Yvester didn’t have much of an opportunity to enjoy his childhood. Robert Johnson, Yvester’s biological dad, fathered 36 children, three with Yvester’s mom Pearl. Yvester was their oldest together. Pearl administered passports for the state of Arizona. She worked hard for her children, but she did it mostly alone. Robert would come and go. He loved women and children. She would say he could look at you and get you pregnant.

He hurt her again and again, but she loved him, and he could always woo her. She quit her good job and followed him to California. When she found out about the other women and they split up again, she was left jobless and on welfare. Like many jilted mothers, she took her anger out not on Robert but on her children. Yvester was the oldest. He got the worst of it “You ain’t nothin’ and you ain’t gon’ never be nothin’, just like your daddy,” she’d tell Yvester.

After a while he started to believe it.

But basketball was his escape. He was good at it, driven, motivated. He was a recognized high-school player in California, Arizona, and Oklahoma, where his family eventually settled, winning awards and even getting looks from UCLA and USC.

“I felt good playing basketball. It was a release for me, a place to let out my frustration. All the emotions I had made me want to win, win, win,” he says.

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