On the basketball court, he dwarfed the opposition. But in a court of law, the 7-foot defendant must gaze up at the man on the judicial bench, and even Shaq was never as menacing or powerful as this opponent. This time the defendant and former NBA center is being leaned on by a judge who knows all his wily moves and a judicial system running low on patience.
And Keon Clark, a decade ago the pillar of the Runnin’ Rebel basketball program, is all alone, no backside help to cut off what is certain to be a legal slam dunk. On this late-November afternoon he sits in solitude at a long wooden table, clad in an eggshell-white T-shirt and faded orange pants—orange has never worked for Clark; it was one of the colors of his final NBA team, the Phoenix Suns, for whom he never actually played. This generic attire, issued by the nearby Danville Public Safety Building to all detainees, was originally designed as a jumpsuit. But not in Keon’s crafty hands. He has tailored the outfit, too small for a 7-footer, into a somewhat fashionable pair of baggy trousers, knotting the sleeves around his waist.
This is how Danville, Illinois’ greatest basketball player appears in Courtroom 4B of the Vermilion County Courthouse, exuding a casual air of comfort he has certainly forged through his many visits to Judge Michael Clary’s court.
Clary and Clark. It sounds like a comedy act, and the interaction between the two might indeed be funny if it weren’t so very sad. Clark is appearing in a preliminary hearing for a charge of “aggravated driving” in his black Cadillac Escalade after a license suspension. Such offenses are common for Clark, dubbed by local law-enforcement officials as a “serial revoker” who has been nabbed dozens times over the years for traffic violations. So frequent are Clark’s driving offenses, they have finally bloomed into felonies.
And as in all matters pertaining to the chaotic world of Keon Clark, ample confusion encumbers what should be a fairly simple case. He has shown up to court with no legal counsel. Stunning, considering that Clary made it clear to Clark in the defendant’s most recent court appearance that he needed to hire an attorney to deal with his mounting and messy legal cases. Weeks earlier, in a decision that can be charitably described as lenient, Clary continued a sentencing hearing for Clark—a hearing that would determine just how much time Clark would be ordered to spend in 
prison—specifically so he could retain an attorney. Clark did find a willing lawyer, a well-known Danvillian named Thomas Mellen—but not for this court appearance.
From the bench, Clary folds his hands as if in prayer, peering down and reminding Clark of the importance of legal representation. “I told you in your last appearance that you needed an attorney,” the judge lectures.
Clark responds, “Sir, I don’t have a lawyer. I was under the impression it was for the sentencing, not for this [hearing].” You can almost hear the grinding of the judge’s teeth as he considers that statement, then asks, “Are you ready to proceed?” Clark answers, “No, sir.” But Clark is boxed in as Clary announces, “We will proceed in this matter, which is to show probable cause to bound you over for trial,” and asks Clark if he chooses to serve as his own legal counsel. In his unwavering baritone, Clark responds, “Yes, your honor.” The hearing then unfolds into a twisted episode of Law and Order, with the onetime star athlete ready to interrogate the uniformed police officer who pulled him over at 7:05 p.m. on July 28 on the 500 block of Oak Street, and when you ask Danvillians where to find the bad part of town, that dark stretch of Oak Street is usually mentioned.
As Clark waits his turn before the court, the cop, a straight-shooter named Thomas Piatt, meticulously explains that he stopped Clark’s Escalade on the evening of July 28 and noticed expired license plates from Ontario, Canada. He ran a procedural check on Clark’s license and found, not surprisingly, it had been suspended.
Clary asks Clark, 32 but wizened beyond his years, if he has any questions for the officer. He does. “When you pulled me over, were you going the opposite direction as me on Oak Street?” Piatt says that when he pulled Clark over, he was driving behind Clark’s Escalade, not in the opposite direction. Clark, who was a criminal justice major at UNLV, seems to be attempting to establish that there was no probable cause for the officer to have stopped him. But the officer swats that question away by saying, no, he pulled Clark over because of the expired Canadian plate. Then Clark asks, “Did you destroy the video of the incident, even though it could prove my guilt or innocence?” The brazen question hangs for a moment before the prosecutor bursts in with an objection, on the grounds that the question is “argumentative.” But the officer answers anyway, saying flatly, “I don’t destroy evidence.”
And that’s it. Keon Clark, being given the treatment afforded any common criminal, is to be bound over, again. He is hastened away to his temporary home, a jail cell in his hometown. But that is hardly the end, as Clark’s legal saga seems as unwieldy and boundless as the Blob. On December 14 he was granted another reprieve, as Clary refused to rule on Clark’s sentencing for this charge and also tossed out his sentencing on a separate charge of carrying an unregistered firearm, a felony drug charge and DUI in Vermilion County. Clary ruled that because Clark, who was sentenced in absentia in the latter case, should be given time to have his legal counsel review that case and be afforded a fair hearing at a later date.
Judge Clary, who also heads the Vermilion County drug court and often orders convicts into treatment programs in place of prison, was also swayed by Clark’s startling testimony: that Clark is an alcoholic with a pint-of-gin-a-day drinking habit, and that he was never sober on the court while in the NBA, reviving his buzz even at halftime. After Clark ended his playing career three years ago, he said, his heavy drinking led to daily blackouts. According to the Urbana News-Gazette’s account of Clark’s court appearance, he said it didn’t help being in “the city of sin” in Las Vegas, though he didn’t say if he was actually drunk on the court at UNLV. But whether he was or wasn’t intoxicated at tip-off while plying with the Runnin’ Rebels, it’s clear the Keon Clark of those days was equal measures gifted and troubled.
•••••
In the years I knew Keon Clark, which amounted to two foggy seasons as the Rebel basketball beat writer for the Review-Journal, we sometimes called him “Neon Keon.” The nickname was great, ideal for a star athlete in Vegas, but it never quite stuck. This was a guy so obviously talented that he could blow even the most jaded basketball minds, but he was never consistently Neon Keon. He was tantalizingly gifted, possessing rare skills and physical attributes that could not be coached. But too often he seemed full of helium, blithely wafting through life as if weightless. After blossoming late at Danville High School, Clark announced he would play at Temple University, the first large-college basketball program to show interest in the budding prospect. However, Clark’s high school academic record disagreed with his plans, and he was never admitted to Temple. To build an acceptable academic record and to keep his game sharp, Clark played at Irvine Junior College in California, then returned to Danville, then finally enrolled at Dixie College in St. George, Utah, where he signed with UNLV and its hotshot new coach from the University of Massachusetts, Bill Bayno.
