Hometown hero or pariah: Stanley Roberts’ complicated relationship with Hopkins, SC

Home can be two places at once.

Baton Rouge is where Stanley Roberts has worked for the last nine years, where he attended college at LSU, where he found companionship in Wayne Sims and Shaquille O’Neal and contentment in the blissful solitude of his living room recliner.

But Hopkins is Roberts’ hometown — and no one can ever change that. Not even him. Not even in the years after his 1999 NBA suspension, when he felt too humiliated to come back. Located in Lower Richland, small-town Hopkins always was, and always will be, an integral piece of his story.

For years, nothing told The Stanley Roberts story better than a drive down Congaree Road:

On one side of the street sat the mobile home where the 7-foot Roberts grew up with his parents, brother and sister. On the other side, directly across the street, stood the dilapidated bones of the house Roberts tried to build for his mother in 1998 — just before a failed drug test ended his NBA career.

Roberts’ mom never got a chance to live in the 4,900-square foot, six-bedroom house. Roberts’ money dried up when the NBA checks stopped coming, then he lost the property in an ill-advised deal with an acquaintance. For almost a decade, the empty husk of a mansion glowered over the rest of a quiet country road — peeling plywood, collapsing beams, 8.3 acres of weeds and dead grass.

The massive unfinished house seemed a perfect monument to Roberts’ Icarus-like rise and fall. All the while, the man himself stayed as far away from Lower Richland as he could, rarely setting foot in the community.

“When I played ball, I went back probably every two or three years,” Roberts told The State.

“When I got suspended, I just — I don’t even know if it was embarrassment or if I just felt like I let the city down.”

Time has a way of reshaping narratives. Of healing. Drive down Congaree Road today, and you’ll see that the house Roberts bought for his mom is no longer hollow and deteriorating. A former Gamecocks football player, Lance Laury, bought the property and finished construction on it several years ago. It’s fenced-in now, with tall green trees providing privacy. Cars are parked in the driveway.

Across the street, the trailer that Roberts once lived in has been replaced. After plans for the house fell apart, Roberts bought his mother a new mobile home instead. When she died, he signed it over to his brother. Stanley has no need for property on Congaree Road anymore.

The relationship between Hopkins and Roberts is a complicated one — on both sides. At varying times, Roberts has played the role of hometown hero and pariah. Beyond the embarrassment of the suspension, there are painful memories and dark secrets from Roberts’ childhood that have dissuaded him from coming back.

But much like Congaree Road itself, Roberts’ South Carolina legacy has evolved with the passage of time.

Today, more than 30 years after he won back-to-back state titles at Lower Richland High, Roberts’ No. 53 jersey finally hangs in the basketball gym known as the Diamond Mine. Former high school teammates like Jo Jo English, Tracy Garrick and Charles “Boogie” Jacobs say that Roberts should be celebrated — not only for his high school dominance but for the way he pulled the pieces of his life back together after basketball ended.

No one denies Roberts, 52, made mistakes, nor does Roberts deflect blame for any decision he made.

“When you truly love somebody, you stand with them through the good and through the bad, no matter what,” English recently told The State. “Nobody’s perfect. Nobody is without flaws. But when you’re an athlete or a coach, the only difference in your life and other people’s life is that all your success and failures are played out in front of other people.

“Yet even still, that’s an even better story to tell to the younger people.”

Roberts’ story has transformed over the years — from triumph to shame to redemption. But it will always start with Hopkins.

> Read the first part of Stanley Roberts’ story here

Inside the mobile home

Retirement has been kind to Jim Childers, a lifelong educator and former head basketball coach at Lower Richland High School.

Over the summer, Childers and his wife of 48 years packed up an RV and set out on a quest to explore the country, bouncing from state to state at their own leisurely pace. The next stop is slated for Des Moines, Iowa.

