The 1992 North Jackson Chiefs vs. Fort Payne Wildcats high school basketball game was one of the few times a team with only two remaining players beat a team that still had five in the 117-year history of organized basketball.
However, the real lives of the winners in this game were heartbreaking with players being shot, going to jail, ending up fighting with each other.
It is breathtakingly exciting and profoundly sad.
December 08, 2008 2 On 5One night in 1992, in a small town in Alabama, the North Jackson Chiefs won a game against seemingly insurmountable odds. Then came the crashes and the gunshots and one man's fateful choice |
IF YOU could unbreak the bones and erase the scars, recall the bullets and sever the chains, recap the bottles and catch all the smoke, if you could swim 16 years up the river of time and find a town called Stevenson, you just might see something glorious.
Stevenson lies between two ridges in north Alabama, by the Tennessee River, a dark blue vein on the earth. There, on Valentine's Day 1992, the North Jackson Chiefs hosted the Fort Payne Wildcats in high school basketball. It was not a playoff game, not even a conference game, and neither team was especially good. But in the 117-year history of organized basketball, it was one of the few times a team with only two remaining players beat a team that still had five.
If this were a movie, the story would end at the final buzzer. The winners would always be winners, fists in the air and black jerseys glistening, and the losers would always hang their heads. This is not a movie. Morning came and they all woke up.
These officials can be blamed for this. They let this thing get out of hand completely.
That's the voice of George Guess, apothecary and Chiefs radio announcer, with 2:53 left in the fourth quarter. He's perched on a stage at the end of the court, next to a colossal painting of an American Indian with a headdress of blood-red feathers.
Until a few days before the game, North Jackson had 10 players. Then the leading scorer quit because the coach wouldn't let him play every minute. Now, as the game winds down, the Chiefs' best all-around player, point guard Chris Stewart, has fouled out. Eight Chiefs standing. Already the referees have called about 70 fouls.
The Chiefs lead 58--55. Their best remaining player has the ball, facing the basket.
Robert Collier pulls up from fifteeeeen—
Robert is the largest Chief, 6'1", 245 pounds, the only true post player on a roster full of guards. He has been playing with four fouls since the first half. He lives in the projects. He can't afford a varsity jacket or a class ring. He owns one pair of pants, which his mother washes every night and dries on the heater because she has no clothes dryer. On warm days he wears his mother's shorts to school and hopes no one can tell.
Tonight Robert's mother is in the bleachers, as always, and his father is on Death Row.
—no good. Murphy Thompson with the rebound. We've got a whistle and a foul.... Did they call it on Murphy Thompson? If so, he's gone.
Seven Chiefs standing. Their school is on the north side of Stevenson, a rusty old town of 2,000 where goats graze in meadows above the vacant redbrick buildings of Main Street and a farmer hands out free yellow squash from the bed of his pickup truck.
Fort Payne is about six times larger than Stevenson and 40 miles to the south. It has mansions on the eastern ridge and enough cotton mills to justify the self-proclaimed title Official Sock Capital of the World.
Fort Payne scores, cutting North Jackson's lead to one. Both teams turn the ball over. The Chiefs get it back on the baseline with about two minutes left.
Collier will trigger the ball inside.
His father has been on Death Row since 1978. They used to be Big Robert and Little Robert, and they rode in Big Robert's Chevy Chevelle convertible to go fishing and to football games. Then Big Robert lost his job and the money dwindled, and he was too proud to ask for help. He drove the Chevelle to Georgia and put his .32 revolver in a grocery bag and walked into a flower shop and pulled the gun and got the cash and sped off. Two deputy sheriffs caught up to him and pulled him over, but he wrestled a gun away from one of them and shot both men. One died. Big Robert drove home and gave his wife $70 from the flower shop. The police caught him the next day. Little Robert was two months from his fifth birthday.
We've got a turnover against North Jackson. Collier moved along the baseline. And you can't do that [after] a turnover, which is what it was. You can do it after a score.
Little Robert became the man of the house. When his mother got tired on the 205-mile drive to the prison in Georgia, he dropped chips of ice down her back to keep her awake. By 13 or 14 he was taking turns behind the wheel. He always said he would grow up and get rich so he could bust his daddy out of jail.