Clark was the top recruit and cornerstone for Bayno’s first good team at UNLV, and even watching Clark stride onto the court gave Rebel coaches a chill. Clark’s height was listed as 6-foot-11, but he has a gracefully long wingspan that made him play as if he stood three inches taller. He intimidated, altered shots and changed games merely by roaming the key, waiting to swat lay-ups into the press row. He was freakishly thin in the trunk, weighing no more than 220 pounds, but his vertical lift was measured at 40 inches, meaning that from a standing start he could leap atop a washing machine. He had a long and graceful gait that made him deadly in the open court. He had strong-but-soft hands, great dexterity and passing skills and an effortless shooting touch. A left-hander, Clark was so fond of cutting loose long-range jump shots that his coaches often spoke of how he showed more pleasure in knocking down three-pointers in practice than in dunking. No wonder; Clark had been able to dunk since age 13. By college, the dunk had become passé.
Though largely unrealized, Clark’s skills were not entirely lost at UNLV, not by a long shot. His time with the Rebels was burnished with singular, stunning moments that never quite seemed connected but were nonetheless impressive, a collection of explosive moves often showcased in the fringes of major-college basketball.
In one characteristically eye-popping sequence, Clark threw down a dunk after taking off from the foul line during a game in Laramie, Wyoming, a sweeping effort that left the hometown crowd abuzz. A similarly stunning moment, my favorite Keon highlight, took place in a game against Texas Christian in Fort Worth. Rebel point guard Kevin James, a 6-footer who (unlike Clark) got every ounce out of his natural ability, attempted to finish a fast break by charging down the middle of the lane and converting a finger-roll. But the ball caromed high off the back iron, out toward the foul line. Seemingly from nowhere, an airborne Clark snared the rebound, pulled the ball to his hip and in a flash threw down a dunk that made the backboard sway.
Clark strung enough of those moments together to help restore UNLV’s basketball program to respectability, particularly during his first year with the team. When Clark arrived as a junior prior to the 1996-97 season, the Rebels had fallen sharply from the NCAA Championship days of Jerry Tarkanian. They had suffered consecutive losing seasons for the first time in school history, and the program was still recovering—financially, and in the court of public opinion—from Rollie Massimino’s two controversial seasons as head coach. The season before Clark showed up, the Rebels were 10-16—and Bayno said they had overachieved to post even that record. With Clark, UNLV won a postseason game for the first time since Tark’s team beat Seton Hall in the West Regional finals of the 1991 NCAA Tournament. In Clark’s junior season, the Rebels were 22-10 and won two games in the National Invitation Tournament before being knocked out at Arkansas.
The NIT was hardly a destination tournament, especially for a team that just seven years earlier had won the national title, but the Rebel program was gaining notoriety (not to mention nationwide TV audiences on ESPN’s Big Monday telecasts) and was rightly considered to be on the upswing. And, in a move that thrilled the coaching staff and Rebel boosters, Clark decided to hold off entering the NBA draft, where he likely would have been a high first-round pick, and play his senior season at UNLV. Clark had already been named first-team all-Western Athletic Conference; now he was talking about snaring the Naismith Award as college basketball’s top player (an honor bestowed years earlier on a true Rebel great, Larry Johnson) and winning “a ring”—a national title at UNLV.
But in the off-season, Clark made one of his notoriously ill-advised decisions, joining teammate Kevin Simmons on a trip to Florida for spring break that was financed by an agent, a clear violation of NCAA rules. Clark said he didn’t realize until after arriving in Florida that something was amiss (the limo awaiting the guys at the airport was the first sign that this was no ordinary jaunt to the beach). Hoping for leniency, UNLV self-reported the offense to the NCAA. But the powerful college athletics governing body, which had butted heads with the Rebel program since the early days of the Tarkanian era, hit Clark with a stiff penalty—an 11-game suspension to be served at the start of his senior year. That would wipe out about a third of his final season at UNLV.
Still, all seemed remedied as Clark returned to the team with a buoyant attitude. During a news conference at the Thomas & Mack Center, he sported a ball-cap tipped sideways, flashed his mischievous smile and displayed his penchant for the malaprop by saying he’d turned his life around “360 degrees” as a result of the punishment. He also said he was the best player in the country, though he hadn’t seen any game action in eight months.
But even as he scored a career-high 28 points against Air Force in his second game back from the suspension, Clark never found his footing in his senior year. Later in the season, he was suspended indefinitely for violating a team rule, failing a school-administered drug test even as NBA scouts were tracking his conduct on and off the court. Thus, Clark was rendered a Rebel outcast, not only banished from games but also forbidden from working out with the team. Soon after the team suspension, and with Bayno’s support, Clark announced he was leaving the program altogether to prep for the NBA draft. His stats at UNLV were okay but far short of the numbers he could have posted if he’d stayed straight and out of Florida. In 39 games over two seasons he averaged 14.8 points, 9.6 rebounds and 3.5 blocks per game. His 112 blocks in his junior season were a team record.
By the spring of 1998, NBA scouts evaluated Clark the same way contestants on Let’s Make a Deal considered the mystery of what’s behind Door No. 3. He was probably the most closely scrutinized player in that year’s draft, an irresistible prospect who would have been taken in the first few picks if he’d avoided trouble. As Boston Celtics GM Chris Wallace said at the time, Clark had “immense athletic ability, maybe more than any other player in the draft. The big issue with Keon is the off-the-court—the intangibles.”
