A basketball odyssey
Riek's ride spans globe
You are strapped into this ride now, holding on tight with both hands, because events are unfolding at break-neck speed in this strange and wonderful country, where everyone is tugging at you, pulling you closer, so they can tell you what is best.
Our Savior New American School on Long Island helped bring you to America and gave you food, clothes, and a home. The Winchendon School in Central Mass. plays stronger basketball and specializes in English as a second language. They both have laid claim to you, John Riek, and others would too, given the chance. You wonder where it will lead you. College? The NBA? Junior college? Another prep school?
Whom can you trust? You are 7 feet 2 inches, freakishly tall, and you have to remember to duck every time you enter a room or you will smash your temple on the crest of the doorway. Since you were a child in your native Sudan people have gawked at you, but when you get older and begin playing basketball, your height is no longer a hindrance or an embarrassment. It is your ticket out.
Your country is run by militants raging a bloody civil war who will persecute you for illogical reasons. Your brother, Diewo, disappeared from your village because . . . why? You don't know why. Perhaps Diewo laughed too loud, walked too straight, gave a sidelong glance misinterpreted by the wrong person. All you know is one day they came to get him, and you never saw him alive again.
He is gone, just like your father, and your mother and sister are alone now, because you have come to America to save them. Your brother's wife and her young children live with them, and there isn't enough food or work or happiness to go around. There's no running water, no electricity either.
Sometimes, you forget about your home in Africa because here in Massachusetts, you sleep in a comfortable bed with sheets and blankets and a soft, clean pillow. Your legal guardian, Gary Lorden, has taken you and your best friend, Thon Luony, into his Townsend home while you attend Winchendon School, and it is so spacious you wonder why only one family lives there. Lorden's wife, Heidi, buys you new clothes and washes them when they are dirty. She cooks you meals, drives you around in a fancy SUV. She takes care of you.
The wealth of America makes you dizzy. The first time you walk into a convenience store Coach Gary asks if you'd like something. You can't help it. You wildly grab at the candy and chips and soda. He explains the cupboards in his home are full and you are welcome to try anything you want.
You had never seen Gary Lorden before when he comes on a clandestine mission to New York to squire you away from the Our Savior New American School last summer.
He urges you to get in the car, to leave your clothes and your documents behind, because there is no time. You hesitate, because you do not know him, but Thon is there, and so is Mustafa Al-Sayyad, another Sudanese native who came to America and played basketball for Jerry Tarkanian at Fresno State. Mustafa has been counseling you since he learned you are unhappy at Our Savior. He puts you in touch with Fatah Muraisi, an Army captain born in Yemen who lives in the US and looks out for kids like you.
Mustafa and Fatah have African roots. They understand where you come from, where you want to go. They say you can trust Gary Lorden, and they all tell you the same thing: You must leave Our Savior.
So, after much discussion, you fold your long frame into Lorden's car and you drive away.
Within weeks, you are back in New York. But then, you change your mind again and return to New England for the second time, where you finally land at the Winchendon School.
This entire journey has been confusing, confounding. When African businessman Deng Leek brought you to New York last January, you were so grateful. You traveled from your tiny farming village of Bitui to Nairobi, took a flight to Dubai, then a 17-hour flight from Dubai to New York's Kennedy Airport.
The next day, you were on the basketball court.
You did not like Our Savior. They followed you everywhere, even to the bathroom. You wanted a better weight program to build up your slender 220-pound frame. You wanted better coaching.
Thon was at Our Savior with you. He didn't like it, either. He is your trusted confidant. He speaks better English than you do, and sometimes he is your translator, discussing the information in your native Nuer tongue, then relaying it to the Americans. He coughs a lot, spits up blood. He says maybe he's sick, but he is not tested or vaccinated when he arrives at Our Savior.
Later on, this is a problem, because you find out Thon has tuberculosis, and everyone becomes very concerned. They worry you have it, too, and the whispers breeze through the NBA ranks that something is very wrong with the 7-2 African kid.
Your name is John Riek, and you will spend this winter at the Winchendon School playing basketball. Some NBA scouts - they are everywhere now - question your age, your health, your commitment. One recently noted, "A lot of upheaval. A lot of red flags." And yet, a recent mock draft on ESPN.com slotted you as a lottery pick in next June's draft.
If you play well enough, if you can convince them you can be the next Dikembe Mutombo, or maybe even something better, then this all will be worth it. You can buy your mother a new house, maybe one with clean pillows and a sink with flowing water.
You meet with a reporter, and you are asked about your future.
"Maybe the NBA," you answer. "Maybe college."
