Gentle Ben : A Young Giant From Louisiana Will Carry Hopes of Clippers, Fans

Out in the woods beyond Carroll High School’s playing fields, the crickets continued their high-pitched chirping until the sound became so pervasive that it drowned out almost everything else.

But the sound of rubber soles on a wooden floor inside the school’s gymnasium was strikingly familiar to that of the crickets, not just because of the screeching noise but also because it had become a nightly routine, going for hours, nonstop.

About 20 local boys, some just entering high school and others just recently graduated, met on this late summer night in the oppressively hot gym to spend another evening playing pickup basketball.

They were having a good time, but there was a higher purpose for their gathering. They had come to help Benoit Benjamin, probably the best basketball player from these parts since Bill Russell, stay in shape before he leaves for Los Angeles later this month and his first National Basketball Assn. training camp.

Every day this summer from 5 to 7 p.m., Benjamin could be found plodding up and down the court, intimidating the other players with a variety of dunks, blocked shots and inside moves that drew gasps and shouts of approval from the sidelines. No way was this meant as an NBA simulation for Benjamin, the Clippers’ 7-foot, 245-pound first-round draft choice from Creighton, but his domination was nonetheless impressive.

The game over, Benjamin’s body glistened with sweat as he mounted his bicycle and pedaled home. Another day of training was finished, which meant that he was one day closer to the beginning of his professional basketball career. He has been patiently counting the days ever since June 18, when the Clippers drafted him. He was the third pick of the draft, going after Patrick Ewing and Wayman Tisdale.

Soon, almost everything Benjamin has wanted will be his. He’ll be a starting center on an NBA team, earning close to $1 million--although negotiations haven’t been completed--and living a glamorous bachelor life in Los Angeles.

But to Benjamin, the prospect of playing against some of the NBA’s best centers, among them Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, is most exciting. Many in the NBA are saying that in a few years, if not sooner, Benjamin will be among the best.

“From the standpoint of pure, raw basketball ability, you won’t find too many guys with the tools Ben has,” said Willis Reed, the former New York Knick star who coached Benjamin at Creighton. “But it’s going to take time. I’m sure it’s going to be quite a change for him to go against Kareem, who has 18 years experience on him.”

No doubt, the whole experience will be a shocking change for a 20-year-old who has spent nearly all his life in this quiet, northeastern Louisiana city of 70,000, with only a three-year stopover at Creighton in Omaha, Neb. Some wonder if Benjamin will be able to handle his new-found wealth, celebrity status and independence.

His mother, Carolyn, is worried. His high school coach, Jimmy Jones, is more curious than concerned. Benoit smiles and says he can’t wait to find out.

“I’m fully aware of what type of change it is,” Benjamin said. “I always wanted to be out in California, to be drafted high in the NBA. It’s really a dream come true. What I’ve got to do is just know my priorities. I might run the streets a lot, but when the time comes for business, I’ll just have to push all that aside.”

At home this summer, Benjamin has been cycling, not running, the streets. He can pretty much cover all of Monroe and parts of West Monroe on his 10-speed in a little over two hours--without shifting gears.

Pedaling the streets, Benjamin gives a guided tour of his town. The downtown skyline consists of a few five- or six-story brick buildings. The Ouachita River, which separates Monroe from West Monroe, is a murky green-brown and accommodates few boats.

Baptist churches outnumber fast-food restaurants, three to one, and some of the smaller streets are in that awkward transition from gravel to pavement. Nearly all the residential areas are row houses on stilts, with small front porches and big back yards.

The modest home at 203 Malvern St., solidly built of red and white brick, is occupied by Carolyn Benjamin and her son, Benoit. Walk through the backyard, past where a fence is supposed to be, and you come to the residence of Catherine N. Benjamin, Benoit’s grandmother.

Next door on Egan Street is the home of Emily Benjamin Winston, Benoit’s aunt. Benoit has taken turns sleeping at the three houses all summer, although none has a bed big enough to comfortably accommodate his 7-foot frame.

The three women--Carolyn, her mother, Catherine, and her sister, Emily--were responsible for Benoit’s upbringing.

Carolyn Benjamin, a strong-willed woman who has an equally strong handshake, was pregnant with Benoit at 16 and did not marry his father, Ansley Reed Jr., who later played basketball at Southern University and who died in an car accident when Benoit was 9.

A graduate of Grambling State University, Carolyn, 37, works as an administrative assistant at the local office of the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act and is part owner, with her mother and sister, of a business that provides nursing care to the elderly.

