Former IU player Jay Edwards wants a different shot at NBA

The kid they called "Silk" in high school is 46 now. He still plays. Still possesses the same smooth jump shot that earned him his nickname. Those knees just aren't what they used to be.

"An old man," he said with a smile. "Sometimes I feel it."

It's not only the knees. Away from basketball, Jay Edwards often belied his nickname. "Silk" was rough around the edges. There were drug and alcohol problems, even dating to his days as a three-time state champion and co-IndyStar Mr. Basketball with teammate Lyndon Jones at Marion High School in 1987.

There were missteps. There were decisions he wishes now that he could change. Like leaving Indiana after his sophomore year to start an NBA career that amounted to four games, seven points and 26 minutes. Injuries and poor judgment kept derailing him. Jay Edwards never made a 3-pointer in the NBA, a job he seemed born to do. How is that possible?

"When you start on the journey, you can't lose focus," he said. "I lost focus a lot. I lost focus throughout my career. I'd get in focus and then lose it again."

Edwards bounced around. There were several years in the Continental Basketball Association – many productive seasons – and professional stops in Spain, Israel, Argentina, Venezuela, Canada and the Philippines.

"Anywhere they needed a shooter," he said.

When it was over in 2002, he bounced around some more. He worked for a car dealership in the Chicago area and later as a technician for a pipe supplier in Bay St. Louis, Miss. Anywhere but home. Anything but basketball.

"I've been running from it for a while," Edwards said.

From what?

"The spotlight," he said. "I got tired of the negative questions: 'Why did you do this or that?' or 'I heard this about you.' I got tired of it. I disappeared."

Edwards is back now, back in Indiana and looking to get back into basketball. His five-year goal is to work as a shooting coach for an NBA team. He's started the process, working with high school kids in Muncie and running a youth basketball camp with Jones and Woody Austin, the 1988 Mr. Basketball from Richmond.

"I've had a little bit of a roller coaster life," Edwards said. "But I really want to make it work. I don't want to go back, I'll put it that way."

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Edwards used to watch NBA games and see guys like Bruce Bowen, Tim Legler, Voshon Lenard and Sam Mack – players he'd gone head-to-head with in the CBA – and wonder what might have been.

At the time, in the early-to-mid 1990s, Edwards was bouncing from the Fort Wayne Fury to Rochester Renegade to the Rockford Lightning to the Connecticut Pride to the Yakima Sun Kings, looking to get another shot at the NBA.

"I took Bruce Bowen's job in the CBA before he got called up," Edwards said. "Tim Legler, I averaged like 32 on him every time we played. Voshon Lenard, I used to give to him, too. That hurt because those are guys I did pretty well against."

If it was just about basketball, it would have been easier. Basketball was never the issue.

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***

Edwards actually should have been a Muncie Central Bearcat. His father, Fred, and mother, Rosemary, divorced when he was 5. Jay moved to Marion to live with his mother, who worked for RCA. Edwards' brothers, James and Jeff, were much older and pretty well out of the house by the time Jay was in elementary school.

"It was basically just me and my mom," Edwards said.

His first love was baseball. But Randy Black, then the director of the Police Athletic League in Marion, asked him to play basketball. That was that.

"We grew up wanting to be Marion Giants," he said.

Success came at a young age and – as it turned out – with a hefty price. After seeing some varsity minutes as a freshman, Edwards and Jones started for Marion's 29-0 state championship team in 1984-85. That was the start of the "Purple Reign" era under coach Bill Green.

Edwards averaged more than 15 points a game as a sophomore. Seniors Lefon Bowens and Jay Teagle were Indiana All-Stars that year and Nikkie Mallory ran the show at point guard.

"We had some veterans on that team that had played with James (Blackmon Sr., a 1983 Marion graduate)," Edwards said. "We had a really good team."

Edwards and Jones ran the show as sophomores. Marion lost three games that year. But the Giants again turned it on in the tournament and punished Anderson 75-56 in the state championship game. Edwards was sensational as a junior, averaging 24.6 points and 8.6 rebounds.

The good times were rolling in Marion. The gyms at home and at North Central Conference rivals such as New Castle, Anderson, Richmond and Muncie Central were packed. But Marion never lost. In three years, the Giants were unbeaten in conference play.

"We were like rock stars almost," Edwards said.

The Giants, ranked No. 1 in the nation going into the 1986-87 season, were on a pedestal in Marion. Edwards, without much of a male influence in his life at the time, began to drift into the party life off the court.

"Bad habits," he said of the alcohol and drugs.

But Marion lost just one game that season and cruised to a third consecutive state title, a feat that hadn't been accomplished since Franklin of the 1920s. In the state finals, Edwards had 35 points and 16 rebounds in a win over Richmond.

"That Edwards worked as hard as I've ever seen him," Richmond coach George Griffith said at the time. "He must have really wanted it badly."

Edwards and teammate Jones shared Mr. Basketball honors. All five Marion starters made the Indiana All-Star team. All was well on the surface as home state heroes Edwards and Jones left for Bloomington to join an Indiana team coming off a national title.

