Felipe Lopez, once feted as the city’s best schoolboy basketball player, drives a silver, unwashed S500 Mercedes Benz down East 156th St. in Longwood, one of the South Bronx’s most troubled sections, on the first Saturday in February. It is 9:25 a.m. His mother, Carmen, rides shotgun, and his son, Pito, sits in the back. Lopez slows as he approaches the Bronx Spanish Evangelical Church, a stone building with red doors and stained-glass windows. He honks his horn twice, and a security guard slides back the black fence, topped with loops of razor wire, for Lopez to pull in and park. Lopez walks past bins for the church’s food bank, down three steps and in through a metal back door.
Spanish is spoken; sneakers squeak on the freshly mopped hardwood floor. Lopez, dressed in all black, strides through the taut space. He surveys the collection of neighborhood boys, ranging in age from 6 to 15, wearing black T-shirts emblazoned with “Team Fe” in yellow. Three of them arrived 90 minutes earlier, walking on snow-covered sidewalks in 18-degree temperatures, to sweep the court and work on their jump shots. One by one, they gravitate to Lopez, greeting him with handshakes and hugs. Hellos exchanged, they heave balls at the metal rims and dribble all around. Kharlos Ortiz, a stringy lefty, draws Lopez’s attention, then ire. Lopez locks his blackish-brown eyes on Ortiz in the left corner. Ortiz, putting his jacket down, stares back with a blank look.
“Excuse me, excuse me,” Lopez says. “Get down and do 25 pushups.”
Ortiz demurs.
“Can you see me?” Lopez says. “I mean, I’m standing right here and you don’t say hello?”
Ortiz, 14, knew little of Lopez weeks earlier. He learned about a free basketball program in the back room of the church from his stepfather and enrolled in order to improve his game. He looked up “Luis Felipe Lopez” on Google and eyed the career arc, tracking Lopez’s days from Rice High in Harlem to St. John’s in Queens to the NBA and back to the Dominican Republic. He noted that Lopez, an electrifying presence from the wing, was labeled “the Spanish Michael Jordan” by prognosticators when he was Ortiz’s age. Then he viewed a series of YouTube highlights featuring Lopez. There were clips from games in the Dominican where Lopez ended his pro career.
“I saw a few dunks,” Ortiz says. “That got me hyped.”
Lopez, 39, can be difficult to place in New York, the city he once soared above. He likes to keep basketball on the “low burner,” living modestly with his girlfriend across from Riverdale’s Van Cortlandt Park, and running through its back hills. Hailed as the best player in the country 20 years ago at Rice High, Lopez inspired “Felipe Mania,” sending fans into raptures. The cheers and camera crews trailed him to St. John’s, but lost interest as time went on, and Lopez, despite scoring at a prodigious pace, could not resurrect the Johnnies. Thereafter, he reached unimaginable heights as a Dominican immigrant, sitting on the same stage as President Clinton during a forum on race, and experienced unexpected lows, punching a teammate in the face during his last professional game on American soil in the CBA. Ten years after his NBA career ended with a torn ACL, Lopez has returned to the South Bronx, volunteering at his mother’s church as he attempts to break a cycle of lost prospects in his old neighborhood.
“To this day, the No. 1 question I get, no matter where I am, is, ‘Where’s Felipe?’ ” says Zendon Hamilton, Lopez’s teammate at St. John’s. “It’s almost like he’s a folk hero. His legend grew by word of mouth: ‘This kid in the Bronx from the Dominican Republic has a 60-inch vertical, can dunk with his left hand, threw down over somebody. He’d do some salsa after a play.’ All true. If you didn’t watch him, you might lose him.”
Much of the basketball landscape as Lopez knew it has changed in the years since his star turn. Rice High, long a basketball power, was shuttered in 2011, following the fate of Power Memorial and Tolentine, once dominant New York City basketball schools that fell like dominoes due to the cash-strapped Archdiocese’s inability to keep them open. The Big East, the conference of UConn’s Ray Allen and Georgetown’s Allen Iverson in Lopez’s time, is all but gone, ground up in the gears of conference realignment. The Vancouver Grizzlies, the first NBA team that Lopez took the court for as a first-round pick, making him the second Dominican athlete to play in the NBA, moved to Memphis. Still, the South Bronx remains pocked by drugs, poverty and violence. The roads to ruin are familiar.
