The game’s coming down to the final 120 seconds and the win will go to the
hungriest team. Eric Crookshank is exhausted, but he needs to find the
strength for one more burst.
He knows where to find it.
"When I get tired, when I think, man I can't do that, I think about the
last remaining seconds of my mom when she was on her deathbed. She tried to
fight for her life, and I'm out here, can't fight to play two more minutes?
I'm tired? That's what gets me through games."
The jazz musician from California, a statistician from Newfoundland and
a teacher from South Carolina now form part of the core of the Halifax
Rainmen. As the ABA has a salary cap of about $120,000 for twelve guys,
nobody's here for the money.
Crookshank has come a long, hard road from his rough Oakland origins to
play professional basketball in Nova Scotia.
"I saw a lot growing up. Drugs, driveby shootings, poverty," the
29-year-old says in a slow drawl. "It made me more strong as a man, and
gave me the power to not want to go that way in life."
So, under the firm hand of his mother, he turned to basketball.
"I got friends right now that are living their lives through me. Kids
who were better athletes than me growing up, and I emulated and idolized
them, they got veered off with the peer pressure in the neighbourhoods and
they lives went down hill. Now you see Œem and a couple of Œem are in jail.
A lot of people I knew are killed now."
When his mother died, Crookshank ‹ that's his mother's maiden name ‹ was
devastated. He took two years off basketball to get himself together.
Eventually, he found that extra energy once more, and got back on the
court with the help of Gary Payton, the legendary NBA SuperSonics point
guard, who is his godbrother.
"He's like, you play basketball, make me proud. I'll handle everything
else."
When he goes back to the old neighbourhood, he sees a lot of kids like
him ‹ and the thin line between making it as a pro basketball player and
ending up in jail. Gangs are a big problem.
"I talk to the kids: ŒYou think these gangs are your family. I'm on a
basketball team. I know if I can't score 28 points on the night, my other
brothers on the team will pick up the slack. Basically we're a gang, and
we're going to play in front of people and they're watching us, paying
money to see us play."
He's also taken a local "kid" under his wing in teammate and North
Preston native Derico Wigginton-Downey. "Derico's a very handsome guy," and
popular with the ladies, Crookshank teases, saying he sometimes needs help
keeping his focus.
The Rainmen play together, live together in a Bedford house and travel
together, taking turns driving the team bus.
It's like a marriage, Crookshank says, albeit to 11 men. "You have your
different arguments. I can tell you about everyone on my team: what food
they like, when they gonna get up. If something's missing, I know who got
it," he laughs.
As the Rainmen fight for a spot in the playoffs in their first season,
Crookshank is right where he wants to be.
"It's a challenge now that our backs are against the wall and I'm really
happy ‹ cause my back's been against the wall my whole life, and look at me
now."
Back-to-back with him on the court is Peter Benoite. Chances are, he
knows exactly who's scored how many points on any given night ‹ prior to
earning a spot with the Rainmen, he was a statistician in Newfoundland and
Labrador Premier Danny Williams's government.
The former Academic All-Canadian at Memorial University is on a year of
absence to chase his dream a little further.
The captain of the Rainmen ‹ at 32, he's the oldest ‹ had played a few
years in Germany before settling into the nine-to-five, but he had itchy
feet.
When the Rainmen came to town, he saw his shot.
"I had my decision made before I was offered the job," he said. "Whatever
the offer was, I would have taken advantage of it. Money comes and goes ‹
the experiences, you either take advantage of, or you don't."
He explains his decision to leave the easy life ‹ and the apartment he
shared with his girlfriend ‹ thus: "Being a statistician or being a
basketball player in which role can I inspire kids the most?"
When the laughter has died down, he grins and continues.
"Honestly, that's one of the questions I asked myself ... Mentally, I'm
just not ready to let it go yet. I want to keep playing at that elite
level."
And if he happens to inspire a kid to become a statistician? "There's
nothing wrong with that, either," he says, a little defensively.
Benoite is from a small town: Seriously small. Little Barachoix, near
Placentia, Nfld, boasted a boomtown population of 14 when Benoite was born;
it has dwindled to his parents, an aunt and a brother.
Now, he lives with almost as many people in the Rainmen house.
Sometimes you're running down the dream, sometimes the dream is running
you down ‹ like on those 13-hour drives to Montreal.
"The grass is always greener, right? Some days, I wish I could go in and
sit at a desk for eight hours instead of running up and down the court," he
admits, "but I'm still doing what I love to do."
He's having too much fun to go back to the numbers just yet.
"I figure, you can work nine to five and sit at a desk when you're 70.
it's harder to keep doing this as you get older. The wins and losses fade
away ‹ well, the wins stay a little longer ‹ but it's the off-court stuff,
the travel, the people, that really count."
Kadiri Richard would agree. Before the 27-year-old started blocking
shots for the Rainmen, he was helping kids learn at school in South
Carolina, playing basketball whenever he got a chance. These days, that's
all he does: 18 hours a day with the team, interrupted by time spent with
his girlfriend, a Dartmouth woman who attends Saint Mary's University.
He continues to teach: now his teammates, if they want it or not. In
huddles, he urges Benoite to "do that bull-dog thing he does" and tells
Crookshank: "The one person in this league that can stop you is me, and I'm
on your team. So why aren't you scoring right now?"
He's about to be joined in Halifax by his other love: his 2001 Mustang
GT Convertible is coming in April.
The first licence plate he got for the Mustang read: DUNKONU.
"I took that off and said, I'm not a basketball player, I'm working on
getting degrees now." He replaced it with GETAPHD as he pursued his dream of
becoming a vice-principal. "But I changed it back to DUNKONU right now," he
laughs.