Before being immortalized by Shawn Kemp in the 1990s, the number 40 of the sonics had been carried by another talented player, a certain John Brisker.
A player with a unique and tragic fate, between racial revolts at the University of Toledo in the United States of Martin Luther King, the success and the beautiful life of All Star in ABA, and a mysterious end that borders on the legendary in the 'Uganda of the Amin Dada dictator.
Double All-Star in ABA but Lambda player quickly disappeared from radars, after only three seasons in the NBA, in Seattle, John Brisker is one of the biggest puzzles in history.
Misery and frustrations from childhood
Star player of his high school, the Hamtramck High School in the suburbs of Detroit, with 24 points and 20 rebounds on average (in 1965), alongside a certain Rudy Tomjanovich, the young Brisker has not easy life from childhood. With his mother who became a hemiplegic following a stroke, Brisker must grow faster than his little comrades. Without having the means …
“We moved fifteen to twenty times when I was a kid. Because we couldn't pay the rent … I lived in a city when I was in high school. Many things frustrated me and I was going to express them outside by going to shoot the ball. »»
Revolted by nature by this obstacle course (he worked in a car washing machine at the age of 11, before being a concierge until he was 18), the young man consoles himself by playing jazz with his trumpet , that he learns to master from CM1. Ambitioning a school of the Big Ten conference, Brisker must finally be satisfied with the college of Toledo in 1965.
“Toledo made me the best offer. They gave me a car, an apartment and a wardrobe. I just asked where I had to sign! I didn't care what school it was. But when I got there, I had people who were against me because of my skin color. I had never experienced damage like that in my life. I started to ask myself questions. And I didn't get any answers … I changed. I became hostile because I did not understand why I could not also belong to this world. I always wonder. »»
Deprived of play for his first year, although he dominates the first team to training, Brisker will multiply to channel “his violence”. Roomed artist on the boards, the student takes revenge while playing at the “Tight End” position for the football team, even trying to snor at the Tuba for the fanfare!
Energy ball which turns into a basketball factory on the ground, this winger on the shoulders of mover does damage with 14 points and 8 rebounds rebounds on average for its sophomor and junior seasons. But the fate is reunited again against him in his senior year, in 1968 when, after a failed training, Brisker was completely excluded from the team, his university suddenly declaring him ineligible for the end of the season.
Put off-circuit, Brisker nevertheless attracts the lusts of NBA teams, but also NFL, before the draft of 1969. If it is well selected by the Sixers, it is during the additional round, added at the end of Draft . Not so awaited in the big league, the fault of an end of a shortened university career and a reputation that is already starting to gain a negative magnitude, he opts for the ABA, among the Pittsburgh Pipers.
There, in a new opposite, he will turn to 29 points on average, drawing comparisons with Oscar Robertson and Jerry West for his ability to blacken the sheet of stats, with rebounds, passes and, intensity, intensity, intensity, intensity, intensity, intensity, intensity, intensity, intensity, intensity, intensity To go with its baskets!
A well -tempered character
Nicknamed “the heavyweight champion of the ABA” for his propensity to take out the elbows and his love of contact, but also because he “Was expelled more games than a kid at a strip club with a false identity card”, Brisker has always come out of the crowd, regardless of the league.
Preferred to say that he was just a “Aggressive player, a competitor”. And he did not hesitate to get out of the sacred “punchlines”: “I am ready to do anything to bring Pittsburgh into playoffs, even if it means that you have to break the leg of an opponent. »»
During the All Star Game Aba of 1971, Brisker was even stronger: he would have gone to find the league commission agent in the stands, to intimate him to pay him on his own pocket the bonus of 300 dollars which was due to him! And on the field in addition!
To say that the boy was not cold in the eyes is the euphemism for the one who, during the half-time break of an ABA match, brought back several minutes late, after having turned one of His own teammates, too vehement in his eyes.
Or who was arrested after a fight outside the Three Rivers Stadium, during the World Series of Baseball in 1971. Imagine that this old John was simply beaten with several cops, sending two to the 'Hospital … because he didn't want to leave a taxi!