But first, here in mid-October, Childers has returned home to the Midlands. In the midst of his cross-country excursion, a production company from Spain reached out to him about a documentary it’s making on Roberts who played one season overseas for Real Madrid as a 19-year-old after he flunked out of LSU.

Childers is back in South Carolina so he can take the Spanish camera crew for a tour of the Diamond Mine, then for a drive down Congaree Road. Though there’s a new mobile home in its place, Childers will never forget the times he stepped into Roberts’ cramped trailer to see the family of four — and sometimes uncles and cousins — packed together.

“Stanley never could extend his legs in his bed,” Childers says, while forking through a salad at Groucho’s Deli on Forest Drive.

“He had to be in the fetal position asleep — a lot of time on the floor. And he was sharing it with his brother and his uncle, in this little mobile home. He didn’t have a lot.”

For a time, there was a stretch of Congaree Road made up entirely of Roberts’ family members — on both his mom’s and dad’s side. Stanley is the middle child of the late Isabella Roberts Davis and Robert Lee Davis Jr. Their oldest child is John Wayne Roberts, who goes by Wayne, and the youngest is Judith Roberts.

Isabella used to always tell her children that she let them choose between their father’s last name and her maiden name. Stanley doesn’t remember making that decision, but there’s no doubt he always was a mama’s boy.

A staunch Christian, Isabella ruled her household with military-like precision. Every minute of every day was accounted for. No cursing and no drinking was tolerated in her presence, and Stanley wouldn’t dare cross her.

For three decades Isabella worked for the University of South Carolina, oftentimes putting in late hours as a custodian. Her husband was a truck driver and would leave for days at a time in his 18-wheeler. Many nights, Stanley was the one preparing dinner for his siblings, keeping their home in order.

For entertainment, Stanley and his friends would walk over to the playground of the nearby elementary school, or they’d gather at Caughman Road Park. Sometimes, when no one was watching, Stanley and his brother snuck over to the farmland across the street and snagged ears of corn to munch on. Stanley never could have dreamed that he’d one day buy those 8.3 acres for his mother.

In those days, Stanley never even imagined he’d play basketball. His brother Wayne, two years his elder, was the one who loved the game and played ball for Childers at Lower Richland. When Stanley hit a growth spurt in middle school and skyrocketed to 6-foot-7, Wayne suggested to Childers that he take a look at his not-so-little brother.

“My brother, my uncles, my cousins — everybody played, but I had no desire to do it,” Roberts said. “Jim Childers came down and talked to me and asked me to play, and I was like, ‘If my mother says it’s OK for me to play, I’ll play.’ So Coach Childers went and talked with my mother.

“I was always on my mom’s coattails. Even though everybody around me played sports, I had no interest in sports. When she gave the green light, I said, ‘OK, I’ll go play because mama wants me to play.’”

It took time, and lots of pushing for Roberts to become the force that led Lower Richland to two state titles. His nickname in high school was “Enough,” because often that was exactly the amount of effort he gave in practice and in the classroom.

But whenever Roberts’ grades slipped or he’d threaten to quit the team, Childers knew all he had to do was put in a call to Isabella, and she’d be standing outside the front door — ready to pounce — as soon as Roberts got home.

“She had to be tough because a lot of guys in that neighborhood got off to other things that kept them from playing,” Childers said. “So she had to be tough. She was very religious. She made sure they went to church. Isabella was no joke.

“She was always there for Stanley but wasn’t gonna put up with Stanley’s nonsense, either.”

Isabella did all she could to shield her children, to keep them grounded in their faith and away from trouble. But as earnestly as she tried, she could only protect them for so long.

The murder trial

On the evening of April 21, 1987, Wayne Roberts shot and killed 18-year-old Gerald Rowe during a neighborhood scuffle in Hopkins.

Over the course of a nearly yearlong murder trial, Wayne insisted that he was threatened by Rowe and two other men — alleged members of the B-Loves gang — and that a friend handed him a pistol that he fired in self-defense.