“I try to make sure the kids know they’re young,” Lopez says. “They grow so fast because they have to create a wall of protection. If you’re weak, you get bullied so you have to act. You have to understand there is another way.”
Blades and bullets are regularly seen in the church’s neighborhood. Homeless people pushing carts line the sidewalk by the wrought iron fence, waiting their turn to collect fruits and vegetables from the food pantry. A child in a Spider-Man hat urinates on the sidewalk. A security guard chides him; the boy and his parents smile back. An adult in a black coat threatens another with a knife. Lopez’s acolytes, meanwhile, assemble inside for six hours every Saturday, wearing yellow hats he hands out as a display of solidarity. They carry Bibles in book bags and leave their report cards for Lopez to review. He issues math assignments for them to complete by the next session and his girlfriend, Marija Kero, to teach upstairs. He scolds the boys who hand in reports on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. that are incomplete.
“I asked for one page, you gave me half,” Lopez says. “Dr. King died for our freedom. You can’t give him a page? Just 13 sentences? That’s an embarrassment.”
Lopez alights at the sight of one boy in particular. His name is Troy; he is 10. He wears a red shooting sleeve on his right arm and slides his fingers into imaginary gun holsters after knocking down jumpers. He had missed a number of sessions in January, then reappeared on Feb. 1. Lopez halts practice when he notices Troy.
“Troy!” Lopez says. “Troy!”
Lopez walks over to the boy, lifts him up above his head and hugs him. Troy places his book bag down in the corner. He runs through the drills, bounces off the walls and locks up opponents on defense. He then meets with Lopez in the church afterward. Lopez, tired from the day, sits in the first pew, before the altar. Sunlight shines through the stained glass; the No. 5 train screeches around a turn on the elevated tracks over Westchester Ave. outside. Troy looks at him. Lopez knows there are problems at home.
“What happened to your house?” Lopez says.
“It got shut down,” Troy says.
“How’s grandma?” Lopez says.
“Good,” Troy says.
“I want to meet her,” Lopez says. “I want you on our team.”
“So do I,” Troy says.
“I’ll drive you home,” Lopez says. “Take whatever food you need.”
* * *
Maybe it was the American M-16 assault rifle Lopez saw a man pull from a duffel bag and used to shoot bullets into an open crowd on Brook Ave. in 1989. Maybe it was the lines of cocaine addicts he saw stretch around an abandoned building on his block, as if waiting for a government handout. It’s hard to figure what left the greatest impact on his young mind, Lopez says with a sigh. For some reason, he felt at home in the forgotten, forbidding borough, building an immigrant’s dream from a nightmare setting.
“If I was in the Olympics I would have broke a record running from gunshots,” Lopez says.
Born in Santiago, the Dominican Republic’s second-largest city, surrounded by mountains in the country’s northern region, Lopez learned basketball in a baseball nation. There was one playground in town, but he ran all over, testing his limits. On multiple stunt attempts, he split open his tongue. He got stitched up and readied for his biggest jump, joining family in the United States. He knew no English at the time, and his siblings immigrated stateside in several installments. He landed in 1989. There was a chill in the New York air on arrival; goose bumps were a foreign feeling. He assimilated quickly, picking up American expressions and phrases such as “Oh my goodness.”
Much was lost in translation. Classmates ridiculed his language skills. He believed “dumb” was the same word as “dunk.” When Lopez would be near the basket, a kid asked Lopez, “Are you dumb?” Lopez picked up the ball and dunked. The kid asked again, “Are you dumb, Felipe?” Lopez slammed the ball and smiled. He repeated the eighth grade and drew attention from Rice High. Lopez was to be allowed six months to prove himself as an English speaker; Maura Beattie, once a nun, taught math at the school with remedial students. Now she was assigned to teach him English.
