(This is the second of a 5-part series on Detroit Public School League basketball legend, Curtis Jones. Please find Part 1 here.)
Curtis Jones on the basketball court was unparalleled.
Standing just 5-foot-9 and tipping the scales a shade below 150 pounds during his high school playing days, Jones was like a water bug on the floor. He danced in, out, and between defenders with ease, creating space where no one saw any; making passes when none believed they were possible.
“I’d heard about Curtis Jones,” remembers former Southwestern star Antoine Joubert, “but he was pretty well through playing by the time I saw him at St. Cecilia’s. Still, he put on a few dribbling clinics for me. He was like the ‘And-1’ players are today. He could do some amazing stuff with the ball.”
He was a second-team All-PSL player his sophomore year and a first-teamer each of his final two seasons.
“What made him so special was his court awareness,” recalls teammate and future Major League first baseman John Mayberry. “He was phenomenal with his peripheral vision. He was one of the first I’d seen use the behind the back and the fancy bounce passes. He was so good and so quick with the ball. He’d dribble right through full court pressure like it was nothing and he always saw everybody. He’d make big shots when you needed them. He did whatever he wanted to do on the basketball court.
“If he would’ve been eligible to get drafted out of high school like the kids do today, he would’ve been a number one pick.”
Echoes Lamont King, a fellow teammate at Northwestern: “He could dodge rain drops, find you with a pass, and not get wet. Curt was the man to me!”
Robert “Smitty” Smith, a Miller High graduate, longtime PSL watcher, and one-time coach of Robert Traylor at Murray-Wright, remembers a quintessential Jones moment: “It was at this all-star game. He had 19 assists and this one pass that I’ll never forget. He put it between his legs, his defender’s legs, and got it to this other guy – in stride – for a lay-up.
“He was, in my opinion, the best player pound-for-pound and inch-for-inch the PSL has ever seen.”
Unfortunately for Jones, the zenith of his basketball career might have been reached during his junior year with that buzzer-beater against Pershing. Not only was it a shot witnessed by a packed house at Osborn High School, but it was also the first high school game televised in Detroit. Because neither U-D Memorial nor Cobo Arena were available for the game, the PSL struck a deal with WKBD-TV, Channel 50 to broadcast the game, better allowing the 5,850 students at the two schools a chance to witness the showdown between top-ranked Northwestern and third-ranked Pershing.
It was, as they say, the stuff of legends.