Between the two jobs and help from the family, she never has had a problem putting clothes on Benoit’s massive back, shoes on his size 16 feet and mountains of food into his mouth.

“I love to eat,” Benoit said. “When you got three ladies who can burn (cook), like I got, well, you know, it’s tough not to eat.”

You don’t have to spend much time around the Benjamins to realize that Benoit has, in his words, been mothered and smothered since he was a baby. When he walked through the kitchen door after his nightly workout, he was greeted with a kiss on the cheek by Aunt Emily and another by his mother, leaving red blotches of lipstick on his face.

Benjamin, more visual than verbal, doesn’t say much to strangers. Quiet and introspective, he has been called Gentle Ben almost as often as he has been called Big Ben. Sporting a new-wave, Grace Jones hair style, white-rimmed shades and a double-strand gold necklace, he is quite a sight.

Around the house, though, he is nothing more than Carolyn’s little boy. This night, Catherine, Carolyn and Emily sat at the kitchen table, cradling coffee cups and telling “cute” stories about Benoit’s childhood that make him choke on the bottle of orange juice he’s chugging in front of the refrigerator.

“I always knew Ben was going to be an athlete,” said Carolyn, who is 6-foot-2. “At 5, he threw a rock, oh, it had to be 150 feet and hit a duck with it. We thought right then that he was going to be a baseball player. Then, when he started growing, everybody pushed him into basketball.”

None of the women in Benoit’s life did the nudging. Carolyn’s concern was that Benoit’s schoolwork would suffer. After school, when Benoit would grab his basketball and dribble it up 12th Street to the hoops on the playground, Carolyn would falsely accuse him of hanging out with the “bad boys” and getting into trouble.

Years later, after Benjamin had led Carroll High to the Louisiana championship, he turned to her and said: “See, Ma. I wasn’t with the bad boys.”

Only now that Benjamin is preparing for life on his own in Southern California will his mother admit that she was overprotective. But Carolyn also maintains that it was necessary. “I had to be both mama and daddy to Lenard,” she said.

The only time Carolyn uses Lenard --Benoit is his middle name--is either when she’s angry at him or talking to strangers about him.

“When he was little, he was in Boy Scouts,” Carolyn said. “They’d go on these weekend camping trips, and when I’d drop him off I’d be all hugging and rubbing him and I wouldn’t let him go. One day when he was 11, he says to me, ‘Mama, just go on home. The kids are teasing me about it. I’m a man now.’ ”

Everyone agreed that things would have gone smoother with a man to help guide Benoit. But Benoit’s father was either away at school or working out of town. So Carolyn, still in her 20s when Benoit was in his formative years, tried to be both.

“It was a mistake I made, getting pregnant,” Carolyn said. “But I’ve never considered Benoit a mistake. In the ‘60s, people treated you like an outcast if you got pregnant in high school. My mother was hurt by it, but she kept him while I went to college. It was hard, being a parent. I remember times when I’d take a belt to Lenard and my mama would turn and use it on me because she felt I wasn’t doing right.”

At about the same time his father died in a car crash, Benjamin began playing basketball.

On a recent trip back to the blacktop courts at Clark Elementary School, where Benjamin first played, it seemed strange to him that he could dunk, almost without leaving his feet, and move around the basket with such ease. As a kid, Benjamin said, he was so clumsy that he fell down just looking up at the basket.

“I’d just fall down for no reason,” Benjamin said. “But back then, I liked playing basketball. It was something I did for myself. I kept telling myself that, one day, I’d be a great player.”

Greatness was slow in coming, even after Benjamin learned to keep his feet. Even so, he was drawn to the game because he was taller than most other boys and “coaches were always father figures to me.”

The first coach who made a lasting impression on Benjamin was Jones. It took awhile for Benjamin to warm up to Jones, but Jones was immediately interested when he saw the 6-6 eighth-grader who sat in the corner of Carroll High’s gym and watched the high school boys play.

Not wanting to scare off the shy prospect by directly approaching him, Jones would casually roll the ball toward Benjamin, hoping he’d pick it up. One day, Benoit did.

Because he was so much taller than classmates, Benjamin was painfully self-conscious. Carolyn recalls telling Benoit, embarrassed by his height, to stop slouching. It also took Jones some time before he finally convinced Benjamin that height was all right and, in fact, preferable for dominating the competition.