But what happens if it's neither?
Bursts onto scene
John Riek burst onto the American basketball scene last summer when he dominated the"Every document provided to us by the US government indicated he had only finished two years of school," Stelzer explained. "His academic proficiency and his command of the English language was poor. We were trying to work with him in that regard."
Riek, now 18, is listed at Winchendon as a postgraduate. Lorden said he has Riek's diploma from Gambella High School in Ethiopia. Stelzer counters the document is either fraudulent or doesn't exist, "because if it did," he said, "why would they not present it to us when we asked?"
Lorden shows the document to a reporter. It lists Riek's courses in his final year as Thok Nuer, Amharic, English, Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, and Geography. It says he graduated.
"They had to lie about his academic record," said Lorden, "or he wouldn't have been eligible to go to Our Savior. Their school is for only students in grades kindergarten through 12th grade."
"We were entrusted with raising a child, but were disrupted by people who saw he was a very good basketball player and aim to capitalize financially on that," Stelzer shot back. "It's exploitive. And John is too young and too inexperienced to know which way is up."
Lorden and Mustafa claim it's the officials at Our Savior who exploited Riek, by threatening him with deportation if he did not adhere to their rules, by sticking him in a library with a bin of remedial tapes and expecting him to learn English, and by falsely listing him as an undergraduate.
"I had the same experience when I came here," Mustafa said. "People tried to enroll me in high school, even though I had a diploma. It is a problem. People take advantage."
Last summer, while Riek still was enrolled at Our Savior, he was approached by an African intermediary named Oliver who arranged for Riek and Thon to take a bus to Mt. Zion Academy in North Carolina. A number of AAU coaches clamored to offer to help with Riek's transfer, but Mt. Zion turned them away. After that, Riek was monitored closely by Stelzer and his staff, who were concerned he would leave again without notifying anyone.
That's when Lorden, a builder who has been active for years in the New England region running basketball camps, free town clinics, and coaching AAU basketball, stepped in. He had helped Mustafa train for his pro tryouts after college, and Mustafa ended up living with him for more than three years. Lorden said Mustafa informed him of Riek's and Thon's plight and asked him to intervene.
Thon left Our Savior and moved in with the Lordens in Townsend. He said Riek wished to follow, and contacted another African student at Our Savior, Marial Dhal, and asked him to slip Riek his cellphone so they could coordinate his escape.
"John said he wanted to get out of there," Dhal confirmed. "I could not turn my back on him."
Lorden drove to New York with Thon and Mustafa. They waited in the parking lot of a library between the school and the home of Riek's host family. After several minutes, two tall slender African boys - John Riek and Marial Dhal - emerged from a row of trees adjacent to the library.
Once Riek was ensconced in his Townsend home, Lorden went about the arduous process of trying to reach Riek's mother to establish legal guardianship. When he informed Stelzer of Riek's intentions to transfer to Winchendon, Our Savior's headmaster refused to release his visa, transcripts, or passport.
"It wasn't until I got the FBI to go to the school that we got John's papers," Lorden said.
Stelzer said the guardianship papers Lorden presented were not genuine. He also questioned the tactics used to remove Riek from Our Savior.
"They wouldn't leave him alone," Stelzer said. "Cellphone calls at all hours of the night. Secret meetings. All sorts of under-the-table maneuvering. I'm not going to try and match that kind of stuff."
Yet less than a month after Riek left New York, Deng Leek, the African who delivered Riek to Our Savior, drove up to Townsend to visit Thon and Riek. He took them to a nearby gas station, flipped open his laptop, and told them he'd be deported unless they returned to Our Savior to straighten things out.
Thon Luony refused to go. Riek was torn. Deng Leek reminded him that he and Stelzer had provided his transportation to America, as well as his tuition and housing.
So Riek folded himself back into another car, this time for the ride back to New York.
"I went back because they told me everything had changed," Riek said. "We'd have new coaches and more lifting. I go back, and nothing had changed."
Thon did not return to New York. Instead he vacationed with Coach Gary and his family in Maine. When he began coughing up blood, Lorden rushed him to the nearest emergency room.
Thon tested positive for tuberculosis, and was designated highly contagious.
"We were in a camper together," Lorden said. "My wife, my kids, and their friends. We'd all been exposed."
So had John Riek, Thon's best friend, who was back in Centereach, N.Y.
Lorden had Thon admitted to a hospital, where he spent the next 16 days receiving treatment. Lorden, his family, and their friends tested negative. He drove back to New York, this time to the home of the family where Riek was staying. He explained Riek was at high risk, and he needed to remove him immediately.
