Chicago Bulls

Earnest Killum's journey from the cotton fields of Mississippi to playing with the Lakers

Published Mar. 29, 2016 1:28 p.m. ET

Sam Gardner

In the world of sports, athletes often dedicate their entire lives to reaching the pinnacle of their profession, but for many, life at the top can be short-lived. Sometimes all a player gets to experience at the highest level is one minute on the court, one trip to the plate, one shot on goal or one checkered flag, but more often than not, that fleeting moment in the spotlight is a story all its own. This is One and Done, a FOX Sports series profiling athletes, their paths to success and the stories behind some of sports' most ephemeral brushes with glory.

Earnest Killum didn't necessarily know he wanted to be a basketball player growing up, but the Clarksdale, Mississippi, native knew he needed to do something more with his life than those who came before him.

Raised in a family of sharecroppers, Killum grew up without his mother, who passed away a month after he was born — he says he's never even seen a picture of her — and saw how hard the people he loved worked just to get by. As he got older and began to realize his basketball talent, the wiry, 6-foot-3 guard began to view sports as a way out.

During the school year, Killum would walk a mile each way to school and work picking cotton with his family after class — during the summer, he'd spend all day in the fields, starting at the crack of dawn. Whatever time he had left for himself was spent playing basketball, practicing free throws, shooting jump shots and working on layups, often on a court by himself.

Little did Killum know his passion for hoops and his commitment to improving his circumstances would eventually lead him all the way to the NBA, where he would play — however briefly — alongside Wilt Chamberlain, Jerry West, Gail Goodrich, Elgin Baylor and Pat Riley with the Los Angeles Lakers.

"The environment that we were in was real low," Killum told FOX Sports recently. "You only did what you saw your parents do, and seeing them out in the cotton fields all the time, all that heat, making very little money, was an incentive to me to get up and try to do something to get away from that situation. I grew up in poverty but poverty was not in me."

A star at Coahoma Agricultural High School, Killum began his college career at Coahoma Community College before transferring to Stetson University in DeLand, Florida, prior to his junior year. There, under coach Glenn Wilkes, Killum put himself on the national radar, averaging 24.2 points as a junior then 25.6 points as a senior, still the two best individual seasons in Stetson basketball history.

In each of his seasons with the Hatters, Killum was named to the AP first team in the NCAA's college division, which later became Divisions II and III. In arguably the best game of his career and the biggest win in school history, Killum scored 29 points for the Hatters in an 87-80 victory over No. 18 Louisville in Orlando — 23 of them coming in the second half.

"They'd had Wes Unseld and Butch Beard and other great players [in previous years], so they were known," Killum said of the Cardinals, who at that time were led by Mike Grosso and Jim Price. "That's another place I wanted to go to school, but they never contacted me. And my junior year when we played them [in an 84-69 Louisville win], they were so good we hardly got into the game.

"That first half they were kind of dominating because none of us were hitting shots," Killum continued. "But in the second half, I said, 'Hey, man, we might as well leave everything we have out on the court. Let's see what we can do,' and that's what I did."

With his stellar play over the course of that senior season, Killum caught the attention of NBA scouts. Going into the 1970 Draft it was believed he'd be a target of the Atlanta Hawks. In the franchise's days in St. Louis, the Hawks regularly played home games in Memphis, about 75 miles from Killum's hometown. Killum and his teammates tried to go when they could, so in some ways, a potential career with Atlanta felt like a reunion.

Except Atlanta did not select Killum with either of its two first-round picks, opting to go with LSU's Pete Maravich and UCLA's John Vallely instead. And by the time the Hawks' second round pick came around, Killum was off the board.

"[Wilkes] called me on the phone and said, 'Well, the Hawks didn't draft you. Tough luck, yeah?'" said Killum, who believed the news meant he hadn't been selected. "I said, 'Oh well, maybe I'll get an opportunity to go try out somewhere.' I knew he had connections over in Europe, so I thought maybe I could play a little bit there. But then he said, 'But the Lakers did, in the second round. They must have really liked how you played [during December losses to UNLV and UC Santa Barbara] out west.'"

Soon after being taken 30th overall, Killum flew out to Los Angeles. There, he met with Lakers general manager Fred Schaus, who told Killum the team envisioned him in a Jo Jo White-type role [an eventual seven-time All Star, White had earned All-Rookie team honors with the Celtics the year before]. An energized Killum was impressive during pickup games in L.A. that summer.

"I was getting 15, 20 points some nights out there against the guys that lived in the Los Angeles area who played in the summer out there," Killum said. "Sidney Wicks, Curtis Rowe, Henry Bibby, they all played, and we had a good time. I mean, you had an opportunity to play against some of the best during the summer, and some of those guys were like, 'Who is this guy Killum?'

"In fact," Killum continued, "the day I dislocated my ankle, I was over at UCLA and we were playing against Walt Hazzard, Lucius Allen, all those guys."

Ah yes, the ankle.

At one point during a game, Killum had gone up for a layup and landed on a defender's foot on the way down. The result was a severe dislocation that kept him out of action for months, however it did bring him closer with the all-time great Chamberlain during the Big Dipper's final years with L.A.