Wallace, hardly alone among NBA scouts, was dead-on. The pattern continued: Clark had the talent but wasn’t particularly interested in developing it. He was selected No. 13 by the Orlando Magic, who immediately traded him to the Denver Nuggets. Clark settled comfortably into the role of NBA journeyman. He spent two and a half seasons with Denver and, in the 2000-2001 season, was traded to Toronto. He played with the Raptors through 2002, and prior to the 2002-2003 season, signed as a free agent with the Sacramento Kings. He played one season in Sacramento and was dealt to Utah, where he played just two games before undergoing surgery on his right ankle to repair a bone spur. The Jazz, displeased with his rehabilitation, traded him to the Phoenix Suns, and that was the last team to list Keon Clark on its roster. He never actually played for Phoenix, which released him after the 2003-2004 season.
Keon Clark, at the age of 30, had tossed himself on the NBA scrap pile. In yet another regretful decision, he retreated to Danville, where the bad actors from his youth were eager to party with the homegrown multimillionaire, saying that all he wanted was to be left alone. But his behavior made that impossible.
•••••
The Friendly Tavern in Danville is about a hundred years old. It seems every business, venue and government building in Danville is “about a hundred” years old. It is a Sunday afternoon, and I have been directed to the tavern by the manager of the Danville Days Inn, who says the Friendly is a good place to catch the Bears-Broncos game, if I don’t mind the smoke. It seems most Danvillians smoke, and those who don’t are wreathed in the fragrance of tobacco. The town is actually closer to Indianapolis, 90 miles to the east on Interstate 74, than to Chicago, which is 120 miles north. But it seems more tilted toward the Second City; for pro sports, Danville wears the deep shade of Bears blue. For college, the town pulls for the University of Illinois in Champaign, about 30 miles to the west.
At the moment I know exactly one person in Danville, and he’s locked up in the “PSB” (what locals call the Public Safety Building). So I introduce myself to a guy at the bar, Lou, and ask, “How old is Danville, exactly?” Lou says, “I think it was founded in the ’50s.”
“How’s that possible?” I say. “This building here must be a hundred years old.”
“Well, I think Danville was established around the time of the Civil War,” Lou says as he gulps a Bud Lite. He means the 1850s, and we are clearly in a different dimension here. I find later that Danville was founded in 1827. It’s an old industrial labor town, and over the years those jobs have been sucked up (a General Motors plant closed a decade ago, taking with it 4,000 jobs). I ask what the major employer is these days, and Lou says, “There’s the oats plant.”
“Oats plant, like, a crop?” I ask.
“No, Quaker Oats,” he says. Danville owes a lot to the just-add-water breakfast staple.
Danville is just a tough little town. If it were a boxer, it would be Jake LaMotta. It can really take a punch. Danville has withstood its share of haymakers over the years, no doubt, a union town that keeps shedding good-paying jobs. As is the case in most small towns, you can gauge the economic climate by the state of its downtown, and Danville’s is struggling. There is a secondhand furniture store that seems to do well; the Deluxe Restaurant, which serves great gyro sandwiches and halibut six days a week; and a fun little family-owned coffee pub called the Java Hut, which sits just a couple of doors down from the Vermilion County Courthouse and is popular among the town’s many attorneys. For a time, Danville’s downtown was shut off to vehicle traffic and sort of resembled a little Fremont Street, but all that did was crimp off people in cars who might want to park and spend money. So the downtown district has been reopened to motor vehicles, and survives mostly because of the business of people on their way to and from court. Java Hut closes at 3 p.m., unless there are straggling customers who want to stay late. There seems to be an inordinately large number of taverns in Danville, too, though there’s no statistical verification of that. Same with churches—where there aren’t taverns, there are small churches of all faiths serving the closely tied community.
The Friendly Tavern crowd is almost always made up of locals, which makes the unfamiliar patron a true oddity. Lou asks, “What brings you to Danville?” I say, “I’m from Las Vegas, and I’m working on a story about Keon Clark.” This draws what I will come to refer to as the “Keon Scoff,” which is how most Danvillians respond to the mention of Clark’s name. It’s a combination laugh-snort, often followed by, “Good luck.”
“It’s a sad deal,” Lou says. “What a waste.” Again, these will become familiar themes. Sad deal, that Keon. What a waste. Had too much, too soon. Needs help.
Lou goes on to list what I will come to know as the “Danville Five,” the quintet of the town’s favorite sons. They are listed in differing order, but they are always the same group: Dick Van Dyke, Jerry Van Dyke, Gene Hackman, Donald O’Connor and Bobby Short. Often, joining that list are astronaut Joe Tanner, former Major Leaguer Darrin Fletcher, and even National Education Association President Reginald Weaver. Danville was never embarrassed by that crew. But Keon Clark, whoosh. Sad deal.
“He’s supposed to be sentenced tomorrow, right?” Lou asks. He is right: The next day, Keon Clark is to find out the length of his prison sentence. But even that process becomes entangled.
•••••
“You’re not going to like this,” says Patrick Hartshorn, the platinum-haired sheriff of Vermilion County, “but Keon’s hearing has been postponed.”
“Of course it’s been postponed,” I say, laughing. “Why would it go off as scheduled?” This clearly confuses the sheriff, but the fact that Keon Clark is not where he’s supposed to be when he’s supposed to be there evokes morosely humorous memories of a time when nothing seemed to go off as scheduled. This time, it turns out that Clary’s wife fell ill and he needed to take her to the emergency room, and thus Clark’s date has been taken off the docket.
But later in the week Clark will have to appear on a separate charge of driving under a suspended license, so he will eventually appear in this court. Again.
Clark has already been sentenced to prison once—in September, in neighboring Champaign County, for driving with a suspended license. He pleaded guilty on that charge, for which he was sentenced to two and a half years in prison, but he skipped out on his sentencing hearing, and a warrant was issued for his arrest. Weeks later, in October, Clark also failed to appear for his jury trial in the Vermilion County Courthouse on charges of possessing a firearm without identification, driving under the influence and possession of a controlled substance (cocaine, in this instance). He was sentenced to another two and a half years on those charges, but by then he was leading his own fast break, a fugitive wanted by authorities in two Illinois counties. Clark has always been able to avoid jail time by “bonding out,” paying his bond, ducking his sentencing hearings and returning to his life of recreation—a mix of booze, drugs and golf. Trying to sort out what Clark has paid in bonds—actual money, not just promises to pay—has become a sort of parlor game among Danville officials. He has paid at least $100,000 to stay out of jail.
