had “Vote for Maurice” stickers and buttons made. And, which is more, the entire town got on board with the campaign. The local Pizza Hut staged ballot-signing parties. The local hardware store awarded TVs to the dorms who handed in the most votes. Fraternities and sororities staged competitions.
The end result was ballot-box-stuffing that would have impressed even the folks back in Cheeks’ hometown of Chicago, where such shenanigans have long been the stuff of legend. He drew 412,330 votes from a town whose population swelled to no more than 15,000 when school was in session. On the West squad, only Thompson (509,680) and Utah State’s Mike Santos (493,970) drew more. (Lee had the most on either team — 579,574.)
Cheeks took it from there, which actually scared the hell out of the Sixers. Superscout Jack McMahon had long before given him a look, and liked him.
“I thought he would be a sleeper for us,” McMahon told the Wilmington News-Journal after the draft, “but all of a sudden he made a showing in the Pizza Hut Classic, was a runner-up to Mychal Thompson. He wasn’t a sleeper anymore.”
Still, Cheeks slipped through the cracks. Then he spent 15 years slipping to the rim and slipping into passing lanes, the result being that he slipped into Springfield. Won a championship along the way. Made a bunch of All-Star teams and All-Defensive teams, then went into coaching; he’s currently an assistant with his hometown Bulls. (There’s also a statue of him outside the arena in which his college team, now West Texas A&M, plays its home games. And yes, it features his collegiate hairstyle, which he abandoned early in his pro career.)
None of this appears to have changed him, though. Think about Natalie Gilbert and the anthem. Think about his Hall of Fame acceptance speech. (I’m not crying. You’re crying.)
“Just a kind man,” Michele said.
Ramsey, who has kept in touch with Maurice over the years, believes her 30-year career as an event planner is a direct result of her involvement in that long-ago Cheeks campaign. Recently she tried to arrange a virtual program that would involve him discussing leadership with Harvard professor Tom DeLong, as DeLong believes there is no better example of that than Cheeks coming to Gilbert’s aid.
Alas, Ramsey said Cheeks was uncomfortable talking about himself for the program, and it did not come off as planned.
Hey, same as it ever was. I have a theory that Cheeks’ humility and decency contributed to his failures as a head coach, a role he has attempted to fill in three places, including Philadelphia — that his demeanor simply doesn’t lend itself to a position where you so often have to lower the boom, or at least deliver bad news.
Better that he should remain an assistant, something he’s been doing for 16 years now. Better that he should hang around and make everyone’s life a little easier, a little brighter. Better, really, that he should continue to help people fit in, as he did all those years ago in a gym in Texas.