Riek tested positive for exposure to TB, but not TB itself. He seemed unfazed by the news, explaining that people in his country contracted this disease all the time. Malaria, too.
Riek could not grasp why everyone in America was so horrified by it.
"I saw the chest X-ray and it was good," Riek said. "They gave me medicine. And that is all."
Thon is no longer contagious. Riek has been taking two pills a day since the summer to make sure he doesn't contract the disease.
Asked why they were not tested for TB at Our Savior, Stelzer answered, "I'm not the person who is the school nurse. Every time we bring in a student we get our academic people and medical people involved in making sure the students are properly enrolled. Once we learned of Thon's illness, we contacted the Suffolk County health authorities and have met all requirements."
John and Thon live on the Winchendon campus now but spend weekends with the Lordens. When they need boots, school supplies, or extra long sports jackets, the family provides for them, just as it did for Mustafa.
So what's in it for Gary Lorden? He says he does it because he loves the game and helping players grow. He estimates he spent more than $20,000 on Mustafa's medical bills and living expenses, knowing full well that money would not be repaid. He provides equally for Thon Luony and John Riek, even though Thon is not a player who will be a pro candidate, or for that matter, a candidate for a college scholarship.
"I don't need anybody's money," Lorden said. "I have plenty of my own."
Asked if he would do it all over again, Lorden pauses before answering. "They are good kids," he said. "But I don't know. It's hard to be questioned when you are trying to do the right thing."
Fatah, who has enrolled Marial Dhal at Hillsboro Community College in Florida, said he feels a responsibility to care for these young African players. He concedes he has looked into becoming Riek's agent, but, he said, that is mostly to make sure no one else takes advantage of him.
"I have never asked for anything regarding John - although many have offered," Fatah said.
Dhal said he talks with Riek regularly and his friend is happy for the first time.
"He finally feels comfortable," Dhal said. "He finally feels satisfied with everything."
"I like it here," John Riek said. "I like living with Coach Gary."
Work to do
You know the scouts think your legs are too scrawny, even though you are 240 pounds now, so you go to the weight room. Your coach, Mike Byrnes, a basketball lifer and former walk-on at the University of Massachusetts, warns you your legs are too long for the machine and you are risking injury, but you need to impress the scouts, so you pile up reps, your legs flapping, and you lose your grip, the machine comes crashing down, and you hurt your knee. The pro scouts who plan to come to the National Prep Showcase in Lowell Nov. 17 are told not to bother.The amount of attention you are receiving is significant, so the NCAA drops by to make sure no colleges are violating recruiting regulations. Because you will be 19 next November, you are eligible for the NBA draft without a year of college.
Byrnes tells everyone he's trying not to overwhelm you. You have a tremendous amount of raw ability, but you are still learning the game. You give him a blank look when he asks if you know how to hedge on a screen, how to fill the lane on a secondary break.
You rely on your incredible 7-foot-8-inch wingspan to block shots and grab rebounds, and you can step out from 15 feet and knock it down. But the scouts are stuck on the same thing - those skinny legs - and they watch you get manhandled on the block, pushed out of position by smaller kids. You lack explosion when you jump. One scout (none is permitted to speak publicly about a player who has not declared for the draft) says he will recommend against drafting you in the first round. Another agrees you need work, but adds, "The upside could be significant. 7 foot 2 is 7 foot 2."
You get frustrated with Byrnes, because some nights he only plays you 20 minutes. He says, "I don't care if you are a 7-footer or the last guy on the bench. You follow the rules or you won't play."
Somebody will take a chance on you. That's what Fatah and Coach Gary and the others are saying. Maybe you'll be an NBA first-round pick, maybe not, and that's a big difference because the first-round money is guaranteed, and you need that cash.
Maybe you aren't ready for the NBA yet. You would like to go to college - UConn would be your choice - but can you pass the SATs? You are still learning the language. Thon took the SATs and told you how difficult they were. The ESL program at Winchendon has helped immensely, but you are a long way from where you need to be. Coach Gary is trying to have you categorized as learning disabled, so you can have more time with the test, but there is no guarantee you will pass. Maybe you can go to junior college, but another year would go by without you sending home money, and that's no good.
Sometimes, you miss Bitui. Life is simpler there. You miss the beans your mother cooked you. They have them here, but not the way your mother makes them.
People ask you all the time what you hope to accomplish. Your answer is always the same: "Hopefully I can help my family."
So you hold on tight with both hands as you careen forward at break-neck speed. You don't know for sure where you are going.
All you know is there are plenty of people along for the ride.
Jackie MacMullan can be reached at macmullan@globe.com. 