“I didn’t even let him know I knew the shape of a basketball,” Beattie says. “I told him, ‘Do you play square basketball? That’s what we play here.’ I wanted him thinking.”
Each morning, she taped “Learn to Read” on Ch. 13. She gave him children’s books on tape and bought him a Walkman, a hot commodity at the time. On the subway, he listened to the tapes and read along. Straphangers looked at him strangely. Beattie considered his innocence to be that of a sixth-grader, full of wonder and curiosity. One day, in the fall of his freshman year, there was a small article about him with his picture in the Daily News. Lopez brought the newspaper into his tutoring session with Beattie.
“Por que?” he asked.
Rice basketball coach Lou DeMello knew why. Lopez was long, lean, happy and hipless. He was an elastic slasher, legs scissored and wrists cocked en route to the rim. There was potential in every dribble, and DeMello kept tight reins on Lopez. Look at DeMello sideways, and you were in the stairwell, running up and down the seven flights. Energy at the practice ebbing? DeMello requested his assistant coach to grab the keys to two vans. The whole team hopped in the vans and rode uptown to 155th St. They ran up and down 130 concrete steps by Rucker Park to the Macombs Dam Bridge above. By then, interest in Lopez already spanned the city. The first time that St. John’s assistant Ron Rutledge ever saw Lopez, at an AAU event in California, he focused on the guard. “The only image I could have when I saw him was Felipe in a St. John’s jersey, at Madison Square Garden with 19,000 people cheering,” Rutledge says.
There was time to develop in the interim. Lopez played AAU ball for the Gauchos under Dave McCollin, a court officer so loud the judge said he must have missed the day of Kindergarten when whispering was taught. Instead of drawing up plays on a board, McCollin placed loose change on the court and rearranged coins as X’s and O’s during timeouts. Best known for beating a Soviet Union team in 1987, the Gauchos traveled to the South of France and dominated domestically with Lopez. His elegance was evident in every time zone. In Honolulu, Rice teammates huddled in football fashion under the basket during a dunk contest. Lopez skied over them to win. In Las Vegas, on Christmas, sneaker impresario Sonny Vaccaro invited the Raiders to his house. Gifts lined the room.
“I could barely see the Christmas tree, there were so many boxes of sneakers,” DeMello says. “They weren’t wooing me. They were wooing Felipe.”
He shared billing with Kevin Garnett at the Beachball Classic in Myrtle Beach, S.C. and received letters from recruiters. Roy Williams, then the coach of Kansas, arrived at Rice early for the official home visit. DeMello was to drive Williams to the family’s apartment, but his blue caravan had a flat. DeMello rushed inside the school to call a friend. Williams, dressed in an expensive suit, dropped to his knees and went to work.
“By the time I came back, my man had the hatch open, removed the tire and put the spare on,” DeMello says.
College coaches loved to gauge Lopez’s motor, and no competition revved him up more than St. Raymond, the Catholic school from Castle Hill that battled the Raiders for city titles. In one game, at Iona College, there were 50 Division I coaches in the stands. All 10 starters went on to play in Division I. A fire marshal knocked on Rice’s locker-room door at halftime and threatened to shut the game down if DeMello, also the athletic director, did not clear the aisles in the wooden bleachers. Lopez stole an inbounds pass around the 3-point arc, took two steps and dunked on the inbounder. Fans banged tamboras, scratched a metal instrument and waved Dominican flags. There was salsa in the stands. Talent evaluator Tom Konchalski considered Lopez “larger than Menudo ever was.”
“When you dealt with Felipe, it was like Carnival,” says Emanuel (Book) Richardson, a former St. Raymond guard. “They were doing everything but roasting pigs.”
DeMello watched the followers grow, the lines for autographs extend around the court and the random construction workers come to watch practice at Rice’s bandbox space. They came to Rice when going to visiting games because they knew they could get into the away game if they looked like they were with the team. “It was like, ‘Who are you? Why are you here? It’s a high school game.
Don’t you have a job?’ ” DeMello says.
