The Dream of Fields

The best times of Ronnie Fields’ young life?

That’s easy. They happen 10 feet above a hardwood floor as he soars effortlessly at the end of a slashing drive, cradling the ball before jamming it through the hoop.

In the high school gyms of Chicago, it was enough to start the talk. The next Michael Jordan maybe. He wore No. 23 and sported a startling array of dunks. Jordan himself once called Fields a “monster talent.”

Maybe, too, Fields could join his high school teammate, Kevin Garnett, who went straight from Farragut Academy on the city’s sometimes violent West Side to fame and wealth in the NBA.

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The worst times? That’s easy, too. They all happened in the space of seven months:

* The night Fields wrecked a coach’s rented car, breaking his neck on the eve of the state high school playoffs.

* The day last summer he was denied admission to DePaul University and its basketball program because his academic credentials didn’t measure up.

* The day he pleaded guilty to sexual misconduct against a young woman in a darkened room at a coach’s apartment.

“In my situation it takes a man to admit that he has done wrong. I admitted that and I apologize for that and it’s time to move on,” Fields says. “I learned a lot from this past year.”

Fields pleaded guilty to misdemeanor sexual abuse last September and was sentenced to two years’ probation and 15 days in a work program. He admitted that, last July, he and two other men took turns having sex in the dark room with a 20-year-old woman who did not realize what was going on. Th woman was an acquaintance of Fields.

Fields says he sorry to have caused so many people so much pain. He is trying to look ahead.

“I learned a lot from this past year,” he says. “1996 was a very negative year for me. I look forward to a better year in 1997.

“All that other stuff is the past now. So I’ve put that behind me.”

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Now, on a snowy night, some 80 miles northwest of Chicago, Ronnie Fields is alone on one end of a basketball court, working on his jump shot.

He’s a member of the Rockford Lightning, making $900 a week in the Continental Basketball Association, playing in cities such as La Crosse, Wis., and Fort Wayne, Ind.

His new town is a mere 90-minute drive from home, where the Bulls are the talk of every cab and coffee shop. It’s also a world away from the NBA, where players like Garnett have million-dollar contracts and live like rajahs in fancy homes in the suburbs.

In gritty Rockford, Fields hopes he can make up for what he has lost and rebound to become the player--the NBA player--he always dreamed of being.

“For sure it’s no problem. It’s just going to take time,” Fields says. “I want to work on things to get to the next level, such as defense and ball handling, all the different type things that it takes to be in the NBA.”

Fields and Garnett don’t talk much anymore. While Garnett is enjoying the game at its highest level and the perks that surround it, Ronnie Fields is piecing his life together.

That, he says, is one reason he and Garnett, starring with the Minnesota Timberwolves, don’t talk much anymore.

“Kevin’s been busy and stuff. He’s trying to focus on bettering his game,” Fields says. “So it’s been hard, cause I’m trying to get where he’s at. I’m trying to focus on my game.”

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Fields, who grew up in a single-parent home, flirted first with baseball, then began to blossom as a basketball player in the eighth grade with uncanny leaping ability that took time to harness.

“He began to focus on basketball to stay off the streets,” says William Nelson, who first coached Fields in seventh grade and then later at Farragut.

Fields became a celebrity at Farragut, where racial tension between blacks and Hispanics was commonplace and often turned violent.

His on-court prowess and popularity unified factions, Nelson says. A mural was put up in the school gym after he left, commemorating Fields’ accomplishments. It’s still there, despite the criticism of many, including some school officials who said a sex offender should not be praised as a role model just because he was a good basketball player.

Nelson says the mural controversy has been overblown.

“Ronnie’s biggest thing was that he could communicate,” the coach says. “If all hell was ready to break loose, there was Ronnie as sort of an ambassador. They looked at Ronnie as their Jordan.

“It was so smooth by the time he left. There was no mob action, not the type of tension there was before. . . . They all know what Ronnie has done, good and bad. The mural is not going to affect that.”

Fields was rated one of the nation’s top 20 prep players by an assortment of publications and experts, when he broke his neck in an early morning car wreck last February. He was driving a car loaned him to by a former Farragut assistant, who has since been banned from coaching in the Chicago Public League.

After fusion surgery, Fields had to wear a halo to stabilize his neck; he missed the end of his final high school season.

Once recovered, he hoped to hone his game at DePaul but didn’t make the grades or test scores to get in. He had a tryout in Europe but that didn’t work out, either.

Now he’s hoping the CBA can be a way of pulling himself up. He’s also finding out that the professional game is not all dunking and up-and-down play.

He’s defending other young, talented players who, like him, want to go to the next level. He also competes against former NBA players who are hoping to be called back up.

“I think it’s how much he learns, the concepts that he applies at this level that he can then take with him if he goes to an NBA camp this summer,” Lightning coach Mike Mashak says. “I think what’s important for Ronnie, that he learns concepts and how to execute certain skills, not whether he dunks the ball 20 times. Everybody knows he can do that.”

The CBA is known as the league of opportunity. Fields, whose 40-inch vertical leap helped him average 33 points and 12 rebounds as a high school senior, must look at it that way.

“If no one was willing to wipe the slate clear with Ronnie, the kid would have been condemned for life at age 19 from mistakes he’s already paying for, has paid for and continues to pay for,” says Mashak, who acquired Fields’ CBA rights from LaCrosse.

“Who are we to say, ‘Ronnie you can’t make up for those mistakes, you can’t undo the past, therefore we’re not going to give you a chance for the future?”’

Fields’ potential, his jumping ability and his creativity are evident, even if he’s just a reserve for the Lightning. Last week he won the slam-dunk contest at the CBA all-star game.

Jeff Grayer, a former first-round pick of the Milwaukee Bucks who played seven years in the NBA, is now Fields’ Rockford teammate. He encourages patience.

“Ronnie is very gifted, very athletic, but it takes time,” Grayer says. “There are different defenses and strategies. But he can play. He’s just got to learn as he goes.”

Marty Blake, the NBA’s scouting director, is one of those people Fields must attract. Blake sees hundreds of prospects, many of them who flourish with the benefit of something Fields does not have--college experience.

Fields will need to apply for the NBA draft and hope to get an invitation to a tryout camp.

“Ronnie Fields is a tragedy in the sense that he has probably been his own worst enemy,” says Blake, who’s been skeptical of Fields’ all-around game. “If this kid will toe the mark and make a conscious effort to improve his game, there is no reason we wouldn’t invite him. But we’re not going to invite him just because he’s from Chicago.”

The difference between the 20-year-old Garnett, who’s 6-11 and fabulously skilled, and the 6-3 Fields is obvious.

“Garnett comes along once every 50 years,” Blake says.

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Is the CBA a last resort for a young man who has already missed some opportunities, mixed with some wrong people, made big-time mistakes in judgment and failed to make the grade academically?

“A lot of people say, ‘Well this is his last chance.’ I find that to be ludicrous,” Mashak says. “He’s 19 years old playing at a very high level with very little training. No matter how this turns out, how can this be viewed as his last chance? This to me is more like the first step in a long process for him.”

DePaul Coach Joey Meyer, whose team obviously could use a player to make it more competitive, says Fields has time to develop.

“Let’s look in five years from now and see where he’s at,” Meyer says. “I certainly hope to God everything works out.”

Fields has a feel for his game, understands what it has to offer and realizes that he’s only started to grasp its intricacies at a high level of competition.

“Sometimes I look at a basketball and it seems like it’s talking to me,” he once said. “It seems to be saying, ‘Pick me up, take me out.”’

Fields knows if he fails this time, the ball and his chance at success could slip from his fingers forever.