Remembering Raymond Lewis, the 76ers draft pick who never played in the NBA

June 30, 2024

Sonny Vaccaro, one of basketball’s most well-known names, has seen every elite high school player since 1965, when he co-founded the Dapper Dan Roundball Basketball Classic in Pittsburgh.

Vaccaro, who built his basketball legacy as a famous executive with Nike, Reebok and Adidas, was in awe of a young Raymond Lewis. After watching Lewis in high school, Vaccaro said those unfamiliar with the guard need to know his story.

“He was the best high school player that I had ever saw in my life,” Vaccaro told The Athletic. “What I saw was a kid oblivious to anything but the love of basketball.

“What I saw later on was basketball killed him, because basketball lied to him.”

Former NBA player and current Pepperdine coach Lorenzo Romar said the story of Lewis’ life is fascinating and sad. The documentary film “Raymond Lewis: L.A. Legend,” which tells the story of a drafted athlete who never played a minute in the NBA, will be screened for free Saturday in Salt Lake City during All-Star weekend.

Lewis was a phenom at Verbum Dei Jesuit High in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles in 1969, winning three consecutive California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) Southern Section championships. A prodigious scorer, Lewis was recruited by more than 250 schools, according to the documentary, but he surprised many by choosing California State University, Los Angeles.

Lewis was a machine on the Cal State L.A. freshman team, averaging 38.9 points per game. In his sophomore year, Lewis ranked second in the nation in scoring during the 1972-73 season, averaging 32.9 points. He left college following that season for the NBA Draft, and the Philadelphia 76ers chose him as the 18th pick.

Lewis, however, left the Sixers after being frustrated over a contract dispute. He negotiated his own contract, which he thought was for $450,000 guaranteed, but the deal included much of the money being deferred. The dispute led to Lewis never playing professionally, as the Sixers threatened to sue when he tried to play for the Utah Stars of the ABA.

Both Romar and Vaccaro described Lewis as “stubborn” in that he tried to go against the league in a contract dispute that ended his NBA career before it started.

“Raymond didn’t do anything he didn’t want to do,” Romar told The Athletic. “You weren’t going to sway him to do something he didn’t want to do. Raymond had trust issues, which is why he didn’t have representation.”

“I honestly believed the game killed him because they lied to him,” added Vaccaro, who tried helping Lewis get into the ABA. “The NBA and the ABA weren’t truthful, and it was a bad time to be an isolated player, especially Black in those years.”

Vaccaro said Lewis and prep phenom Ben Wilson, who was murdered in 1984, remain the “two biggest heartbreaks of my life.”

“They never had a chance,” Vaccaro said. “The world never got a chance to know them.”

Romar, six years younger than Lewis, didn’t get to know Lewis until he was in the NBA in the 1980s. Stories of Lewis’ dominance came from what he did on the blacktop and in summer-league pro-am games that included NBA players.

“What I remember is he had been past his prime, but still nobody could stop him,” Romar said. “Whether the guys were in the NBA, whether the guys were All-NBA, All-Defensive Team … he’s getting 60, 70 points on guys.”

Romar told The Athletic that Lewis was a student of the game. In February 1973, Romar was in middle school when Lewis torched coach Jerry Tarkanian and Long Beach State, then the third-ranked team in the country, for 53 points.

Glenn McDonald, who played at Long Beach State and later in the NBA, relayed a story to Romar about what Lewis did to exploit their defense. Lewis heard Tarkanian was planning on using a 1-3-1 three-quarter-court trap prior to the game. Lewis wanted to be a step ahead.

“He put Xs on the floor where he thought the openings in the zone would be and shot from there all week,” Romar said. “That next game, he had 53.”

Lewis’ basketball mind and overall skills got him drafted, but he never played a minute in the NBA. He battled depression and addiction before dying in 2001 at 48 years old from health complications after having a leg amputated and suffering a stroke.

Vaccaro said it’s important to tell Lewis’ story because the basketball community must remember how players were treated in the past. The notion of a player with two years of college basketball and no legal guidance negotiating his own contract today would be absurd.

Vaccaro doesn’t want the public to forget what those times did to some of the best players.

“People forget that part of basketball,” Vaccaro said. “Those kids in those years had no chance to do what these kids do in this generation.”

Lewis’ daughter, Kamilah, was angry with her father growing up. She had questions: Why didn’t he just play under the contract with the Sixers? Would life have been different if he hadn’t challenged the authority of the NBA?

Kamilah remembers moving from Long Beach to Watts because of the family’s financial hardships. But the documentary has brought a new level of compassion.

She served as a producer on the film and found the process of making and marketing the film therapeutic and educational. Prior to the film being made, she had never seen footage of her father’s high school games or his early 1970s interview with Bryant Gumbel.

“I always heard ‘signed a bad contract,’ but I never knew the insights of what that meant,” Kamilah told The Athletic. “That’s another reason I want to get a hold of it, to see the language in the contract.”

The contract led to the derailment of what many believed would have been a promising professional career. It left Lewis to play the game wherever he could, but not for a living. He loved summer games against NBA players, such as Los Angeles Lakers star Michael Cooper. Kamilah didn’t realize just how special he was on the court.