The Wildcats turn the ball over with about 90 seconds left. Chiefs by one. Now they turn it over.
So here comes Fort Payne with an opportunity to take their first lead of the game. And they do!
Fort Payne leads 59--58 with about 1:15 to go. Another whistle, like fingernails on a blackboard.
And we've got a foul called. They're gonna call it on Chad Cobb.
Somehow this is Chad's first foul. He is Robert Collier's distant cousin, a grinning coil of muscle and fist, the quickest Chief and probably the shortest. He is only 5'8", but his vertical leap is so good that the coach sometimes puts him at center court for the opening tip.
Chad rides his Yamaha along the ridges above town, daring the hillbillies to chase him, and he drag-races in the streets, leaving long black rubber trails. Robert sometimes rides on the back, big man on a little bike, one arm around Chad's midsection at 100 mph, popping wheelies, jumping hills, leaning together on sharp curves, running from their enemies. Chad has Robert's trust. They never crash and never get caught.
Fort Payne makes both free throws to lead by three. Aftear a Chiefs turnover a Wildcat is fouled but misses the front end of a one-and-one. The Chiefs rebound with 45 seconds left.
Still got a chance. Sixty-one to 58.... Out to Chad Cobb. Needs to crank up for three!
Chad was a small-boned kid who took his share of whippings growing up. Lately he has been doing the whipping, especially on the white boys who hurl rocks and the n-word in his general direction.
He puts it up from three—
Chad is a streetballer: fast and reckless, prone to turnovers and wild shots, feet sometimes kicking to the side on his jumper.
—it's no good.
Two years after the game, a car will run Chad's motorcycle off the road, sending him hurtling into a fence post. His right leg will bend upward till the foot is past his shoulder, leaving the kneecap hanging by the skin and blood vessels, but he will walk again nine months later and then climb back on his bike and twist the throttle and go.
Fort Payne with 28 seconds. And the ball stolen away by Travis Smith! He puts it up. It's good! One-point game.
Clinging to the lead, Fort Payne milks the clock to five seconds. Another foul, another Chief gone. Six left now. Fort Payne makes the first free throw, increasing the lead to two.
They've pretty well sealed the fate of the North Jackson Chiefs.
Fate goes by many names. Sixteen years later, on Aug. 24, 2008, Little Robert Collier will tell a stranger that God still has a plan for him. But he won't blame God, or anyone else, for the way his life has turned out.
"We make our own choices," he'll say.
Thirty-two minutes of basketball, 74 fouls. That's over two fouls per minute of playing time. I think you'd have to check a long way to find very many games that would even come close to such.
George Guess is right, although a 75th foul is called as time expires. That's one foul every 25.6 seconds. The NBA record for total fouls in regulation since the 24-second clock was installed, 84, was set by the Indiana Pacers and the Kansas City Kings in 1977. That game lasted 48 minutes: one foul every 34.3 seconds.
Fort Payne is on the foul line, up by two with five seconds left. The team has made only 10 of its 30 free throws. A man yells from the bleachers, long and low, to distract the shooter.
I don't know whether there's anybody made a film of this game or not, but this will certainly be one for study by the officials' association.
A film of this game. Near the end of the following decade, the people of Stevenson will still be searching. At dusk one summer day Chad's father will sit at home, thinking about it. "I'd give anything to get that tape," he'll say. "If I had the money, I'd put out a reward."
Frank Cobb lugs his camcorder to most of his son's games. But tonight, late in a mediocre season, he decides the Chiefs are a waste of tape. Later he will look back on the mistakes in his life and conclude this was the biggest.
Nevertheless, Frank and others will swear they saw camcorders in the bleachers that night, at least one and as many as three, over on the Fort Payne side. They'll conclude that whoever made those tapes must have set them on fire.
The shot is missed. Chiefs with the rebound.
Five seconds. Four. Three. Chiefs still down by two.
Travis Smith down, he pulls it up—
Travis will think back on this game 16 years later, and it will give him chills. He grew up with Robert and Chad in Stevenson, playing backyard ball on the iron-rich clay. One day in agricultural-science class when the teacher wasn't looking, he and Chad conspired to climb through the suspended ceiling and liberate Little Debbies from the snack room.