"I finally healed but by that time the season was well underway," Killum said. "Wilt had gotten hurt (the season before) and so he asked me one night in the dressing room, 'What percent do you feel like you're ready to play? Thirty? Forty? Fifty?' and I said, 'Maybe about 70.' He shook his head and said, 'Then you're not ready to play.'

"Then he said, 'Now, I'm going to tell you what to do,'" Killum continued. "'You need to go down on the beach and jog in that sand. You don't need to jog far, but you need to do it every day, and that'll strengthen your leg.'

"So I took his advice, and the next day I went down to the beach," Killum said. "I started jogging a little bit in the sand, and it hurt so bad but I think I did about a mile. I'd jog as much as I could stand it, and it felt like every time you stepped you were sinking down four inches deep. But after about a week and a half, I came back in the gym and I could finally dunk a basketball again, and [Lakers coach] Joe Mullaney looked at me, and Wilt said, 'Didn't I tell you what that sand would do for you?'"

Chamberlain's 7-foot-1 presence was just as imposing in the Lakers' locker room.

"My locker was right next to his," Killum said. "His lower extremities, his legs and stuff, were skinny, but his upper body — man, he was huge. He used to bench press 330 pounds, 350 pounds, like it wasn't nothing. So I remember I said to myself, 'Man, if this big man goes crazy, I'm right next to him. I might not have a chance to get out the door.' So I asked them to move my locker.

"But he was a good guy," Killum added with a laugh. "He was knowledgeable — he and Elgin Baylor, those two knew something about everything."

It wasn't until late in his rookie season that Killum was available for game action, but at that point, with the team's routine established, Killum had a tough time cracking the Lakers rotation.

He finally made his NBA debut in late February, but went scoreless in the closing moments of a blowout of the lowly Cleveland Cavaliers. Then in his second career game, Killum finally accomplished a goal he'd set at those Hawks games in Memphis so many years earlier, hitting one free throw — the only regular-season point of his NBA career — in a 110-100 win over the Detroit Pistons.

"We saw them play San Francisco, saw them play Boston, saw them play Philadelphia when Wilt was with Philadelphia, and you just wondered whether you'd ever be able to get to that level one day," Killum said of those games and his aspirations. "And when you get there, it's amazing. It's amazing when one of your dreams comes true. It's mystifying."

Killum's success was short lived, though.

He made two more regular-season appearances in 1971, in road losses to the Knicks and Celtics, but did not register any stats. He also appeared in a playoff game against the Chicago Bulls, making the only field goal of his NBA career in a 26-point win, and added two free throws in a season-ending loss to the Milwaukee Bucks in Game 5 of the Western Conference Finals.

"In Milwaukee, we were going down the hall there and Lew Alcindor — Kareem Abdul-Jabbar — said, 'Hey, bro, you're just waiting on your opportunity, right?'" Killum recalled of the series. "I said, 'Yeah,' and he said, 'All right, it'll come.'"

Unfortunately, Killum never got the chance. Soon after the 1970-71 season ended, he was released by the Lakers.

"I really lost some confidence," Killum said. "You start questioning yourself and wondering, 'Why did I even get drafted?' And when you don't have the confidence within yourself, that's a real problem. I always liked to be prepared for whatever I did. I wanted to go in knowing I might have a chance."

Then after failed tryouts with the Dallas Chaparrals and Memphis Pros of the ABA, Killum followed a lead from his former college coach Wilkes and played one season in Europe before retiring from basketball and pursuing a career in education.

"Eventually you realize you might be at the end of your road," Killum said. "So you have to accept that and move on to something else."

For the next three decades, Killum worked in the Georgia school system, first as a teacher and basketball coach, and later in administration, eventually retiring as a high school principal after 32 years.

During that time, Killum faced his share of tragedy. At one point he lost all of the memorabilia from his playing career in a fire at his childhood home in Mississippi. In 1992, his son, Earnest Killum Jr., a California state player of the year, passed away at the age of 20 while playing basketball at Oregon State.

"You just don't know what's in store for you sometimes, or your children," Killum said. "But it makes me feel good as a father to know that he wanted to follow in my footsteps."

While some may look at Killum's life and career as a hard-luck story of disappointment and missed opportunities, Killum lived the dream simply by having a career at all.

"The work and passion that I put into the sport did not go unnoticed, and I'm happy that I'm considered to be one of the best basketball players to ever attend Stetson," said Killum, who was honored with the rest of the 1969-70 Hatters team at a game earlier this season. "When you're in that class, it always makes you feel good, even if you wonder if you could have done more.

"What's for you is for you, so I don't dwell on it," Killum added. "You always wish that you could have done better, but it wasn't meant to be, so you just move onto the next chapter of your life."

PREVIOUS ONE & DONES:

May 12: Dean Morton

May 19: Ross Browner

May 26: Dave Salvian

June 2: Mine That Bird

June 9: Kerwin Bell

June 16: MIchael Campbell

June 23: Tyson Wheeler

June 30: Roe Skidmore

July 7: Steven Hill

July 14: LaMarr Hoyt

July 21: Bernard Quarles