Basketball legend in Varese, he sacrificed the NBA for his ideals. He became a musician with the instrument that Kareem sold him: “He wanted a hundred dollars, it was worth a thousand. After the expulsion from Portland I also became a taxi driver. Varese was a formidable team”
On February 1, 1972, the Portland Trail Blazers await the Phoenix Suns in one of their 82 regular season games in the NBA. It is America shocked by the endless conflict in Vietnam and enveloped in a spiral of protests that does not spare even President Nixon. When the anthem rings out on the field before the match, a player decides to remain seated: it is his civil way of protesting against ever-creeping racism and against a senseless war that demands the sacrifice of thousands of young lives. That man is called Charlie Yelverton, and after that gesture he will have to abandon forever the league that had welcomed him just a few months ago: a broken dream. Meanwhile, a few hours earlier, in Varese, thousands of kilometers away, a small sporting drama took place: the home team lost by one point in extra time against their hated rivals from Cantù in a very hot derby. A defeat that will cost dearly: Ignis will end the season in first place but on equal points with Simmenthal Milano and will lose the scudetto in the play-off in Rome. Charlie and the Garden City do not yet know that their destinies were inextricably linked that day.
After the expulsion from Portland, the first landing in Europe, in Greece.
“I went on a summer tour in Italy, people from Olympiacos saw me and took me to Athens. But after the coup d’état I returned to America and to get by I also worked as a taxi driver: it allowed me to train at home after I finished my shift.”
Until Varese called in 1974.
“I hadn’t played for a few months, even though I was keeping fit, and they trusted me. I was the foreigner in the Cup, we won the 1975 Champions Cup without losing a single match. An exceptional team: Gualco, Bisson, Ossola, Rusconi…”.
“The leader. He expressed a great personality, he knew how to distinguish the moment in which it was necessary to joke from the moment in which it was necessary to encourage his teammates and the environment. When he became serious we listened to him in silence. And we had a great coach, Sandro Gamba”.
It was said that she remained suspended in the air and never came down, making it impossible to defend her shots.
“It was a quality that I honed when I was a boy and then in college: I used to climb the steps of the arenas diagonally to strengthen my leg muscles and then jump off.”
But was there any opponent capable of containing it?
“That devil Bariviera. He was smart, he marked me like a man and when I started the shooting movement, without being seen by the referees, he gave me a tap on the elbow.”
His best skill as a player?
“It may seem strange, but I think I was above all a great defender. I learned basketball in the playgrounds of Harlem, where there are no rules and where the first thing you have to do is stop your opponents from scoring you in the face. In elementary school, they made me play against kids two years older than me, I had to grow up quickly if I didn’t want to get overwhelmed.”
Speaking of defense: it is said that you were the first to tell Kobe Bryant that in basketball you shouldn’t just make baskets…
“It was at a camp I organized at Abetone, it was 1990, his father Joe brought him to me. Kobe was 12 years old, he already had a glimpse of incredible talent, but when he had the ball he never passed it and always tried to shoot, and then didn’t come back to defend. When I asked him who his idol was, he replied “Michael Jordan”. So I took him aside and told him to watch his videos, and to evaluate whether the decisive plays were those in attack or in defense. And I also taught him to improve his dribbling with an exercise that I had invented, starting from six different positions of the ball around the body. A few years later, when Kobe signed his first millionaire contract with the Lakers, his father sent me boxes and boxes of technical material, accompanied by a note: ‘Without you this wouldn’t have been possible'”.
Who do you think was the best player of all time?
“In the NBA, Elgin Baylor and just below Oscar Robertson. But the greatest of all is someone who never played in the NBA, Joe Hammond. He was the king of Rucker Park, the most famous playground in Harlem: he once scored 50 points against Doctor J Julius Erving. But the extraordinary thing is that he scored them in just one half…”.
Tell us about your passion for music.
“It was passed down to me from my father, Charlie Roscoe, he loved “salsa”. I played the saxophone since I was a child, I was gifted. Then a game of chess with Kareem Abdul Jabbar changed my life”.
“We’ve known each other since we were kids, we’re both from New York even though he comes from the Bronx: and then we competed against each other in high school, he at Power Memorial and I at Rice, a bit like Milan and Inter. When I went to play in Milwaukee with the Blazers, he invited me to his house, we both had a passion for chess. In the living room he had a Selmer, the most famous brand of saxophone in the world. When he learned that I had a sax too, but of decidedly inferior quality, he offered to sell me the I paid a hundred dollars for it, it was worth more than a thousand.”
It is the instrument that still accompanies her in her evenings.
“I’ve never recorded my own stuff, I’ve never been interested in it. I’ve always been a performer, even if now I have arthritis in my hands and my mouth is a little crooked, so I’ve had to reduce my repertoire. But I still enjoy it.”
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