He’s Got Next

There are dreams you forget as soon as you wake up, and then there are dreams you never forget. T.J. Cummings never forgot this dream.

How could he? It recurs. He has had it this year and last year and the year before that. Not just once a year, but all the time, and with startling clarity. He dreamed it alone, but he prayed that he would live his dream for all the world to see.

Sons have followed fathers into the NBA, but never have father and son played in the league at the same time. Yet T.J. Cummings vividly envisioned sharing a season in the league with his father, Terry.

“We were in the league, playing ball, passing the ball to each other, patting each other on the back, walking off the court smiling, having interviews together, being in magazines and newspapers together,” T.J. said. “That was my biggest dream ever. I told him about that every year. That would be so real.”

Terry Cummings is old school. To him, this is the meaning of real: He is 39. T.J. is 19, a freshman at UCLA. When Terry scored his first points in the league, T.J. was 1. When Terry made his first All-Star team, T.J. was 3.

The NBA grants no mercy to the aging. Nagging injuries nag longer.

T.J. told his father about his dream, and Terry told his son about his aching groin pull. T.J. told his father about his dream, and Terry told his son about his fraying rotator cuff. T.J. told his father, yet again, about his dream.

Then, over the summer, Terry told his son about the surgery, about the defibrillator doctors needed to implant to regulate an erratic heart rate. The operation did not compel Terry to retire from the league, but it did compel T.J. to pray for the health of his father ahead of the realization of his dream.

“I’d rather have him around than have us break any records,” T.J. said.

He can’t shake the dream, though. He doesn’t want to. Maybe, just maybe, when T.J. skips from UCLA to the NBA, Terry will be there waiting, in uniform, for one game, for one play, for one dream.

*

The bond between father and son is as strong as it is unlikely. In the summer before T.J. started sixth grade, Terry divorced Vonnie, mother of two of his three sons.

“She’s been the mother and the father for me for a lot of my life. She’s just an incredible woman,” T.J. said.

“Even when they were together, it was hard. He was always out of town. I can’t really remember a period of time when I could always see him.”

During the school year, Terry was seldom home, crossing the country as an NBA star. During the summer, Terry was seldom home, crossing the world as an ordained Pentecostal minister.

He sought to develop and nurture a relationship with his three sons, frightened that one day they would not know him well enough to trust him for advice and counsel.

“My dad was an old, country man,” Terry said. “When we got into trouble, he just lined us up and went to whaling at us. I learned from my father that I wanted to be able to communicate with my sons. I don’t want my kids going out and someone else having to teach them.”

The kids tagged along to the two All-Star games in which Terry played, to occasional games and practices during an 18-year career that included stops in San Diego, Milwaukee, San Antonio, Seattle, New York, Philadelphia and Oakland. When Terry took his sons to a sporting-goods store and invited them to pick out the jerseys of their favorite NBA players, they all wanted Michael Jordan jerseys. Terry smiled and paid up.

If the boys spent the weekend, Terry would take them to church, or he would gather the kids around his bed and read the Bible there. If the boys spent a week during the summer, he would take them along when he preached in the inner city or on a Native American reservation, for much the same reason he advised T.J. to attend college rather than consider jumping from high school to the NBA.

“He’s grown up totally different than me,” Terry said. “I was a little ghetto kid. T.J. was brought up in nice schools, in nice homes. I thought it was important for him to get an education, to go to college and to mingle with other cultures and see life differently.”

Terry left the choice of college entirely up to T.J., much to the chagrin of DePaul alumni counting on Terry to deliver his son to his alma mater. Terry also left the choice of sport entirely up to T.J., a star youth tailback growing up in football-crazed Texas.

“Every time I got the ball, I used to run for a touchdown. My dad got so excited,” T.J. said. “If I ever did make it toward basketball, he wanted me to make that decision on my own. He didn’t want to interfere with my growing up.”

In sixth grade, T.J. stood 5 feet 5. By eighth grade, he was 6-5, and he could dunk.

“That was when I started thinking, ‘Dang, football might not be it,’ ” he said.