The Dominican demand was so great that DeMello scheduled one game Lopez’s senior year at George Washington High in Washington Heights so that the Hispanic community could crowd into a larger venue. The week before the game, DeMello eyed Lopez and noted that he was not giving 100% effort. DeMello turned the lights out in the Rice gym and told Lopez to leave. DeMello told the team to throw Lopez out of practice, but his teammates stood by him. Eventually they all left after DeMello refused to give in. The next day, Lopez dunked and pinned opponents’ shots to the backboard.
“He played above the rim for two straight hours,” DeMello says. “His own teammates were scared of him. I would have paid Rice High to be coach that day.”
Lopez was benched the first quarter of the George Washington game because he was late to that practice. In three quarters, he scored 49 points. “That was my DNA,” Lopez says. “If I’m on a break, ain’t no lay-ups, I’m dunking that sh–. I want you to jump and challenge me to see how high I could jump. If you block it, sh–, that’s a good block, but I’m coming back. You’re gonna block it three times? It’s that one time that I dunk it is going to be the one time everyone is going to remember.”
He left indelible images in his wake as The Felipe Lopez Experience toured top college towns across the country. In Tallahassee, he stood next to Florida State quarterback Charlie Ward, then a Heisman hopeful, on the sideline during the top-ranked Seminoles’ game against Miami. They spoke between possessions. Before Lopez departed for Lawrence, Kan., Jayhawks assistant Matt Doherty wrote DeMello a note.
“The state of Kansas is fired up for Felipe’s visit. We may keep him here for good!”
Phil Ford, the North Carolina assistant, wrote DeMello as well.
“When he qualifies, Felipe will be able to write his own ticket. I hope it is to Chapel Hill, N.C. (smile).”
Lopez made his announcement at the Gauchos Gym, reaching into a brown bag for a single-feather headdress as a salute to the Redmen, the mascot St. John’s had just retired. He slipped it on. Family was happy to have him a subway ride away, but Beattie and McCollin had counseled that he might flourish outside the city’s limits. “He needed to get away so he could take a deep breath,” McCollin says.
* * *
Yanvier Morel, 15, is more familiar with Lopez’s path than most. He emigrated from Santiago to the South Bronx in 2004, and lives on the 20th floor of a brick building in the John Adams Houses, a collection of units the FBI and DEA know well for various narcotics investigations, towering over the church. Morel likes to stay at home with family and look out windows, taking in sightlines of Queens, Brooklyn and Manhattan. He maintains a bright outlook, but keeps an escape plan handy, aware of public housing’s perils. He believes he would burn if there ever was a fire in his apartment so he stores parachutes in a closet. His favorite landing spot is with Lopez’s program on Saturdays.
“Felipe’s an angel to me,” Morel says. “I have the same dream as him.”
Lopez was billed as a savior once before. At St. John’s, he came in with three college credits from taking Advanced Placement calculus and crushing expectations. Before Lopez’s first season began, there he was on a boat in the Hudson River, jumping on a trampoline. The image of Lopez, levitating over the Statue of Liberty with a setting sun in the background, graced the cover of Sports Illustrated before he ever played a game. St. John’s first practice was broadcast by ESPN and WFAN, recorded by a dozen TV cameras and several dozen scribes. Some 5,500 fans attended at $4 a ticket. They were dazzled by a light show and dancers wearing Spandex. “Felipe Mania” was in full effect. “He wasn’t just asked to play, he was asked to sell tickets and hot dogs,” Rutledge says. “If anything we had to do over, maybe too much was asked of him, by St. John’s and the city. It’s like Carmelo Anthony with the Knicks now: not enough support.”
Lopez arrived on campus with Zendon Hamilton, also a McDonald’s All-American. They were going to turn things around with point guard Tarik Turner. Students requested autographs from Lopez in class; he lived in an apartment off campus with Hamilton. Those were carefree times; Hamilton started a DJ night in the apartment. Turner rapped, Hamilton spun records on his turntables and Lopez “did whatever was asked of me.” Lopez played a similar role on the court, putting up 35 points against Syracuse at the Carrier Dome. He guarded Ray Allen, Allen Iverson and Kerry Kittles. Each drew headlines, but only Lopez’s name lit up the Garden marquee on game night.
