Gregg Doyel

He's tall. He's also distinguished and stoic, but man is he tall. He's 80 years old and wearing a green blazer like the other ushers at Bankers Life Fieldhouse, but he's 6-6 and working in an NBA arena and so … you wonder.

He's standing near one basket, where NBA players and coaches have walked past him since 1997. They don't know who he is. They've never asked. Not one of them. Not in 17 years.

I asked. Last week. Saw this tall, distinguished, stoic man in his green jacket, standing quietly near the basket before a Pacers game, and wondered.

"Excuse me," I say to the usher whose nameplate identifies him as 'Cleveland.' "Did you play basketball?"

Cleveland Harp peers down at me. He smiles. Then he puts a finger to his throat and tells me a story.

The finger. Right. Cleveland Harp was a smoker, two packs a day for a lifetime, until the doctor said his lifetime would soon end if he didn't have his voice box removed. Stage 4 cancer. It was Aug. 26, 2010. A surgeon removed the voice box, connected the windpipe to the esophagus with a small valve, and gave Harp the ability to speak. When he's ready to talk he puts a finger to his neck, presses down on that valve to close it off and trap the air in his throat, and squeaks out a sentence or two.

"Don't make me laugh," he says more than once.

Eventually I say something silly, can't help it, and he starts laughing. Then wheezing. Then he goes silent.

Cleveland?

He sips a drink through a straw, waits a few seconds, then speaks. It sounds as if he's talking underwater.

"I told you not to do that."

That's how his story comes out. In wheezes and pauses and squeaks, in a halting squawk that belies the dignity and maturity of the words he chooses. He tells me about playing with a younger kid named Oscar Robertson at the Lockefield Gardens housing unit, on a court folks around Indianapolis called the Dust Bowl. He tells me about playing for Crispus Attucks High School, the senior center on a team that won a regional in 1953, two years before Robertson helped Attucks become the first all-black team in America to win a state title.

Cleveland Harp tells me about playing for the Harlem Globetrotters. About playing against 7-footer Bill Spivey, who was banned by Kentucky and then the NBA for his role in a point-shaving scandal, and against Bevo Francis of Rio Grande College, who scored an NCAA-record 113 points in a game in 1954. About playing basketball against future Major League Baseball stars Dick Allen and Ernie Banks. About teaming up with ex-Trotters Goose Tatum and Marques Haynes and barnstorming for more than a decade with the Harlem Magicians and Harlem Astronauts.

He tells me the NBA never gave him a tryout. He tells me he isn't bitter. He tells me all of this with his finger pressed to his throat. The NBA players walking by, the coaches – Charlotte Hornets assistant Patrick Ewing walks toward us, looks at the 6-6 Harp, looks through him, over him, keeps going – they have no idea who he is. The NBA today is a billion-dollar business. The growth of the game, its explosion, was aided by the Globetrotters and other barnstorming squads that showcased African-American pioneers like Tatum and Haynes, Wilt Chamberlain and Connie Hawkins.

Cleveland Harp was but a single spoke in that wheel, but that wheel helped drive the NBA to these financial heights. And that wheel ran right over him. His teammate at Crispus Attucks, Oscar Robertson, knows.

"Lot of guys didn't have the opportunities to play NBA basketball because of the timing," Robertson says. "Cleveland was one of those guys."

And so I asked Harp, as Pacers center Roy Hibbert walked past the basket and onto the floor, about the irony that his life represents. Millionaires on the court, and here you are, an usher at their games. Separated by a few feet, a few decades, a few million dollars.

"Gregg, I'm not bitter about none of it," Harp says, using my name as he tends to do, one of his many charismatic affectations. "We came along when we were supposed to come along. We did what we were supposed to do. And now is their time to do what they're doing."

He pauses. Forces some air back into his lungs. Presses his neck.

"It doesn't bother me a bit."

