<<Camby s Troubling Ties That Bind >> 上

作者：camby322 标签：BY NEW Times York

阅读次数：90

arcus Camby has confined himself to the grounds of a rambling estate he has rented near the Knicks' practice facility in Purchase, N.Y. Barely visible from the road, a stone-and-iron gate marks the passage to the walled-off world Camby seldom leaves at night.

It is better this way. If there is anything Camby has learned in his turbulent two years in the National Basketball Association, it is this: It's harder for trouble to find you if it does not know where you are.

Although he is only a two-hour drive from his old neighborhood, a decayed pocket of Hartford known as the North End, Camby has allowed few people to know where he lives now.


Tamia Murray and Marcus Camby
But there is one person from his past whom he still embraces as tight as a blanket in the cold: Tamia Murray.

Murray is a former hustler who sold drugs, mixed in a seamy nightclub scene and pulled countless scams in order to endure the streets of the North End.

And during a sordid saga that played out at the University of Massachusetts, Murray played a prominent role in an agent scandal that left the school stripped of its 1996 Final Four appearance and left Camby's name disgraced. Murray was on the take as agents, including Wesley Spears and John Lounsbury, plied Camby and his friends with cash, gifts, rental cars and prostitutes at UMass.

Often, Murray has been considered a bad influence in Camby's life. But this is Camby's best friend. How do you ask a player to detach himself from the past? How can he commit a ghetto sin and turn his back on a confidant who helped him survive a neighborhood?

"People say cut loose from the past, but they really don't know," Camby said, standing inside a gray mansion decorated with black-and-white photos of Muhammad Ali and Martin Luther King in the living room. "I listen to what they are saying and stuff, but I don't pay attention to them. It's how I feel inside. Tamia is a guy who will always be in my corner, and I'll always be in his corner.

"I don't care what anyone says about him. People might say he's in my life because he can get this or that or because I'm this or that, but I don't see it that way."

He sees Murray as one of the only people he can trust. And so Murray is never far away. Without an outside income, Murray drives Camby's cars, lives at the estate and has many of his expenses paid for by the Knicks' 24-year-old forward.

Although teams are prohibited from discussing players during the N.B.A.'s lockout, there are those within the Knicks' organization who have privately wondered if the friends from Camby's past, like Murray, could lead the team's newest player into some precarious situations.

This issue is not isolated to the Knicks. The league is concerned about the growing number of its athletes, especially the younger players, who now have entourages. In the league's rookie orientation session, players are cautioned about associating with unsavory crowds.

Camby understands these concerns but believes he and Murray have it all worked out. In the past, particularly when caught up in the dizzying feel of the money that washed over Camby and Murray at UMass, Camby failed to consider the repercussions of his actions -- and those of his friends -- away from the court.

"You have so many people coming at you that you have to really sit down and think, 'O.K., what am I about to do here?' " Camby said. "That's the one thing I didn't do. I did things spontaneously, and I was going with the flow. Now, everything I do, I analyze it. Should I do it? Should I not? Is this a bad situation or not? Most of the time the answer is easy: I don't leave my house. I figure if I don't leave my house, I can't get into any trouble."

It is hard to imagine Camby falling into trouble. He is an affable, well-spoken and respectful person. But he realizes that few see this side of him. He is out to prove that he can be not only a young asset for the aging Knicks, but also a decent and responsible person who has set up the CambyLand Foundation, which focuses on the educational needs of children.

In all likelihood, his detractors will roll their eyes at this image reclamation project. Camby is still booed when he plays against the Celtics at the Fleet Center in Boston, where the fans believe he betrayed UMass by accepting money from agents, infractions punished by the National Collegiate Athletic Association.

Although Camby repaid UMass the $151,000 it lost in Final Four tournament money, he rankled some by saying he felt no guilt over his actions. He has been portrayed as a greedy kid without a moral compass.

But those close to Camby paint a different picture. They see a kid who always tried hard to avoid trouble, to the extent that he turned his back on the men who used to gamble on his high school games at Hartford Public.

"I remember these guys who used to go to the games and bet other guys that Marcus would get 30 points by halftime," Camby's cousin, Reggie Jackson, said.

Some say the real trouble began when agents started using cash to get cozy with Camby's friends, like Boris Wray and especially Murray. While no one, including Camby, is making an excuse for his gross missteps at UMass, there is an explanation for how Camby, who grew up under the eye of a strict and loving mother, ended up with his name smeared in a scandal.

"Basically, it all comes back to me," Murray said recently as he sat in the driver's seat of Camby's Range Rover parked on the main drag of the North End. "If I had never started taking cash from certain individuals, none of the bad stuff that went down would have ever happened."

He wants the blame. Bring it on. As Murray explained himself, his rock-hard exterior, complete with two scars from the bullets he took at ages 11 and 14, began to melt. Unexpectedly, his eyes welled with tears.

"Of course I felt like I let him down," Murray said. "Of course I felt bad. You care about someone, you're not wanting to hurt them.

"But you've got agents who have millions. And they are coming at individuals who have nothing. Marcus didn't know where the money was coming from. If I want to give someone in this neighborhood $10, they don't ask where it comes from. They take whatever they can get. If you can get cash, anyone would take it. Thing is, no one outside this jungle understands that mentality."

One World, Two Paths: A Homebody Star, a Streetwise Pal

Murray and Camby grew up in the North End's unsightly Bellevue Square project, which has since been renamed and renovated. Although crime there has decreased 41 percent in the last four years, according to police department records, North End residents say children still hit the ground when a car backfires in fear of a drive-by shooting.

In the first 10 months of this year, there have been 10 homicides. In 1994, a year after Camby graduated from Hartford Public, there were 17 murders, 48 sexual assaults, 488 robberies, 605 aggravated assaults and 799 burglaries in the North End, an area noted as the worst crime zone in the city.

Beneath the violence that has long scarred this neighborhood, there were two kids who were as tight as matches in a matchbook. Camby and Murray spent their days shooting hoops and unloading their energy with a game of tag through the hallways of the projects at night. As close as they were, they grew up very differently. Murray was the same age as Camby, but while he was on the streets trying to make a dime, Camby was performing in an elementary school play.

Same neighborhood, different worlds. Recently, Marcus's mother, Janice Camby, was sitting in the living room of a two-story brick home in a suburb of Hartford, with the smell of bacon floating in from a gourmet kitchen.

"Bellevue Square is a long way from here," she said, looking around the house her son bought for her after he signed a three-year, $8.4 million deal with the Toronto Raptors two years ago. "When we were looking for a place, Marcus liked this house. He liked the high ceilings."