St. John’s needed to adjust to having a star player. Coach Brian Mahoney knew the celebrity Lopez enjoyed, but he did not fully understand the attention other stars paid to him until the team played in Miami. Mahoney received a phone call one day as the Red Storm prepared to play the Hurricanes. It was from a friend, who said there was a professional baseball player who wanted to meet Lopez. The player was shortstop Alex Rodriguez, then a 20-year-old Washington Heights product with Dominican bloodlines. Rodriguez, picked first in the previous year’s MLB draft, came to the St. John’s hotel for a team meal.
“Alex Rodriguez was mesmerized, star-struck and wide-eyed by Felipe,” Rutledge says. “He was fixated on every word that came out of Felipe’s mouth. He wanted to know about his fashion, his style.”
There was an undeniable flair to Lopez. Spanish music played during layup lines before home games, and he scored 17.8 points per game despite shooting 41% from the floor as the Big East’s newcomer of the year. He proved inconsistent at times and lost some of his sheen, averaging more turnovers than assists without a creative point guard at his side. His setbacks became fodder for skeptics. Marty Blake, the NBA’s head of scouting services, said the SI cover ruined Lopez, adding, “Who was Felipe Lopez? A nice high school player who couldn’t shoot?” Both family members and coaches knew his career was not going according to plan. His work ethic was there, but the wins were not.
“I grew a little depressed,” Lopez says. “It wasn’t like I was going to kill myself, but the joy of the game was gone. Losing took its toll. We never looked at each other as a team.”
Mahoney’s group managed only an 11-16 record Lopez’s sophomore year. It lost in the first round of the Big East Tournament, and Mahoney was asked to step down. He did, and in came Fran Fraschilla, a sideline cyclone, to re-energize the program. Lopez welcomed the change, and toured Japan with a team of amateur American players over the summer. Upon his return, he reached rock bottom before rebounding. In the sixth game of the season, playing at Minnesota, Lopez was guarded by old St. Raymond nemesis Eric Harris. Harris knew every move, every head fake. Lopez missed all seven field-goal attempts, six of which came from 3-point range, the only area where he could get off a shot. Lopez’s only points came on two free throws late in the second half after Minnesota’s center, Trevor Winter, had leveled him with a bodycheck under the basket.
“It was an ass whipping,” Lopez says.
Beattie visited him once at his apartment off campus. She asked Lopez what he had had for breakfast. He said two Twinkies. She rolled her eyes, and believed he was living “footloose and fancy-free,” unlike the tight watch he was under at Rice. He accumulated so many parking tickets on campus and its surrounding streets that a police boot was placed on his car. He kicked the boot, and the boot came off. Lopez took it home.
“I felt they was always on my ass for things,” Lopez says. “They wanted all these rules. Mind you, they wanted me there at 5 a.m. for practice, go to class, then back to practice, then go to games. There was times I was late for places. I would just park in certain places. I had the boot for like two weeks. They called me, ‘Please return the boot or we will have to deal with you in a legal way.’ “
The boot issue was resolved, and Lopez re-worked his game. He kept long hours in the gym, outlasting the janitor, Domingo, who left Lopez to turn out the lights. The effort eventually paid off. Lopez reached the NCAA Tournament his senior year, but his March moment fell short in Chicago, Jordan’s home. Trailing Detroit by two in the final seconds, Lopez took the last shot, a three. It hit the front of the rim, and Hamilton rebounded it, unable to put the ball in. Lopez fell on his back. He covered his face with his hands and lay there a minute before teammates lifted him up and led him off the floor.
“It is the shot that I still think about,” Lopez says.
Lopez likes to say he played with basketball amnesia, forever focusing on the next stroke or steal. Friends and acquaintances approach him and mention dunks he pulled off — like the time he threw a ball off the wall in South Carolina before slamming it. He shrugs at most, leaving others to debate his legacy in bodegas and barbershops. He still calls the SI cover “a blessing,” noting that it “put not just me but my community on another stage,” and allows that he would have liked to ease into his role at St. John’s a little more. He graduated with a degree in hospitality management, but the school withheld his diploma due to unpaid parking tickets. To this day he says, “Someone, somewhere knows where my diploma is. I do not.” In his kitchen, he has the ball commemorating his status as St. John’s third all-time leading scorer atop a cabinet.