After Clark failed to appear at his October 10 court date in Danville, a warrant was issued for his arrest. He was AWOL until October 18, when officers nabbed him as he was riding a public bus in Splendora, Texas, just outside of Houston. He was in that area after checking into Extended Aftercare Inc., a drug and alcohol treatment facility operated by former NBA player Gus Gerard. In his testimony from December 14, Clark said he was in the center awaiting admission to its 90-day program to treat alcoholism. He told the court he still had his “beer goggles on,” and during a three-day detox program had chugged four beers he’d snuck into the center in his bag. Clark had also made the trek to Houston without the permission of the Illinois judicial system, so he was in fact a fugitive while in the rehab center.
It wasn’t the first time Clark had considered alcohol treatment. In May, Clark actually did argue to Judge Clary that he wanted to enter a treatment center, and was granted yet another continuance in his Vermilion County case, but he didn’t check into rehab at that time—and compounded the problem by adding more charges to his already stacked criminal record.
And Clark testified that he’d checked himself out of Extended Aftercare, after he was tipped off that the feds were looking for him and against the wishes of Gerard, who was interested primarily in getting the former player sober. After he was pulled off the bus in Splendora, Clark was finally returned to Danville, by a private security service that hauls fugitives back to justice, to face a pair of two-and-a-half-year sentences. At that point, what needed to be determined by Clary was if those terms would be served consecutively or concurrently; Clark will be sent to prison for at least two and a half years as a result of his sentence in Champaign County. Simple enough—except that his Vermilion County sentencing case is far from resolved (he might well receive probation, given his recent willingness to seek treatment), and he is also facing charges in the Indiana counties of Fountain and Marion, where he has been named in misdemeanor charges of possessing marijuana in 2004, and of misdemeanor battery and domestic battery in a 2005 case.
The battery incidents involved Jamie Hall, the mother of Keon’s 7-year-old son, whose name is also Keon. Mother and son live in Indianapolis. Keon the father’s trips to Indianapolis often ended badly as Clark reportedly got sideways with Hall over issues involving the care and support of young Keon. None of Clark’s cases in Indiana will be addressed until his charges in Vermilion and Champaign counties are resolved, so it is probable Clark’s saga will be shifted to the judicial system in Indiana. As those who have followed the case in Illinois would say, lucky them.
But the sterile court records do not do justice to these sad-tragic infringements of the law. Consider the incident on September 7, 2005, in which Clark was pulled over in his black 2003 Mercedes Benz following an incident at a Danville Steak ’n Shake. This is where Keon’s worlds collided: The Steak ’n Shake is just down the street from the YMCA where he played basketball as a kid, and also just a half-mile from Turtle Run Golf and Banquet Club, where Clark has played golf almost every day for the past two years. It is also a short jaunt from the office of his current attorney, Mellen; the entire collection of landmarks and businesses are within a 2-mile radius—even while breaking the law, Clark has his hometown at heart.
Sheriff Hartshorn takes the narrative here.
“You have two uniformed cops in the restaurant at 2 or 3 in the morning, having dinner or whatever you call it at 3 a.m. There are marked cars in the parking lot and two uniformed officers inside. Keon comes in, and there’s one of those plastic signs that says ‘wet floor,’ and he comes in and trips over the sign. Then he screams and yells about the employees putting the sign there, and he wants service, and here’s two uniformed officers sitting in the restaurant. He’s raising hell with the staff and then yells, ‘The hell with you! I’m not buying anything here!’ Then he leaves, gets in a car, in front of the police officers, and drives off. So they get into their squad cars, follow him for two blocks, and what happens?”
They pull him over.
Officers Jane McFadden and Rhonda Swisher reported that Clark looked disheveled and that they tailed Clark until his car severely cut a corner while making a turn onto Ferndale Avenue—which is the turn you make when heading out to Poland Road, where Clark lives. His license was suspended (a given), and when police searched his Mercedes they found an unlicensed handgun and cannabis in the trunk and cocaine in the passenger-side compartment. The gun charges are particularly alarming to State Attorney Frank Young, who says, “When you have a firearm involved, it’s a very serious offense.” It should be noted that Young, whose office is aggressively prosecuting Clark, is a onetime Keon Clark fan—he even has a signed Toronto Raptors cap from Clark’s days in the NBA.
After the Steak ’n Shake incident, Danville police seized Clark’s Mercedes through the Illinois Drug Asset Forfeiture Procedure Act, which permits law enforcement to collect property in drug-related crimes. The Danville Police Department used it as a command vehicle for a year before selling it on eBay. The top bid, $45,100, was paid by a man from California.
Clark can be counted on for high-stakes drama, for sure. After a 2006 arrest he sued the Vermilion County Sheriff’s department for using excessive force (that suit was tossed out in July); Hartshorn says Clark often braces as if resisting arrest, and has been known to spit near the feet of officers as he’s being detained. In September, during a hearing in the Champaign County courthouse, Clark collapsed and suffered an apparent seizure just as the judge denied a motion for a continuance in a sentencing hearing in Clark’s felony charge of driving on a suspended license. According to the Urbana News-Gazette, Clark let out a groan and fell back into his chair the very moment the judge denied the motion. The courtroom was cleared, and Clark was taken from the court on a stretcher to Carle Foundation Hospital, where he was promptly arrested again as he was being released. Clark’s health has been a concern—he claims to be clinically depressed and bipolar—and, of course, as he has a long history of drug and alcohol abuse, a condition that, if treated earlier, might have kept him out of court in the first place.
•••••
Sometimes you can just tell who the mother is.
A group of a dozen or so Keon Clark backers are milling around the entrance of the Vermilion County Courthouse, including a couple of pastors on hand for moral support and Keon’s grandmother, Pat, easily identifiable as a member of the entourage for her baby-blue Denver Nuggets sweatshirt. It turns out they are here for no reason, as Clark won’t appear before the judge on this day, and are wondering what’s next.