As Wayne stood trial and faced a possible life sentence, his younger brother Stanley was coming off his first state title at Lower Richland and heading into his senior year as one of the most sought-after recruits in the country.

Three colleges — LSU, Georgia Tech and South Carolina — had been pursuing Roberts most fervently, and Stanley had been taking the time to weigh the merits of each. But with his brother in trouble, pressure to pick the hometown Gamecocks started to mount.

That pressure came from every direction, from fans, radio hosts, alumni and from people in and around the USC basketball program. The Roberts family claimed Harold Hill, a magistrate judge who presided over Wayne’s first court hearing, promised to “go easy” on Wayne if Stanley signed with USC, according to previous reporting by The State. Hill admitted to the paper that he urged Stanely to attend USC but denied offering to help Wayne.

“It became just this bigger-than-life story,” Stanley said. “And I’m stuck in the middle of it.”

One day, Isabella came home from her job at the Russell House on USC’s campus and told Stanley she had been approached by then-Gamecocks basketball coach George Felton. She said Felton told her that he knew the judge for Wayne’s case, that the judge was a USC graduate and that Stanley committing to South Carolina could prove beneficial for his brother on trial.

Felton says today that he has no recollection of that conversation.

“I don’t remember any of that,” Felton told The State. “I knew his brother was in jail, but I don’t remember anything else more than that.”

On Roberts’ recruitment to USC, Felton added: “That’s 25 years ago. I wished him well, and I hope they’re doing good. But I’ve moved on to a different chapter.”

Nevertheless, Stanley could see the anxiety on his mother’s face as she pleaded with him to hold off on making a college decision until his brother’s trial was over.

So he waited. And waited. Until one night in November 1987 he was sitting up late with his brother at home.

“Look,” Wayne said, turning toward Stanley. “If you’re ready to make a decision to go to school, make your decision. Don’t worry about me. I shouldn’t have been out there in the first place. Even though it was self-defense, I put myself in that position. Don’t let this affect you.”

Stanley took those words to heart. The next time his mother left for work, he called Felton and Georgia Tech coach Bobby Cremins and told them he was declining their offers. Then he dialed Dale Brown and told him he was committing to LSU.

When his mother came home, she was furious. Isabella barely said a word to Stanley for the remaining months of the trial, and Stanley spent much of that time over at Childers’ house, watching cartoons with his kids. It was during those days when Stanley became something like another son to Childers. He remembers the way his daughter Amy, born with cerebral palsy, would light up every time she’d see Stanley, and Stanley would pick her up out of her wheelchair and carry her on his shoulders.

On February, 25 1988, the jury reached a verdict. Not guilty.

A 20-year-old Wayne walked out of court a free man.

“I’m happy as hell,” Wayne said in a story in the next day’s issue of The State. “I was really scared. Now I can get this behind me and get on with the rest of my life.”

With his brother finally acquitted, Stanley thought he could move on, too. But in the last months of his senior year at Lower Richland, there were whispers of a threat on Stanley’s life. The B-Loves gang was allegedly seeking retaliation for the man Wayne had killed.

Taking those threats seriously, police officers set up camp at the high school and monitored Congaree Road. At a time when Stanley should’ve been celebrating his upcoming graduation, his second state title and his commitment to LSU, he was instead fearing for his own safety.

“As a kid who hadn’t had that much experience with the world, it was traumatic,” Stanley said. “It wasn’t the easiest part of my life.”

Minutes after Stanley walked across the stage at his Lower Richland graduation, his security detail whisked him away to the nearby DMV office. They printed Stanley an ID, then escorted him to the airport, put him on a plane to Baton Rouge and told him, “Do not come back.” Those were his final moments as a Hopkins resident.

A shell-shocked Stanley was all by himself when he got to his LSU apartment. No friends in a new town. No family. No ideas for where to go or what to do.

He remembers walking down the street to a small store on the corner and buying bologna, mayo, a loaf of bread and a two-liter soda. Then he walked back to his adopted new home and sat there — alone.

