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you around. Stand up for yourself, son.”
    Ever since I was nine, Sarge taught me all the basics, thentold me, “Go play.” If I went to the park to work on things, he wasn’t trailing along with his head up my butt. It was up to me to get better.
    I was going into my senior year, and Bo Outlaw was still playing with my old AAU team. He was probably the best player in San Antonio at that point. They now see how good I’ve gotten and they figure they have a chance to win the whole thing, so they bringme back.
    I have to stay out of trouble because I want to play on that team.I’m getting letters from almost every college in the country, and this whole basketball thing might work out after all if I can just learn to keep my cool.
    Sarge is there for almost all my high school games, and he’s not very hard to miss. He’s riding the officials so hard my coach doesn’t ever have to bother. Aftera bad call, you could hear my father in the stands yelling, “You stupid ref!”
    My dad was going to make sure I didn’t blow it. Everything had to be done right. Once, in the middle of a game, he stood up and started hollering at me because my uniform shirt was untucked. That kind of stuff drove him crazy. They practically stopped the game so I could get my shirt tucked in. You could have hearda pin drop in that gym. Everybody knew not to mess with Sgt. Philip Harrison. He spent most of my high school career screaming, “Take it to the hole!”
    We played in Class 3A, and everyone was jealous of the Cole Cougars. I was getting all the attention, all the press. Other schools wanted to beat me and our team in the worst way.
    There was nothing fancy about our high school program. We dressedin the band room because we didn’t have a locker room. I was big into rap at that time and I knew all the lyrics to every song. Plus, we’d make up our own songs. One of our best was when we remixed the school song. It started out like, “Hail to our alma mater, hail to thee, colors green and gold.” We added our own beat, threw in a few swear words, put on our plastic Mercedes-Benz necklaces, andhad them rolling in the aisles.
    Coach Madura was straight country. He’d hear my rap music and yell, “Turn that garbage off!” Coach Madura handled us just right. He was very tough on me, but on the court he let me do a lot of things, which I appreciated. He used me to break the press. They’d throw the ball up to me and I’d bring it up the floor. My ball-handling skills were pretty good. But mostly,I could score.
    Besides Doug and Joe, who was all-state football and all-state baseball and had some real speed, we had this kid named DarrenMathey who could handle the ball pretty well. Our other football player was Dwayne Cyrus, another real athlete who added muscle. We had Jeff Petress, who could shoot the ball.
    Then we had Robbie, who we nicknamed the Duke of Juke. Robbie would get the ball,drive to the hole like a madman making all these crazy motions, then he’d kick the ball back out. So one time we’re playing and Robbie goes to the hole doing all his Duke of Juke stuff and he’s got a layup—I mean, no one is on him—and instead he kicks the ball back to me at the foul line.
    I yell at him, “Rob, what are you doing? You had a layup. You gotta take that.”
    So Rob stops right in themiddle of the game and slams the ball down on the court. “Listen,” the Duke of Juke screams at me, “I ain’t getting no scholarship, bitch. You shoot the ball!”
    He was right. I was the only one getting a scholarship. It was all on me.
    I ran into some nasty people in Texas. There was a lot of racism. Places like Asherton, Texas, and Plugerville, Texas. Those places held up signs with apes whenblack kids like me came to town. When you are a kid, that stuff hurts. I was already kind of self-conscious about my size, and that sure didn’t help. I had no choice but to learn to deal with it.
    When I was playing for LSU against Mississippi State,