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Tigers’ Dorsey Grows Into His Role 4/3/08

Success and Missteps Mark Unlikely Trip From West Baltimore
By Adam Kilgore
Washington Post Staff Writer
HOUSTON — Sharlene Dorsey knew right away, from the sound of her son’s voice on her cellphone, that something was wrong. “Ma,” he told her, “I said something I shouldn’t have said.”

“Joey,” she replied. “What did you do?”

Well, Joey Dorsey explained, he tried to use David and Goliath as a metaphor for his matchup against Greg Oden last year, in Memphis’s region final against Ohio State in the NCAA tournament. Only he had called himself Goliath when he had intended to show what an underdog he was. “It came out wrong,” Sharlene said.

Joey landed in the spotlight of one of the nation’s largest sporting events and in the crosshairs of columnists and fans. It came at him fast. How could this have happened to a skinny kid from West Baltimore who was teased for having ears so large doctors considered taping them back, who didn’t play organized basketball until he was 17 and a junior at Frederick Douglass High?

He had already developed a persona as Memphis’s intimidator, the same role he played this season during the Tigers’ run to the Final Four in San Antonio, where Memphis will meet UCLA on Saturday. The 6-foot-9 senior may be the Final Four’s most improbable participant. He is the first member of his family to last four years at college; the only male in his family, Sharlene said, not in jail or caught up in Baltimore’s drug scene.

“It’s been amazing to me,” he said. “Every time I go out there and play, it’s like a dream. I can’t believe I’m here playing.”

His remarks about Oden only added to his menacing reputation, one built on bulging muscles and violent dunks. Those close to him, though, know him as a prankster who “will definitely try you,” his mother said, laughing. In elementary school he would pluck an apple off his teacher’s desk, take a bite and then put it back. He jumped off tables and did cartwheels during class.

At Memphis, he’ll tell one teammate to knock on another’s door and run away. When the second teammate opens the door, Dorsey splashes a cup of water in the unsuspecting player’s face. His favorite part about college is “sneaking out after curfew, and seeing how much he can get away with,” Sharlene said.

Sharlene witnessed her son’s skill in that area firsthand. A single mother, she vowed to protect Joey from their ravaged neighborhood, but she disapproved of her son playing basketball.

Joey was tall, and a neighbor constantly tried to persuade him to come to the blacktop courts. Sharlene was wary of the neighbor, whom she knew to be a drug user.

But Joey kept sneaking away, and people around Baltimore’s playground noticed how natural he was, how well he moved for his height. He joined a local summer league without telling Sharlene, and the coach at Frederick Douglass spotted him. Before his junior year, the coach persuaded him to come out for the team. Dorsey still didn’t tell his mother.

His first organized basketball game came down to the final possession, and he made the game-winning shot. The next day, Sharlene thumbed through the newspaper and discovered her son’s secret: Dorsey’s picture appeared on the front page of the sports section.

“She went at me,” he said.

But Sharlene, with some prodding from her mother, finally realized the opportunity basketball afforded. No one in their family had ever graduated from college, and now 20 schools wanted her son.

Dorsey chose Memphis after stops at two prep schools, and he bonded with his teammates immediately.

But Dorsey’s demeanor changed last season after he called out Oden. And after Oden dominated him — Dorsey scored no points and grabbed three rebounds — and helped end the Tigers’ season, Dorsey retreated to his mother’s apartment in Baltimore, so embarrassed he didn’t go outside for two weeks.

The incident, Dorsey said, matured him.

Before this year’s tournament began, Coach John Calipari gave Dorsey a blue diary with the Memphis logo on the front. “Write your story,” Calipari told him. Before each game, Dorsey scribbles a narrative about making a game-winning free throw.

Dorsey made only 38 percent of his free throws this season, but after emerging from where he started, almost anything seems possible. Sharlene was walking down her street recently and saw her neighbor, the man who introduced her son to basketball. She could tell drug use had swallowed him. “He really looked awful,” she said.

She reached into her purse, pulled out a DVD, a copy of a highlight tape Calipari had given her, and gave it to the man.

The meeting made Sharlene realize how differently things could have turned out. But she also knows her son — the kid with “Dumbo ears” who looked “kind of like Urkel” — too well to believe he wouldn’t be here, ready to finish his story.

“It’s real cool, but I keep asking my family, ‘Am I supposed to feel a different way?’ ” Sharlene said. “To me, he’s still just Joey.”

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