'But You're Pearl': Remembering Dwayne Washington, Who Changed Basketball Forever

Every story about Dwayne "Pearl" Washington is essentially a New York story.

Washington, who died on Wednesday of a brain tumor at age 52, was the kind of riveting point guard and natural showman who could have only been bred in a city where attention is at a premium. There's the tale of Pearl showing up at a game at Harlem's King Towers on a motorcycle with a "fly-ass girl on the back," parking at half-court, dropping 55 points, and then driving away satisfied. There was that time, as SLAM's Bobbito Garcia shared in a warm remembrance, when Pearl supposedly shook four defenders during a game in Bedford-Stuyvesant, dunked on a big man, and caused such chaos that the game ended in the third quarter.

Is this a true story? Garcia's source, former Bulls guard Sam Worthen, insists it is, but I'm not sure if it even matters. The point is, Pearl did those things all the time, in his high school gym, on the playground, wherever he happened to be playing at that particular moment. People climbed trees and gathered in project-house windows to watch him. More than any college basketball player of his era, Washington's game captured the imagination, opened us up to the possibilities present in basketball, and channeled the beating heart of the city game.

He was the first televised display of that New York style. This is why those of us who had a chance to watch him play at Syracuse found that it changed our very perception of what college basketball could be. I don't remember many games from that era, but I do remember watching the Big East Championship game where Washington and Walter Berry dueled to the end (Berry blocked Washington's last-second shot), because it felt like a moment that altered college basketball.

Washington was one of the primary figures in establishing the Big East's identity, the guy who imported that playground explosiveness and excitement.

"Everybody says that Patrick Ewing and Chris Mullin made the Big East, but I think Pearl made the league," Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim said. "They were the best players, but Pearl was the player that people turned out to see and turned on their TVs to watch."

Washington's creativity, his ball-handling, and his presence were extraordinary; his crossover dribble was an inspiration to Tim Hardaway and all the other flashy point guards who succeeded him. He once dropped 82 points during a game at Boys and Girls High School in Brooklyn, and perhaps what's most amazing about Pearl is that none of it ever felt forced. "He had a flair, but it wasn't something he put on," Boeheim told ESPN. "That's just the way he played."

He went to Syracuse, at least in part, because he wanted to play in front of as many fans as possible. By the time he left, attendance at the Carrier Dome had grown from 20,000 to more than 26,000; he hit a half-court buzzer beater his freshman year to beat Boston College and made a jump shot to beat No. 2 Georgetown the following season. A local store printed out T-shirts that read, "On the Eighth Day, God Created Pearl."

That Washington never really made it in the NBA—he was drafted 13th in the first round by the Nets in 1986, and lasted just three seasons—almost embellishes his legend. The Nets accused him of being slow and unwilling to work on his game, but mostly it was just the wrong situation at the wrong time, because Pearl was who he was. He had a few injuries, played a couple of years in the Continental Basketball Association, and became a salesman for AT&T, his name receding into legend.

In 1995, while watching a football game at his home near Boston, he began shaking and coughing blood. It turned out to be a brain tumor, and while Washington had surgery and survived for more than two decades, the tumor returned a few months back. He will be remembered for the way he altered the aesthetics of college basketball, for the myths and legends he left behind on various New York City playgrounds, and for a gentleness that belied his on-court showmanship. He never uttered a curse word, one friend said, and a high-school teammate, Elmer Anderson, recently recalled the time when Washington insisted Anderson take his place in an all-star game at a high-school basketball camp.

When someone asked Washington about hitting that shot to beat Boston College, he said, "I'm not the only guy to hit a game-winner from half-court." And when news arose of his most recent health issues, Anderson ran a benefit for him at Boys and Girls, and a GoFundMe page raised more than $62,000 for his medical care.

"He was a modest, nice guy," said current Boys and Girls basketball coach Ruth Lovelace.

"But you're Pearl!" she would tell him sometimes.

"Yes," he'd reply. "I'm Pearl."