March-April 2002
Hoop Profiles
By Bill Glovin
Bobby HurleyLegendary Duke point guard Bobby Hurley '93, who played before crazed fans and millions of television viewers, says nothing in his basketball career compared with the pressure he felt the day he spent $1 million on a horse. "The auction was tense enough, but when I signed on the dotted line to complete the deal, my hand was shaking. I watched this horse run in person and on video and he had this regal, get-out-of-my-face attitude. He was like a great athlete who knew he was great. I'd been around that kind of attitude before."
Hurley's horse, Songandaprayer, went on to win the $200,000 Fountain of Youth Stakes in Florida, then joined the field for last year's Kentucky Derby. The thoroughbred set a blistering pace, leading the first half of the fastest Derby in history. Despite falling back to a disappointing twelfth, Songandaprayer's purses and subsequent breeding fees are returning Hurley's investment in spades.
At age thirty-one, Hurley probably wishes his professional basketball career had gone as smoothly. Drafted as the seventh pick in the first round of the NBA draft by the Sacramento Kings, Hurley was involved in a near-fatal car accident near Arco Arena just nineteen games into his rookie season. His injuries included collapsed lungs--one ripped from his trachea--broken ribs, a shattered shoulder blade, and a partially torn anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) in his right knee.
He was back on the court six months later, and he doesn't use the accident as an excuse. But after helping lead Duke to three Final Fours during his Blue Devil career, everyone, including himself, had expected more. "Maybe it was the system," he says. "I was never a scoring-type point guard, the kind that seem to do better in the NBA. We also didn't have many offensive options. I played in the NBA for five years and, while there were more downs than ups, I think it made me a stronger person."
He last played in the NBA in 1998, and officially ended another comeback last summer when he tore his ACL while playing in the Jersey Shore League.
Through the years and while recuperating, Hurley occasionally visited Monmouth and Freehold racetracks with a friend who had made some wise equine investments. The friend encouraged Hurley to do the same and introduced him to John Dowd, a well-respected trainer. Dowd taught Hurley the ropes and trained Songandaprayer.
The frenzy of a Derby hardly fazed Hurley, who was used to the media, having played under a microscope his whole career. With a no-nonsense demeanor and playground smarts, he led his father's high-school team, St. Anthony's Prep in Jersey City, to state championships. In his senior year, he was one of the most heavily recruited guards in the nation. "I leaned toward going to college closer to home, but I met guys such as Quinn Snyder and Dan Ferry while visiting Duke, and had a sense that Durham was the place for me."
It was a marriage made in hoops heaven. As a freshman in the 1989-90 season, Hurley started all thirty-eight games and collected 288 assists, the most in school history. More tellingly, he showed unusual poise in leading Duke to the Final Four. Says Hurley, "Although we made it to the final, I needed to get stronger mentally. I'd make a bad play and go into the tank. I had a terrible game against UNLV in the NCAA tournament final, and that was definitely a motivating factor going into my sophomore year."
Hurley became serious about conditioning, lifting weights and working to get his body-fat ratio under 10 percent. "I got the sense that I could be very good if I worked harder," he says. After starting his sophomore season slowly, he seemed to get better with every game. Both team and player appeared to peak in the NCAA tournament semifinal against UNLV. Hurley, finishing with twelve points and seven assists, had redeemed himself as Duke eked out a 79-77 upset. The Blue Devils went on to win its first national championship in a relatively anti-climactic final.
Faced with the impossible task of topping themselves, the Blue Devils of Hurley's junior year had a magical run from start to finish. The team finished 34-2, winning the ACC league title and tournament and a second consecutive national championship, beating Michigan in the final by twenty points. Hurley broke Tommy Amaker's assist record and was MVP of the Final Four. In a tight semifinal game of the NCAA tournament against Indiana, Hurley had six three-pointers and twenty-six points. Says Hurley, "My only regret is that we didn't go undefeated. We were that good."
His Duke career ended on a disappointing note when he broke his foot at the end of his senior season. Still, by the time his career was over, he was first all-time in assists and minutes played, second in three pointers, and sixth in steals. The team records, however, mean the most to him: 119-26 over four years, two ACC titles, one ACC tournament championship, three Final Fours, two national championships. His number 11 jersey is one of nine that hangs from the rafters at Cameron--something that caught his eye when he returned last summer to play in Grant Hill's charity game.
"I'll continue to dabble in horses, but I'm not making that a career," says Hurley. He still follows the game closely and is helping his younger brother, Danny, coach at St. Benedict's Preparatory High School in Newark. It was Danny who introduced Bobby to Leslie, who became his wife in 1995. The couple has two daughters, Cameron and Sidney. "I really don't know what I'm going to do," says Hurley. "I guess you could say I'm still searching."
