So bad that he sometimes came home from practice and ate only a bag of chips. The kid with the diamond earrings was suddenly worrying about his next meal. And that wasn’t his worst fear.
Clement had an infant son, Chase. But the boy’s mother was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and had to be hospitalized for a time. Clement temporarily got full custody of Chase and decided he should move closer to his family in Raleigh for support. That’s the main reason he transferred to NCCU — for Chase.
Things didn’t get much better. Landon’s father got a job installing windows and sun roofs and worked seven days a week. His mother helped out with the baby but had a daughter of her own living at home. Landon started winning hearts on his new campus with his humble personality and his game, but there was a reason for his unassuming ways: He was going without meals and sleep.
He told almost no one what he was going through. Except for his closest friend on the team, David Best, nobody had much of a clue.
In his first season after transferring, Clement averaged 18.7 points a game. But the gym was his only escape. He tried desperately to keep shooting, keep studying, keep his eyes on the prize so that his mind wouldn’t entertain thoughts of crime. He admits those ideas lingered threateningly close. Кстати, мы рекомендуем – тайм-менеджмент для менеджера по продажам, а также, и тренинг активных продаж в Киеве, новый взгляд со стороны.
«I used basketball to clear my mind,» he says. «Basketball has always been more than a game, but I used it as counseling. When I had a ball in my hand, it relieved all that stress.»
Race is something everyone can see. But class can be hidden. And Clement hid it well.
«It was a pride issue,» he says. «I didn’t want anybody looking at me different.»
So he kept to himself. And he played as if his son’s future depended on it. In a way, it did.
Practice lasts three hours on a chilly December day, and that’s not unusual for Moton — a taskmaster if ever there was one. There’s a volleyball game scheduled in McDougald-McClendon Gym and the poles get set up even before the men’s basketball team leaves the court. A volleyball player actually pushes a cart full of balls into the free-throw lane, and still hoops practice goes on. Moton might not be the most famous coach in America, but he’s surely one of the most intense.
There’s a reason for that.
He was born in Roxbury, Mass., which he calls «the murder capital of the world from 1985 to 1989.» There’s a near-pride in Moton as he talks about the poverty of his youth. «The projects prepare you,» he says, «for anything and everything you might face.»
Moton doesn’t need to hint his players are, by that definition, unprepared. He comes out and says it.
«My players, they’re spoiled,” says Moton, who is black. «They’re rotten. They don’t know what it’s like to hurt.»
Moton is one of the best players ever to lace up at NCCU. But don’t ever say that was only because of natural talent. It was because of hunger –- the hunger from growing up in the projects with a mother who worked herself to the bone. His players don’t always understand, he says.
«They’re not from the projects,» Moton says. “That’s the problem with the world. They don’t understand the people before you.»
To drive home the point, Moton printed out a photo of slaves and showed it to the team.