He’s Meek in Name Only

The scar runs vertically up his calf, jagged as a needle line from a polygraph. Duke basketball player Erik Meek is inside the team’s dressing room, doing some stretching before practice. Lifting his leg behind him and latching onto his ankle, he provides a closer look at a gash that must be at least eight inches long. A drunken driver gave it to him, and Erik wasn’t even in a car.

In his own way, this resilient kid from Escondido represents a lot of what is good about college basketball. Maybe a lot about Duke basketball, too. He represents patience and persistence. Today will be the Blue Devil junior center’s 90th college game. He has started only six. Never once has he started an NCAA tournament game and he is unlikely to start today’s against Florida. Yet it took Erik Meek such a long, long time merely to come this far, the way he views it is, “I feel like a brand-new person.”

The patience of the Duke program is being repaid. When an automobile ran down the 6-foot-10 senior from San Pasqual High from behind while he was out jogging in 1991, after he already had made his commitment to Duke, the coach there, Mike Krzyzewski, immediately made a long-distance call that Meek can remember virtually word for word. “Coach K said, ‘Don’t worry, your scholarship is still waiting for you here, whenever you’re ready.’ ”

He now appears regularly as the backup center to Cherokee Parks, throwing around his 245 pounds. He surprised North Carolina three weeks ago with a dozen points. He came away from Georgia Tech with a double-double. A big man with a soft touch, Meek has taken 165 shots in his Duke career and has nailed 95 of them. All in all, he is the kind of center Duke keeps on its bench who could be in a whole lot of other schools’ starting lineups.

Other schools don’t interest him, though. Never really did.

“I wanted to go to a school where basketball was big, and I mean big,” Meek says. “I don’t think basketball can get much bigger than it is at Duke. It didn’t take me long to recognize that North Carolina isn’t like other places. Basketball is like a religion here. You walk into a room, people are talking about basketball. You walk into a room, people automatically know who you are. It’s like another world from California. People out in California are interested in a lot of things. People here in North Carolina are interested in basketball.”

The coach was counting on two blue-chippers from California to pick up at center where Christian Laettner would leave off. The coming season, 1991-92, would be the one in which Krzyzewski would win his first national championship. It would also be the end of Laettner’s career as a Blue Devil, leaving a gaping hole in the lane that no one little could fill. Parks was the big freshman with the big future. Meek was the insurance.

Parks was the 6-foot-11 kid with sand in his shoes from Huntington Beach. He committed to the Durham, N.C., campus, one day after his visit. Parks remembers, “I fell in love with the place.”

That first season, he really got an education at Duke, including an earful from Laettner. The upperclassman got on his case, on his game, on his garb. Whenever Parks did something right, Laettner said he had simply gotten lucky. It took Parks many weeks and many lectures before he came to realize that Laettner got on everyone that way, even Bobby Hurley, at one time or another.

Now it’s Parks who feels comfortable getting on teammates’ cases.

Even Grant Hill, the All-American who is rooming with him at the Final Four, had the sniffles here Friday because, he said, “Cherokee likes the room cold and I like it hot, and what he says goes. You know these big guys, they push you around.”

Parks chuckled and said, “Call room service and have them bring up some extra blankets.”

Back when he and Parks were freshmen, Meek missed out on some of the hazing. He was busy having scar tissue in his leg removed, or trying to regain his old form. His flexibility was greatly impaired. It took nearly two years, Meek believes, before he could fully concentrate on basketball without feeling some sort of twinge, some reminder of the accident, physically or mentally.

He told the Blue Devil Weekly school paper: “This year has definitely been the year when I’ve finally been able to put that completely behind me.”

At times this season, he and Parks even share the floor together. Parks took his game farther outside, looking for long-range, Laettner-like shots. Meek camped underneath. Even in limited time, he is averaging 4.2 rebounds a game, many of them on offense. Coach K let him start against Michigan, then sat back and watched Meek rip down seven boards against the likes of Juwan Howard.

The player’s perseverance has paid off. So has his hard work. Last summer was so crucial to not only his physical well-being but his future in basketball, Meek was willing to try anything. He even put on leather gloves and headgear and got into a boxing ring for a few lessons, immediately becoming one of the tallest pugilists this side of Too Tall Jones. He learned what it was like to develop quickness, to develop stamina.

“And how to take a punch,” he says, touching the bridge of his nose.

After being struck by that car, the next thing Meek knew was that he was being lifted into an ambulance. He wasn’t sure what would happen to him after that. The running, the lifting, the rehab, everything he endured thereafter prepared him for this season. Even the boxing.

He says now, “If you’ve never shadow-boxed or hit a heavy punching bag, well, you just don’t realize what a real workout can be. I have a whole new regard for boxers now.”

Maybe the world is ready for a 6-10 boxer.

“Oh, no way,” Meek says. “I’m just now enjoying what it is to be a basketball player again.”