‘Dark secrets’

That feeling — utter loneliness — is one that gnawed at Roberts for much of his adult life. A former girlfriend of six years used to tell him, “You’re the only person I know who can be in a house full of people and still feel alone.”

And she was right. Roberts knew she was right. Because at the height of his wealth and fame, when he had nine people living in his spacious Los Angeles home, Roberts couldn’t have felt more isolated. None of the parties or the drinks or the cocaine or the cars or the yachts brought him any measure of sustained joy. He had a hole inside him that couldn’t be filled, no matter how many dollar bills he poured into it.

Throughout his playing days, there were nights when he’d sit alone at home, with the lights off, and think about ending his life. Roberts said much of his cocaine usage was a way of quietly committing suicide, hoping that his eyes wouldn’t open the next morning. For the longest time he wasn’t sure why those depressive feelings sat in his gut.

The traumatic trial with his brother and the ensuing threats had rattled Roberts, but the roots of his pain dug far deeper. It took Roberts years to untangle his feelings of unworthiness and to understand how much they stemmed from his upbringing — and particularly from his relationship with his father.

“Like any other family, we have our secrets,” Roberts said. “And there were some dark secrets during that time.”

Up to a certain point of life, Robert Davis was a “great dad,” Roberts said. But during Roberts’ teenage years, Davis slipped into alcoholism. He had a habit of hopping in his 18-wheeler and disappearing for multiple-day benders. When he drank, his personality changed. He grew prickly and combative, and there were times when he struck Isabella or the kids — or both. Roberts remembers his maternal grandmother walking over from next door and breaking up arguments between his parents. One afternoon, Roberts returned home from school to find that the family’s mobile home was gone. His dad had hooked the trailer up to his 18-wheeler and driven away with it in a fit of rage.

Roberts thought his father didn’t care about him. He never saw his dad at any of his high school games, and his absence spoke volumes.

Davis died from cancer early in Roberts’ NBA career. After going to his father’s funeral, Roberts remembers driving over to the Diamond Mine at Lower Richland High for a basketball game and immediately recognizing the woman working the ticket window.

“I surely miss your dad,” she told Roberts as he approached the window.

Roberts shot back a quizzical look: “What do you mean? My dad never came here.”

“Oh, your dad used to come to your games all the time,” she replied. “He was usually drunk. He was intoxicated. But he used to go up the stairs to the upper level and stand in that doorway and watch your games and watch you play.”

That moment shook and confounded Roberts. It still brings tears to his eyes when he thinks about his father secretly and drunkenly watching his games. Growing up, Roberts never felt good enough for his father’s love, and that feeling of inadequacy carried through with him to the NBA, where at every stop coaches kept questioning his dedication and fitness.

“I kind of lost the luster for basketball,” Roberts said. “I was just like, ‘These people don’t think I’m good enough. I’m never in shape.’ It plays with you mentally. I let it get to me.

“My mom used to say, ‘Boy, I raised you stronger than that. Don’t let them get to you.’ But it had changed for me. It was fun in high school. In college, it was OK. But when I got to the NBA, it became a business. It’s more about being a product. And if you’re not producing, they’re gonna get rid of you.”

Looking back at the way life has unfolded, Roberts considers the NBA suspension a blessing. In the same vein, he’s grateful for his cocaine arrests in the early 2000s and even more grateful to the Houston-area judge who would eventually sentence him to rehab. He needed to be humbled.

Roberts lost himself in the glamour of the NBA, but he found clarity in his seven months in a ragged, cockroach-infested rehab center in Texas City.

One of the last steps in his recovery was to write a letter to the person in his life who hurt him most. The requirement was two pages. Roberts wrote 41 — scribbling away until he spilled every last drop of angst toward his father onto paper. Then Roberts took those pages, stuffed them in an envelope and handed them to his counselor.

“You said what you had to say to your father, didn’t you?” the counselor asked. “You let it all out, right?”