In walks a tall woman clad in black. Black jacket, slacks, shoes, hair, everything. She’s tall, probably 5-foot-10, pretty in a stoic sort of way, and those piercing eyes—just like Keon’s. I walk over, push my hand toward her and introduce myself. Needlessly she says, “I am Keon’s mother,” and my hand just hangs there, useless.
Cynthia Brown is her name. For most of Keon’s upbringing, it was just those two, though he did spend some time with a family friend and former Danville High hoops star named Jerome Nelson, a big-brother type who taught Keon a lot about hoops and, vainly, about responsibility. Keon’s father, John, was himself a criminal of the first degree who had hardly anything to do with young Keon’s development; the stories I heard around Danville were of John Clark resurfacing during Keon’s glory days at Danville High, drunk or high, a sad distraction attempting to play off his son’s fame and promise. The father was hard to miss—he is also 6-foot-11, same as Keon. Years ago he was a fine shot-blocker, when eligible, at Danville Community College. (John Clark is also in prison, convicted of first-degree murder in the July 2003 slaying of a 27-year-old man, in a dispute over a bicycle.)
It was left to Cynthia Brown to raise a free-spirited kid, and Keon’s highly publicized roller-coaster ride has left her acutely skeptical of anyone who is not unconditionally supportive of her son. She’s not surprised I have arrived at the courthouse, as news of an impending visit by a writer from Las Vegas working on a story about the great fall of Keon Clark has made its way around town. “I know who you are—you wrote a bunch of negative stuff about Keon when he was in college.”
Whoa, let’s rewind here. I tell her what I tell everyone in Danville, that I was always fond of Keon. That is true— I liked Keon, though he drove everyone around him nuts half the time. I say that I covered Keon on the court, I covered his suspensions, but I tried to be fair. I also say that if I wanted to simply rip Keon, I could have done so from Las Vegas. There is certainly enough documented material to pull from. But I would like some insight as to what has happened to him, and my overtures to Keon himself, at the PSB, have yet to lead to an audience with him.
She quickly cuts into the town of Danville, calling it a racist community, and saying Keon is a product of that environment. Ask anyone, she says, and they’ll tell you Danville is racist. (There is no doubt racism in Danville, which is 34 percent African-American and is home to many low-income African-American residents who have moved in from Chicago, but Clark’s criminal record would land anyone—even Dick Van Dyke—in the Public Safety Building.) Her racism allegation rings a bell—a decade ago, after Keon got into a fight with an opponent at San Jose State, he accused the Spartan player of dropping N-bombs on him throughout the game. At the time, Keon said he’d been called that name for years, dating to his time in Danville.
When talking of her son, Brown seems tense, terse, but speaks crisply, as if reciting prepared text. She’d be a hell of a political candidate, and her powerful personality has halted many Danvillians close to Keon from saying anything—positive or otherwise—about her son. Running into an angry Cynthia Brown, at church or at Village Mall, is not an appealing prospect.
Not finished, Brown takes after local law enforcement and the judicial system, saying police officers and state attorneys have picked on Keon for his color and his money, evidently out of jealousy. She says that Keon needs help and reminds me that he had been seeking treatment in Houston when the feds apprehended him and shipped him back home. He needs recovery, she says, and I seize that comment and say, “If there’s anything I can relate to, it’s this. I know what that’s like. You know what covering UNLV was like in those days? Chaos. It was total chaos. Some of us had to change the way we live after those days, including me.” She seems to be listening, finally, and I tell her I’ve been to a place in town, an A-framed meeting place called the Camel Club that holds 12-step meetings. I’ve been in town for one night, and I know there are people who would be willing to visit Keon in jail and talk to him about any form of recovery he chooses.
She seems to be listening, looking me straight in the face with those dark, penetrating eyes. She says, okay, she wants time to gather her thoughts, and asks me to list some questions about Keon that I have for her during my stay. I do that, and we are to meet the next day. But overnight she changes her mind. She calls and says simply, “I can’t talk to you.” No reason given. That’s the last I hear of Keon’s mother.
•••••
Java Hut will be staying open late today, maybe even until 3:30 p.m. Gene Gourley will be stopping by for coffee.
Gourley would be the Gene Hackman of Danville—hearkening to Hackman’s role as Coach Norman Dale in Hoosiers—but of course the town already boasts the real Gene Hackman. What can be said about Gourley is he is one of the town’s most-respected and most-admired citizens, for 22 years the head coach of Danville High School’s basketball team. Gourley is known as “Coach” just about everywhere, and at the end of the week I’m happy to be invited to the dedication of Gene Gourley Court at the Danville YMCA. If you know Gene Gourley, you have juice in Danville.
Gourley and Clark are forever linked in Danville lore because of the school’s greatest basketball team, the 1992-93 Vikings, which reached the semifinals of the Illinois AA state basketball tournament. At the time there were just two divisions for the entire state. Clark’s legal and personal turmoil notwithstanding, that year’s Danville Vikings are still fondly recalled all over town.
Gourley remembers first seeing Clark running around the YMCA as a kid, maybe in sixth grade. “He was running around, playing some basketball, sometimes just running,” Gourley recalls with a chuckle. “I got to know him his freshman year at Danville, and he’d grown so much that he was not real coordinated and was really weak. He was 6-5, 6-6, just a project.” Clark was not a factor as a player during his freshman or sophomore years, primarily, as Gourley recalls, because of poor academics. “I don’t think he ever took school seriously at Danville,” he says. But Clark’s developing skills and body could not be ignored. By the beginning of his junior year he was at least 6-foot-8 and growing fast.
Problem was, Keon was not yet a great talent, and played for a very good team. In his junior year, Danville advanced to the state tournament’s “Sweet 16,” and, as Gourley says, “His work ethic and accountability were not where I wanted it to be at the time. I’m old-school that way.” But Clark continued to grow, and in his senior year had reached 6-foot-11. Gourley had to find a way to develop Clark while remaining true to his “old-school” philosophy, which was simple: If you don’t work hard, you don’t play. Clark was booted from practice several times by Gourley, and away from the court had already been caught lifting a knee brace from a drugstore, which the store’s proprietor noticed when he saw Keon wearing the brace during a televised replay of a Danville High game. More than any player, Clark put his coach’s “old-school” approach to the test.