“He was too nice,” Jones said. “He didn’t want to demoralize the opponent. I told him that the quick little guards don’t feel bad about making you look foolish running him in circles, so he shouldn’t feel bad about blocking their shots.”

From the start, Benoit liked Jones.

“He was like a father to me,” Benjamin said.

Their relationship didn’t end when basketball practice ended each day. Jones drove Benjamin and his own son, Al, to school almost every day, often drove Benoit home after practices or games, and had him over for dinner. Jones laughed and said that the only time Benoit refused a ride was after a bad game or practice, because he’d had enough lecturing.

“If he had a problem with a girlfriend, he’d talk to me,” Jones said. “I’d talk to him about sex, too, and not to get involved in drugs. My son, Al, is a year younger than Benoit and it was an older brother-younger brother situation. They used to borrow my car all the time and go to Ruston or Shreveport on Friday nights.”

Benoit doesn’t remember too much about his real father. The memories are fuzzy. Mostly, what he knows is what his relatives have told him about Ansley Reed Jr. When he was alive and in town, Reed was little more than a weekend and holiday father.

Reed, who stood 6-5, was a star forward at Carroll High and Southern University. His father, Ansley Reed Sr., was the first black police officer in Monroe during the 1950s and is considered a civil rights symbol in town. Now retired from the force and owner of a local disco, Reed said that his son and grandson are alike.

“I’ve seen them both grow up, and Ben is the spittin’ image of my boy,” Reed said. “They were both tall but had a short boy hang around them as their best friend. My boy was shy. Ben is shy. They even played basketball for the Carroll Bulldogs with the same style.”

There were differences, of course. By the time Benjamin was a sophomore in high school, he had sprouted to 6-8 and Jones could no longer keep him on the bench under wraps. On March 31, 1980, when Carroll met rival Neville High in a District 3-AAAA game, Jones went to Benjamin in the second half and Benjamin responded with 18 points in 16 minutes. Carroll won, 73-53, and the lead paragraph in the local newspaper the next morning said: “Big Ben has arrived!”

It wasn’t long before college recruiters began arriving at Monroe Municipal Airport in droves and asking directions to Malvern Street. After Benjamin, now a fully grown 7-footer, had averaged 29 points a game his senior year at Carroll to lead the Bulldogs to the state title, he was considered the nation’s most highly sought prep center. No fewer than 350 major colleges contacted Benjamin, who was intimidated by the onslaught. The recruiting of Benjamin was a study in excessiveness and cut-throat tactics by college coaches. Rumors began flying all over Louisiana about which university was offering what. But after Benjamin had finally whittled his choices to three--Creighton, Grambling and LSU--things really got crazy.

After visiting Creighton, Benjamin told his mother that he was convinced that the school was for him. Creighton’s coach, Reed, who had grown up only 40 miles away from Monroe and gone to Grambling, had won him over. Not only did Reed fit Benoit’s image of surrogate father, but he was one of the NBA’s all-time great centers and could be the one to properly mold him into a pro. Before committing, though, Benjamin visited LSU, then told his mother he wanted to go there. Carolyn, impressed with Reed, insisted that her son attend Creighton. She told Benoit she would not sign the letter of intent to LSU. Then, when Benjamin did sign with Creighton, a Grambling assistant coach charged that Creighton had broken the rules and had Benjamin sign early. Reed personally flew back to Monroe to deny the charge at a press conference.

At about the same time, rumors circulated that Reed was dating Benjamin’s mother and that they had been schoolmates at Grambling. Actually, Reed, who had left Grambling before Carolyn enrolled, had made only the three visits allowed by the NCAA to a recruit’s home.

“I told my mama to change the phone number because we were constantly being bothered by college coaches,” Benjamin said. “She never did. Sometimes, I couldn’t even remember which coach I was talking to.”

He remembered Reed, though, always. Reed made sure of that. From the day Benjamin set his size 16s on campus, Reed was constantly pushing him. It didn’t help that Benjamin had been stuffing himself with his mother’s fried chicken, along with anything else in the refrigerator. Benoit arrived at school two Twinkies shy of 280 pounds--about 40 more than his playing weight. Reed called him Baby Ben in front of the other players and told the Omaha press that he was a small-town mama’s boy who had better change. Benoit dropped the weight quickly but was so weak that opponents pushed him around. Benjamin averaged 14.9 points and 9.6 rebounds his freshman season as the team finished 8-19.

