Billy Ray Bates
Encyclopedia
Billy Ray Bates is a retired American
professional basketball
player. Bates played shooting guard
at McAdams High in Mississippi and attended Kentucky State University
.
Bates played four seasons in the National Basketball Association
for the Portland Trail Blazers
, Washington Bullets and Los Angeles Lakers
. He also played overseas, in Switzerland
, Mexico
, Uruguay
, and most notably in the Philippines
for the Crispa Redmanizers
and Ginebra San Miguel
of the Philippine Basketball Association
.
On January 17, 1998, Bates robbed a New Jersey Texaco station at knife point, slashing the ear of attendant Philip Kittel. He was sentenced to seven years in prison. He has since been released and is living in the Camden and Trenton areas of New Jersey.
, Bates immediately grabbed the limelight and thrilled the crowd with a spectacular display of inside and outside moves against the league powerhouse, Great Taste Coffee. In that game, Bates would go up against PBA legend Norman Black
. In that game, Bates exploded for 64 points on 20 out of 25 two point shots (80%), 5 out of 6 three point attempts (83%), and 9 out of 10 free throws (90%), along with 12 rebounds and 5 assists. Norman Black was pretty offensive-minded himself, popping in 59 points in a losing cause, 120-119 against Crispa. Bates would display an accurate jumper even from 3-point range, a muscular upper body to physically match up and intimidate the skinnier/taller opponents, and a mean game from the paint punctuated by his favorite arsenal, the slam-dunk.
Three things stood out in that game. First, Bates scoring 64 points was marvelous because Crispa had a number of superstars on their team. At that time, Crispa didn't need a scoring import since the locals were more than capable of carrying the load. The second remarkable thing was how Bates electrified the crowd with his derring-do style. A lot of Bates's two-pointers came from dunks, around 6 in that game, ushering in a new era of prototype PBA imports that were benchmarked on Billy Ray Bates. And third, Bates was now under Tommy Manotoc, acknowledged back then as the greatest defensive coach of the league. For someone like Bates to be collared with his offensive ways was practically impossible to do, as Manotoc himself later admitted. Manotoc instead decided to change his style to suit the strengths of Bates.
Bobby Factura would write:
He became the Philippine version of Julius Erving, revolutionizing the fastbreak game with his thunderous dunks and long-range bombs, averaging an astonishing 64.5 percent from the field and a high of 64 points in one game. Television game shows had dunking contests on miniature goals.
Bates’s scoring ability and flamboyant showmanship plus a charismatic, outgoing personality endeared him to the basketball-watching Filipino public and the media. He was called the Black Superman. A local shoe manufacturer gave him an endorsement coming out with a line of shoe with “Black Superman” emblazoned on it. Bates was so flattered big time with this endorsement that he was spreading the word back home in Mississippi about his success in the Philippines, even having a pair of rubber shoes named after him.
"Those people, they loved me," Bates would tell The Oregonian
. "There, I was like Michael Jordan
. I could have anything I wanted. All I had to do was snap my fingers. I had my own condo, my own car and my own bodyguard with an Uzi. I had to fight off the women."
Bates won the 1983 Best Import award and helped the Crispa Redmanizers
win two championships. Three years later, Bates and Michael Hackett joined forces to give Ginebra its first PBA title in 1986. He returned to Ginebra in 1987 leading all imports with a 54.9 ppg average. His last stint with Ginebra was in 1988, where he teamed up with future Celtics star Kevin Gamble
. But being out of shape, he played in only four games and both players were eventually replaced by the high scoring duo of Joe Ward and Tommy Davis. Billy Ray Bates would be widely regarded by many as the greatest import ever to have played in the PBA.
In Billy Ray's four seasons in the PBA for Crispa and Ginebra, he averaged the all time league high of 46.2 points in 98 career games. Joel Banal
, a former PBA player, looks at the game where Bates was held to a PBA career low of 28 points among the highlights of his playing career.
Bates later played in Switzerland
, back in the U.S with the World Basketball League, a few seasons in Mexico—even a season in Uruguay.
Bates's career is an example of what can happen to players unprepared for NBA life in urban environs. Jerome Kersey
relates,
Bates once epitomized the image of hard-partying, sex-crazed athletes in the PBA. His Filipino teammates vividly recall times when Bates downed a couple of beers in the locker room before tip-off. It is believed that he was able to put up Wilt Chamberlain
-like numbers in the bedroom, as well as on the court. Even his PBA nickname, "Black Superman," contained a hint of innuendo.
In the past, Bates has been vague about the root of his difficulties. In a 1992 interview with The Oregonian, for example, he denied having drug problems.