Brian Davis
Brian Davis '92 is on the phone from a hotel room in Washington, D.C. He's made a name for himself around Durham as a developer, so it comes as a surprise when he reveals that he hopes to return to the NBA. He has spent recent months working out with the New Jersey Nets, the Washington Wizards, and the Miami Heat. Suddenly, call-waiting interrupts. "Sorry," he says. "I'm supposed to be in on this conference call."
Davis, age thirty-one, has covered a lot of ground: growing up on the hard streets of Atlantic City, four Final Fours, hoops in France and the NBA, a job in the NBA's New York headquarters, a wife and new son, and a role in creating West Village, a development a few blocks from campus.
The partnership between Davis, Tom Niemann, and Davis's former roommate, Christian Laettner '92, acquired five former Liggett & Myers tobacco warehouses and converted them into 243 loft apartments and retail space. Plans are under way to build brownstone condominiums in downtown Durham, as well as Soulard Village in historic St. Louis.
"The idea for West Village began when Laettner and I were looking for our own apartment as students and found a shortage of good housing stock near campus," Davis explains. "One summer, I had an internship in [former Duke president] Terry Sanford's Senate office on Capitol Hill. I told him about our idea and he suggested I meet with his son, who introduced me to Tom. There were a lot of skeptics who thought we would fall flat on our face. But those are the same skeptics who thought we'd never beat UNLV."
A thirty-point loss to UNLV in front of millions of viewers in the NCAA final in 1990 inspired Davis and his teammates to make amends by committing themselves to a vigorous conditioning program in the off season. In 1991, they got their chance for revenge in the NCAA semifinal game. In a nail biter, Duke came away with a 79-77 win over UNLV and a place in the final, where they defeated Kansas.
Davis, who says the win in the rematch against UNLV was the highlight of his Blue Devil career, gives most of the credit to Coach K: "He instills in his players that they can accomplish anything if they set their minds to it. It's the intensity and organization of the practices, the first-class way you travel, the attitude around the program. It breeds success; and you have that feeling in class and after basketball is over."
Davis was an entrepreneur early on. He made his own business cards at age nine, and cut grass, washed cars, raked leaves, and picked blueberries. Before Mike Krzyzewski became Davis' authority figure, there was his mother, who raised four children. "I never knew my father; he had a gambling problem," he says.
The family moved to Prince George's County, Maryland, when Davis was twelve, and he played football and basketball at Bladensburg High School. He sent his own letter of introduction to fifty colleges, trying to win a scholarship. "I didn't even make All-County in basketball; I won an MVP award at an all-star camp and suddenly Duke was interested. It helped that my high school coach knew Mike Brey [Duke assistant coach] and that I had a 3.5 GPA and good SAT scores."
At Duke, Davis wasn't a prolific scorer, but he made the kinds of contributions that don't show up in the agate type. One especially memorable moment came as a sophomore in the last moments of the 1990 regional final against Connecticut in the Meadowlands. Huskies guard Tate George had just hit a huge turnaround baseline jumper that put Connecticut up by one point with seconds remaining. Coach K called a timeout and devised a play in which Laettner would throw the inbounds pass to Davis, step inbounds, and then get the ball back from Davis. The play worked like a charm: Laettner hit the shot at the buzzer and Duke fans were suddenly spilling on to the court, celebrating another Final Four.
In Davis's senior year, Duke went 34-2, but was knocked out early in the NCAA tournament when Grant Hill '94 and Bobby Hurley were injured. Davis, drafted as the forty-eighth pick of the NBA draft by the Phoenix Suns, was released during training camp. He signed to play with a French team alongside seven-foot-seven Gheorghe Muresan. Offered a spot with the Minnesota Timberwolves in 1993-94, he played sporadically on a team that went 20-62. "I found the NBA to be more about politics and marketing than basketball," he says. Yet he wants to return. "I know the odds, but I think I can still play on that level."
In August 2000, life took another turn when he married Marsha, an attorney and former Miss Maryland who runs her own hair-care products company in Washington. In June, the couple had a son, Brian Davis Jr. Recently named to the board of the National Historic Trust, Davis says he hopes to build on his Durham entrepreneurship and help inner cities by building development bridges between community leaders and money lenders. "Growing up in Atlantic City, my favorite game was Monopoly," Davis says. "It's not a game anymore."
