Lawrence Dunn remembers the 1965 annual banquet of the Raleigh Sports Club, where Pete Maravich was honored as the area's high school basketball player of the year.
Maravich, who played at Broughton and averaged 32 points per game, was a logical selection. He was a first-team Parade magazine high school All-America and the most coveted high school player in the country.
Dunn, who played at small Berry O'Kelly School on Raleigh's Method Road, was a star, too. The Raleigh Sports Club named him the Wake County independent player of the year after he averaged 34 points and led O'Kelly to the N.C. High School Athletic Conference 2-A title.
Maravich, who was white, had to leave the banquet early to prepare for the N.C. Coaches Association East-West All-Star Game.
Dunn, an African-American, was not invited to the game. The East-West All-Star games were for players at N.C. High School Athletic Association schools. White players.
Dunn didn't know all that. He thought the East-West All-Star Game was a chance to play against the best, and he was ready to go.
"I leaned over to Coach [William] Hooker and asked if we had a game like that, and if I could play in the one with Pete?" Dunn said. "He said he'd explain later, but he never did."
Dunn's high school, Berry O'Kelly, and the other high schools for African-Americans, were members of the N.C. High School Athletic Conference.
Dunn played during a time of segregation in North Carolina. Many black basketball stars had limited prospects after high school and most played in relative obsurity, unable to play for most major schools in the South.
Maravich scored 42 points, which is still the All-Star Game record, in Greensboro.
Dunn later played in a Johnston County-Wake County All-Star Game for the black schools. He doesn't remember how many points he scored.
Almost 50 years later, Dunn, 64, still remembers the disappointment of not playing with Maravich in the All-Star Game.
"That hurt me as much as anything in my life," he said. "Pete went to the game, and I went to a dance they were having at my school. ..."
"Pete was somebody that got a lot of [attention]. I accepted that. I never said I was better than him. I know that he loved basketball better than anything. But I'll always wonder what was out there. That's why I really hated that I couldn't play in the East-West All-Star Game. I would like to know how I would have done."
Closed doors
Dunn, one of 10 children raised in east Raleigh, wasn't as good as Pistol Pete, but he was good enough to play in the Atlantic Coast Conference, according to the coaches of the era. But that was never an option.
"I knew there were white people and black people, but we never really talked a lot about society," he said.
His was a household where faith dominated - "you couldn't play outside on Sunday if you didn't go to church" - but where race was never discussed.
While Maravich slipped into gyms to shoot for hours at a time, Dunn retreated to his backyard rim and a goal with no net, no backboard.
Maravich was a national recruit. Dunn was, too, but with a caveat. Most major colleges in the South, including the four ACC schools in North Carolina, didn't recruit black players.
"He was good enough to play in the ACC," said James Farris, who coached O'Berry Kelly rival Garner Consolidated. "He was quick and could shoot the eyes out.
"He could have played anywhere where he was given the chance."
Ed McLean, who was in his first season as the all-white Broughton coach in the fall of 1964, saw the black players in pick-up games in the community.
"There were guys who could really play," McLean said. "They could play with the best people we were playing."
Hooker, the O'Berry coach, said Dunn is one of the quickest players he has ever seen, and he has never seen Dunn's equal as a shooter.
Hooker remembers watching Dunn make shot after shot from the top of the circle in practice from what would be 3-point range today.
Hooker called Dunn "Lucky Shot" and the nickname stuck.
"I loved to shoot that fadeaway jumper from the corner," Dunn said. "I'd fall all back in the crowd and that's where the girls were usually standing."
There was little defenders could do because of Dunn's range and his quickness.
"James Farris, who was coaching at Garner Consolidated, got so frustrated one night because they couldn't stop Lawrence. James was pulling at his hair. But nobody stopped Lawrence all year," Hooker said.
Dunn's 34 points per game came on a limited number of shots. Hooker said Dunn made more than half of his shots.
"Lawrence didn't shoot that much, but he didn't miss many," Hooker said.
CIAA beckons
Dunn said he had some major college basketball offers, the most intriguing from Indiana University.
"The Van Arsdale boys [Dick and Tom] were there, and it was a well-known program," Dunn recalled. "The coach told me they wanted me to come and pass the ball. I wanted to shoot.
"But the bigger thing was that I was a scaredy cat. That was a long ways from home.
"Besides, in my world, North Carolina A&T was just as good, and they wanted me. I wanted to play in North Carolina and the CIAA was as good as I could hope for."
Hooker said he still hasn't forgiven Dunn for not telling him about the Indiana offer.
"I'm still mad about it," Hooker said. "I wish I had known."
Dunn had a good career at N.C. A&T and was the team captain as a senior.
At that time, many of the best players in the country played in the CIAA, and Dunn remembers as a freshman trying to guard Earl "the Pearl" Monroe, who would later star for the New York Knicks.
"He was coming down on a fast break, and he was known for doing this spin move so I was ready for it," Dunn recalled. "But he faked the spin I was expecting and spun the other way. I just stood there watching him.
"My coach [Cal Irvin] took me out and said, 'Don't worry. He does that to everybody.'"
Dunn later coached the Garner High girls to the state 4-A basketball championship in 1978. The juniors on the baseball team he coached at Garner won the state title as seniors, and he built an outstanding boys basketball program at Athens Drive.
He was Athens Drive's first boys basketball coach and held the position until resigning in 2001.
Dunn doesn't spend time wondering what his life would have been like if he had been able to go to an ACC school. He regrets not playing in that East-West All-Star Game, but doesn't despair over it.
"I'm still enjoying my life," he said. "I was raised to not look back, but to look ahead."
But Dunn did get a chance to be part of the N.C. Coaches Association All-Star Game.
Twenty-five years after he attended a school dance while Maravich set a scoring record, Dunn coached the East team to victory.