Roberts nodded. Then the counselor handed the envelope back to him.

“Now, take it and burn it.”

Redemption

From the moment Dale Brown stepped into the mobile home on Congaree Road in 1987, Roberts knew he wanted to play for LSU. There were no unusual tactics used in Brown’s recruiting pitch. This was well before the time of hype videos and social media teams.

All Roberts needed to hear was the candor in Brown’s voice when the coach walked through the door and said, “Stanley, I’m here to recruit you as a human being first and a basketball player second.”

As the son of a self-made single mom who never made it past 8th grade, Brown valued the educational component of coaching more than most. Long after retiring, the 86-year-old still keeps a binder stuffed with files on his former players, with information about their academics and jobs.

Brown always felt like he failed Roberts, who left LSU for Spain after his grades dipped below eligibility as a sophomore. But in the years after Roberts’ NBA career floundered, Brown remained persistent. Every once in a while, he’d meet up with Roberts and would float the idea of, “Hey, you should go back to school.” Roberts would always say no. And the next time they’d speak, Brown would ask again.

“Stanley, do you know who Methuselah is?” he asked Roberts one time. “He’s the oldest man supposedly in the Bible. He’s 969. I plan to outlive him, and I’m going to be on your a-- until you come back to school. Because I promised your mom.

“Don’t you remember I sat with your mama and told her that I’ll do everything in my power to help you get a degree?”

The coach still has one hell of a recruiting pitch. On December 14, 2012, a 42-year-old Roberts walked across the stage at LSU to receive a long-awaited bachelor’s degree in sports administration.

Brown beamed with pride from the front row. So, too, did a 63-year-old Isabella Davis, sitting in a wheelchair after making a rare flight from Hopkins. She didn’t tell her son she was coming to his graduation. She wanted to surprise him.

“I’ll never forget when I wheeled his mother down the platform to wheel her up on the stage,” Brown told The State. “When he got his degree, man, that woman was just — money can’t buy that — her happiness to see her baby get a degree.”

Isabella never needed the giant house across the street. She never asked for it. Roberts tried to build her a house at the very beginning of his career. He asked her a few times. She kept telling him to save his money. All Isabella ever needed was a moment like that one — those steps across the stage. A moment of perseverance. Redemption, even.

That moment was one of the last the mother and son would share in person.

Last spring, on March 20, 2021, Isabella died from a bout with COVID-19. Her death came swiftly and unexpectedly, like so many pandemic deaths. She first went to the hospital after falling and hurting herself at home. Then came the surprise positive test.

For the week she was in the hospital, Roberts talked to his mom over the phone from Baton Rouge almost every day. He asked her if he should come back to Hopkins. And, true to form, she kept telling him to wait until she got home from the hospital. She wanted to cook for him. She never got the chance.

Roberts drove back to Hopkins for Isabella Roberts Davis’ funeral on April 3, 2021. It was the first time had been back to his hometown in roughly a decade.

The second time came a few months later, on Dec. 17, the night of his jersey retirement at Lower Richland High.

Ever since the NBA suspension, Roberts feared the embarrassment of returning to Hopkins, of facing the people he had always thought he let down. But when Roberts walked into the Diamond Mine that night, he was filled with love, not shame. Emotions brimmed to the surface when English announced a surprise scholarship in his name.

Former Diamond Hornet players like Tracy Garrick speak as glowingly about Roberts’ heart as they do his basketball prowess. The Stanley Roberts story they tell is not one of failure. Not even close.

“I’d like for him to think and understand that there’s people here who still love him tremendously,” Garrick told The State. “I always think about it as like, ‘Man, he should have been back here living.’ He shouldn’t have been in Louisiana. He should have been here, where everybody here could love on him.

“He’s always gonna be one of us. He will always be a Diamond.”

And Hopkins will always be home — even from Baton Rouge.

> Read the first part of Stanley Roberts’ story here