One is a sophomore at Calvert Hall, hoping to someday achieve the same greatness his father did for the Terrapins in the Atlantic Coast Conference. During a game more than three decades ago, the father scored more points than any player in Maryland history, a record that still stands today. The other is a current Terrapin sophomore trying to find his niche offensively long after his father became the most prolific scorer in small-college history.
For 10th-grader Jonathan Graham, he?ll always be the son of Ernie Graham, whose shooting symbolized the mercurial nature of a singular big-city talent who was his own worst enemy ? until fatherhood spurred the former Maryland star to turn his life around.
And for Terrapin sophomore Landon Milbourne, he?ll always be linked to father Andre Foreman, a lower Eastern Shore native who knew his limitations on the basketball court. So he stayed close to home, attended Salisbury University and became the most prolific scorer in Division III history.
Legacies are nothing new in college basketball. Florida, Ohio State and Georgetown all featured sons of famous fathers during their runs to the Final Four last spring. Now it?s Jonathan and Landon?s time to emerge from the basketball shadows cast by their accomplished fathers, who hope their sons? successes on the court strengthen their father-son bond off it.
Jonathan and Ernie Graham
The Baltimore Catholic League produced Rudy Gay in 2004 and Donte Greene in 2007.
The BCL?s class of 2010 will include Jonathan Graham, but it would be a disservice to the Calvert Hall big man to push the G-Man connection. Graham doesn?t possess the NBA Lottery athleticism of Gay, who?s averaging nearly 20 points for the Memphis Grizzlies, or Greene, a Syracuse freshman and favorite for Big East Conference Rookie of the Year.
Besides being a first-year starter and work in progress, Graham has exceedingly large shoes to fill in his own household.
“I?ve watched the tape,” Graham said. “Wow, that?s good stuff.”
He was referring to a faded Jefferson-Pilot broadcast from Dec. 20, 1978, the night his father dropped 44 points on North Carolina State ? as a sophomore, no less. It remains the Maryland single-game record, and had there been a three-point line in that era, the slick, smooth forward would have gone for 50.
Graham was hardly a gunner or a one-man team. Graham?s 1977 recruiting class included Albert King and Greg Manning, with Buck Williams joining them a year later. In 1980, they were thecore of the second Maryland team to finish atop the ACC regular-season standings.
When Graham left Maryland in 1981, his 1,607 career points were No. 4 all-time, and, despite the fact that he didn?t play point guard, his 346 assists were No. 3.
“He was a really good teammate,” said Manning, whose son, Greg Manning Jr., is a reserve guard at Loyola College.
For all his accomplishments and charisma, Graham came to be demonized over a feud with coach Lefty Driesell and the drug habit he carried from his hometown of Baltimore to College Park to a pro career that took him to more than a dozen countries.
“There?s a lot of pain associated with that guy,” Graham, 48, said. “I did a lot of dumb, self-destructive things.”
Positive and negative reinforcement are part of Get the Message, the foundation Graham directs that targets at-risk youth. When he kicked his habit and began that outreach, his motivation included Ernest Graham Jr., born in 1981, and Jonathan, a decade later.
“My sons, they were key,” Graham said. “When I got to the low point, there was no other reason to live. You learn from the mistakes you made and teach your children to do better.”
Graham was long a polarizing figure at Maryland, fingered for part of the blame in a recruiting rift between Driesell and Dunbar High at a time when his high school alma mater had the nation?s premier prep program. The bad blood ended when Keith Booth joined the Terps in 1993, and the saga has taken some curious turns.
Driesell and Graham have repaired their relationship. Now a Maryland assistant coach, Booth has helped head coach Gary Williams mine Baltimore for St. Frances senior Sean Mosley and current Terp freshmen Dino Gregory and Braxton Dupree ? who happened to be the guy Jonathan Graham banged against in Calvert Hall practices last winter.
“When Jonathan gets stronger, he?s going to be a major, major player,” said Mark Amatucci, who developed the likes of Duane Ferrell and Juan Dixon before turning the Calvert Hall program over to John Bauersfeld last year. “He just needs some time. He?s going to be a good perimeter player, just like his dad.”
Jonathan, at 6-foot-7, will go between his legs in the open court and has good range on his jumper, but plays with his back to the basket for Calvert Hall, where he averages team highs of nearly 18 points and eight rebounds. Still maturing physically, Jonathan?s game already possesses a certain savoir faire, courtesy of the right AAU experience and his father.
