Thompson, talk about a dunker.

Talk about a dunker, yeah.

But he played against Dr. J, Julius Ervin, the New Jersey Nets in that championship.

And it was the greatest aerial show that I've ever...

I haven't seen the area show like that since.

And this is like since 40, 50 years ago almost.

Including when the Air Force gets involved.

Does that now shrink from a peephole to a pinhole?

Yeah

...

in terms of just hang time and all the acrobatics in the midair.

Jerry West is somebody that, you know, Mr.

Clutch, knocking down jumpers.

I've, I've watched him literally hit, like, five, six, seven jumpers at, at the buzzer to win games, um, back in those days.

So it was just a, it was a magical time for basketball to grow up in LA at that point.

Yeah

Is

it

after? Well, I was at the tail end.

We won the 10th championship for Coach Wooden in 12 years.

And so, you know, and when I got there, they had won seven in a row.

Yes.

Bill Walton, Jamal Wilkes, Keith Wilkes at that time, they were just coming off of two seasons where they were 30-0, 30-0.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

But he was based, he was based on a real story, a real guy, Reggie Harding, who was one of the first, if not the first, uh, high school to NBA players out of Detroit, Michigan.

Heroin addict, uh, uh, gun-toting, just full of larceny and, and, and, and, and then chicanery and all kinds of craziness, and so that's what the character was based on.

So I started doing research for that character.

Uh, Ray Scott actually played with Reggie with the Detroit Pistons when, um, when Reggie came into the league in the early '60s.

So Ray turned me on to Charlie Rosen- So Charlie and I came up with that idea of, of, of, of, uh, Crenshaw and what it means.

We started talking about kicking around things we could work on together.

Um, why should people get this book, whether they're, you know, a fan of you, a basketball fan, or just a, you know, whatever? You know, why should they get it, and how can they get it?

So what, what kind of, what inspired you to develop and write and create this oral history now? I mean, in this year and what kind of was the kernel for that?

Well, now when? I'm in this...

Fourth quarter.

Well, I say second overtime of a double overtime.

Well, you still dunk, though.

With the clock winding down.

Yeah, yeah.

and he

Wow.

But he was so much better even at that point.

And so all that to say, man, this dude...

You know, we have a group chat, some of my UCLA brethren that played on a lot of championship teams under John Wooden, and one of the guys, Marvin Vitatoe, who played at UCLA first couple of years transfer because of the, the amount of talent that, that, that was coming in.

But, but he, he, he, he made a comment in our group chat that he's not a five, he's a six.

You know, just like he's on a, he's, he, he's on a whole nother level in terms of what he does and, and he's ridiculous, man.

And we often talk about the Ralph Sampsons and some of these other guys back in my era that had that size and mobility.

Mm

Talk a little bit about that time, though, in Crenshaw and going there during that time, the surroundings and what you had to go through on a daily basis.

Well, and that's the basis of the book.

I talked to a lot of people who were there at the beginning.

Mayor James Butts of Inglewood, you know, SoFi Stadium and the Intuit Dome.

He's one of the main drivers behind the economic resurgence of Inglewood.

Ellis Valentine, the first Major League Baseball player out of Crenshaw.

I mean, everybody talks about... just how difficult navigating the academic pursuits for those of us who had college in mind, but also there was a really strong, it wasn't so much gang, organized gang in terms of Crips and Bloods, but we did have the beginnings of the Crips and the Brims was the predecessor to the Bloods.

Well, there's so many that I think about, you know, but, uh, I mean, maybe two more Marcus, if you just, uh, uh, humor us, uh, number one, the, uh, Jefferson high Democrats.