The Charlie Scott Interview
By:
Michael D. McClellan
|
Wednesday, May 11th, 2005
You
were born on December 15th, 1948 in New York, New York. 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
grew up in Harlem, and I didn’t have much hope of going to college. My high
hopes, growing up in my neighborhood, was to just get through high school. I
started playing basketball when I was twelve years old, when I took an interest
in it. I played bitty-ball and AAU ball. I enjoyed playing, and I got better
at it. At the age of fourteen I went away to Stuyvesant High School in New York
City, and they didn’t allow me to play on the basketball team. Academically, it
was a high standards school, and they were very strict about who could play and
who couldn’t. It actually turned out to be a positive for me, because I learned
how to study and how to prepare myself for tests, and without basketball I spent
a lot of time doing both. These were the things that I lacked academically. My
time at Stuyvesant really helped to prepare me for a college environment.
I transferred to Laurinburg High School, which is in North Carolina, following my tenth grade year. That’s when I started playing high school basketball. It was there that I was able to get a scholarship to go to the University of North Carolina. So that’s basically a thumbnail sketch of how I got from Harlem to North Carolina.
You
played high school basketball at Laurinburg Institute in North Carolina.
Described as "an itty-bitty town in the middle of nowhere" Laurinburg has a
rich basketball tradition. Chris Washburn, Charlie
Scott, Sam Jones and Jimmy Walker (Jalen Rose’s dad) all played there, while
jazz legend Dizzy Gillespie played the trumpet here before dropping out in
1935. Please take me back to your time at Laurinburg.
In
fact, I ended up at Laurinburg because of Jimmy Walker. I had some friends
who were a few years older than myself, and they had played basketball with
Jimmy – a guy named Dexter Westbrook, who went on to Providence college with
Jimmy, and James Barlow, who went to Kentucky State, where he was killed in
a car accident. These were guys that were older than me, and had played at
Laurinburg. Dexter and James were the ones that had really told me about
Laurinburg High School. They also told several of their other friends.
That’s how a group of us ended up in Laurinburg, North Carolina.
It’s interesting that you mention Dizzy Gillespie. He’s one of those who had attended Laurinburg, but very few people know where he went to high school. Unless you’re from that area, or maybe a jazz buff, that piece of history is lost when his name comes up. He was a great musician.
Following
high school, you accepted a scholarship to play for Dean Smith and the North
Carolina Tar Heels. The decision wasn't an easy one, because you were on
the verge of signing with Left Driesell and Davidson. Please take me back
to that point in your life – what was the biggest factor in your decision to
play for the Tar Heels?
To
be honest, I think Lefty was the first person who really recognized me,
noticed me, and gave me notoriety as an athlete at that point in my life. I
had gone to Lefty’s basketball camp as a junior in high school, and at that
time he offered me a scholarship. He was the one who really told the world
about me. Before then I was playing basketball at Laurinburg, and I really
hadn’t heard that much from colleges. But once I went to Lefty’s camp, it
was really the beginning of a tremendous recruiting circumstance. As you’ve
said, Lefty was at Davidson at that time, which is North Carolina. And
after Lefty starting recruiting me, I was recruited by all of the other
schools in North Carolina – Wake Forest., Duke, North Carolina State, and
the University of North Carolina. I have to thank Lefty for starting my
career, because he was the first person to really take notice of me.
I had made an early decision to go to Davidson, and I was really planning on going to school there. But my high school coach, who probably had a lot more insight than I did at that time, made me keep my mind open and visit other schools. I eventually changed my mind, and decided that I wanted to go to the University of North Carolina. That’s how I ended up going there.