Jim Spanarkel
Two weeks after the tragedies of September 11, Jim Spanarkel '79 says, he was having problems focusing on his job, his past, or much of anything else. His office, a Merrill Lynch branch in Paramus, New Jersey, is a mere twenty-five miles from the World Trade Center site. His wedding pictures were taken from Windows of the World, the restaurant that once existed atop Tower One.
In the incident's aftermath, the markets plummeted before bouncing back and the economy was recognized as being in a recession, but Spanarkel--a forty-six-year-old certified financial planner who helps manage millions of dollars for the firm's wealth management group--wasn't panicking. "There couldn't be a more horrible event, but long-term financial success isn't event-driven. Investing is about discipline, not emotions," he says. "Still, this is the kind of event that makes one re-evaluate practically everything."
One might consider Spanarkel's life fodder for a corny Hollywood script. He's a kid from the streets of Jersey City who won a scholarship to Duke and became an All-American, then played in the NBA and became a successful basketball broadcaster and financial planner. Growing up between two sisters and three brothers, he married his high-school sweetheart. They have two boys and two girls. "I count my blessings, but right now I'm more focused on the people who are missing and their families," he says.
Sports came easy to Spanarkel. Most of his spare time was filled playing touch football and baseball on rutted fields or shooting hoops in the park. "My dad was a sales rep for Kellogg's, so the joke was that we must have eaten more cereal than any other kids in the neighborhood," he says. "Dad had a big influence on my athletic development--he was a master at offering advice in a quiet, unassuming way."
At Hudson Catholic High School, Spanarkel starred in both baseball and basketball. A year behind him was teammate Mike O'Koren, who would go on to become a rival and an All-American at the University of North Carolina. "I couldn't talk Mike into Duke; he wanted to do his own thing," says Spanarkel. Duke was especially attractive, he says, because it offered him the opportunity to play both baseball and basketball.
By his junior year, however, Duke's basketball season was lasting into late March and he didn't have time to prepare for baseball anymore. A six-foot-five shooting guard, he was ACC Freshman of the Year in 1976 and the first Blue Devil to score 2,000 points. He helped lead Duke to the national championship game against Kentucky in 1978 as a junior under coach Bill Foster.
Many credit that team--the first Duke team to make the tournament in more than a decade--with setting the program's tone for years to come. Spanarkel and teammates Mike Gminski '80 and Gene Banks '81 played the game with flair and intelligence, and their squad was a reason many blue-chips-to-be dreamed of someday becoming Blue Devils.
Spanarkel, who wore number 34 at Duke, claims to have made up for unexceptional athletic skills by gaining experience in playing more games than most teenagers. At Duke, he was inspired to work hard by Tate Armstrong '77, M.B.A. '85, a team leader. After averaging eighteen points per game over his Blue Devil career, he was drafted as the sixteenth pick in the first round by the Philadelphia 76ers and was selected in the NBA expansion draft the following year by the Dallas Mavericks. He played in Dallas for another three seasons.
"I loved playing for Dick Motta, and was there when they acquired Mark Aguire and Rolando Blackman and had some success," says Spanarkel. "But college and pro were vastly different in the sense that I went from playing ball for fun to having to survive training camps. Still, how many people can say that they competed with and against people such as Julius Erving, Magic Johnson, and Larry Bird?"
Spanarkel sensed his NBA career was winding down and, with his history degree under his belt, considered law school. He decided to make the most out of sitting around the airports and hotels, so much a part of NBA life, by studying for and earning his securities and real-estate licenses. "By the end, I was a little discouraged by basketball, and that might have been why I didn't look to coach," he says. "Playing time wasn't always doled out on merit; I felt there were times when I played behind guys because they had a guaranteed contract or a big reputation."
In 1982, he married his high-school sweetheart, Janet, and settled in northern New Jersey. A year after starting with Merrill Lynch, he landed a part-time color analyst position with the New Jersey Nets. Today, he still works for the Nets, and also works Big East Conference games for ESPN and NCAA tournament games for CBS.
"I don't get back to Duke as much as I'd like to, but I'll always cherish those memories," he says. Coincidentally, his old teammate and rival O'Koren is now an assistant coach with the Nets. Says Spanarkel, "Mike has grown tired of hearing me say, there's nothing like Cameron."
Carmen Wallace
Watching on TV from across the country, Carmen Wallace '97 winces as the New England Patriots quarterback Drew Bledsoe takes a vicious hit from two New York Jets. The following day's sports pages reported that Bledsoe suffered internal bleeding. "He should have gone out of bounds," says Wallace. "My guess is that Drew was frustrated and was trying make something happen."