Gourley recalls, “I finally told Keon, ‘You have the ability to be a starter and play on this team, play all the time. This is the way it’s going to be: The next game, I’m going to let you start, but if you have an attitude or are not working hard, I’m going to take you out and sit you right next to me for three minutes. And I’ll put you back in, but if you don’t show me you want to play, I’ll take you out a second time and you ain’t going back in.’”
Hackman couldn’t have stated it any better. Gourley’s system worked well enough to keep Clark on the court and motivated. As Gourley puts it, he was the darling of the state tournament, flourishing as if from nowhere for the plucky upstarts from tiny Danville. The memories are still vivid and cherished; hanging in Gourley’s home is a framed photo from that tournament, of Clark’s long arms wrapped around the coach, whose happy face is but a blip in Keon’s body.
It was at this time that Temple ramped up its recruiting efforts and descended on the Danville High campus. Clark liked Owls coach John Chaney quite a lot, and Temple was one of the more highly regarded programs in the country. But Clark’s academics were hardly a launching pad to higher education, “basically Cs, Ds and Fs” as the coach recalls. After Clark’s senior season, a meeting between Temple officials, including Chaney, was scheduled at Gourley’s office at Danville High. The coach was there, as was the player and Cynthia Brown. Clark’s eligibility was the sole agenda item.
“I give Temple a lot of credit, because they found Keon early, when he was an unknown, and all of a sudden in his senior year he’s playing against Chicago teams and blocking 10 shots a game and doing all these unbelievable things,” Gourley says. “He had that personality that could shine, too, and they loved that, and Keon really wanted to go there. So we’re in my office, and they’re talking about getting him signed, and they brought up his academic questions. They’re being really positive, saying, ‘Keon, we can get you into summer school, and if you make straight As and finish up this year and do really well, you’ll be academically eligible.’”
But Chaney was talking fantasy; Clark, though intuitively intelligent despite his awful decisions, never had an appetite for the classroom.
“I’m saying, ‘You know, Coach, that’s true. That could happen,’” Gourley continues. “‘But given Keon’s grades, what happens if he doesn’t make all As in summer school?’” Good question, unless you are Cynthia Brown.
“She jumped on me. ‘There you go! You don’t think Keon can do it; you’re being negative again!’ I was trying to look out for her son, and she started blaming the school—the counselor didn’t schedule him right, on and on,” Gourley says. Chaney was still bent on signing Clark, but Gourley walked out of the meeting shaking his head, and of course Clark never did enroll at Temple.
The incident underscores the friction between the coach and the parent. Brown wanted her son to be disciplined, but not at the expense of playing time. Years later, she made that point clear to the coach during the Dustbowl Tournament, an annual community hoops event. Gourley was seated alone in the stands, and Brown arrived with a few fans and took a seat a few rows in front of him. Loud enough so the old coach could hear, she said to those around her, “Yeah, if somebody had given Keon a chance to play and hadn’t picked on him in high school, he’d be a lot better than he is now.” Clark was in the NBA at the time.
But Gourley did spend some one-on-one time with Clark himself this September, on the golf course. Over the past few years Clark had become a pretty fair golfer, shooting around 100 with his customized Pings. Those who have spent time with Clark on the course say he has just one true passion—golf. It’s a shame he got himself run off the Harrison Park public course, where his frequent drunken diatribes were finally too much for players or club officials to tolerate (Clark’s final act at Harrison Park was berating two guys on the ninth hole who happened to be Illinois state patrolmen). But he has been welcome at Turtle Run, a higher-end country club. Gourley plays at Turtle Run, too, and ran into Clark one afternoon. Neither had playing partners—both Clark and the coach are fine playing nine on their own—and paired up. By then, Clark was facing sentencing on multiple felonies in two counties and sought solace on the links.
“I’d read all this stuff about him, and I didn’t want to browbeat him to death because he knows where I’m coming from, how I feel,” Gourley says. “He’s a good golfer—that’s the funny thing, he’s got that long body, with a lot of room for error, but I told him he had a really nice swing. He says, ‘Yeah, Coach, I took up the wrong sport.’ He said something about coming back to Danville, and I said it wasn’t always the best thing to do, to go back to your hometown, because there are a lot of hangers-on here, a lot of people who want to take part in his success and ride his coattails. He says, ‘It’s kind of sad, Coach, to come back to your hometown and not be able to live like you want to.’”
Finally, the coach told his former star player, “Maybe the best thing for you would be to get out of Danville.” Gourley meant eventually, of course, not immediately. But two weeks later, Clark was winding his way to Texas. Gourley shakes his head and says, “Maybe he took me too literally.” Maybe. With Keon Clark, you never really know.
•••••
The voice on the other end of the phone is from the blurry past, but it remains undeniably familiar. “Hey! It’s Coach Bayno.” Bill Bayno is the onetime fast-rising NCAA coaching star who led UNLV back to the NCAA Tournament and back to NCAA probation (suffice to say that the recruitment of Lamar Odom was a painful turning point for many people connected to the UNLV hoops program). Bayno was fired by then-UNLV President Carol Harter during the 2000-2001 season, but he has rallied, in his life and career, and today is an assistant with the Portland Trail Blazers.
Bayno asks what is happening with Clark, and I give him the crystallized criminal report.
“I’m truly, truly sorry to hear about him,” Bayno says. “I fell out of touch with him, but NBA teams have been calling me over the past two years trying to find out about him.” The conversation turns nostalgic, with the coach remembering Clark’s unselfishness on the court—Keon was anything but a ball hog—and his God-given ability. “He and Shawn Marion were the best athletes I ever coached,” Bayno says, referring to the current Phoenix Suns forward and NBA All-Star. “There are very, very few 7-footers who had Keon’s coordination.”
Clark was not merely a great basketball player. “I remember the first time I saw him hit a golf ball, I went, ‘Holy shit!’ It was pretty easy for him,” Bayno says, laughing. “He was the best at everything we did. We took the team out for bowling, he was the best bowler. We drove race cars out at the mini-grand prix, he was the best at that. We played softball, and he could hit a softball 400 feet.” And, though the coach was not privy to this trait, Clark mastered a dead-on Bill Bayno impression while at UNLV.