In his recollection of the events, Bates went to the liquor store, bought a lottery ticket and a half-pint of vodka, which he drank. He then ran into a group of younger kids, who talked of getting cocaine but nobody had the money to buy the drug. Bates suggested the idea of robbing a Texaco station he frequented. He attacked the attendant, 18-year-old Phillip Kittel, with a knife. Although Bates says he never used the weapon, Kittel received three stitches to his ear. The attack was caught on videotape. Bates fled the scene, the knife falling out of his pocket. He was found by the police passed out on a neighborhood lawn blocks away with $7 in his pocket.
Bates was convicted of first degree aggravated assault and second degree assault, and in June 2000 began serving a sentence at Bayside State Prison in Leesburg, N.J. that carried a maximum of 10 years, 3 months and 24 days and a minimum of 5 years, 11 months and 16 days. He was paroled in March 2005 after completing 85 percent of his sentence (4 years, 9 months and 11 days).
He violated his parole when cocaine showed up in his drug test eighteen months later. Bates went back to Bayside and was released on March 23, 2008.
Bates became an inmate at Hope Hall, a 164-bed halfway house for adult male offenders in Camden, N.J. During his stay, he has taken part in classes designed to mend damaged cognitive skills, ready himself for the workplace and learn how to manage his emotions. Bates juggled church attendance, AA meetings and shifts at Aluminum Shapes, an aluminum extruder, where he readies products for shipping. In the evenings, he studies reading and writing at Camden Community College.
Bates passed a rehabilitation program in 2008 at a Salvation Army center in Newark, N.J. Citing confidentiality laws, Capt. Carol Austin only indirectly acknowledged Bates' involvement, saying the last she heard from him was he was headed to Portland in 2008.
After being released, Bates lived in two places, a friend's apartment in Manhattan and his wife's home in North Brunswick, N.J. He attended a Back to Work program in Manhattan for job referrals. He and former 76ers guard Earl Harrison are tried to start a basketball skills coaching clinic.
During the prison sentence, Bates wrote his autobiography titled "Born to Play Basketball" in ink and pencil on 714 pages of yellow legal paper, front to back. Although featuring rudimentary spelling and painful grammar, Michele Mako, the publisher of Florida Peach Publishing Company, was said to have considered the manuscript. Mako liked Bates' honesty about his past and booked the ex-pro on a three-day, three-night NBA and NFL Speakers Cruise in February 2009 to the Bahamas.
In 2009, Bates worked for a big grocery supplies chain. Then at present, Bates works as a floor technician in the 6 p.m. to 4:30 a.m. shift with the Colgate recycling company in New Jersey. Bates and his wife Beverly, a front desk officer at a local Hilton hotel, have been married for twenty-two years. He has a daughter, Jennifer, who is 24 and lives in Switzerland, where he once played. Bates tries to play basketball once or twice a week in New York City or South Jersey and has joined some exhibition games with retired PBA legends.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
professional basketball
Basketball
Basketball is a team sport in which two teams of five players try to score points by throwing or "shooting" a ball through the top of a basketball hoop while following a set of rules...
player. Bates played shooting guard
Shooting guard
The shooting guard , also known as the two or off guard, is one of five traditional positions on a basketball team. Players of the position are often shorter, leaner, and quicker than forwards. A shooting guard's main objective is to score points for his team...
at McAdams High in Mississippi and attended Kentucky State University
Kentucky State University
Kentucky State University is a four-year institution of higher learning, located in Frankfort, Kentucky, United States, the Commonwealth's capital. The school is an historically black university, which desegregated in 1954...
.
Bates played four seasons in the National Basketball Association
National Basketball Association
The National Basketball Association is the pre-eminent men's professional basketball league in North America. It consists of thirty franchised member clubs, of which twenty-nine are located in the United States and one in Canada...
for the Portland Trail Blazers
Portland Trail Blazers
The Portland Trail Blazers, commonly known as the Blazers, are an American professional basketball team based in Portland, Oregon. They play in the Northwest Division of the Western Conference in the National Basketball Association . The Trail Blazers originally played their home games in the...
, Washington Bullets and Los Angeles Lakers
Los Angeles Lakers
The Los Angeles Lakers are an American professional basketball team based in Los Angeles, California. They play in the Pacific Division of the Western Conference in the National Basketball Association...
. He also played overseas, in Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
, Mexico
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
, Uruguay
Uruguay
Uruguay ,officially the Oriental Republic of Uruguay,sometimes the Eastern Republic of Uruguay; ) is a country in the southeastern part of South America. It is home to some 3.5 million people, of whom 1.8 million live in the capital Montevideo and its metropolitan area...