“I don’t want to dwell,” he says. “Why brag about the past? I don’t blame anyone for anything. I enjoyed the bands, the battles, the whole experience. I can put my head on a pillow and smile at peace each night.”
He picks his spots in revealing what he remembers. On a recent Saturday, he leafs through a Bible at the pulpit inside the church. His players, ranging from Joseph Ozuma, the fifth grader who attends Ballet Tech, to Jerry Padilla, the 7-year-old forever falling to the ground and picking himself back up, sit before him. Lopez steps in front of them, setting aside a Scripture reading to speak off the cuff.
“I’m going to tell you a story,” he says. “I hate to talk about myself but I have to.”
He relates his successes and setbacks, plotting his path, potholes and all. Morel, in the front row, leans in. Lopez tells them that life can be as simple as a math equation.
“Once you think you have something dominated, ‘Boom! Here comes something more difficult,'” he says. “You must adjust.”
* * *
Rain is falling in Riverdale, and Lopez, wearing a winter hat with furry earflaps, steers his Mercedes, the one with 174,000 miles on the odometer, down Broadway. It’s 10 p.m. on a Wednesday in February. He looks to his right, checking on his other Mercedes, parked between snow banks on the street, and pulls into a spot by his apartment. He talks about “the baddest team” he ever played for. They were the Albany Patroons of the CBA. Michael Ray Richardson, once a Knick, forever a colorful figure, was the coach. Kareem Reid, the former St. Raymond point guard, was on Lopez’s side for once. Lopez was paid $12,000 for the 20-week season. They celebrated at every turn.
“We partied like rock stars,” Lopez says. “Excuse me: broke rock stars.”
Lopez sampled life in all three American professional leagues: NBA, the reformed ABA and CBA. He was drafted by the Spurs in the NBA, the 24th pick in the first round in 1998, then shipped to Vancouver on draft night. He realized his dream in making it to the NBA, but then did a poor job setting new goals. He moved on to the Wizards, where he was paired with Jordan, the jump man logo Lopez drew comparisons to once upon a time. Lopez respected Jordan’s career, but also realized how demanding he could be as a teammate. Sometimes Lopez felt it was too intense.
“It’s a problem because not everyone’s Mike,” Lopez says. “He set the standards super high, but not everyone can apply to that challenge. He knew how to dominate a game. He expected the guys around him to give more. He’s not made to be a failure.”
The Wizards released Lopez that season and he signed with the Timberwolves. He teamed with Garnett and began to identify a fit in the system as an improved ball-handler, as well as a defender. Teammate Wally Szczerbiak noted that Lopez had “carved out a nice niche, a defined role” at both ends of the court. When Minnesota played Washington a few weeks later, Lopez watched Jordan slice through the lane. Lopez fouled him hard. Jordan looked around at Lopez and said, “What the f—?”
Lopez apologized.
“Sorry, Mike,” Lopez said. “Sorry.”
Lopez was eventually the one lying on the ground. It was October 2002, and the Timberwolves took on the Boston Celtics in a preseason game at an obscure arena in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Lopez charged into swingman Paul Pierce and twisted awkwardly. He tore the ACL and MCL in his left knee, and writhed on the floor, fearing the worst. It was over. Lopez, who was entering his fifth season, rehabilitated, but never played another regular-season game in the NBA. Living in Miami, he transitioned to television, working for Telemundo as an analyst, but wanted back on court after a while. He had a daughter named Anuhea Alexa, and left the States to play in Europe, suiting up for a team in Oldenburg, Germany. The new country piqued his interest, and he drove for hours on off days, stopping at the Berlin Wall, touring Munich and drinking in Oktoberfest. He was enchanted by the journey.