—we've got a whistle.... Wai-ait a minute. It's not over yet.... No time shows on the clock.... Travis Smith goes to the line.... And he will get three because he was shooting from three-point range when he was fouled.
Travis bounces the Wilson Jet-Pro on the hardwood. Every day at the end of practice he shoots free throws and doesn't stop until he's made 10 in a row.
He hits the first. It's a one-point game.
Travis wants to play for the Detroit Pistons, like Isiah Thomas and Joe Dumars.
Next one is up. It's good!
Instead he will pour concrete and drive a truck. He will have six children by three women.
Travis Smith. All the pressure on his shoulders. Does he make it? No. We've got overtime.
Travis fouls out 59 seconds into overtime. Five Chiefs standing.
One night five years later, on Jan. 26, 1997, he will quarrel with one of his former teammates. Travis will borrow a pistol and find the man in a drugstore parking lot and raise the gun and pull the trigger.
Robert Collier gets the ball. Robert may have to be the guard. He takes it down the floor.
Sixteen years later Robert's name will still come up in conversation at Friday's, a restaurant in Stevenson, especially at the table known as the Liars' Table, where retired men gather to tell tall tales over biscuits and gravy. The memory of this game will be one of the few things that can stop them from talking football. David Smith, the boys' old ag-science teacher, will stop by occasionally.
"You hope," Smith will say, referring to Robert and the magical game, "that will be a turning point in his life. You hope and pray." He'll think about Robert for a moment. "I don't know where Robert's at right now," he'll say.
It's a two-point game in favor of Fort Payne, 64--62. Comes in to Stafford Henry, off to Chad Cobb.
After high school Chad will attend motorcycle mechanics' school in Florida, working part time to pay his way, just scraping by. One night he will go to the gas station to put a gallon in the tank. The price will be 92 cents, and he'll scrounge up exactly 92 cents. He'll go inside and try to pay and the clerk will tell him he can't pay with that much small change, and Chad will see other customers staring. Finally he'll slap the pennies on the counter.
"Here it is," he'll say. "I paid for it. I'm leaving." He will drive away with tears in his eyes.
A moment later he'll stop for a homeless man with no legs. He'll let the man cross the road, wheeling his wheelchair with one hand, pulling a cart with the other. The man will look Chad in the eye and smile.
From then on, whenever he feels a twinge of self-pity, Chad will remember that smile.
We've got a whistle and a foul.
Stafford is gone with 1:41 left. Four Chiefs standing.
Two seconds later, another whistle.
And Thomas Hutchins is gone now. Hutchins is out of the game with 1:39 to go.
Thomas is best friends with Travis and Chad. They play secret games of Rook in the back of Mr. Smith's ag-science class. One day nine years later, on Feb. 26, 2001, Thomas will drive through a stop sign and hit a man playing basketball in the street. The man will fly toward the power lines and land in a field, cracking his vertebrae and puncturing a lung.
Three Chiefs standing: Robert, Chad and Chris Shelby, who comes from deep on the bench and fouls very hard.
And coach Jay Sanders has elected to use his only remaining timeout.
Sanders knows what it's like to be poor. His first bed was a dresser drawer, and he played in the snow wearing socks wrapped in bread bags. He lent Robert a tie to wear on game days and never asked him to give it back. He spent all season trying to persuade Robert to use the pump fake. "The kids'll go flying," he told Robert, "and you're wide open."
No one could remember Robert using it in a game.
This is an ugly thing, folks, for a high school basketball game, and it's all a result, in my opinion, of the officiating.... I don't know the names of any official that's working this game and don't really care to know. But I certainly think that games of this nature should certainly be evaluated by whoever is in charge of the officials' association.
The referees' names will be forgotten. One will be rumored to live down the road in the town of Hollywood, but when reached by telephone he will swear he was not in Stevenson that night.
Both teams are given to slap-happy defense, and the storm of whistles may simply be the refs' best attempt to stop the boys from knocking each other around. They will ultimately call 84 personal fouls; Guess counts 40 on North Jackson, 44 on Fort Payne. The Wildcats had more players to begin with and so will have more at the end.
