OSU’s NBA superstar, up close and personal

By Jeff Welsch

Silence engulfs the cozy gym at Portland’s Concordia University, and some 75 teen-age basketball hopefuls freeze as the towering presence at midcourt starts to speak.

"Team One," he says, "talk to me."

More silence. The dozen members of Team One, standing in a single row along the baseline, squirm. The others are motionless as they watch.

The leader had asked for 15 jumping jacks from the group.

Somebody on Team One lost focus and did 16. Nobody wants to confess.

"What have we talked about honesty and character?" the leader prods, firmly but gently.
At last, acknowledgement comes from the guilty party.

A.C. Green smiles.

"All right, honesty — thank you," he says. "You were being honest even though there was a lot of pressure on you."

Everybody claps, and the A.C. Green Leadership Camp continues, with its namesake soon to be involved in everything from calisthenics and operating the scoreboard to participating in skits and sweeping the floor.

A.C. Green has returned to his old Portland neighborhood for the past 16 years to operate a camp for teen-age basketball hopefuls.

For 16 years, the most durable player in National Basketball Association history and Oregon State University Hall of Famer has returned to this old brick gym in the neighborhood he still calls home, not so much to teach basketball but to share bigger-picture convictions with an increasingly troubled generation of kids.

Honesty. Character. Compassion.

Courage. Fairness. Integrity.

A.C. Green doesn’t talk the talk. He simply walks the walk.

At a time when many pro athletes lend their name to a camp, show up for the introductory first day and then disappear with a fat paycheck, Green has missed only one day of his Portland camp in 16 years.

That happened when he left abruptly to attend the funeral of a cousin who was killed in a car accident in Los Angeles. He paid for his entire family to fly to L.A., then returned to Portland the next day.

Along with his brothers, Steve and Lee, A.C. is one of the first to arrive and the last to leave his camp.

He has been known to ride a bicycle past the neatly manicured lawns and older homes in his northeast Portland neighborhood to the quiet Concordia campus that has been the oft-troubled area’s anchor for several decades.

He high-fives the kids, wrestles playfully with his nephews and remembers names of campers from years back.

For all that he stands for, all that he’s been and all that he hopes to become, Green credits his faith, his family and his years at OSU.

He doesn’t receive a nickel.

"He’s willing to invest his time back into his neighborhood, but it’s the way he does it that’s special," says Joel Schuldheisz, Concordia’s athletic director and a longtime friend of Green’s. "You can see he’s here for the love of the game and young people."

To Green, it all seems so natural — as natural as lacing up his sneakers for a record 1,278 consecutive NBA games, reading the Bible at 5 a.m. and steadfastly resisting the urges to relinquish his renown as the league’s only known virgin.

This, he says, is the plan God had for him and the reason He bestowed upon him a special gift called basketball.

"It’s a part of me. I could complain about all the problems coming up with kids, but rather than complain I’m trying to find solutions.

"It’s a message bigger than me."

For all that he stands for, all that he’s been and all that he hopes to become, A.C. Green — his father, A.C. Sr., won’t say what the initials stand for, if anything — credits his faith, his family and, in no small way, the years (1981-86) he spent at Oregon State University.

Twenty years ago this fall, Green arrived on the OSU campus sporting kinky Shirley Temple locks, a gaudy basketball resume and a reputation unfairly sullied by a gambling-debt skirmish that actually involved his gregarious older brother Lee.

Never did anyone imagine that one day he would become one of the finest players the school has ever produced, the NBA version of Cal Ripken Jr. and a worldwide poster-child for humanitarian efforts.

Even in the family, only his dignified and gracious mother, Leola, knew of his extraordinary basketball talents until his sophomore year at Benson Tech in Portland, when Lee decided to take a detour from his usual stop to look longingly at cars at Lou Williams Cadillac. Lee noticed a full parking lot down the street at Benson and ventured inside in time to see his brother swooping for a slam dunk and hear the PA announcer gush.

"I didn’t think of anything like this happening," Lee says of his brother’s fame.

A.C., who never pined for an NBA or collegiate career while growing up, merely wanted to graduate from high school so he might one day leave the neighborhood that remains an inextricable part of his fabric.

"I didn’t have that fire in my belly," he recalls. "That wasn’t me.