, and most notably in the Philippines
Philippines
The Philippines , officially known as the Republic of the Philippines , is a country in Southeast Asia in the western Pacific Ocean. To its north across the Luzon Strait lies Taiwan. West across the South China Sea sits Vietnam...
for the Crispa Redmanizers
Crispa Redmanizers
The Crispa Redmanizers was a basketball team in the Manila Industrial Commercial Athletic Association , the Philippine Basketball Association and the Philippine Amateur Basketball League from the 1960s to the early 1990s.- Profile and history :...
and Ginebra San Miguel
Barangay Ginebra Kings
The Barangay Ginebra Kings is a professional basketball team of the Philippine Basketball Association founded in 1979 and owned by the Ginebra San Miguel, Inc., a subsidiary of the San Miguel Corporation...
of the Philippine Basketball Association
Philippine Basketball Association
The Philippine Basketball Association , is a men's professional basketball league in the Philippines composed of 10 company-branded franchised teams. It is the first and oldest professional basketball league in Asia and the second oldest in the world after the NBA...
.
On January 17, 1998, Bates robbed a New Jersey Texaco station at knife point, slashing the ear of attendant Philip Kittel. He was sentenced to seven years in prison. He has since been released and is living in the Camden and Trenton areas of New Jersey.
NBA career
He would take the PBA by storm in the mid-80s. In his first game with the Crispa RedmanizersCrispa Redmanizers
The Crispa Redmanizers was a basketball team in the Manila Industrial Commercial Athletic Association , the Philippine Basketball Association and the Philippine Amateur Basketball League from the 1960s to the early 1990s.- Profile and history :...
, Bates immediately grabbed the limelight and thrilled the crowd with a spectacular display of inside and outside moves against the league powerhouse, Great Taste Coffee. In that game, Bates would go up against PBA legend Norman Black
Norman Black
Norman Augustus Black is an American retired professional basketball player in the CBA, NBA, and PBA who has since settled in the Philippines. He is also a former head coach of the San Miguel Beermen, Mobiline Phone Pals, Pop Cola 800s, and Sta. Lucia Realtors...
. In that game, Bates exploded for 64 points on 20 out of 25 two point shots (80%), 5 out of 6 three point attempts (83%), and 9 out of 10 free throws (90%), along with 12 rebounds and 5 assists. Norman Black was pretty offensive-minded himself, popping in 59 points in a losing cause, 120-119 against Crispa. Bates would display an accurate jumper even from 3-point range, a muscular upper body to physically match up and intimidate the skinnier/taller opponents, and a mean game from the paint punctuated by his favorite arsenal, the slam-dunk.
Three things stood out in that game. First, Bates scoring 64 points was marvelous because Crispa had a number of superstars on their team. At that time, Crispa didn't need a scoring import since the locals were more than capable of carrying the load. The second remarkable thing was how Bates electrified the crowd with his derring-do style. A lot of Bates's two-pointers came from dunks, around 6 in that game, ushering in a new era of prototype PBA imports that were benchmarked on Billy Ray Bates. And third, Bates was now under Tommy Manotoc, acknowledged back then as the greatest defensive coach of the league. For someone like Bates to be collared with his offensive ways was practically impossible to do, as Manotoc himself later admitted. Manotoc instead decided to change his style to suit the strengths of Bates.
Bobby Factura would write:
What Doc (Julius ErvingJulius ErvingJulius Winfield Erving II , commonly known by the nickname Dr. J, is a retired American basketball player who helped launch a modern style of play that emphasizes leaping and play above the rim....
) did to revolutionize the slam-dunk in the NBA/ABA during the 70s, Bates did the same for the PBA in the early 80s. His natural ability to hang in the air longer than any defender and at the last instance powerfully slam the ball into the rim brought the shot to the next level.
He became the Philippine version of Julius Erving, revolutionizing the fastbreak game with his thunderous dunks and long-range bombs, averaging an astonishing 64.5 percent from the field and a high of 64 points in one game. Television game shows had dunking contests on miniature goals.
Bates’s scoring ability and flamboyant showmanship plus a charismatic, outgoing personality endeared him to the basketball-watching Filipino public and the media. He was called the Black Superman. A local shoe manufacturer gave him an endorsement coming out with a line of shoe with “Black Superman” emblazoned on it. Bates was so flattered big time with this endorsement that he was spreading the word back home in Mississippi about his success in the Philippines, even having a pair of rubber shoes named after him.