The coach is particularly interested in Clark’s trip to the treatment center in Houston. “If he was at the clinic, trying to get help, that’s a positive sign.” Bayno considers himself a recovering alcoholic (sobriety date: May 25, 2002) who wasn’t fully equipped for the demands of running a major college-basketball program when he was hired by then-interim UNLV President Kenny Guinn in 1995. “Had I been sober, I would have been able to help him more, but I was managing my own disease, and when you’re doing that, it takes up all of your energy,” says Bayno, just 32 when he took over at UNLV. “I think he really was a good kid, but when he was hit with that suspension, that was kind of the beginning of the end, at least at UNLV.”
It becomes apparent that three people deeply involved in the saga of Keon Clark were mired in the same condition. Nobody fully realized the problems of the others—as Bayno says, “I didn’t realize you drank that much”—but it’s sad to report that Clark was not the only one onboard the UNLV Caravan who was drinking his way toward implosion. If Clark is serious about changing his life through recovery, he’ll find that, in that world, a pint-a-day gin habit is not a record. But it is respectable. The details are largely irrelevant, though, as the coach and writer discuss what type of help Clark would need to rebuild his life.
Bayno asks a favor. “If you see Keon, give him my cell phone number. Give it to his mom, or his attorney or whoever. I want to help him.” It might seem like a courteous gesture from an old coach, but more likely, it’s a 12-step call.
•••••
The 300 block of Poland Road has been listed as Keon Clark’s address for the past two years. The house (where his mother, who oversees his holdings, also resides) is on the rural outskirts of town, just beyond the city limits. This is where Danville police were called on a 911 call earlier this year, a domestic dispute in which Clark was found in the kitchen gripping a handgun. The officers actually had to draw down on him to resolve that particularly tense conflict in this area of ranch-style homes, where straw is sold from barns, where houses sit on small patches of farmland and neighbors can attend two small churches—the red-brick Farmers Chapel United Methodist Church (established 1871) and the newer, aluminum-sided Edgewood Baptist Church.
Clark’s light-green home sits at the end of a very long, circular driveway, more like a short street, and is big, between 4,000 and 5,000 square feet. There’s a hoop out front and, remarkably, the plum-colored Chevy Impala that Clark drove while at UNLV. Same car, like new, I used to see parked outside the Thomas & Mack Center. The home sits far back from Poland Road on a 26-acre plot. It was once a cornfield, in fact, and Clark even considered building a five-hole golf course on the property but was talked out of it for the ample cost of development and maintenance. The next-door neighbor, retired painting contractor Bob Ervin, welcomes an unexpected visitor and is fine to talk about Clark.
“I think he was surrounded by a bunch of phonies,” says Ervin, who has lived on this parcel for 40 years. “I think he got too much, too fast. But I’ve never personally had any trouble at all with him.”
Ervin recalls a similarly random popover by someone asking about Keon Clark from about three years ago. “I was picking blackberries, and this scout from the Cleveland Cavaliers drives up and asks where he can find Keon Clark.”
In the shrunken universe of Keon Clark, this person is easy to locate: He’s Mark Warkentien, today the vice president of basketball operations for the Denver Nuggets and a former executive with the Cavs. Warkentien also spent some time at UNLV, as an assistant coach and recruiting coordinator and assistant athletic director during the Tark years. He helped convince Guinn to hire Bayno, in fact, and first saw Clark play (terrible one night and great the next, naturally) at Dixie College. Guinn and Bayno were also on that trip to St. George.
Though at least a dozen pro teams were interested in Clark, Warkentien was the last NBA official to meet with the wayward player, during the summer and fall of 2004. Warkentien drove around Danville until finding Poland Road and caught Ervin outside his house. Warkentien had wisely packed his golf clubs, and when Ervin said Clark was probably golfing, the NBA exec and would-be gumshoe headed out to Harrison Park. Clark was on the driving range. The two reconnected, playing quarter-a-hole golf and discussing Clark’s NBA future.
“We met four, five times that summer, golfed twice,” Warkentien says during a phone conversation. “We were looking for inside help, and that was my last stab at Keon. A number of times he was ready, but our team wasn’t. There were a couple of times the organization was ready for him, but he wasn’t ready for us.” Clark was still a hot commodity for his size and skills, and Warkentien tried to convince Clark to at least take a 10-day contract to see how (or even if) he would fit with the Cavs. But by the summer of ’04, Clark already had begun his slide into trouble. He was making those trips to Indiana, drinking to excess (he was known to order a quart of cranberry juice on the golf course, supplying his own hard alcohol for his daily round) and rolling up criminal charges. Another roadblock to a possible return to the NBA was that word had spread around the league that he had failed to effectively rehab his injured ankle, though Warkentien says he had no problem with Clark’s athletic skills, even in the summer of 2004.
“We were thinking we might be able to reinvent this guy, as a player, but that process just fell apart,” Warkentien says. “He probably could have signed another big contract, but the crazy thing about Keon is it was never about the money. He just wanted to be left alone. Ninety-nine guys out of 100 would have wanted more money, but he’s that one guy who didn’t. It just didn’t matter to him. It’s the damnedest thing.”
•••••
In the back room at Dean’s Paint and Wallpaper is a door trim marked several times over in various colors of ink. You have to look hard to find it, and the marks are more than a decade old—you can tell, because they are dated—marking the growth of Keon Clark during his teen years. It ends with, “4-14-96,” and “7-0.” So at the paint shop owned by the father of one of Keon Clark’s best friends, he was a genuine 7-footer.
Terry Mourer has operated the paint shop on East Main Street for 35 years. Terry’s oldest son, Jim, met Clark when he was 10 and Clark was nine. They became good friends, despite the difference in race, size and skills. As Clark developed into a pro athlete, Jim became a whiz in finance and opened a contracting business in Indianapolis. Clark always trusted Jim and, after a falling-out with his original NBA agent, asked Jim to represent him during his free-agent negotiations during the summer of 2002-2003.