Wallace has more than a casual fan's interest in Bledsoe. He's part of a team of sports agents that represents Bledsoe, as well as several other NFL stars, at Athletes First in Newport Beach, California.
A popular Blue Devils forward from 1993-96, Wallace claims to have lived a charmed life. "People have a hard time believing this, but I actually got a scholarship to preschool," he says. "I must have been good at coloring in the lines."
The preschool was part of the tony Tower Hill School, a private school founded by the Dupont family in Wallace's hometown, Wilmington, Delaware. Wallace--one of the school's few African-American students--lettered in basketball, baseball, football, and track. "Basketball was my best but least favorite sport," he recalls. "I played the game mostly in the driveways of rich kids."
As a first team All-State hoopster, he caught the eye of Coach K and then-assistant Tommy Amaker '87, M.B.A. '89 during at Nike's Five-Star Basketball Camp. They were at the camp to recruit another player, but came away impressed with Wallace and Steve Wojciechowski. "Toward the end of the game, Wojo threw me an alley-oop pass, I jammed it, and the next thing I knew, Coach K was calling me from Barcelona."
Krzyzewski told Wallace that he hadn't played against top-flight high school competition and that Delaware wasn't exactly an athletic hotbed, but that he'd get a fair shot at earning playing time. In Wallace's freshman year in 1993, he covered and was routinely schooled by senior captain Grant Hill '94 in practice. He played sparingly in games, but was a member of the team that took a magic carpet ride to the final game of the NCAA tournament.
Early in Wallace's sophomore season, Krzyzewski left the team with a bad back and assistant Paul Gaudet took over. Says Wallace, "It seemed like we lost every game by one point. By the end of the year, I finally began to get my opportunity and had a breakout ACC tournament. I believe that adversity breeds friendship, because my closest friends in the world are the guys from that year: [Kenny] Blakeney, [Trajan] Langdon, [Jeff] Capel, [Eric] Meek, Wojo."
With Krzyzewski back the next season, Wallace broke into the starting lineup and was seemingly on his way to stardom when he blew out his left knee towards the end of the year. After a summer of extensive rehabilitation, he spent most of his senior year as part of a second unit that saw considerable action. He wore a knee brace and played despite having lost most of the cartilage. His career ended before the NCAA tournament when he tore a quad muscle. Says Wallace, "It was an incredible senior year. We beat Carolina for the first time since I had arrived and started our run of first-place finishes in the ACC. We haven't lost the ACC since."
At six feet, five inches and 190 pounds, Wallace played mostly as an undersized power forward who brought the Cameron Crazies to life with his acrobatic dunks. Fans nicknamed him Snake, The Smiling One, and The Human Pogo Stick. "A lot of teammates didn't go out much or talk much, but I was always accessible," says Wallace, whose popularity lives on through a fan website (www.duke.edu/~tjf1/carmen/carmen.html). "I'm a social bunny, a man of the people." He returned to Durham last summer to play in Grant Hill's alumni charity game, an event that he hopes becomes an annual ritual.
After graduation, Wallace weighed his options. He knew that his knee couldn't pass anyone's physical and he wasn't sure what he wanted to do with his majors in history and sociology. Joby Branion '85, a former Duke football player and an attorney who worked for sports agent Leigh Steinberg, thought so much of Wallace that he called the boss and put him on the phone with Wallace. He was invited to California and hired on the spot.
Last February, several of the firm's associates, including partner David Dunn, left Steinberg to form Athletes First. At the time, Wallace was in charge of the Lennox Lewis account. "It was a huge risk," he says. "We walked out with no clients and no money." Soon, several big names gravitated to the firm, whose principals had nurtured them and negotiated their deals. Steinberg is currently suing Athletes First for representing former clients.
"The sports agent biz is a lot like it has been portrayed in Jerry Maguire and Arli$$," he says, referring to the film and the HBO sitcom about sports agents. "It's twenty-four-hour, seven-days-a-week. I'm traveling constantly and never far from my cell phone," he says. At age twenty-seven, he's still honing his negotiating skills. He says he feels his strength is knowing myriad salary cap rules that have changed the face of professional football in recent years.
Before his dog died a few months ago, the pair ran together every morning. Still a bachelor, Wallace has given up basketball for golf and recently moved into a new beachfront apartment in Newport Beach. Says Wallace, "I'll always wonder how far I could have gone in basketball if I hadn't gotten hurt. But that's in the past. I'm a sports agent now, and I couldn't be happier."
Bill Glovin is senior editor of Rutgers Magazine.