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Edwards was originally planning to attend Louisville. He told then-coach Denny Crum before his junior year at Marion, though in the days before recruiting coverage was big business, it wasn't made public.

"Denny Crum flew to Five-Star Basketball Camp and (director) Howard Garfinkel told me the story that he'd never come to see a player before," Edwards said. "They put a little pressure me and I told Crum I'd come to Louisville. That lasted up the point where I signed with IU, basically. I knew Lyndon was learning to IU so I said, 'Let's go then.' It didn't hurt that (Bob) Knight was saying I'd be Steve Alford."

***

Edwards left many indelible memories in his time at Indiana. He carried the Hoosiers during Big Ten play as a freshman, averaging a team-leading 19.2 points in conference games. He was named Big Ten Freshman of the Year.

As a sophomore, he was Big Ten Player of the Year. On three consecutive weekends, Edwards hit either winning or tying last-second shots against Purdue, Michigan and Illinois. All three came on national television.

But Bloomington is also where the path diverges for Edwards.

"I was that age where nobody could tell me nothing," he said. "Turn it up times 10 (compared to most kids that age). That was me."

For all of the great moments on the court – and there were many – there were problems off the court almost from the outset. After he missed time for academic reasons as a freshman, Edwards failed a drug test in September of his sophomore year. He entered a chemical dependency program in Indianapolis.

"We wanted to get him help now and not see him dead in a year or two," his mother told the Marion Chronicle-Tribune at the time.

Knight told The Sporting News that Edwards had been "a monumental pain the ass." But he continued to produce. In the historically strong 1988-89 year for the Big Ten, Edwards averaged 20.0 points and shot 45 percent from the 3-point line to lead Indiana to a 27-8 record and the Big Ten title. Michigan, which won the national title, lost to Indiana twice.

"There's no way we should have won the Big Ten," Edwards said. "Without (Knight) coaching, we wouldn't have. He was smart."

Indiana lost to national runner-up Seton Hall in the NCAA tournament regional semifinal. Not long after, in a decision he still regrets, Edwards declared for the NBA draft. He expected to be taken somewhere in the middle of the first round.

Instead, he slipped to the second round and the 33rd overall pick to the Los Angeles Clippers. Bad decision. Bad fit. Plus, Edwards had suffered a knee injury during Big Ten play as a sophomore that was worse than he'd originally believed.

"I had two strong years at IU," he said. "I should have stayed four, or at least three. I got injured, wasn't able to prove myself and then ran into trouble. It was just too much."

Edwards never told Knight he was leaving. He has run into his former coach twice since then.

"I tried to talk to him, but he just cussed me out," Edwards said. "I'm not going to get cussed out a third time. It's 30 years later, so I'm not too worried about it."

***

There were guys picked in the second round of the 1989 draft who carved out solid NBA careers. Sherman Douglas, 12 seasons. Clifford Robinson, 18 seasons. Doug West, 12 seasons. Chucky Brown, 13 seasons. Haywoode Workman, eight seasons.

Edwards, four games.

He started the season on the injured list with the hurt knee. He came back in January for a 30-win Clippers team before he injured the knee again. In March, he was suspended by the NBA for failing a drug test.

"Instead of working harder, I just tried to rely on my talent," he said. "It backfired on me. Everything had come so easy. We won three state championships in a row at Marion. I got Freshman of the Year and Big Ten Player of the Year. That's a good five years. In my mind, I'm ready to roll. But I didn't put in the work once I got hurt."

There were tryouts later. With the Pacers, the Lakers, the Spurs. Edwards was never able to get his foot in the door again.

At age 21, he'd played in his last NBA game.

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Edwards makes it back to Bloomington for a couple of games a year. Indiana fans love to talk about those winning shots. That's what they remember. Edwards laughs that he might have missed a shot or two at Assembly Hall, but those seem to have been forgotten.

"Ever since the PAL club, I wanted to be the guy who took the last shot," he said.

You could say Edwards is taking another last shot. In the past 18 months, both his mother and father died. He reconnected with his dad in his final two years, living with him in Muncie. They talked about Jay's uncle, James, who was a prominent actor in several movies and television shows in the 1950s and '60s.

"It was good for me," Edwards said. "I got to talk to him about a lot of stuff that I didn't know. We were able to reconnect."

Fred Edwards died in December 2013. Five months later, Edwards' mother passed away.

"I was a little numb for a while," he said. "But I'm glad I got to spend time with both of them."

If this is a last shot, Edwards wants to make it count. The camps with Jones and Austin began earlier this month and he's started working with youth players in Muncie as a shooting coach. He's not sure where exactly the journey will take him, but he'd like to believe there are life lessons he could pass along to others.

"I don't know the exact message yet," he said. "But I'd like to tell kids that there are life-changing decisions you make that you have to live with."

Call Star reporter Kyle Neddenriep at (317) 444-6649.