“I?ve tried to teach Jonathan as much as I can,” Ernie said. “He?s got a lot of fundamental, old-school skills.”
He added a postscript: “For all that I?ve taught him, at the end of the day, his success will be more about her influence than anything I taught him.”
Ernie was talking about Karen Graham, his wife and Jonathan?s mother, who graduated summa cum laude from University of Maryland, Baltimore County and deserves a large portion of the credit for her son?s work ethic.
Landon Milbourne, Andre Foreman
Jonathan Graham honors his father when he puts on his 25 jersey, unaware that Ernie wore it at Maryland as an homage to Gus Johnson, the power forward for the old Baltimore Bullets when the city had the most rollicking team in the NBA.
The current Terps have Milbourne wearing No. 1, the position his father holds on the NCAA?s Division III all-time scoring list.
Foreman starred at Salisbury in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when college basketball seemed to thrive everywhere in the state except for College Park. Coppin State and Towson went to the NCAA Division I Tournament, and Washington College, Johns Hopkins and Salisbury went deep into the Division III tournament.
Foreman left Salisbury in 1992with 2,940 points and 1,140 field goals. Sixteen years later, both remain the standard in Division III.
“I never thought it would hold up this long,” said Foreman, who was in the right place at the right time.
When an ROTC commitment left Foreman ineligible to play during the 1989-90 season, the ridiculously up-tempo Sea Gulls averaged an NCAA record 104.5 points. Foreman led all of Division III with a 31.5 average as a junior, and as a senior took Salisbury to the Elite Eight and a blowout of University of Maryland, Eastern Shore that forced the Hawks? coach to resign.
A chiseled 6-foot-6-inch leaper with low-post skills and a sweet stroke, Foreman seemed like a man among boys in Division III, but he was a late bloomer out of Stephen Decatur High in Berlin, where his teammates included Troy Wainwright, now Maryland?s director of basketball operations.
A few months after Foreman?s high school graduation in June 1987, Landon was born to Kaona Milbourne, another Stephen Decatur student. The two never married but remain good friends. Foreman went off to make a living in Sweden and then Finland, and in 1999, Kaona moved her family to the Atlanta suburbs, where Landon?s game took off.
He may be a starter in the ACC, but it wasn?t until 2005, before Milbourne entered Oak Hill (Va.) Prep, that he finally beat his father head to head.
“When I got to be 14, 15, I wanted to play my dad one on one all the time,” Milbourne said. “I was finally able to beat him for real, without him letting me, when I was 18.”
Not that that led to any trash-talking.
“I?m not as athletic as he is,” said the son.
“Landon?s a lot better than I was at his age,” the father answered.
U.Md. coach Williams has dealt with more delicate dynamics. His best player last season was D.J. Strawberry, whose father, Darryl, hit 335 home runs in the major leagues. While the ESPN cameras always found the elder Strawberry, Foreman came and went unnoticed at the Comcast Center in December 2006, an interesting turnabout.
“My dad?s a celebrity in Finland,” Landon noted. “My senior year at Oak Hill, I stayed with him for a week, got to see him play twice. Everyone there knew me, newspaper reporters wanted interviews.”
Foreman, 38, lives and plays in Joensuu, closer to Russia than the Finnish capital of Helsinki. His point guard is Louis Hinnant, an Oxon Hill native who played at Boston College and completed his ACC eligibility just before Milbourne began his.
Foreman has a residence in Silver Spring in order to be near his son when he?s stateside. In Finland, he monitors an up-and-down Maryland season via live streaming on the Internet.
As a freshman, Milbourne logged just 12 ACC minutes. In last month?s ACC opener, he got a career-high 35.
A left-hander who needs to take the confidence he has at the free-throw line into the Terps? half-court game, Milbourne got career highs of 12 points and four blocks in last week?s rout of Holy Cross, and came out averaging 7.4 points and 4.0 rebounds. Increasing resolve at the defensive end has kept him in the starting lineup.
“I?m learning how to move my feet, move without the ball,” Milbourne said. “The game is so much faster at the college level.”
Taller than his father, Milbourne is listed at 6-7, 207 pounds.
Those are the exact dimensions Ernie Graham carried as a Maryland senior.
Paul McMullen is the author of “Maryland Basketball, Tales from Cole Field House” and “Amazing Pace, the Story of Olympic Champion Michael Phelps from Sydney to Athens to Beijing.”
