The Artis Gilmore Interview
By:
Michael D. McClellan
|
Friday, May 6th, 2005
You
were born on September 21st, 1948, in Chipley, Florida, a town of approximately
5,000 in Florida's Panhandle. Please share some of the memories from your
childhood, and also some of the events in your life that led you to the
basketball court.
I
guess you have to know a little about that part of the country. Those were very
difficult times. The race relations were very tense. I went to a segregated
school, all black, which was before integration and all of these other things.
There just wasn’t a lot of opportunity in and around Chipley – it was a very
poor area, and my father often had trouble finding steady work. There were ten
children in the family, which meant a lot of mouths to feed, and my parents did
their best to provide for us. They also installed a very strong value system in
us, with a strong sense of right and wrong.
From a sports perspective Chipley was very much a football environment, and I
was involved in all of that at a very early age. That’s what you saw on
television the most. Everyone wanted to play football, including me. But then
I suffered a minor football injury, and at that point I decided to make the
switch to basketball. I was a skinny, 6’-5” freshman, so it probably made more
sense to something less physical. Besides, my parents couldn’t afford the
insurance premium required for me to play high school football.
After
playing high school basketball at Roulhac in Chipley, you moved to Dothan,
Alabama, 30 miles to the north. As a senior you were honored as a
third-team high school All-American. What played the biggest part in your
transformation into one of the best high school athletes in the country?
Moving
from Chipley to Dothan, Alabama, was probably the single biggest step in my
growth as a basketball player. As I’ve said, Chipley was a very small town
with little in the way of opportunity. There wasn’t a whole lot of anything
in Chipley. The school was a prime example; at Roulhac, there might have
been ten students in the graduating class on a good year, whereas there was
about 170 in my graduating class at Carver High School in Dothan, Alabama.
During
the '60's and '70 's Villanova coach Jack Kraft ran one of the top high
school basketball camps in the nation. Players attended free by working as
waiters. One of those waiters was a certain 6'-9" Alabama schoolboy who
later went on to collegiate and professional fame. Please take me back to
your time at Camp Green Lane.
It
was a very fond memory. All of the games and drills were played on outdoor
courts. Chet Walker of the Philadelphia 76ers came over to Camp Green Lane
that summer, and that was a really big deal for us, but there was word going
around camp that Wilt Chamberlain was going to show up. Unfortunately, that
never happened – it turned out to be a rumor. But just the thought of Wilt
dropping by had everyone in the camp talking. I remember personally looking
forward to the chance of meeting him and being so excited about it, because
I had been such a huge fan of his for so many years. I was also a huge fan
of Bill Russell. I think a lot of it had to do with the position they
played – they were two of the greatest centers to ever play the game, and
two of the greatest players of all-time, and I was a young, big man who
aspired to play like them. Also, in those early years the only NBA regular
season games that you would see on television were those played by the
Boston Celtics and Philadelphia 76ers. Those were the marquee games for the
networks to produce. Unfortunately, Wilt didn’t show up at the camp that
summer. But it was equally impressive to meet his teammates, like Chet
Walker and Wali Jones.