“The first time I played against Brisker, he just turned to me and jostled me”said Billy Knight in the famous Loose Balls book by Terry Pluto. “I hadn't done anything to him. He was causing the tokens! »»
The story tells that Brisker's head was priced in ABA, at 500 dollars in fact! While his own Pittsburgh team had recruited a US football player to settle it in training … until the two men go to get their respective pistols in the locker room!
Retired at 28
Landed in Seattle in 1972, Brisker fell again on a bone. In size, in the person of Bill Russell, the legend of Celtics who became a coach of the Sonics in the summer of 1973. The relationship between the two men will be complicated to say the least, between hope of relaunching a talent and difficulty managing an aging character.
In 1974, Brisker was sent to Purgatory, namely the infamous Eastern Basketball League (the G-League of the time, so to speak). It is not long in showing what wood it is made of, and heats up: with 51 points for his first match. Then 58 in the second!
Unfortunately for him exiled, by burn all his bridges with the NBA, Brisker finally accepts a buyout of his contract with the Sonics. After only three years. In 1976, when he was only 28 years old. Instead of the starting million, he will only get half, cut brutally halfway through his contract in Seattle.
“I thought he was going to kill him!” On the one hand, I could see water in the eyes of one. Intimidation. And the other was ready to attack ”, said Slick Watts in the Seattle Times. “We were all petrified. But we knew that he had nothing against us. He wanted to fight with the coach. »»
In Bill Russell's niche, Brisker will only play 21 games this season. On February 14, 1975, a defeat in the far northwest derby in Portland, Brisker, however, proves that he still has it under the sole, with a 7-point sequence in 14 minutes. It will however be his last NBA match.
Deprived of the ball, checks that go with it and the attention he has always been able to attract to him since his “artists” years in high school, Brisker is nonetheless still embittered and bitter. He rocks in the dark side while several of his business flow, and his couple is beating the wing and ends up in villain after domestic violence.
“That's the problem. The heart of the problem ”, Assends Spencer Haywood, the Sonics Star Pivot. “At the time, if you told someone that he had problems to manage his anger, that we had to go to consult a psychologist, we were told to go and get you, to mix with your onions and how crazy you were! John was typically the guy who didn't want to hear about it. When we offered him a discussion, you exposed yourself to fight in your turn with John. »»
Developed for holding up to a dictator!
In debt, divorced then remarried, Brisker wants to start his life again. Student passionate about the African-American cause, to the point of making the headlines of the local press in Toledo when he led the revolt after one of his teammates, black skin, was excluded from the team, Brisker dreams of Create links between Africa and companies led by black American leaders.
Close to Black Panthers, he launched himself into import – export with Africa, with one of his collaborators, a man named Benjamin Lewis. The two businessmen visibly rub shoulders with the large eggs of Uganda of the Dictator Idi Amin Dada.
Spencer Haywood had nevertheless warned his former teammate to stop his highly dangerous activities, even trying to prick his passport to hold him back to the country … In vain, the former Pittsburgh Condor flies back to Africa, a nourishing mother. For a round trip …
In this case, John Brisker's latest sign of life is the phone call he spent his second wife on April 11, 1978.
Many theories float on the tragic end of Brisker, sometimes quite eccentric. Some evoke a premeditated disappearance, under a new identity, to escape its heavy past and its creditors! Others report that he had been hired as a mercenary in the civil war which then tore Uganda.
“He went to Uganda as a mercenary and he was fighting there,” says his former teammate Tom Burleson. “His wife went there with him, and he was captured by the men of Amin Dada. The latter prepared him and they served him and his wife in banquet! »»
Another, “the legend” most commonly accepted, narrates that it would simply have been caught up again by its damn pig character. An obvious faux-pas in a meeting at the top against a dictator.
“From what he said, he was sitting at the table of one of the kings there is there, and an argument would have broken out,” said Slick Watts, the legend of the Sonics. “Brisker didn't want to let go of the song, he didn't bother. But in this country, you cannot disrespect a king. Apparently the guy already had his gun ready to shoot, hidden in the turkey or something like that, he drew and pan … he shot down. In any case, this is what the legend tells. ”
A report explains that the two Americans were accused of criminal activities. Next followed by the Ugandan regime, they were removed from their rooms at the Kampala International hotel. We never saw them again …
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSZ2YK9DIZ0