And we've got a foul called now on Fort Payne.... Chad Cobb goes to the line.
The game will end and the years will pass and sometimes Chad will still hear this crowd roaring.
Chad Cobb misses the free throw, and Fort Payne claims the rebound. They're playing five against three. They'll just back it out and wind [down] the clock.... 67 to 62. All over but the crying.
Nothing in the manual could prepare a coach for this. In retrospect it will be easy to say what Fort Payne coach Phillip Collie should have done with 1:38 to play. Poured it on. Pressed his two-man advantage. Widened the lead until it was insurmountable. But Collie does what seems to make sense at the time. He bleeds the clock. Sixteen years later, in an e-mail to a reporter, he will write, "I want to ask that if in your story there is blame concerning the North Jackson game, that you put it all on me." Fine. But he is a better coach than his players think. He came to Fort Payne to be near his only relatives and his in-laws after his wife, Dixie, died in childbirth, leaving him with a newborn and a toddler to raise alone. The North Jackson game will drive him to work even harder. After the next season he will leave Fort Payne for Buckhorn High in New Market, Ala., and two years later he will win a Class 5A state title.
Another whistle, another foul on Chris Shelby (his fourth), another missed free throw by Fort Payne.
Chiefs get the rebound. Chad Cobb, just take it on in. Pull up from three, he is fouled and will go to the line with 54 seconds to go. So now Chad Cobb will have the pressure on his back. And Chad Cobb drops it in.
Chad will finish mechanics' school and become service manager at a motorcycle and ATV shop across the Tennessee line. His marriage will fall apart and his wife will leave for Texas, but he'll go to court and win primary custody of his daughter, Shanele, and his son, Chad Jr. He'll coach Chad Jr. in football and teach him to fix motorcycles and tell him he can be anything he wants, even a doctor.
Chad hits. So it's 67 to 64.
Chad will decide he should be in the Guinness Book of World Records for this game. He'll want to make a movie about it. He'll say it's something not even Michael Jordan ever did. He'll remind his children about it, especially at their sporting events when he thinks they might give up. He will put them in a room with the audio recording of this game and close the door so they can't walk out.
"Oh, Daddy," they'll say. "Again?"
Chad's third free throw is no good. Rebound, Fort Payne... 39 seconds to go. Somebody's gotta foul.... HE WALKED WITH THE BALL! And the Chiefs get it.
A month or two after the game Guess will hand Sanders a cassette tape of his broadcast. Fourteen years later, when he is 66, George Foster Guess Jr. will die of a heart attack. They will lay his bones in the clay on the side of a hill, next to his ancestors, between the river and Russell Cave. On his headstone they'll carve a five-word epitaph: THE VOICE OF THE CHIEFS.
Two years after that Sanders will have the tape transferred to compact disc. He will gather the old Chiefs at Western Sizzlin' and give them copies. Robert will not be there.
Thirty-two seconds left. Still got a chance. Three against five.... Robert Collier in to Chad Cobb, gotta take it down the floor. Chad's gotta do his stuff tonight. Pulls up for three—
After high school Chad and Travis will run together, ride together, raise hell together. They will always be linked by this game. Travis's steal, basket and two free throws sent the game into overtime and set the stage for Chad's singular achievement. They will vow to protect each other.
—AND HE HITS IT AND WE'RE TIED AT 67!
One night five years later, on Jan. 26, 1997, they will quarrel about whether or not Travis has been two-timing Chad's female cousin and whether or not Chad told on him. Chad will still be on crutches from the motorcycle crash. "Chad, you can't fight me," Travis will say.
"I've got other ways of handling you," Chad will say.
Travis will borrow a pistol and find Chad in the drugstore parking lot. He'll raise the gun and pull the trigger.
We've got a foul called on Chris Shelby.... Shelby's out of the game.
Two Chiefs standing.
He's gotta miss this. The Chiefs need the rebound.
Travis will say he was only shooting at the ground. He'll swear the bullets bounced.
We don't have any timeouts. It's Robert Collier and Chad Cobb against five.
One bullet will pierce Chad's left thigh and another will smash his fibula. He'll look up and see Travis aiming the gun with his eyes closed.
He missed the free throw and—
With 17 seconds left Fort Payne gets the rebound and scores. Another whistle.
