Clark: Thanks, but no thanks
Off the hoops radar since ’ 04, Keon Clark is alive and well (dope charges aside) and uninterested in saving the Raptors
Watching the Raptors get manhandled of late, there are those who pose a question: Is there not a tall guy walking this earth who could help ease the pain?
Jack Armstrong, the gravelvoiced broadcasting sage, was poring over statistics in the Air Canada Centre press room the other day when he mentioned an American of no fixed professional address.
“ Where,” Armstrong wondered, “ is Keon Clark?” Chuck Swirsky fielded the same query on his radio show last week, when it was apparent Toronto’s hoopsters could use the spring-loaded athleticism Clark brought to the club in 2002 and 2003.
“ Nobody can locate Keon Clark,” said Swirsky, the Raptors’ play- by- play man. And it’s true, indeed, that the last time most NBA fans heard, Clark had verbally accepted an offer to play for the New York Knicks during the summer of 2004. But he never signed the deal. He never phoned the Knicks back. He disappeared off the hoops map.
Finding the enigmatic beanpole was going to require the Sherlock Holmes treatment, to be sure. So your correspondent got out the magnifying glass, uncaged the bloodhound and, uh, typed Clark’s name into an Internet phone directory. He answered on the third ring.
“ It’s going all right, man,” said Clark in his familiar bullfrog baritone from his house in hometown Danville, Ill., about an hour’s drive from Indianapolis. “ I’m just trying to live my life without nobody telling me what I gotta wear. I mean, when you’re going to work, you’re going to work. When we work, we wear jerseys, know what I mean? We’re not working in an office. We’re working at 94 feet.” With that rant against the NBA’s new dress code, Clark bid adieu and hung up. When he answered his phone a couple of days later it was suggested an NBA team could still use him. Six- foot- 9 and soft- handed, athletically freakish and 30 years old, Clark’s potential still tanta-
lizes.
“ Anybody could use a guy like me when it comes down to basketball,” he said. “ I do know how to play it. But I don’t know how to play those other games that go along with the NBA. I’m non- conformist . . .” He last played in the NBA for the Utah Jazz in November 2003, when he was traded to Phoenix and released. He said the Indiana Pacers called him as recently as a month ago, but he hasn’t heard from any teams since. He didn’t say whether the drop- off in interest coincided with his appearance in a local courthouse earlier this month for a preliminary hearing on charges of possession of cocaine and cannabis, not to mention possession of a firearm without the proper identification card. A Danville newspaper quoted police testimony that said Clark had been driving erratically in his black 2003 Mercedes-Benz when officers pulled him over and discovered the drugs and the unloaded gun. A trial is set for January and Clark remains free on bond.
It wasn’t his first run- in with the law. He has been previously cited for marijuana possession. ( There’s a well- circulated story about Clark lighting up a generous helping of his cherished recreational vehicle while playing in a charity golf tournament in the same foursome as Glen Grunwald, then the Raptors general manager.)
Clark also conceded that he spent a couple of days in jail recently after what he characterized as a dispute over child- support payments to the mother of his 5- year- old son, Keon.
“ Jail ain’t built for 6- 9 guys,” he said. “ I’ll put it like this: When I was lying on the bed I had my feet out of the bars.”
Prohibited by a court order from seeing his son, he said he lives vicariously through pictures, “ and they’re old pictures.” It hurts, he said, that his son will grow up without a dad; Clark’s own father, who wasn’t around to raise him, has been serving a 65- year prison sentence for murder since 2003. Keon Clark’s two best friends are his golfing buddies, one a retired doctor in his 70s, the other a 50- something man on disability.
“ Anybody my age, they’re like, ‘ Man, you’ve got this and you’ve got that.’ Yeah, I worked for it. You sell dope. I don’t want to be around you,” he said. “ They already think I sell dope. That’s actually come out of the mouths of cops, ‘ Do you feel good selling dope to little kids?’ . . . This is their perception of me. They think in order for me to do the things I do, I’ve got to sell dope.
“ People don’t understand, if you can’t live the rest of your life off one year in the NBA, you can’t live off 21.” He explained that he “still hasn’t touched much” of the after- tax portion of the $ 15 million ( all figures U. S.) in salary he made during his six- year career; that he buys and sells rental properties for income. Other than the Benz, which remains in a police impoundment yard, his tastes aren’t extravagant. He has never owned a diamond, to the best of his recollection. He lives on 30 acres of land he bought a few years back for $ 250,000, including the house and the pool. Basketball is still in his life: once a week at the local YMCA.
“ Other than that, I just relax. I’m really cool doing nothing,” he said. “ I play golf every day, if possible. I played nine this morning. I’m still sh--- y, but I enjoy it. . . . What do I shoot? It depends on the night before.” He had to get going, he said, but he rhymed off a list of reasons why he’ll never play in the NBA again, the league’s policy of random drug testing not among them. He had surgery on an ankle in 2003 and it still bothers him. He hates flying and he doesn’t like the dress code. And then there’s the money, more of which he said he doesn’t need.
“ I’ve lost everybody, including my son, because of money. No question. Money always drives people apart,” he said, sighing. “ You know, I really wasn’t a big NBA guy. I just did it because I was good at it. I don’t understand how these people can literally beat their bodies to death, for money. Why kill yourself? You won’t even be able to play basketball with your kids. I’m feeling much better now that I’m not running.”