After that first year, Benjamin disliked most things about Creighton, although he stopped short of denouncing Reed.

“I wanted to quit and go home,” Benjamin said. “But my three ladies told me I had to stay and make it better. They said nothing in life that’s worth having is easy. (Omaha) is a freezer. One time last year, I spit, and I swear it was frozen before it hit the ground. For real, man. I had my ups and downs in college, but no regrets, really. A lot of people asked me why I went to Creighton. One reason: Willis Reed.”

Reed made Benjamin his personal project. Benjamin averaged 16.2 points and 9.8 rebounds as a sophomore. The Bluejays finished 17-14 and were invited to the NIT.

Then Benjamin’s game blossomed and starting resembling Reed’s. Benjamin uses the turn-around baseline jumper Reed had--although Benjamin is right-handed and Reed is a lefty--and has the same aggressive rebounding ability and knack for blocking shots.

As a junior last season, Benjamin became nationally known even though Creighton and other Missouri Valley Conference teams rarely appeared on television. Creighton’s program was crumbling, but Benjamin averaged 21.5 points, 14.1 rebounds and 5.1 blocked shots. The Bluejays, 20-6 at one point, lost their last six games and got no post-season bids.

In the weeks just after the season, Reed resigned, saying he was tired of what he called the cut-throat business of big-time college basketball. Benjamin then decided to pass up his senior season and declare himself eligible for the NBA draft.

In July, the Missouri Valley Conference put Creighton’s program on one-year probation without sanctions. One reason was that Benjamin drove a “loaner car” from a local dealer for an extended period.

All Benjamin says about the downfall of Creighton’s program is that it was a degrading experience and that he felt sorry that Reed left. But after that happened, there was no question that Benjamin would go, too. Even though Reed, now an assistant coach with the Atlanta Hawks, had said all along that Benjamin needed his senior year to mature, Benoit thought it wise to test the NBA early.

The NBA was more than happy to give him the chance. Benjamin, depending on which NBA executive you talked to, either was the second or third pick in the draft, behind Ewing and perhaps Oklahoma’s Tisdale. It is difficult to overlook a 7-foot center with Benjamin’s statistics and talent, yet there was disturbing talk that Benjamin had a major attitude problem.

Evidence of that can be seen on Creighton game films. At times, Benjamin dogged it, seemingly pouting on the court. He also can be seen yelling at teammates and officials and even arguing with Reed on occasion.

Reed said: “The problem with Ben was that he was raised by three women who had a very strong influence. That tends not to make you give 100%. But we had no real problems.”

The Clippers, awarded the third pick in the draft lottery of non-playoff teams, took no chances. They called in Saul Miller, a psychologist, to evaluate Benjamin before the draft, an unusual practice.

“It gave us another dimension into Benjamin’s personality,” General Manager Carl Scheer said at the time.

When Scheer and Coach Don Chaney met with Benjamin, Chaney asked him: “How will you react the first time an established center kicks your tail?” Benjamin looked puzzled and said he hadn’t thought about it.

“I’ve thought a lot about it now,” Benjamin said this summer. “And I think I’m capable right now of being the type of player the Clippers need.” This summer, Benjamin said he has never trained as hard for anything as he has for his rookie season in the NBA.

He wakes up at about 10 a.m.--”I still want to sleep late.”--and rides his bicycle for three hours in the hot and humid afternoon. “I do it in the afternoon, so I can sweat more,” he said. Then he lifts weights and plays pickup games at Carroll High.

To keep his weight down, Benjamin has eliminated breakfast and lunch. All he eats during the day is fruit. Then, at dinner, he eats “all I want.” So far, this unusual diet is working. Benjamin has lost 20 pounds and weighs a svelte 245.

Another worry, especially to Benjamin’s mother, is that Benoit will soon get fat with the Southern California life style. Benjamin has tried to comfort her, to no avail.

“We’ve talked and I think he’s going to be OK,” Carolyn Benjamin said. “But Ben is only 20, and when he went away to college, that didn’t go so well. Has he matured enough? I don’t know. Hopefully, he’ll remember where he’s from and the values he’s been taught. Yeah, I think he’ll be OK.”

Casually shooting baskets one afternoon at a tattered hoop at Clark Elementary School, where his basketball career began, Benjamin was told of his mother’s comments and laughed.

“I don’t honestly know how I’m going to handle the money,” Benjamin says. “But my curiosity level is way up.”

Soon enough, he will find out.