“They walk 10 miles to the woods and suddenly there’s a castle,” Lopez says. “When you get there they just have beer after beer after beer.”
He followed the bouncing ball to Spain, back stateside and through South America. International competition always thrilled him, but sometimes the unexpected clipped Lopez. One time, in 1995, it was ice that fans threw on the court at referees when the Dominicans played Cuba. Lopez called for an isolation play at the top of the key in the final seconds, but he slipped on water, unable to finish the play. Game over. Another time, after his knee injury, he didn’t make it into the game. During layup lines, a spirit squad member shot a T-shirt gun in Lopez’s direction. The projectile hit his reconstructed knee. He was out for the weekend’s competition. “How does that happen?” he says.
Many of his highlights were legendary in Santo Domingo. His No. 13 became tantamount to Jordan’s No. 23 in the United States, and his likeness appeared in random places. One night, Orlando Antigua, a member of the national team, was eating with Lopez in Santo Domingo. The only other person in the restaurant was a female cook. Antigua heard a car stop outside; seven men exited. They talked loudly and approached the players’ table. One of the revelers reached into his shirt and pulled out a gold chain. It was decorated with diamonds. In the center was Lopez’s pose from the SI cover.
“It is yours if you want it, Felipe,” the man said.
Lopez declined, but he gave plenty back to his native land. He petitioned the country’s president when he first made the NBA, and a gym was built on the site of his former playground. He ran events for children, ranging from boxing to basketball camps. There were potato-sack races and dance contests. He did charity work in the Dominican Republic, and owned a house, an all-white one in the Camp David section overlooking Santiago. He drank Presidentes and relaxed in his “pacuzzi” — half pool, half Jacuzzi — but the game tugged at him again. To make a living, he set off for leagues in Venezuela, Argentina and Monterrey, Mexico. He came back to Albany to play for the Patroons, and reached the league championship series. In Game 2 at the 3,500-seat Washington Ave. Armory, Lopez clashed with teammate Carl Mitchell. Lopez took exception to Mitchell’s shot selection. He also overheard Mitchell call him “a b—- a– n—-.” Lopez punched Mitchell; Mitchell hit back. The Patroons lost. Chaos reigned afterward. Fans held out SI covers for Lopez to sign as the team walked to the locker room. A coach slammed a door.
“Your own teammate punches you during a game?” Mitchell said. “What the hell is that?”
“I heard him say something and it was bad,” Lopez said. “I’ve been playing basketball for a long time and I wasn’t comfortable with what he said. We exchanged blows. I was not going to take it lightly.”
Looking back, Lopez notes, “I didn’t have s— to lose. I wasn’t in the NBA anymore.” But he never left the NBA family, remaining active with its charities even after he was gone from his playing days. He helped build a library in Brazil, conducted clinics for children abroad and grew into a role as an ambassador for the game, especially in Spanish-speaking communities. Fellow ambassador Dikembe Mutumbo dubbed him “Saint Felipe” for his humanitarian touch, and there proved to be no borders for Lopez’s help. Two years ago, he started lending his time freely at the YWHA in Riverdale. In the basement gym, a Maccabi Square Garden where boys wearing yarmulkes run under a large map of Israel, Lopez works with special-needs children. He entertains all questions.
“Felipe is special among former players,” NBA commissioner Adam Silver says. “He’s magical. Kids respond to him, his manner, his smile. He has almost a special skip in his step. People at one time were saying he might be one of the greatest ever. He had a nice career, but I think he also recognizes that he lives his life in the moment. I’ve never sensed any bitterness, any belief that he was entitled to something that didn’t come.”
Relationships remain Lopez’s greatest currency and inspiration. In his apartment, there is a poster of former Knicks guard John Starks’ famous lefthanded dunk over Jordan and Horace Grant in the 1993 playoffs. Lopez sees Starks at community events for the Knicks. There is also a photo of Drazen Petrovic, the Croatian scorer, because his girlfriend, Kero, is Croatian. Lopez loved Petrovic’s spirit as a player, and tries to channel it on and off the court. He keeps a photo of himself with David Stern, the former NBA commissioner, on a table in his living room. It is not from draft night; rather it is from a community center with children.
