“Gene is Coming.”
The T-shirts appeared on the Duke campus in the spring of 1977, months before Eugene Lavon Banks would play a single game in Cameron Indoor Stadium. By then, the word was already out: the best high school basketball player in America — better than Albert King, better than Earvin Johnson, better than anyone — had chosen Duke. Not North Carolina. Not UCLA. Duke. A program that had finished last in the ACC four straight years.
Banks was born on May 15, 1959, in Philadelphia, the second of eight children. He grew up in West Philly, moving through ten different homes before he was a senior in high school. The neighborhood was tough — gang conflicts were common, fistfights and knives a regular feature of the landscape. But when the West Philadelphia Speedboys played basketball, an unspoken truce would settle over the streets. “I had gang members come up and say they wouldn’t fight out of respect for what we were doing,” Banks recalled. “And these brothers were serious. On any given day they’d fight, but not when we played.”
At West Philadelphia High School, Banks led the Speedboys to three straight Public League championships and a 68-game winning streak. The crowds grew so large that the team began playing its home games as preliminaries to the NBA’s Philadelphia 76ers. His combination of size (6-foot-7), strength, and skill was rare for a high school player in the 1970s — he could post up like a big man, handle the ball like a guard, and slash to the basket with authority. “Everyone wanted to see Gene. He was the best,” said Darryl Warwick, the team’s point guard, who went by the nickname “City Lights.”
By his senior year, Banks was the consensus national player of the year. Parade Magazine named him their top choice. He was selected for the inaugural McDonald’s All-American team — alongside Magic Johnson and Albert King — and was voted MVP of the 1977 Capital Classic in Washington, D.C., scoring a game-high 22 points. No one else scored more than 12.
UCLA wanted him. Penn and Villanova, practically next door in Philly, wanted him. Wilt Chamberlain personally called on UCLA’s behalf. Dean Smith sat in the Banks family kitchen making his pitch for North Carolina. Notre Dame’s Digger Phelps applied relentless pressure.
It was an English teacher at West Philly — William H. Deadwyler Jr. — who first suggested Duke. “The only thing I knew about the ACC was David Thompson,” Banks later said. “[Deadwyler] kept hammering me about the academics and the beautiful buildings. To get him off my back, I chose to go there for a visit.”
The visit changed everything. Harold Morrison, one of Duke’s few Black players, took Banks off campus and introduced him to North Carolina Central University and Durham’s diverse community. Banks saw a world beyond the gothic towers. He went home, took his mother’s advice, went into his room, closed the door, and prayed. In a dream, he saw himself wearing a blue and white Duke uniform.
In January 1977, with Duke mired in another losing season, Gene Banks stunned the basketball world by committing to the Blue Devils. The signing was so improbable that head coach Bill Foster personally flew to Philadelphia on signing day, drove to the Banks home, and pulled the National Letter of Intent out of the family’s mailbox before the U.S. Mail could lose the most important piece of paper in Duke basketball history.
Duke’s sixth African-American basketball player would become its first Black star. “There weren’t many blacks on campus, but it was a small and significant group,” Banks said. “I had to achieve in order for others of my race to achieve.”