About 25 feet away is the Hornets' $41 million center, Al Jefferson. He's sprawled on the court, having his hamstring stretched by a trainer.

"Big Cleveland Harp did everything but make the ball talk," according to the story in the Lebanon (Pa.) Daily News on Nov. 20, 1963. "And there were those in the crowd that went away believing he could do just that."

At Bankers Life Fieldhouse there are occasionally those in the crowd who believe this tall, quiet man played basketball. Had to, right? They wonder, and so they ask him if he played. And this is what Cleveland Harp quietly tells them.

"No," he'll say. "I never played."

He's here for work, not attention. He didn't gravitate to Market Square Arena in 1997, and follow the Pacers to Conseco (now called Bankers Life) Fieldhouse in 1999, so basketball fans would see the tall usher and ask about his own career. He took the job in 1987 after having spent years in Detroit managing apartment buildings and restaurants. He became an NBA usher because he was 63, ready to come back to Indianapolis and slow down, but not ready to stop. Today he's 80. No voice box. Still an usher.

"I realize what a sweet job it is," he says. "I'll work until the Lord takes me."

He lives in a senior center on 86th Street, and he drives his 2009 Lincoln Town Car to a job where he is unknown to most. At a recent Pacers game I approach usher Corey Thompson, point to Harp, and explain his ex-Globetrotter backstory.

"For real?" Thompson asks.

Another usher, Ed Roessler, had been working with Harp for more than a year before he figured it out. And only then because the Globetrotters were in town, and they recognized former players in the community, and invited three or four ex-Trotters onto the floor. There was Willie Gardner, the best player Indianapolis ever produced until The Big O came along a few years later. There was Hallie Bryant, another great from Crispus Attucks who joined the Globetrotters. And there was … what?

"I look up," says Roessler, "and there's Cleveland on the court."

In his green blazer. The same one he's wearing when I ask him why he doesn't tell people what he's accomplished.

"Gregg, most of us that came up at that time were not boastful," he says. "We did it. If people know, fine. If they don't, fine."

The Pacers don't know. Coach Frank Vogel didn't know. Or Hibbert. Ian Mahinmi didn't know but stopped me as I walked away, wanting to make sure of the name. "You said Cleveland, right?"

Chris Copeland said he's talked to Harp several times, but never knew the usher's basketball background.

"Cool cat," Copeland says. "Had no idea he played. Respect."

David West seemed like the most likely Pacer to know. Older, wiser, still so grounded – he was the one who might know, I figured.

"No," West said. "I don't. What's his name?"

Cleveland Harp. Local high school star. Harlem Globetrotter. A pro ballplayer for more than 10 years. Now an usher.

"Yeah, I wouldn't know that," West said. "Unless you tell your story, how are people supposed to know?"

They aren't, which is how Harp likes it. Why did he tell me his story? Why, when I asked him if he played, didn't he lie to me as he has lied to so many Pacers fans? Harp says he doesn't know. Moment of weakness, perhaps, and it's one I make him pay for later, after talking to various ushers about the former Globetrotter in their midst, and learning from one of them – from an usher of 12 years named James Fletcher – that Harp has a nickname.

"I call him 'Player,'" Fletcher says.

I run to Harp and demand to know if he's been lying to me. You have been telling folks who you are!

"He's talking about the women," Harp says.

Back to Fletcher I go.

"Yeah," Fletcher says. "He has lots of little admirers."

Cleveland? Admirers? He smiles, puts his finger to his throat and tells me another story.

"You know, Gregg, I'm still alive," he says. "I'm still alive, still kicking."

Star reporter Candace Buckner contributed to this story. Connect with Star columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter at @GreggDoyelStar or at www.facebook.com/gregg.doyel

Note: Cleveland Harp's alma mater, Crispus Attucks High School, is the subject of a series of stories by Star reporter Kyle Neddenriep that began Tuesday, and also the subject of local filmmaker (and former Star editor) Ted Green's next documentary.