“I blew through a lot of money, but, for me, I knew money was never going to bring happiness,” Lopez says. “I spent on me and my family. At the end of the day, they are who is around me. I’m back where I started with more than when I began.”
He walks through the hall of his apartment building before stopping in his tracks. There is a dog barking, and Lopez runs to it, rubs its belly and brings it into a neighboring unit. The residents are the Mello family. Lopez lived next to them once before, in Santiago. A woman yells, “Who is it?” Her daughter says, “It’s Felipe! Who else?”
* * *
The Rev. Miguel Diaz, leader of the Bronx Spanish Evangelical Church, home of Give Them to Eat, the pantry that provides 29,000 meals each month, recalls his early days in the neighborhood with eyes wide. Burned-out buildings made the Bronx look like Berlin in World War II. Once, Diaz was beaten unconscious and left for dead on the sidewalk. Another time, a hungry stranger threw a brick at him when Diaz told the man the pantry would only be open the next day. He winces at the memories, but his church community was shaken to its core last year when a 15-year-old girl, who worked at the pantry by day, committed suicide hours after leaving the parking lot. Diaz and denizens closed the street off for youths to grieve.
“This is not a job,” Diaz says. “It is a mission.”
Diaz was delighted when Lopez got involved. The Rev. Danilo Lachapel, who emigrated from the Dominican Republic and was once homeless in the Bronx, knew Lopez’s mother for years. She volunteered at the food pantry and soup kitchen; she talked about her son, the basketball player, and Lachapel welcomed Lopez when he finally returned to the area. They value his contributions, including the yellow paint he applied to the gymnasium walls, and the lines he painted on the hardwood court. A banner emblazoned with the words “Team Fe” now hangs on the wall. Lachapel wants the program to grow further, to as many as 200 or 300 children. There are 40 or so now.
“Children are going to act as they see the adults behave,” Lopez says.
Lopez stood at the lectern on a recent Saturday and talked about endurance. He mentioned to the children that he runs to stay in shape. He also noted that Diaz, a strong, sprite 70-something, runs six miles at a time several days a week in Central Park. Lopez invited the boys to join them during the spring.
“I want to create warriors,” Lopez says.
He returned to an old blacktop battleground on March 11. It was the schoolyard near his first Bronx apartment, and he showed up just after noon. He shot around, then accepted the challenge of a young player to a one-on-one matchup. Lopez handled him, then recognized a familiar face from his days as a teen. Lopez threw the ball over at him, and the man tried to place Lopez’s face. They nodded at each other, then Lopez hopped in his Mercedes, made his way back home for a shower and jumped in a black SUV sent to pick him up. He rode in the back, and met his son at Aviation High School in Queens.
It was Pito’s 15th birthday. They took the 7 train to Grand Central, where Lopez participated in a 3-on-3 tournament arranged by Fox Sports 1. The competition featured old Big East players such as God Shammgod and Terry Dehere, David Wingate and Reggie Williams ahead of the reconfigured conference’s tournament that week. They greeted each other beneath the chandeliers that hang above Vanderbilt Hall. Lopez wore a trench coat and fedora, dressed as if he were a commuter heading home. A black curtain that hid a hardwood court dropped down; underneath Lopez’s cover was a St. John’s uniform.
“Is that Felipe Lopez?” a television announcer asked.
It was. He organized his team with an MC’s demeanor, draining a long 3-pointer and dunking on another play, jumping just high enough to get the ball above the rim and down through the net. (“If you call that a dunk,” he says.) It was a flashback to an era his son only really saw on YouTube. The players assembled for a selfie at center court, generations of Big East greats grinning still. Afterward, the driver picked them up again. Kero joined Lopez and his son. They got out in front of Ninja, a Tribeca restaurant on Hudson St. There was levity to Lopez in the dark; he was looking forward to “a 15-year-old’s brand of fun.” Music blared from the SUV’s speakers. He danced as his son and girlfriend walked ahead. He listened to the lyrics, “Do you remember the time?”
