By Keith Mills

When Dunbar's Ernie Graham was deciding to play college basketball at Maryland 30 years ago he asked his good friend Anthony Lewis for advice. When Dunbar's David Wingate chose Georgetown over Maryland in 1983, his rec coach and mentor was Anthony Lewis. And two months ago, when Rudy Gay announced he was leaving Connecticut for the NBA, one of the first phone calls he made was to Anthony Lewis.

Called "Dudie," Lewis has been the director of the Cecil-Kirk recreation center in East Baltimore for the last 30 years. College coaches from Chapel Hill to Champagne know his name. High school coaches from Dunbar to Douglass and from Woodlawn to Walbrook know of the enormous impact he's had on local hoops. Lewis and long-time assistant Calvin Dotsons have helped produce some of the finest players in the country.

Seven Cecil-Kirk alumni, including Wingate, Juan Dixon and the late Reggie Lewis, have gone on to the NBA. More than 100 have played college basketball, including a whopping 27 this year alone. Among them: Gay and Josh Boone at Connecticut, Lake Clifton's Chester Frazier at Illinois, Randallstown's Levi Stukes at Georgia and Walbrook's Velmar Coleman at Towson.

Of the 10 players on this year's Baltimore Sun All-Metro first team, four played for Lewis at Cecil, including McDonogh's DaJuan Summers, who's headed to Georgetown, and Southwestern's Jamal Barney who is going to Providence.

"We've been blessed," Lewis said. "There's nothing like seeing these kids grow up in the neighborhood, go to high school and then college. It's an incredible feeling."

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Lewis grew up on 20th Street in East Baltimore. He went to City College but did not play high school basketball. But he did begin coaching basketball at the tender age of 15.

His first team was the St. Anne's 10-12 team. "It was a CYO team," he said. "Wes Unseld had just started BNBL [Baltimore Neighborhood Basketball League] in 1969, but at that time CYO ball was really all there was."

Ernie and Kevin Graham were on that team. In 1976 they both played for Woody Williams at Lake Clifton. The next year Ernie was playing for Bob Wade at Dunbar. One year later he was at Maryland.

Lewis, meanwhile, was forging a great relationship with both Wade and Williams, two of the city's most powerful and influential coaches. Lewis began coaching many of their players at Cecil-Kirk during the summer. Steve and Dwayne Wallace, Reggie Lewis and Wingate played at Dunbar and Melvin Bartee, Kevin McDuffie and Ben Harlee played at Lake. The latter trio plus Reggie Lewis would eventually attend Northeastern University in Boston, which was then coached by Jim Calhoun. In all, nine of Lewis' players would play for Calhoun, whose relationship with Lewis remains strong to this day.

Boone and Gay continued the Baltimore to Calhoun pipeline, though Gay's recruitment landed Lewis in the middle of a firestorm three years ago. Lewis has known Gay since he was seven and coached him on Cecil's U-17 team two years ago. Connecticut and Maryland were involved in a bitter recruiting war for Gay, who eventually picked UConn. A few months later, the Huskies played an exhibition game against a team made up of Lewis' former players. Lewis' team was paid $25,000. Maryland coach Gary Williams cried foul, linking the payoff to Gay's decision, though Lewis denied any wrongdoing.

What the incident did show, however, was just how relevant and powerful Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) teams and coaches have become. This summer hundreds of area high school players will fine-tune their games on AAU teams in BNBL leagues.

Cecil-Kirk now shares the Baltimore spotlight with Baltimore Select, coached by Keith Goodie, the Baltimore Stars, coached by Duane Davis, Mount Royal and Team Melo, an AAU team sponsored by former Towson Catholic Owl and current NBA star Carmelo Anthony. The Stars feature three players off Pat Clatchey's monster Mount St. Joe team, including Sun Player of the Year, Louis Birdsong.

"When the NCAA cracked down on how many times a (college) coach could see a kid, AAU tournaments started cropping up everywhere," Lewis said. "Now, coaches can go to one venue and see as many kids as they want."

And with these mega-tournaments come some mega-concerns among college coaches, who say the shoe companies, street agents and some AAU coaches often put their own agendas ahead of their players.

Lewis denied the AAU programs are out of control.

"Myths," Lewis said. "Pure myths. The media and technology have caused all that. The high school coach still has a lot of influence and, hopefully, all parties involved will have the kid's best interest at heart. But remember, the AAU coach or rec coach usually has known these kids a lot longer. I've known these kids since they were in grade school."

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That grade school is usually Cecil Elementary, which shares Kirk Avenue with the rec center in one of the city's toughest neighborhoods. Here, just a few blocks from Greenmount and North Avenues, Lewis is a foot soldier, a trusted leader, who helps turn boys and girls into young men and women. He commands and demands respect. To some, he's the only father figure in their lives. To many, he's a comforting voice. Some, like Wingate and Reggie Lewis, made it out of the neighborhood and all the way to the NBA. Some didn't make it past their 21st birthdays. Others, like Derrick Lewis, who played on Wade's 1985 Dunbar national championship team, made it out and have since come back to say thanks.

"Dudie kept me off the streets," said Derrick Lewis, who left Dunbar for South Carolina before transferring to Northeastern. "He and Coach Wade helped keep me alive."

Issue 1.9: June 22, 2006