ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, April 1, 1996 TAG: 9604020010
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B2 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: NEW YORK
SOURCE: IAN O'CONNOR NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
LES CASON ONCE HAD the stuff dreams are made of. Now the former basketball star's life is a nightmare.
The tallest man in the park limped through the sunlight, licking an ice cream cone, ignoring the fixed gaze of a half-dozen cops on the perimeter. He acknowledged a band of dealers, stepped clear of a mother and her stroller, and pointed toward a few NYU kids looking to score. On a strong afternoon for business, Les Cason was taking some time off. He sucked in the March chill, leaned against a concrete wall, and began telling a tale of two cities.
``Dick Vitale is a pusher,'' he said. ``I'm not a pusher. That was the difference in our lives.''
Cason laughed at the irony. I'm not a pusher. He said he has been arrested 60 times for selling drugs, but the cops said 100. On this day inside Washington Square Park, one of the uniforms is talking into his shirt collar, alerting a plainclothes partner, figuring on making it 101. They see a stranger with Cason, take him for a grad student out of the Village or a homeowner from Jersey. If they only knew the boundaries of the conversation. If they only knew their seller and buyer were talking about Vitale, HIV, and the living remains of an athlete who, 25 years before the Final Four, made East Rutherford, N.J., the most important dateline in college basketball.
In 1971, Cason was a 6-9 center for East Rutherford High School, for a dreamer named Richie Vitale. The player was the best prospect in the country, the coach his enterprising mentor. Together, they claimed a pair of state championships and a procession of college offers. A quarter-century later, Vitale returns home the face of TV, the author of books, the maker of commercials, the most identifiable figure in the game.
Cason does not return. He is out of work and infected with the AIDS virus. Once homeless, he lives in a subsidized apartment on the Upper West Side. He said he has quit dealing, has quit taking heroin and cocaine. The cops are skeptical. They say Cason shouldn't be negotiating his recovery inside Washington Square. He says it is home.
``I've been out of society for 20 years, and this is my last chance to get back in,'' Cason said. ``Finally, I want to live life the right way. I'm 43 and I need a job. ... I'm not bitter. Some people want to blame Dick Vitale for this, but I know he did everything he could for me. There's only one man to blame. Man in the mirror.''
`Like watching Gretzky'
Cason was a 12-year-old baseball player when Vitale discovered him. The boy was already 6-5 but hadn't so much as bounced a basketball. This was a perfect match of raw talent and blind ambition. Vitale, in his early 20s, arranged for Cason and his parents to move from Passaic to East Rutherford, a working-class town with six black families. They practiced layups first, then jump shots, then reverse dunks. By the time Cason was a freshman, it was clear he would make the next four winters in East Rutherford unlike any before them.
Willis Reed fell in love with his skills at a charity game, began working with the prodigy to sharpen them. Cason would score nearly 3,000 points in four varsity seasons, would interest more than 300 colleges. East Rutherford surrounded him with willing role players and a gifted playmaker named Dwight Hall, Cason's best friend. In '71, their senior year, East Rutherford - a school of 500 students - was undefeated and unchallenged in its place among the nation's elite teams.
``Les was doing all the ballhandling and turnaround jumpers you didn't see 6-9 guys doing back then,'' Hall said. ``It was probably like watching [Wayne] Gretzky come up. He had natural greatness in him.''
Vitale would have Cason over for dinner, would give him spending money. Once, Vitale allowed his center to use his car so he could attend the prom. Cason, without insurance, got drunk and wrecked it. Vitale smoothed things out with the police.
But during the '71 season the two drifted apart. Friends were telling Cason that Vitale was using him to get a college job. Vitale was telling Cason that he wasn't practicing hard enough. Rumors had Cason running with the wrong crowd. He was skipping class. Not wanting to blemish a perfect season, Vitale suspended him only once, for one game. Finally, the coach sat down his player in the bleachers.
``He told me, `Leslie, I'm going to make it with you or without you,''' Cason recalled. ``He told me I wasn't going to make it if I didn't change. I guess he was right.''
Cason signed on with Jerry Tarkanian at Long Beach State, while Vitale signed on as an assistant at Rutgers. Cason was an academic mess even Tark couldn't clean, so he left for San Jacinto Junior College in Texas. Vitale got him into Rutgers a year later. Cason wouldn't go to class, wouldn't go to the hoop. After Vitale accepted the head coaching job at the University of Detroit, Cason clashed with Rutgers coach Tom Young. He was a marginal reserve for a season and a half, forever teetering on the fringe of ineligibility. He left school, flunked an ABA tryout arranged by Vitale, moved to New York, and initiated a life of drugs and disease.