"Those people, they loved me," Bates would tell The Oregonian
The Oregonian
The Oregonian is the major daily newspaper in Portland, Oregon, owned by Advance Publications. It is the oldest continuously published newspaper on the U.S. west coast, founded as a weekly by Thomas J. Dryer on December 4, 1850...
. "There, I was like Michael Jordan
Michael Jordan
Michael Jeffrey Jordan is a former American professional basketball player, active entrepreneur, and majority owner of the Charlotte Bobcats...
. I could have anything I wanted. All I had to do was snap my fingers. I had my own condo, my own car and my own bodyguard with an Uzi. I had to fight off the women."
Bates won the 1983 Best Import award and helped the Crispa Redmanizers
Crispa Redmanizers
The Crispa Redmanizers was a basketball team in the Manila Industrial Commercial Athletic Association , the Philippine Basketball Association and the Philippine Amateur Basketball League from the 1960s to the early 1990s.- Profile and history :...
win two championships. Three years later, Bates and Michael Hackett joined forces to give Ginebra its first PBA title in 1986. He returned to Ginebra in 1987 leading all imports with a 54.9 ppg average. His last stint with Ginebra was in 1988, where he teamed up with future Celtics star Kevin Gamble
Kevin Gamble
Kevin Douglas Gamble is a retired American professional basketball player in the National Basketball Association. At 6'5" he played as both a shooting guard and small forward...
. But being out of shape, he played in only four games and both players were eventually replaced by the high scoring duo of Joe Ward and Tommy Davis. Billy Ray Bates would be widely regarded by many as the greatest import ever to have played in the PBA.
In Billy Ray's four seasons in the PBA for Crispa and Ginebra, he averaged the all time league high of 46.2 points in 98 career games. Joel Banal
Joel Banal
Joel Banal is a former Filipino professional basketball player, currently serving as head coach of Alaska Aces in the Philippine Basketball Association. Banal played college ball for the Mapúa Institute of Technology, before venturing into professional basketball with the Great Taste Coffee...
, a former PBA player, looks at the game where Bates was held to a PBA career low of 28 points among the highlights of his playing career.
Bates later played in Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
, back in the U.S with the World Basketball League, a few seasons in Mexico—even a season in Uruguay.
Childhood
Bates was born the eighth of nine children of Frank and Ellen Bates. He grew up picking cotton, string beans and corn as the son of Mississippi sharecroppers. His father died when he was seven but figures he took the genes of his 6-foot-6 250-pound father, a massive yet quiet man who loved his liquor and went on drunken walks through the Mississippi backwoods. He says he took his first swig of Schlitz Malt Liquor beer at age 10. He remembers it gave him a headache for two days, but he also remembers he liked the taste and how it made him feel happy. He was also drinking moonshine by age fourteen. At sixteen, he had tried cigarettes and marijuana but didn't like how they made him cough.Pro career
Bates was part of advertising campaigns during his stint with the Blazers, one involved sporting a milk moustache. As one of the more popular Blazers, his jersey number (12) was a popular choice of kids in local recreation leagues.Bates's career is an example of what can happen to players unprepared for NBA life in urban environs. Jerome Kersey
Jerome Kersey
Jerome Kersey is a retired American professional basketball player in the National Basketball Association for a number of teams, but most notably for the Portland Trail Blazers. He also has served in various coaching roles in the NBA. Kersey is currently a resident of Happy Valley, Oregon in...
relates,
After picking Bates up at the Portland airport, then-Blazer trainer Ron Culp advised Billy Ray not to carry large amounts of cash around, but rather to open up a checking account so that he could pay bills with checks.
Bates had a quizzical expression on his face, Culp recalled, and finally worked up the nerve to ask, "What are checks?"
Bates once epitomized the image of hard-partying, sex-crazed athletes in the PBA. His Filipino teammates vividly recall times when Bates downed a couple of beers in the locker room before tip-off. It is believed that he was able to put up Wilt Chamberlain
Wilt Chamberlain
Wilton Norman "Wilt" Chamberlain was an American professional NBA basketball player for the Philadelphia/San Francisco Warriors, the Philadelphia 76ers and the Los Angeles Lakers; he also played for the Harlem Globetrotters prior to playing in the NBA...
-like numbers in the bedroom, as well as on the court. Even his PBA nickname, "Black Superman," contained a hint of innuendo.
In the past, Bates has been vague about the root of his difficulties. In a 1992 interview with The Oregonian, for example, he denied having drug problems.
