Willie Davis is always in a charitable mood.
As the president of the Dallas Chapter of the National Basketball Retired Players Association, Davis heads up a group of players who live in the Dallas/Fort Worth area who go around town making life a bit easier for others. The NBRPA puts on several free basketball camps for the less fortunate, have turkey giveaways – with all the trimmings – during Thanksgiving, and hand out Christmas presents in December.
They also have fund-raising golf tournaments and put on educational workshops for youths.
“My big thing here in Dallas is trying to connect with our youth and expose them to things that they don’t get exposed to in the school setting,” said Davis, who used to play for the Dallas Chaparrals. “I retired from education — that’s why I’m so keenly aware of the needs of our youths today.
“If they manage to (graduate and) walk across the stage, many of them are not prepared themselves to the point where they’re ready to go out into the world. Many of them don’t have any work experience. They don’t really know how to communicate properly in a business setting, and I know this because we do workshops with kids right now.”
Davis is disheartened when he sees families who can’t afford to put food on their table. He also is exasperated when parents don’t have the necessary funds to make sure their kids have a Merry Christmas.
“I really want to give the turkeys to people that need them, so I developed community partners that identify the people that need the turkeys,” Davis said. “We already have it packaged up and ready to put in the car. We’re doing some things in the community to support people who need help, and we just need exposure about what we’re doing.
“For Christmas, we have a Shop With A Cop program over in Fort Worth. Last year we donated 1,500 $100 gift cards, and they passed it out to kids that’s already been identified by community organizations. And then they go to a Wal-Mart store in White Settlement, and they walk around in the store shopping with the police. That’s why it’s called Shop With A Cop.”
Several former NBA players are members of the Dallas Chapter of the NBRPA, including former Dallas Mavericks Sam Perkins, Morlon Wiley and Oliver Miller. Also on that list are Jimmy King, Ira Terrell and Stephen Howard.
Wiley, who played for the Mavs during the 1988-89 season and again from 1993-95, is the treasurer of the Dallas Chapter of the NBRPA.
“I’ll do all the bookings, I go over it with Willie, and I write the checks,” Wiley said. “We do a bunch of camps, we’ve got a real good advisory board — they sell out our golf tournaments.”
Davis said they also have a limited partnership with the Mavs.
“Just being able to connect with them shows that they’re willing to look at us and see what we’re doing,” he said. “Who knows? There might be something that if we do it well enough, they might find a place for a couple of guys to come in and maybe do some things with them.”
Wiley, meanwhile, said the NBRPA is also there to help former players transition to the real world after their NBA careers are over.
“I think it’s good for former players to stay involved,” Wiley said. “All of us retired when we were real young, and then trying to transition, and then trying to go back in that room and everybody’s asking you, ‘What are you doing now?’
“That’s tough for a lot of guys, so they kind of hide. We have a lot of former players that live in the Metroplex that we would love to be a part of this, too.”
The NBRPA – aka the Legends — is a nonprofit organization founded in 1992 by former NBA players Dave DeBusschere, Dave Bing, Archie Clark, Dave Cowens and Oscar Robertson. They have over 1,000 members, featuring 70 Hall of Fame players and 41 of the NBA’s 50 greatest players of all-time, including Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson and Julius Erving.
From Feb. 13-16, the NBRPA will be a part of the festivities at the NBA All-Star game in San Francisco with a luncheon and other charitable events on their docket. Wiley describes it as: “All of your bubble gum cards coming to life. I was cool with Dr. J, I was cool with Bill Russell, because you saw them yearly.
“They may not know your name, but they know your face because you’ve seen each other all the time. It’s just a real cool place. Just to hear all the war stories. That little fish I caught when I was playing, it’s a whale now over the years.”
Davis, who played college basketball for North Texas State, is adamant about the NBRPA doing as much for the youths in this area as they are doing to assist former players.
“You played basketball so long ago, people still remember who you are, but sometimes they don’t even recognize who you are,” he said. “You don’t even look how you looked 20 years ago, 15 years ago.
“The only way you can really build some capacity for yourself or do something using your platform is you got to build relationships, and that’s how we’ve built this chapter to the extent that we’ve built it. What I try to model and instill in these guys is your platform is still alive.”
The NBRPA will be hosting a golf tournament at Brookhaven Country Club in Farmers Branch on June 9. It’s one of their biggest and most popular events of the year.
“When people play in our golf tournament – which are mostly businessmen and women – very few of them leave when the golf tournament is over,” Davis said. “They all come to the club house. Why? The draw is they want to come back and see who’s in there.”
And who’s in there, Davis said, are a bunch of retired NBA players who are doing a lot of charity work in the DFW area.
X: @DwainPrice
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