Vitale would be hired by the Pistons, then fired in a month's time. Upon inception, ESPN asked Vitale if he would be interested in an audition. His career was salvaged.
Nobody has been able to salvage Leslie Cason.
``It's my biggest disappointment,'' Vitale said. ``I used to go to bed at night and dream of Leslie playing in the Garden. I poured my heart out to that kid, hour after hour. I mean, I lost my first wife during those years. Leslie had all the talent in the world. Where he is now, that's the biggest hurt I've had in my life.''
A downward spiral
Cason is dressed in a faded black Adidas jacket, gray sweatpants and white high-tops. He is missing most of his upper teeth, but the years could have been harder on him. His eyes seem clear, his mind sure. They call him ``Slim'' in the park, but Cason doesn't appear a sickly arrangement of bone and joints. He said he contracted HIV in the early '80s, yet the virus hasn't given way to AIDS. He believes he might die without warning.
``A lot of my friends in here died of AIDS just like that,'' Cason said, scanning Washington Square with an index finger. ``I've seen 250-pound guys who looked great just drop dead. My T-cell count hasn't been too good. I feel OK now, but I know I could go at any moment.''
Cason is vague when describing how it started, how he went from the lawns of Rutgers to the streets of Manhattan. His family moved out of East Rutherford. He didn't want the same people who asked for his autograph in high school to keep asking about his plans. He had no luck finding work. One thing led to another. The heroin ran into cocaine. He started sleeping on the sidewalks in the Bowery. Then he upgraded to the benches in Washington Square.
His game gone, Cason started taking pride in the strangest things. He would sell drugs, but he wouldn't rob or mug anybody. Cason brags that the longest sentence he served was a mere 90 days.
``I'd say Les is the kindest, gentlest perp I've ever dealt with,'' said Lt. Robert McKenna of the Sixth Precinct. ``I've arrested him at least 35 times, and he never gave me trouble. He always cooperated and put his hands behind his back to be cuffed. Outside of the drugs, I think the only thing he ever did was pass some bad checks.''
The gentleman dealer was the easiest target. Cason wasn't only taller than his competition but plenty more naive.
``I was sitting in an unmarked car once when he turned around and offered me three bags of marijuana,'' McKenna said. ``When he realized it was me, he threw the bags over his shoulder, smiled, and then surrendered. I mean, you feel sorry for the guy. He used to come into the station with his life's possessions: a bar of soap, a rag and some toothpaste in a plastic bag.''
Cason said he is on methadone now - ``A drug to keep me off drugs'' - and that he wants to stay clean. Because of his HIV status, Social Security granted him an apartment. But when he applies for work, the rap sheet makes for a short interview. He is looking for an employer to take a chance.
``If someone just hands me money, I'm not going to do anything good with it,'' Cason said. ``I need a job I can go to every morning, something to hold onto. If it doesn't happen, sooner or later, I'm just going to go back to what I was doing.''
Success and failure
Cason fondly remembers the playoff games, the tendencies of his East Rutherford teammates, the piercing wisdom of his coach. He said he still loves the game, still catches the NBA when he can find a spare TV. Cason claimed there is no pain involved in watching backup forwards earn million-dollar contracts.
``I wouldn't have been one of those million-dollar players, anyway,'' he said. ``I would've been the type who played 10 years, got his pension, and then got out. That's my personality.''
Vitale tried in vain to alter the kid's makeup. He wanted Cason to share his lust for success. Even now, Vitale can't reach him. He screams into the cameras, does his shtick, sells his cars. Imagine that, bay-bee. Cason isn't impressed.
``Sometimes I wish he didn't do all that jumping around, that he was more serious,'' Cason said. ``But I guess he feels that's what he had to do to make it. Vitale was always going to do what he had to do to make it.''
Vitale has tried several times to meet with him, to help, to talk over old times. Cason is too embarrassed to have this conversation.
``I keep dodging him,'' he said. ``I haven't seen him in 20 years, but he's still like a father to me. What am I supposed to say to him? I don't want him to see me like this.''
Out of chances
A visitor asks Cason if he is interested in lunch. The cops follow him as he limps toward the east end of the park, then lose him as he passes through an open gate and heads toward a diner a couple of blocks north.
On the way, Cason is asked whether he would bet on himself to stay clear of drugs.
``I'm out of chances,'' he said. ``I don't have any choice.''
Cason decides it's getting late, that he is in too much of a rush to eat. He says if he comes across a few bucks later, he will buy a burger, not heroin. He says he might even bet the cash on UMass to win the championship.
LENGTH: Long : 180 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: ESPN Dick Vitale has returned to East Rutherford, N.J.,by CNBas a nationally known figure, a media personality as ESPN's top
college basketball analyst. KEYWORDS: BASKETBALL PROFILE