"Basketball was just something I enjoyed. I didn’t plan on going to college. My goal was to make it out of my particular situation to the next. Get a nice job — that would’ve been cool with me. But God had a bigger plan.

"Proverbs 18th chapter says, ‘A man’s gift will make room for him.’ The gift of basketball has opened up a lot of doors for me."

Green, who turned 38 on Oct. 4, has parlayed his gift into a solid NBA career in which he has played with hardscrabble elegance and stoic grace.

The fourth-leading scorer and second-leading rebounder in OSU history hasn’t missed a game since Nov. 18, 1986, his second year with the Los Angeles Lakers.

Yet for all of Green’s on-court exploits, he is even better known for his commitment to community in Portland, Los Angeles and Phoenix — the three cities other than Corvallis that figure most prominently in his life.

He oversees the A.C. Green Youth Foundation in Phoenix.

He operates numerous leadership camps. He is an outspoken advocate of sexual abstinence and has unflinchingly discussed his virginity on the Oprah Winfrey Show.

On Sept. 25, he was inducted into the World Sports Humanitarian Hall of Fame in Boise, Idaho.

"Yeah, he’s an athlete, but he’s an athlete with a brand," says Rob Michaels, his agent.
"He’s the real deal."

Adds his mother, Leola: "I’m very proud. I see a humble person, a beautiful person, a spiritual person. We are blessed to have him represent the young people. He doesn’t put on airs. It’s just what he stands for.

"He’s just himself."

A.C. Green Sr., who grew up in El Centro, Calif., and maintained cars for a Portland dealership, and Leola Green, a switchboard operator at Nordstrom, already had three children when the last Green arrived on Oct. 4, 1963, in Portland.

The first three were named Vanessa, Lee and Steve, but as soon as Leola saw No. 4 she knew.

"He looked so much like his daddy that I said I’m going to name him A.C.," she once said.
Hence, while the rest of the world has known him as A.C., at home it’s always Junior.

Junior spent much of his youth split between school, church and the courts at John Jacob Aster Elementary School and Woodlawn Park, where Lee was as gentle as a pit bull.

"If it wasn’t for me taking him down to the park every day and putting it on him, he wouldn’t be where he is today," says Lee, 41, the family character.

"I shouldn’t play ball against him now because he’ll get his revenge. He might have flashbacks."

A.C. was an ordinary 5-foot-11 ninth-grader, but by his senior year he was 6-8, averaging 26.0 points per game and earning state Player of the Year honors. He committed to join an OSU basketball team that had been ranked No. 1 nationally for nine weeks the previous winter.

Christianity had become a distant part of Green’s life, and he had even quit going to church. Then a friend in the Fellowship of Christian Athletes asked him to join a group driving to Hermiston for a religion class taught by a Benson Tech faculty member.

Green hesitated, relented and, on Aug. 2, 1981, became a Christian for life.

At OSU, he joined the Maranatha ministry and could frequently be seen on campus reading aloud from a Bible.

Green’s years in Corvallis were pivotal in his personal, professional and spiritual development.

He fondly remembers his pastor, his academic adviser, his coaches and families guiding him through difficult transitions.

"That’s when habits start developing," he says of his college years.

He recites the names of the most significant contributors as if they were guiding him today: best friend Lee Johnson, ’85; legendary coach Ralph Miller, assistants Lanny Van Eman and Jimmy Anderson, ’59, ’61; pastor David Elliott; and John Fenner, ’40, and his family. He even remembers the names of the advisers who helped turn a naive kid into a conscientious student who earned a degree in four years.

"They helped me focus on school," Green explains. "I didn’t want to come back to school when I got done playing."

Of the crusty Miller, the legendary basketball coach who died last summer, he says: "Ralph played a strong role in my life."

For all that his years in Corvallis have provided him, he is giving back.

Green has established a fund at OSU for ethnic minorities. He says he eventually plans to start youth programs in Corvallis with Johnson, who today works for the state in drug prevention and gives speeches about the evils of narcotics at Green’s camps.

"We just talked about it — what can we do around the city of Corvallis?"

Green says, "We owe a lot to our time there. A lot of people there helped me along the way. Most of what I’ve learned, I learned in Corvallis. It’s where I learned the difference between conviction and opinion."

