COMMENTARY : Earl the Pearl Was Real Jewel

There are, in the sports world, good players, great players and those few given over to legend. Earl Monroe, though a wonder, wasn’t the greatest player who ever lived. But a legend? You know it.

It wasn’t just the nickname, although that was part of it. Monroe was a player, like Magic, like Dr. J, like Pistol Pete, who had to have a nickname. He was Earl the Pearl -- a gem, shining then, shining even now.

Basketball, more than any other sport, encourages a cult of personality, and the Pearl, believe me, was Olivier in short pants. They called him Black Jesus. Ray Scott, a teammate, used to say God couldn’t go one-on-one with the Pearl. Watching him once, you were converted.

They voted him into the basketball Hall of Fame Thursday along with Elvin Hayes and Dave Bing and old-timer Neil Johnston. Elvin Hayes was a great scorer and rebounder, but he wasn’t exactly the kind of player to win your heart. Maybe if he had passed the ball more. Maybe if he had passed it once. I’m sure Hayes took more shots per contact with a basketball than anyone in history. Bing was smart and quick and could score and make every play. But he was mortal. The Pearl was different.

He was ahead of his time, a whirling, swirling pioneer, a Daniel Boone with a head fake. In the Pearl, we saw basketball played the way we have come to understand it could be played. He helped define the City Game.

OK, he wasn’t Oscar Robertson or Jerry West. He probably wasn’t even as good an all-around guard as Bing or as his teammate with the Knicks, Walt Frazier, the man they called Clyde and someone who understood personality. But the Pearl had style, and when Michael Jordan flies to the basket, it isn’t so much what he finally does with the basketball as how he got it there.

Maybe you never saw the Pearl. If you love basketball, find some videotape, particularly of his early days with the Bullets. He was the first to do what he did. Here’s the move to look for: He’d take the ball right at you, then he’d turn his back to you, moving the ball from side to side with his right hand. He’s not looking at you, but you’re sure watching him. You’re watching the shoulder fake and the head fake and the body fake and then, not understanding how he did it, you’re watching him pivot past you and fly to the basket. All you’re left with is air. He used to call it “la la,” as in, “I put the la la on him.”

You may say there are a lot of guys today who can do that and more. But Monroe invented it. I can type “to be or not to be” a thousand times, but I’ll never have written it first. In basketball terms, the man was a genius.

We first heard mention of Earl the Pearl at Winston-Salem State University, where he was a two-time All-American. In 1966-67, he averaged 41.5 points a game when Pete Maravich was doing much the same at LSU. When Monroe came out of high school, there were no black players in the Atlantic Coast Conference or in the Southeast. It was an era, before cable TV, when the historically black schools thrived athletically, and NBA scouts helped fill the stands.

Monroe, drafted by the Bullets, was Rookie of the Year in 1968, but, of course, he was more than someone who could score 24 points a game his first year in the NBA. He was a sensation. Imagine, Earl Monroe and Gus Johnson on the same team, on the same court, at the same time. It was no wonder that everyone was predicting pro basketball would be the game of the ‘70s. Finally, in the Magic Johnson-Larry Bird era, the game has moved beyond cult status to stand just behind football and baseball as America’s game and moving beyond them, to challenge soccer, as the world’s game. Earl the Pearl was at the heart of all that followed.

Though he had his best years with the Bullets, he took on the legend that was the Knicks, whose championship team of ’73 now has its entire starting lineup -- Monroe, Frazier, Willis Reed, Dave DeBusschere and Bill Bradley -- in the Hall of Fame. Monroe sublimated his game when joining that lineup, and we had to settle for occasional flashes, but even that promise was enough to keep you watching intently for all 48 minutes.

All you had to do was watch him play to understand. He was magic, before the other guy took the name.