Incarceration
Bates hit bottom on Jan. 17, 1998, when he robbed a New Jersey Texaco station at knifepoint. At the time, he was living with his wife and stepdaughter while holding two manual-labor jobs in eastern New Jersey.In his recollection of the events, Bates went to the liquor store, bought a lottery ticket and a half-pint of vodka, which he drank. He then ran into a group of younger kids, who talked of getting cocaine but nobody had the money to buy the drug. Bates suggested the idea of robbing a Texaco station he frequented. He attacked the attendant, 18-year-old Phillip Kittel, with a knife. Although Bates says he never used the weapon, Kittel received three stitches to his ear. The attack was caught on videotape. Bates fled the scene, the knife falling out of his pocket. He was found by the police passed out on a neighborhood lawn blocks away with $7 in his pocket.
Bates was convicted of first degree aggravated assault and second degree assault, and in June 2000 began serving a sentence at Bayside State Prison in Leesburg, N.J. that carried a maximum of 10 years, 3 months and 24 days and a minimum of 5 years, 11 months and 16 days. He was paroled in March 2005 after completing 85 percent of his sentence (4 years, 9 months and 11 days).
He violated his parole when cocaine showed up in his drug test eighteen months later. Bates went back to Bayside and was released on March 23, 2008.
Bates became an inmate at Hope Hall, a 164-bed halfway house for adult male offenders in Camden, N.J. During his stay, he has taken part in classes designed to mend damaged cognitive skills, ready himself for the workplace and learn how to manage his emotions. Bates juggled church attendance, AA meetings and shifts at Aluminum Shapes, an aluminum extruder, where he readies products for shipping. In the evenings, he studies reading and writing at Camden Community College.
Bates passed a rehabilitation program in 2008 at a Salvation Army center in Newark, N.J. Citing confidentiality laws, Capt. Carol Austin only indirectly acknowledged Bates' involvement, saying the last she heard from him was he was headed to Portland in 2008.
After being released, Bates lived in two places, a friend's apartment in Manhattan and his wife's home in North Brunswick, N.J. He attended a Back to Work program in Manhattan for job referrals. He and former 76ers guard Earl Harrison are tried to start a basketball skills coaching clinic.
During the prison sentence, Bates wrote his autobiography titled "Born to Play Basketball" in ink and pencil on 714 pages of yellow legal paper, front to back. Although featuring rudimentary spelling and painful grammar, Michele Mako, the publisher of Florida Peach Publishing Company, was said to have considered the manuscript. Mako liked Bates' honesty about his past and booked the ex-pro on a three-day, three-night NBA and NFL Speakers Cruise in February 2009 to the Bahamas.
In 2009, Bates worked for a big grocery supplies chain. Then at present, Bates works as a floor technician in the 6 p.m. to 4:30 a.m. shift with the Colgate recycling company in New Jersey. Bates and his wife Beverly, a front desk officer at a local Hilton hotel, have been married for twenty-two years. He has a daughter, Jennifer, who is 24 and lives in Switzerland, where he once played. Bates tries to play basketball once or twice a week in New York City or South Jersey and has joined some exhibition games with retired PBA legends.
Regular Season
| Season | Team | GP | MPG | RPG | APG | PPG |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1979-80 | Trail Blazers | 16 | 14.7 | 1.8 | 1.9 | 11.3 |
| 1980-81 | Trail Blazers | 77 | 20.3 | 2.0 | 2.5 | 13.8 |
| 1981-82 | Trail Blazers | 75 | 16.4 | 1.4 | 1.5 | 11.1 |
| 1982-83 | Bullets/Lakers | 19 | 16.0 | 1.0 | 0.7 | 6.5 |
| Career | 4 Seasons | 187 | 17.8 | 1.7 | 1.9 | 11.7 |
Playoffs
| Season | Team | GP | MPG | RPG | APG | PPG |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1980 | Trail Blazers | 3 | 34.7 | 3.3 | 4.0 | 25.0 |
| 1981 | Trail Blazers | 3 | 38.3 | 2.3 | 4.3 | 28.3 |
| Career | 2 Series | 6 | 36.5 | 2.8 | 4.2 | 26.7 |
PBA
| Season | Team | GP | MPG | RPG | APG | PPG |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1983 | Crispa Redmanizers | 49 | 46.2 | 10.9 | 6.1 | 41.7 |
| 1986 | Ginebra San Miguel | 22 | 47.4 | 13.5 | 5.5 | 49.6 |
| 1987 | Ginebra San Miguel | 23 | 46.5 | 15.0 | 5.2 | 54.9 |
| 1988 | Añejo Rum 65 | 4 | 45.0 | 10.8 | 4.0 | 31.2 |
| Career | 4 Seasons | 98 | 46.5 | 12.4 | 5.7 | 46.2 |