Dwayne Washington, better known as Pearl, a charismatic point guard who achieved legend status as a Brooklyn schoolboy before moving upstate, where he helped lift Syracuse University to national prominence in basketball, died on Wednesday in the Bronx. He was 52.
His sister, Janie Washington Bennett, said the cause was brain cancer. He had survived a previous bout with cancer 20 years ago, she said.
Few teenage athletes have created the kind of magical aura that Washington did. He eventually played three years in the National Basketball Association, two for the Nets (then in New Jersey) and one for the Miami Heat, but his stature in the game was founded before he ever turned professional.
A sensation on the playgrounds of the tough Brooklyn neighborhoods of Brownsville and East New York, he was just about unstoppable when he played at Boys and Girls High School, where in his senior year he averaged 35 points, 10 rebounds, 8 assists and 4 steals a game and was reportedly the most highly recruited player in the nation.
He said he was called Pearl from the time he was 8 years old, a nod to Earl (The Pearl) Monroe, the Hall of Fame guard with the dizzying spin moves and soft, sweet jumper who had recently been traded to the Knicks from the Baltimore Bullets (now the Washington Wizards). Washington told The New York Times that when older players on the court witnessed his fanciful moves, they asked him, “Who do you think you are, the Pearl?”
At 6 feet 2 inches and about 190 pounds, Washington was not especially fast and not much of a leaper. (His Syracuse teammates called him Fat Butt.) But his ballhandling was nonpareil, and his court vision was superb; with the ball he moved with a muscular ease and, faking brilliantly, could easily separate from a defender to create his own shot.
His shooting touch was sometimes questioned, but he shot better than 50 percent over his three years at Syracuse. There, under Coach Jim Boeheim, he adapted to a system that did not require — or want — him to be a one-man team. His game matured, and he became a true point guard: a quarterback who ran the plays, dished to teammates and took advantage of opponents who had trouble keeping up with his shifty moves and powerful drives to the hoop. In three seasons, 1983 to 1986, he averaged 15.7 points per game; in 1985 he was a second-team all-American.
Highlights of Pearl Washington
He helped lift Syracuse University to national prominence in basketball.
When Washington arrived at Syracuse, the Big East Conference, to which it belonged, was in its early years and just becoming nationally prominent. His college years overlapped with those of Patrick Ewing at Georgetown and Chris Mullin at St. John’s, both of them Big East stars, but Washington may have been the biggest draw.
“You can’t talk about the Big East and not talk about Pearl Washington,” the sportswriter and broadcaster Michael Wilbon said in “Requiem for the Big East,” a 2014 ESPN documentary. “You can’t write the history. He’s in the first paragraph. He’s in the first line.”
On Jan. 21, 1984, early in his freshman season, Washington beat Boston College with a half-court shot at the buzzer. A month later, Sports Illustrated devoted a feature article to him under the headline “All Syracuse Is His Oyster.”
“In the open court, or on the break, or steering through the lane one on one, there’s nobody better,” the article’s author, Curry Kirkpatrick, wrote.
Syracuse plays at the Carrier Dome, an enormous arena that also serves the university as a football stadium, and Washington filled it for basketball as it had never been filled before. More than 30,000 people witnessed his Boston College game-winner. Average attendance in the season before his arrival was 20,401 fans per game. In his freshman year, it was almost 2,000 fans more. In his third year, the average climbed over 26,000.
“He was the most exciting player who ever played in the Big East,” Boeheim said in the documentary.
Dwayne Alonzo Washington was born in Brooklyn on Jan. 6, 1964. His father, George, was a construction worker; his mother, Janie, worked in a factory.
Not a particularly attentive student in high school, Washington chose to go to Syracuse, he said, because he wanted to play in the Carrier Dome and because the school had a strong speech communications program. Though he left the university early to play in the N.B.A. — he was drafted in the first round, 13th overall, by the Nets in 1986 — he returned after his pro career to finish his degree. He was studying for a master’s degree at the Syracuse College of Education before his illness made continuing impossible.
Washington made frequent appearances at Syracuse games and remained a beloved figure on campus. In his honor, the members of this year’s Syracuse men’s basketball team wore orange warm-up shirts with “Pearl” and “31” — his former number — inscribed in white.
Washington was married once and divorced. In addition to his sister, he is survived by his mother; his partner, Debra Busacco; a brother, George Jr.; a son, Dwayne Jr.; two daughters, Damara Washington and Tatiana Washington; and four grandchildren.
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