Clark has been derided by journalists who cover the NBA for trusting an unproven representative (and an old buddy from his hometown at that) in a world where insiders thrive. But Jim Mourer did satisfy Clark’s wishes for a two-year, $10 million contract with the Sacramento Kings. Clark actually could have earned a longer contract—Mourer says he could have fetched seven years at $5 million per season, but he wanted the two-year deal, with a player’s option for free-agency after just one season.
“I would have gone with a longer deal, but Keon didn’t want it to be guaranteed,” Mourer says during a phone interview from Indianapolis. “I can’t say exactly why that was, but here’s the kicker: Keon would still be getting $5 million a year if he’d done that.”
Not that Clark wasn’t concerned about money. His buddy had worked for several months as his agent, and was ready to reap the benefits. NBA agents typically receive a 4-percent cut of their client’s’ salary, but only after the contract is signed and the checks start rolling. And just before Clark was to sign the deal with Sacramento, he pulled Mourer aside and told him he “wasn’t comfortable” with the 4-percent agreement. Facing the possibility of losing the deal with the Kings, Mourer told Clark he was willing to work out a payment arrangement later, but it was important for Keon to be under contract—now.
And as the agent of record, Mourer was legally entitled to a 4-percent fee as his good friend’s representative.
“Here’s the best way to put it: Keon doesn’t believe agents should get that much money,” Mourer says. “He thinks all they do is talk and make phone calls.” Such complaints are nothing new; Clark has been reluctant to pay his ever-growing list of attorneys, and for such routine services as landscaping and even carpet-cleaning in his hometown.
During a round of golf, Mourer pressed Clark to at least reimburse him for expenses Mourer had charged to his credit card while courting NBA teams. Clark paid him $30,000, but it wasn’t until Mourer filed a grievance with the NBA that money was deducted from Clark’s paycheck and shifted to Mourer.
“If I could take it back now, I wish I’d never, ever been involved with that,” Mourer says. “I made more money selling homes than I’d ever make as an agent.”
•••••
You wonder if they’ll ever remove Clark’s No. 23 from the glass-enclosed booth where it hangs in the gym at Danville High School. The gym was built in 1924, seats 3,000 and is decked out with a fairly fresh coat of maroon-and-gold paint. The Danville High boys’ basketball team is working out, the starters running a full-court press against the reserves. The place smells of sweat, from today and probably from decades earlier, and the guys’ new Nikes squeak along the court.
I’ve heard about a player on this team, a kid who is supposed to be the best talent since Clark himself wore the Vikings’ uniform. It’s easy to spot Mikel Brigham. As the team breaks to shoot foul shots, one particularly lean and tall kid—he’s 6-foot-5, easily—grabs a loose ball and effortlessly throws back a reverse dunk.
It’s a good move, but a bad move.
“The next guy who dunks is doing push-ups!” warns head coach Gary Tidwell, an energetic young guy who seems prematurely gray. Brigham is just a junior but already has been suspended for one game, for trash-talking a substitute teacher. A little like Clark at that age. Viking boosters wonder if the kid is paying attention to Clark’s plight.
I make my way over to the 1,800-seat Danville High auditorium, a beautiful theater with a wide wooden stage and plush burgundy seats. On this day a youth dance recital is being staged, and at the back of the theater are giant framed newspaper accounts of a visit that Danville’s own Dick Van Dyke made a few years ago, to help with the theater department’s production of Bye Bye Birdie (in which Van Dyke starred, in 1963). We’ve all seen many photos of Van Dyke over the years, from his days on The Dick Van Dyke Show or Mary Poppins. But I’ve not seen him smile like this. It’s a laugh, so real, so very genuine. No acting going on. It is clear that this man—and the other members of the Danville Five—truly embodies the glad spirit of this small town. Compared to the beaming Van Dyke, the honor bestowed on Clark, over at the gym, is just an empty jersey. Later, I’m told there was once a Keon Clark Day in Danville, a piece of information accompanied by that familiar scoff.
•••••
Keon Clark has been called back to court. He’s made one appearance already today, but he needs to return to defend himself in a family court case in which the plaintiff, Jamie Hall, claims he owes $34,000 in negligent support payments. Towering over the officer at his side, he ducks through the doorway leading out of the detention area, and is again led toward the elevators leading to the fourth floor of the courthouse. I look up and note that Keon has aged considerably—he looks like his own father, I’m sure. I ask him how he is, and he says, quickly, “I’m fine, as fine as fine can be.” We chat only briefly, and I mention my conversation with Bayno. “Can you make sure my attorney has his number?” Clark asks before being led back to into the courtroom.
He’s alone again, lost. There are six people in the room—where is Clark’s entourage today?—as Danville attorney David Ryan runs through his client’s complaint, asking the court to garnish Clark’s bank account to meet his financial commitment to Hall and little Keon. Clark has never voluntarily paid child support, which is $8,500 per month, an amount based on his long-lost earning power as an NBA player. It turns out Clark has plenty of money left, about $3.5 million in the bank, according to his own documents supplied to the court a few months ago. He made $15 million in his career, but with the cheap green fees in Danville would seem to have a fairly substantial nest egg.
But none of that is relevant as Clark, softer in tone than he was earlier in the day, explains to the same judge—Clary again—that he should not have to pay $8,500 a month to this woman. “That figure was based on an NBA lifestyle, which I haven’t had in three years, and I have no reason to give money over to a child I haven’t seen for a year in his life, and a year of my life,” Clark says, apparently adding up the two years he has not seen his son. “This woman has three kids, and only one of the kids is mine. She has two vehicles. Why should I have to be required to pay for all this ...” Clary interrupts by saying, “Again, you need an attorney. You’re asking me questions you should be asking your attorney.”
The sun is setting on Keon Clark, whose bald head is being hit with a thin streak of light cutting through the court’s back window. This is where he finally meets the consequences, in an empty courtroom in Danville. Neon Keon, sitting in a lonely spotlight, adrift in his own convoluted reasoning. You feel a catch in your throat and a sting in your eyes, remembering the gifted kid who could dunk on the world but left it all on the court.
John Katsilometes is the Weekly’s writer at large.