The Spirit Is Willing
Terry Cummings was accosted by the Spirit one day while playing basketball. He noticed an Omniscient Presence on the side of the playground. No words were spoken, but the presence told him, “I have called you for a special work and you are my chosen.”
-- passage from
Terry Cummings’ ministries
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It’s a tough act to follow.
For UCLA forward T.J. Cummings to live up to the earthly achievements of his father, a former college All-American and NBA All-Star, is hard enough.
How in heaven is T.J. supposed to match the spiritual feats Terry says he experienced, the conversations with God, the out-of-body events, the visions, the giving the devil his due?
Meanwhile, T.J. can’t even jump out of the gym. The Bruin senior is universally regarded as a good player and a pleasant person, but he is ordinary in ways Terry professes not to be.
Understandably, T.J. has not entirely reconciled the chasm.
“My dad lives the way I want to live, he’s done everything I want to do,” he says. “So I just keep my life centered and hope everything will work out for the best.”
For Terry, believing God chose him for special work and provides paranormal signposts makes for a clear-cut path through life. He became a Pentecostal minister at 16, an NBA star at 21 and The Sporting News “Good Guy” finalist at 38.
Today, as described on his website, he is “a gifted mentor, songwriter, singer, producer, actor, speaker, author, commentator and athlete.”
He’s also a dad whose second of three sons -- the one whose given name is Robert Terrell Cummings Jr. -- felt more forgotten than chosen at UCLA Senior Day when Terry did not make the trip from his Atlanta home to attend.
T.J. also felt abandoned that day by the other prominent male authority figure in his life. Bruin Coach Ben Howland responded to Cummings’ poor defensive play early in the game by benching him to start the second half. He also denied Cummings the courtesy of getting an ovation in his last home game, replacing him for the final time during a timeout.
Terry felt badly about not joining ex-wife Vonnie to escort T.J. onto the floor before the game. He’d been traveling for two weeks and said he needed to return to Atlanta to help his youngest son, 16-year-old Sean, through a crisis.
Terry talked to T.J. on the phone after the game, soothing him the way he does parishioners from Tacoma to Jacksonville: “You have to deal with the emotional side of not having your dad there, and I apologize for that. Don’t get bent out of shape over being benched. Something I have grown to appreciate about you is how you understand things. You’ve come a long way as a man.”
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One day while asleep at his grandparents’, Terry dreamt he saw Jesus on a white horse, with crown and scepter, followed by hundreds of thousands of others dressed the same. As the clouds rolled back, an image of Christ in the clouds formed.
T.J. has his own treasured dream, a recurring one where he and his father are on the same NBA team. There is a fastbreak, T.J. passes to Terry and Terry feeds the ball back to T.J., who delivers a monster dunk.
“The passing part, when he comes to me, it feels like the passing of the torch,” T.J. says. “In my dreams he’s smiling and looking proud, watching me doing my thing.”
The dream might have less to do with basketball than with a yearning for his father to participate in his life. T.J. and Terry talk on the phone several times a week, but Terry, 42, rarely has watched T.J. play in person, in high school or college.
When he has, such as at a UCLA home game Feb. 19 against California that Terry worked into his schedule because he was in Los Angeles to participate in the Legends portion of the NBA All-Star festivities, T.J. has shined. With his father in the stands, T.J. had 19 points and 10 rebounds, leading UCLA to a rare victory.
It reminded T.J. of his middle-school years in La Jolla, just after his parents divorced. The gloom that hung over him when his father was gone for long stretches would miraculously lift as soon as Terry walked in the door.
One day, T.J. gathered the nerve to ask, “Dad, when are you not going to have to leave any more?”
Terry gestured around the beautiful home he had provided for his ex-wife and sons and said, “This is how you get to live this way. Daddy has to go to work.”
On flights to NBA cities or to waiting congregations, Terry would reflect on his family, his heart in conflict. It tugs at him to this day.
“Basketball was a choice to provide for my family,” he says. “The ministry is something you do because you were called from God. You are constantly pouring into other people, even if it means my family suffers for lack of time.”
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Somewhere in the middle of the night, Terry was awakened by the opening and closing of the door with no human help. He knew it was the devil and that he was mad, so Terry rolled over and went back to sleep. Having come face to face with the devil, he smiled, for he was on a high and God was with him.
