The two point guards met and naturally hit it off — they’re both quintessential leaders, unruffled amid adversity with hardwood skills and haughty handles . . . “Mr. Big Shot” and “Barry O’Bomber.”
“It was awesome, man. It was awesome,” Chauncey Billups said of the June day he met Barack Obama. “I wasn’t nervous, but I was honored, that’s for sure.”
Back then, Billups was still a Piston and Obama was still a senator. The president-elect was in Detroit for a raucous gathering, where Al Gore would publicly endorse Obama before his address. Obama’s people reached out to Billups’ people, and there was Billups, speaking to the crowd, urging the Motor City to register to vote, because “as much as we want change, if we don’t go out and vote, it’s going to be tough. And we already know who we’re all voting for.”
Obama, of course, is a basketball enthusiast, a former high school player (where he earned the nickname) who continues to play recreationally. And Tuesday, he will move into the White House, where the point-guard-in- chief might hold court at the rusty outdoor basketball hoop.
For the Nuggets’ Billups, that day in Detroit was unforgettable. Sure, he was Chauncey Billups, superstar athlete (“Obama is a Bulls fan, so I teased him about that a little bit”), but Billups was really just an awed American — and African-American, at that — who saw hope in the flesh and felt promise in the prophecy.
“To have a black president,” Billups said recently, “it’s just unbelievable.
“Times are evolving. I know when I was a kid and you’d be in class and the older people who were black said, ‘You can be anything.’ A lot of times, when you look on TV, and the only blacks you see are athletes and entertainers, it’s tough to believe that. So we always chase this dream — basketball, football, rapping, singing — because we feel like it’s within our reach, because you always see people of our color that are represented like that. But now to have a president and a lot of politicians and things like that, you really can be anything you want to be, if you prepare right.”
That day in June, Obama said to the crowd, “I’m running because of what Dr. King called the fierce urgency of now.”
Today, we celebrate the greatest African-American leader of yesterday. Tomorrow, we celebrate the greatest African-American leader of tomorrow.
“It’s still kind of surreal, you know?” Billups said.
