The ‘ spark plug’ of Pitt basketball in the 1980s
As he spoke over the phone Monday, Curtis Aiken’s voice was steeped in sorrow.
In a span of 48 hours, the former University of Pittsburgh men’s basketball standout lost three people closely tied to his life in the sport. On Saturday, it was former NBA big man Clifford Robinson, with whom he grew up in Buffalo. On Monday morning, it was John Thompson, the legendary Georgetown coach he so deeply revered. And over the weekend, it was Demetreus Gore, one of the most gifted scorers in Pitt basketball history.
A key figure in Pitt’s rise to national prominence in the late 1980s, Gore died Sunday from a heart attack while working out at a gym in the New York area. He was 54.
In 1985, Aiken and Gore, his freshman teammate, were warming up before a game against Georgetown when they heard Thompson’s deep voice summoning them. He complimented the duo on their promise, reminded them they would need to improve defensively to contend in the Big East and ended the conversation bluntly, telling them the Hoyas were “going to kick your ass tonight.” One year later, the Panthers returned the favor, beating then- No. 11 Georgetown. Basking in the win, Aiken and Gore boasted to each other about the trash talk they would unleash on the daunting Thompson, but those plans quickly changed in the postgame handshake line.
“Demetreus was in front of me. I was waiting for him to say something, but he shook Coach Thompson’s hand, dropped his hand, and I did the same,” Aiken said. “We were too scared to say anything.”
It’s the kind of anecdote that offers a welcome moment of levity for Aiken. His teammate and friend is gone but will never be forgotten.
Gore’s time at Pitt lives on, not only in the memories of teammates and fans but also in the program’s record book. He’s 16th in career points ( with 1,555), ninth in career field goals made ( 645) and fifth in consecutive games played ( 122), tying him with Charles Smith, who took the court with him for each of those contests.
That production lived up to the lofty expectations that greeted him at the school. After averaging 33 points per game as a senior for Chadsey High School in Detroit, Gore was named Mr. Basketball in Michigan in 1984.
His potential was evident early. As a sophomore, Gore averaged a team- high 16.1 points per game. He was a player with a style that, as former teammates describe it, was ahead of its time. At 6- foot- 5 and 210 pounds, he could toggle between the various guard and wing positions, with a beautiful and effective outside jump shot that was so lethal that the right- handed Gore would regularly drain attempts with his left hand. His impact, pronounced as it was, was muffled somewhat by the lack of a 3- point line until his senior year and, according to Smith, the way he was misused by coaches.
Even with those limitations, he found a way to shine, even becoming the go- to scoring option for an immensely talented team in the moments when it most needed a basket.
“He was the most talented overall offensive player on the team,” said former teammate Darelle Porter. “He was a better offensive player than Charles Smith, Jerome Lane or you name them. He was sometimes unguardable. He had what they call ‘ It.’ You can’t really describe it, but it was something he had and other people don’t.”
“Demetreus, if you talk to anybody on the team, he was that spark plug,” Smith said. “Jerome was the heart, Demetreus was the soul, and I was just a piece of both of them.”
Gore’s career reached its peak his senior year in 1987- 88, when Pitt reached No. 2 in The Associated Press poll and earned a No. 2 seed in the NCAA tournament. It was there, however, that the Panthers’ championship dreams were dashed unexpectedly early, with an overtime loss to Vanderbilt in the tournament’s second round.
Although Gore didn’t make it to the NBA like his teammates Smith and Lane, both of whom were firstround draft picks, he was exalted by those who knew him, both as a player and a person.
Teammates remembered him for his warm, fun- loving personality, embodied by the radiant gaptoothed smile he’d so often flash. He had a prankster’s spirit at times, like when he told Porter, a freshman at the time, to come to a Pirates game with them wearing a suit and bow tie, only for Porter to show up and see his teammates dressed in shorts. Beyond those jokes, though, was a caring soul, one who uplifted teammates and guided his younger counterparts. Jason Matthews fondly remembers arriving to Pitt as a freshman in 1987 from Los Angeles and having Gore become an instant mentor to him, introducing him to professors, campus police officers and even Craig “Ironhead” Heyward, then a star running back at the school.
“If you ask everybody on the team who their favorite teammate was, they would say Demetreus,” Aiken said.
Beyond basketball, Gore had a passion for music, particularly hiphop. He was known by some teammates for his ability to freestyle rap about events as minute as what he did that day. He even recorded a pair of songs — “Pitt Is on the Rise” and “Pitt Has Arrived” — the second of which came with a wonderfully 1980s music video complete with teammates dancing to choreography Gore put together.
Following his basketball career, he became an entrepreneur and settled in New York, where, among other things, he started a clothing line, had a recording studio, owned a car wash and opened a store in Harlem specializing in hip- hop gear.
An affable, outgoing individual, Gore communicated regularly with many of his former teammates, including Smith, who spoke to him last Thursday for more than an hour. The news of his death, which was passed along by Porter on Sunday to a number of former Pitt players who are part of a group text, stunned them all. With Gore’s passing, as well as Rod Brookin’s in 2015, two of the top four scorers on Pitt’s famed 1987- 88 team died before their 55th birthdays.
“It’s a shock to all of us,” Matthews said. “It was kind of like when Rod Brookin passed away. You just don’t expect your teammate ... it’s not like we’re 70 years old, you know? You just don’t expect it.”
For Gore’s friends and former teammates, who are getting older and have seen multiple figures from their lives at Pitt die in recent years, it’s a jarring reminder of the value of relationships and those closest to them.
“You want to give people their roses before they die,” Smith said. “That impacts me to do that even more. Life is too short. You want people to know how they impacted you and what they meant to you. They should hear it, and they should know.”