All T.J. had to do was ask, and Terry tutored him in the driveway, in the gym, in pickup games. In one game a few years ago, T.J. missed a shot and let an expletive fly.

“Real loud,” T.J. said. “I was thinking about that the rest of the game: ‘Dang, I cursed in front of my dad!’ I couldn’t believe it, because my parents had never heard me curse before.”

After the game, Terry draped his arm around T.J. and told his son not to worry about it. Heat of the moment, you know.

Truth be told, T.J. wasn’t all that worried about it.

“I knew he probably wouldn’t take it too seriously, because on TV I always used to see him do it,” T.J. said, laughing.

T.J. calls his father “a best friend.” Today, T.J. stands 6-8, proudly plays the family sport, cementing what his mother calls the “special bond” between father and son.

“He’s not playing basketball just to please his father, he’s doing it because he loves it,” Vonnie Cummings said. “He can relate to his father on that level now. It brings them closer.”

*

Bill Walton stood courtside at the Arrowhead Pond last month, watching T.J. and the Bruins practice. Walton, the UCLA legend, played with Terry on the old San Diego Clippers. In T.J., Walton sees a chip off a distinguished block.

“The physical resemblance is terrific, and the deep voice,” Walton said. “But more than that, it’s the class, the dignity, the passion for life, the commitment to making the world a better place.”

Michael Holton played against Terry in the NBA, and in spirited UCLA-DePaul games two decades ago. In T.J., Holton sees the calling cards of the father: no nonsense, no flash, no laughter on the court.

“It’s not who we’re playing or where we’re playing or if the game is on TV. He just wants to play,” said Holton, now a UCLA assistant coach. “That’s very refreshing.”

The Bruins opened their season in New York with a 6:30 p.m. game against Kansas. They were to eat their team meal at 3:30, and T.J. showed up, gym bag in hand, ready to eat and run. The UCLA veterans, well aware there would be time to return to their hotel rooms to relax and change, giggled at T.J.

T.J. got the last laugh. He scored 24 points, most ever by a UCLA freshman in his first game. In 11 games, he is averaging 6.5 points and five rebounds.

After practice, when players like to stage impromptu dunk contests or challenge assistant coaches to a round of H-O-R-S-E, Cummings often works on the other end of the court, developing his footwork.

“He keeps working hard because he wants to be his own man,” guard Earl Watson said. “He’s a very unselfish person, not arrogant at all. That’s amazing. A lot of times, you see the sons of NBA stars with an attitude. They don’t think they should have to work.”

In the Bruins’ victory over Hawaii last month, T.J. scored eight points and had seven rebounds, a thoroughly ordinary evening turned extraordinary by Terry’s presence. For the first time, Terry watched T.J. play a college game.

Terry had flown from his home in San Antonio to Chicago, where he watched youngest son Sean play for his eighth-grade team, and then to Los Angeles.

Terry’s oldest son, Tony, played four years at Wisconsin Superior, a Division III school. Terry never saw him play.

“I played professional basketball for 18 years, and I’ve never been happier than I am now because now I get a chance to spend time with my sons,” Terry said. “The times that I lost, I won’t ever get those times back. But what I have now is special.”

Terry insists he did not retire because of his heart surgery. He had controlled his irregular heartbeat with medication throughout his career, he said, and doctors had not ruled out the possibility of his playing with a defibrillator.

“It’s just like having a backup generator,” he said. “The heart wasn’t the issue. I wanted to know I can run up and down the court without limping.”

T.J. played one last card, a baseball card: “Hey, Pops, remember the Griffeys? In 1990, Ken Griffey Sr. and Ken Griffey Jr. hit back-to-back home runs, off the Angels’ Kirk McCaskill. Hey, Pops, we could do something like that, just for one day.”

Terry said, “That one day would have been great, and it would have been beautiful, but I’m thinking more about the rest of my life and being able to be healthy, being able to focus on my future and the future of my children.”

Night falls, and T.J. still has those dreams. Perhaps Pops will change his mind.

Or, perhaps, T.J. will finally listen to the words his father told him when he retired, four simple words that interrupted the begging and pleading of the son:

“It’s your turn now.”