To this day, he gets misty-eyed when he hears OSU’s alma mater.

It was at Oregon State, at a time when the sexual revolution was in full bloom, that Green made his first public stand for sexual abstinence. Twenty years later, he beats the abstinence drum so tirelessly that he is at least as famous for his virginity streak as he is for his consecutive games played.

Indeed, in a recent mainstream movie called "The Brothers," about four African-American friends who are forced to confront issues with honesty and commitment after one marries, one of the characters decides to abstain from sex until marriage.

"Who do you think you are," a third says incredulously, "A.C. Green?"

Green, described by Sports Illustrated as "The Only NBA Player Who Has Never Scored," has never seen the movie, but Miami Heat teammates told him the story. Once they might have kidded him, but today they relate the tale with respect for a man who lives his convictions but refuses to browbeat others into following his lead.

To Green, the movie is an indicator of the role, however small, he’s had in altering cultural mindsets. As a longtime player in Los Angeles, a glittery city that embodies much that he stands against, he has used his stage to coax makers of movies, television shows and videos to include unmarried characters who save sex for marriage.

In a league where some players have more kids out of wedlock than cars in their garage, Green was once almost a freak show. He was the butt of jokes on Letterman and The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.

But he’s seeing a slow evolution in the NBA, too.

"You would think of him as a goody-two-shoes from the outside looking in," Heat teammate Anthony Mason told a Florida newspaper. "It was something to make fun of when you weren’t there, but to see it up close, to see how his life has benefited, you realize that’s the way you’re supposed to live."

Green hasn’t wavered in 20 years despite flocks of female groupies hoping to snap one of his famed streaks.

"It’s a message to a culture that has a lot of confusion from a lot of sources," Green said of sexual mores.

"Parents tell kids one thing and live by a different standard. Churches do the same thing. They pass out condoms and teach about alternatives. I’m challenging personal behavior.

"If that’s the biggest part of my legacy, that’s fine. I’ve got to try to work on it and keep it a focal point. That’s why I’ve stayed so long."

It isn’t that he sees sex as "dirty." Nor is it all about his religion; he notes that he was a steadfast virgin long before he was a devoted Christian, though he sheepishly admits that in high school he bragged about sexual conquests he never made.

"Sex itself isn’t a bad thing," he said. "That’s the most crazy and ludicrous thing. But there is a time and place for it."

For Green, that time and place is marriage. He has dated seriously only twice, but he knows one day he will bring a special gift to a union.

After all, abstinence makes the heart grow fonder.

Or, as brother Lee put it, "I don’t know when or where he’s going to find the right one, but boy, boy, boy — somebody’s going to be in big trouble."

Green’s life is such a whirlwind these days that he rarely has time to stop and take stock of his love life.

The two weeks he spends at his camp at Concordia each summer provide a rare opportunity for a deep breath.

Aside from an NBA career that he vows will continue this winter (though as of late September he didn’t know where), he’s got a variety of business interests and humanitarian efforts under way.

He owns 12 Denny’s restaurants in the Portland, Salem and The Dalles areas because he’s always liked the food, and it was one place he could afford growing up.

He has a company called Integrity Media, which produces movies, TV shows and videos, including an upcoming film called "The Final Solution" about an Afrikaaner man in South Africa coming to grips with his oppression of blacks.

He also owns Biosport, a sports drink he says is healthier than the others out there.

When he’s finished with basketball, he plans to immerse himself even more into community work and spend more time with his nephews and nieces. His world could involve just about anything — except basketball.

"Anything around organized basketball other than watching the kids ... forget about it," he said.

Whatever he does, he says, will be another step in the pursuit of spiritual perfection. This much he knows: The equation will include family, children and God, whom he calls his "head coach."

Certainly Green will continue to return to the old neighborhood, where well-to-do and at-risk kids alike gather for pearls of wisdom about accountability and responsibility from a true modern-day hero. He will be there every day, with broom in hand, scoreboard clock at his fingertips and a high-five for any focused camper who isn’t wearing a Duck T-shirt.

"It’s like an NBA career — you’ve got to prove who you are and what your game is all about," he says.

"I can say anything, but you have to show it." OSU

Jeff Welsch is sports editor of the Corvallis Gazette-Times.