—there's a charging foul called against Fort Payne! No goal. And it'll be Chief basketball!
After the gunfire Chad will drive himself to the hospital, thinking hard about permanent vengeance. From time to time after that he will drive around with his black Tec-9 semiautomatic and he will look at Travis from a distance and wonder if he can line up a shot.
Travis will plead guilty to second-degree assault and serve five months in prison. On Feb. 26, 2001, as he plays basketball in the street, he will see a man barreling toward him on a motorcycle. It won't be Chad. It will be their former teammate Thomas Hutchins, one of Travis's best friends. Thomas will be showing off for a girl and coming too fast to stop. He'll plow into Travis, knocking him out of his shoes, cracking two vertebrae and puncturing a lung.
Seventeen seconds to go. They're gonna surround Cobb. And Chad's gotta break free.
As Fort Payne makes a substitution, Sanders calls Robert and Chad to the sideline. He tries to sound very calm. He tells Robert to throw the ball in. He tells Chad to walk along the baseline toward Robert, lulling the defenders, then do a jab step and run back toward the corner and catch Robert's bounce pass and go.
Sanders figures Cobb will run so fast that he'll overshoot the basket. He tells Robert to run hard for the left block.
So we've got three or four people around Chad Cobb. So the ball comes in to Cobb. He runs it down the right sideline. He may take it all the way in. He will. He'll put it up—
Robert is fast for a big man. He reaches the left block. Five on two, and nobody boxes him out.
—No good. Robert Collier on the follow—
Robert grabs the rebound and at last he pump-fakes. The kids go flying, and he is wide open.
After high school, Robert will bounce from one coast to the other, doing demolition work here, pouring iron there. He will come home, get married and coach his stepson in football. His wife will die in 2007 from complications of diabetes and hypertension. Robert will be in rehab at the time, for his addiction to alcohol and cocaine.
—IT'S GOOD! ROBERT COLLIER MADE THE SHOT!
Years will go by and Robert will think of this game only when someone else brings it up. Even then it will feel hazy, dreamlike, as if maybe it never happened.
Robert won't set his father free from prison. He will follow him in. In 2005 police will say Robert stole a man's wallet and inhaler and beat him. He will plead guilty to second-degree robbery and be put on probation. In June 2008 he will break a man's jaw and steal his cellphone and cigarettes. He will be charged with third-degree assault and third-degree theft, and his probation will be revoked. Big Robert Collier will win an appeal to change his death sentence to life without parole. Little Robert will be scheduled for release in 2023.
Five seconds. [Fort Payne's] Mosteller down. He missed!
Two old hoops will hang above the jail yard, but basketballs will be scarce. Robert will fashion one from white socks and string.
The Chiefs get the ball and—
Chad will have his chance to join Robert in prison. He will not take it. He will look at the smashing of Travis by their old friend's motorcycle and see a certain cosmic symmetry. He will consider his children and his personal myth, forged in this three-minute overtime, and he will put down his gun.
On July 13, 2008, he will see Travis in the street. He'll pull over and get out and walk toward him and they will both smile and throw their arms around each other.
—the Chiefs are gonna WIIIIINNN! AND THE CHIEFS HAVE WON, 69 TO 67!
At the sound of the buzzer the fans engulf Robert and Chad at midcourt, nearly suffocating them, until they hear Chad screaming from the bottom of the pile, "I can't breathe!" In the visiting locker room a few boys weep, and Coach Collie says he wishes they could all float away in a submarine.
And Chad Cobb and Robert Collier the heroes of the night, in a historical game.
After the game, Robert thinks he and Chad will go on TV, talk on talk shows, sign autographs. He will sign one, for a woman in a doctor's office in Birmingham. That will be all.
A few years later Sanders will mail Robert's and Chad's black polyester jerseys to the Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Mass. They will not be displayed. In the summer of 2008 someone from the Hall will mail them back.
That same summer, on the same wooden floor at North Jackson, the latest crop of Chiefs will come in for a practice. Someone will ask them about the two-on-five game. They will say they have never heard of it.
What a game, and what a night it was—
Time is a dark blue river, and it rolls one way. Outside in the cold it rolls on.
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