T.J. confronted a demon last fall, one he had ignored for too long. For years he had barely survived in the classroom, and failing grades last spring and summer caused him to become ineligible and miss the first four games this season.
His unswervingly sunny outlook was sorely tested. His mother moved from Chicago to Brentwood, a few miles from the Westwood house T.J. shares with five other players. He’d go to his mom’s for quiet study time and home-cooked meals, a sanctuary that gave him the stability to achieve the B average in 18 units needed to regain his eligibility.
Vonnie Cummings had seen her son’s grades suffer once before -- the year she and Terry divorced. It hurt to see the son she recalls as “so sweet you just wanted to kiss his cheeks” feeling such pain.
“I know it was hard, but I told the boys they had one year to feel sorry for themselves, then they had to move on,” she says.
But that was 10 years ago. T.J. is a man who had to be held accountable for slacking off in the classroom.
“This was hard too,” she says. “But he was too far along at UCLA to blow it.”
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While Terry was praying one day, he says a ball of fire came from around the corner and set down in the middle of the table. God’s presence was in the building.
T.J.’s signs from above are less dramatic, but he believes they come.
“I used to think, what if I don’t want to do what the Lord wants me to do?” he says. “If I’m not ready. What will I do? When I sit down and pray, I get all the answers I want.”
It wasn’t exactly a visit from God, but while pumping gas on Sunset Boulevard T.J. was picked out by a talent agent who eventually got him a role in a Missy Elliott music video. He did not accept payment to preserve his NCAA eligibility.
“I’ve gotten a lot more offers, but I can’t do it until I’m done playing,” he says. “I have the connections. I’ve met directors, casting agents. I’ve done some networking.”
T.J. is an accomplished sketch artist. He loves the limelight. He thinks about joining his father’s entertainment company, a Christian multimedia firm that includes a record label and has television and movie screenplays in production.
“I’m definitely moving in that direction,” he says. “Whatever it is, wherever life takes me, I’ll do it for the Lord first and foremost.”
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One day as Terry lay down to sleep, his spirit left his body and went up through the roof of his dorm building, past the Earth’s atmosphere, and finally, looking down he could see the Earth beneath him and the heavens above.
At the time, Terry was a DePaul basketball player who along with Mark Aguirre led the Blue Demons to a three-year record of 79-6. He was the second pick in the 1982 NBA draft and became rookie of the year with the San Diego Clippers, then overcame a problem with a rapid heartbeat to last 18 NBA seasons, retiring 29th all-time in scoring and 17th in games played.
T.J. considered leaving UCLA after last season, but returned to school after gauging his NBA prospects with scouts. He will have to fight for everything that came so easily to his father.
An accurate mid-range jump shot that has contributed to a .552 shooting percentage this season and the ability to run the floor are the 6-foot-9 T.J.’s best assets. His tenacity on the boards has improved under Howland’s tutelage.
But he has only three steals in 684 minutes -- a symptom of deficient defense. And although teammates say he is unselfish, T.J. has only 79 assists in 117 career games. He has scored 1,050 career points to rank 41st on the UCLA all-time list.
“I want to play as long as I can keep my body going,” he says.
Terry believes T.J. will be a better player as a professional. But he also talks to his son about life after basketball. For all the time they have spent apart, there is a mentoring relationship -- albeit over the phone.
“My job as a father and as someone who has been there is to help him create a perception of who he will be down the road,” Terry says. “Any real father who has a vision for his life and for his son wants his son to start where he ends.
“That is the blueprint. That is the history of humanity, a father starting a process and a son following it.”
T.J. has little trouble setting aside the disappointments and the distance. He forgives. And he listens.
“There were things he had to do, and I can’t knock that,” he says. “I might have a son and be in the same situation. You can’t get mad at that.
“I feel close to him. And I think that as time goes on, we’ll be closer than ever.”
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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)
Father and Son
Terry Cummings’ career statistics at DePaul and those of his son T.J. Cummings at UCLA:
*--* TERRY CUMMINGS T.J. CUMMINGS DePAUL UCLA 1979-1982 2000-2004 Uniform No. 32 No. 43 Height, Weight 6-9, 220 6-9, 220 Games 85 117 FG Made-Att. 549-1,036 425-847 FG Pct. 530 501 FT Made-Att. 300-393 193-252 FT Pct. 763 766 Points 1,398 1,028 Points P/G 16.4 8.8 Rebounds 857 512 Rebounds P/G 10.1 4.4
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