When he’d return to Verbum Dei to play pickup games, they instituted the “Raymond Lewis Rule,” according to Ed Gordon, who starred at Verbum Dei years after Lewis before having his own college career at San Diego State. His son, Aaron, plays for the Denver Nuggets.

“We’d play two-on-two full court, pickup full court, and after he wins three games in a row, he’s got to sit out a game and let the rest play against the rest, because he just would not lose, ever,” Gordon said. “I’d never seen anything like that before. It’s a story that should be told.”

Gordon is an executive producer on the project. They weren’t close friends, but Gordon revered Lewis’ game and would see each other on the court when Gordon was a freshman at San Diego State. Gordon compared the 6-foot-1 Lewis’ game to that of Kyrie Irving.

Kamilah recalled her father taking jobs, and when coworkers found out who he was, they peppered him with questions about the NBA career that didn’t happen. It all grew frustrating.

“Imagine just reliving that every time you clock in,” Kamilah said. “Then, OK, I’m not going to work there; I’m going to work in Pasadena. Every day, someone’s asking you for an autograph or asking you, ‘What happened? What’s going on?’ That’s mental trauma, and we now know how to call these things out. Back then, we didn’t know what that was.

“Back then, I didn’t know what depression was, but I can tell you around what age I noticed my father going into it. When I noticed the light about basketball going out of his eyes.”

Romar said Lewis never let go of his NBA dream, and at times, it showed. He had plenty of good times, but what happened to him with the Sixers, being blocked from playing in the NBA and getting camp invites that never led to a chance to play professionally bothered him.

“I watched him with his kids. I watched him around the house. He was a cool dude,” Romar said. “But it was always like he was preoccupied with making it to the league still. He’d laugh, he’d tell a story, and then it was, like, he’d go off into the distance thinking.”

Kamilah was moved by all the basketball players who attended her father’s funeral in 2001. It was that moment that helped spark her desire to tell her father’s story.

She’s also learned of modern players, like Baron Davis, who craved to know more about Lewis. She said Davis reached out because he’d heard so much about Lewis as a Los Angeles native, and he wanted to educate himself on Lewis’ greatness.

It’s been about eight years since the project started. She called it a “complete healing moment.” She’s been able to hear some of the stories about her father’s talent confirmed by the likes of Cooper and Tarkanian, who gave his final interview for the documentary before his death in 2015. Tarkanian devoted a portion of his 2005 autobiography to Lewis, calling him the “greatest player I ever recruited.”

For all Lewis gave in pursuing his dream, it’s fulfilling for Kamilah to hear how much he meant to others in basketball.

“I never get tired of hearing it, and it’s amazing,” Kamilah said. “He didn’t get to hear it as much, and now I get to hear it. And through his spirit, I know he gets to hear it, too. It gives me great joy.”

A lot of people played with or against Lewis, but not many knew him because he was a private person. He didn’t have a large circle because of his trust issues. Kamilah said her father was a fan of Muhammad Ali and how he took a stand for his beliefs. He also was a child when the 1965 Watts riots affected his neighborhood, perhaps making him more inclined to stand his ground when he believed he was done wrong.

“He was so misunderstood,” Romar said. “You hang out with him, watching a Dodger baseball game, and you’d have the best time laughing. A lot of people just picture him as a guy that didn’t make it and was just bitter. He had a fun side to him, too.”

Director and Philadelphia native Ryan Polomski and co-director/producer Dean Prator have been part of the push to get the documentary to a wider audience. Kamilah said Prator found some of the footage in garages of people who might have thrown it away had it not been for work on the film.

Polomski said he wanted to be a part of a film based in Los Angeles after relocating to the area about 10 years ago. He said a production grant through Dr. Anthony Samad, a renowned author and executive director of the Mervyn M. Dymally African American Political and Economic Institute at Cal State University-Dominguez Hills, helped a lot.

Polomski said the grant came with a deadline to have the film ready for the 2021 Pan African Film Festival helped get the film completed even as the COVID-19 pandemic forced final interviews to be done remotely. Brian Panish, another executive producer of the documentary, also helped, Polomski said.

Polomski’s roots in Philadelphia made him somewhat familiar with Lewis’ story. Work on the film made him more aware and increased his desire to share the story. The film is available through a variety of streaming services, such as VOD, iTunes, Amazon Direct, Vudu, Spectrum Cable and Google play, but he’s hoping for bigger platforms to share the presentation.

The documentary was a finalist for the 2002 Library of Congress Lavine/Ken Burns Prize for Film. Polomski said they will host a screening at the University of Texas as a part of a Black History Month celebration Feb. 27. He is encouraged by positive reviews.

“We’re going to keep plugging along like we’ve done all along,” Polomski said. “We’ve never quit. We’ve never let obstacles get in our way; we’ve always overcome them. We look at distribution the same way we look at how we made the movie: with a never-give-up attitude just like we think Raymond had.”

(Top illustration: Courtesy of Greenleaf & Associates)

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