UAB’s Greg Gordon putting raw abilities To Use For Blazers
By Steve Irvine
BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA - November 14, 2024
His self-assessment when it comes to basketball says a lot about how UAB newcomer Greg Gordon plays the game.
He’s not polished. He’s far from a pure shooter. On a team that famously features a player who played 12 high school basketball games and another who took a detour to work at Walmart, Gordon could very well have the least pre-college or pre-junior college experience on the team.
Yet, he’s learned to thrive on the basketball court and the recipe for success is well defined.
“Yeah, I don't got no talent,” Gordon said with a small smile. “I have aggression and a motor. That's what makes me good. That's what people always tell me makes me good. You don't always want to believe that you don't have any talent but working hard is a talent to me. I genuinely believe in working hard. Yeah, my aggression and my ability to do what other people might not like doing is my talent. I go down there and bang around with the 7-footers. No one's gonna hurt me so I don't really mind. I mean that's what makes me who I am, man. You know what I mean? I love it.”
The 6-foot-5, 210-pound swingman used that formula to earn All-American honors in both of his seasons at Dyersburg State Community College in Tennessee and averaged 16 points and 7.3 rebounds in 24 games at Iona University last season. He’s now three games into his UAB career, heading into Friday’s visit to High Point, which is thought to be one of the better mid-major teams in the country.
For the record, Gordon’s basketball experience growing up in Chicago came on the playground court and local gyms. He never played high school basketball, partly because he couldn’t stay eligible and partly, he said, because he was easily distracted. His quest was for basketball to help carry him through life, so he would video himself doing basketball workouts and playing in pickup games and post the videos on social media. The hope was getting attention from somebody that could find him a place to play after high school.
At one point, during high school, he broke his right hand playfully punching a friend in the shoulder. Instead, of sitting out from basketball, he trained himself to shoot and play left-handed. Even today, Gordon, who is a natural right-hander, mainly shoots and dribbles with his left hand. But he often likes to finish shots near the basket with his right hand, even when he is on the left side of the bucket. He throws a football with his right hand, swings a baseball bat left-handed and hits a golf ball from the right side.
“It’s just all messed up,” Gordon said.
Considering a basketball journey that seemingly makes little sense, that’s probably fitting.
“You know my mom kind of wanted me to like focus on real life,” Gordon said. “Not saying she was doubting me, but she's never seen anyone from her family make it to this level. It was just she didn't see the realism of it being an opportunity for me. My mom would be like you're not playing anywhere. How are you going to get paid for this? I was, like, I’m going to make this work, but didn’t have a real plan. I needed to beat school in order to get on the court. I never beat school.”
He also had to beat the Chicago streets that swallowed up some of his friends and family. He had two brothers killed in gun violence, one of them directly in front of his family’s residence, as a teenager. That experience could have carried him down the wrong path.
“To other kids, who will listen to this, it can definitely break you,” Gordon said. “It will put fire in you. You can use that in two ways. You can use it as gasoline and let it burn you or you can let it fuel you to do something better. I don’t set my life on revenge or anything like that. I try to go reverse the cycle. I started a non-profit program to help kids that don’t have as much, because those are the kind of things that lead to the street life. When you don’t have a lot and you see other people have it, now you are going off venture in other things you don’t need to be doing. If somebody cares or at least wants to see you do better, it gives you hope. My brothers were the ones who always gave me hope.”
Gordon moved back and forth from Chicago to Florida during high school. His first basketball opportunity after high school came from Lane College in Tennessee. Gordon said the coaches saw some of videos on social media. Gordon traveled to Jackson, Tennessee but chose to turn down the opportunity because of the cost. He then got a chance to attend Miami Triple Threat Prep, which “began to change my life.” After a year there, he began getting attention from junior college coaches. He accepted an offer to play at Tallahassee Community College but that ended not long after he arrived on campus.
“I went there, you know, (the head coach) looked at me and was like, you’re kind of aggressive,” Gordon said. “He said they wanted to change the narrative of JUCO players. He said I fit the narrative of the JUCO players that are bad. He's not saying I'm a bad person. He's just saying like, you know, your attitude is so aggressive, I don't want that on campus.”
While he was in the office talking to the Tallahassee coach, Gordon said he got a text from a Dyersburg State assistant coach offering him a spot if he was available. Gordon walked outside and sent a text to say he was on his way to Dyersburg, which is about 80 miles northeast of Memphis. Gordon didn’t have a car, so best his friend came to drive him to his new home. Gordon had no idea what to expect at the end of the nearly 600-mile drive.
“I will never forget it,” Gordon said. “We were driving, I'm seeing like the woods and everything. I was in the backseat and I was sad because I was on my second school in a month. My parents threw me a nice going away party because I'm the first kid going to college out of my siblings. I’m sad because I felt like I’m letting them down already. I didn’t know how to react. I really didn't say much during the whole trip. My best friend, he kind of knew that I was like kind of feeling a way because there was so much pressure. When I got to Dyersburg, it just kind of changed. Chad Kline, who was my coach there for a year and like the first three or four games my second year, he changed my life.”
Kline, who is now the head coach at Southeast Arkansas College, wasn’t certain what he was getting with Gordon. All it took was one game to answer the questions.
“He's just a raw talent, you know?” Kline said. “I don't know if his skill set is just great, but he goes and gets that damn ball wherever it is. You know, practice is different, especially when you're at a small college or junior college where you don't have that much depth. You know your top five is beating the brakes off your second five in practice. You’re like, ‘Well, yeah, I guess I expect this, but let's see how we do you know against another team's top five.’ He killed it. I was like ‘Whoa, we got us a player here.”
He averaged 23.1 points and 11.4 rebounds in two junior college seasons, scoring a total of 1,292 points in 55 games. He had 40 double-doubles and was a two-time Tennessee Community College Athletic Association Player of the Year.
“Well, I think he figured it out,” Kline said. “I told him, I'm not trying to be mean to you or anything like that, but you're not a great shooter. So what can you do to be elite? And he got that quick. Rebound the ball. And then I always tell our guys, if you rebound, you can take any shot you want. When he rebounds, he’s by the rim, that’s how he scored. He was undersized forward/wing, so in the junior college game, he had power forwards on him, he went right past them on the perimeter and was athletic enough to get to the rim.”
He went from Dyersburg to Iona, where he was the team’s leading scorer and rebounder until he left the team just after the midway point of conference play. He finished the semester while looking toward finding a new college home. UAB head coach Andy Kennedy said they knew about Gordon at Dyersburg but he didn’t fit what they were looking for at the time. This time, though, he fit UAB’s recruiting needs and the coaching staff got an assist from their top player.
“(Yaxel Lendeborg) was texting me saying I’m coming here, there’s no debate,” said Gordon, who met Lendeborg at a junior college showcase when they were both JUCO players.
Gordon started in both preseason contests and was in the starting lineup in the season-opening loss to Vermont. He came off the bench in wins over Southern Miss and Southeastern Louisiana. He’s struggled score on the offensive end – hitting 7 of 19 shots from the field, missing all three of his 3-pointers and all four of his free throws – but made an impact in other ways. He’s averaging 4.7 rebounds per game and his nine offensive rebounds are third on the team behind Lendeborg and Christian Coleman.
Kennedy said that with Gordon’s energy, there is always a spot for him.
“I call it ball getting, he's a great ball getter,” Kennedy said. “He's a guy that can really initiate things and give us a spark, whether it be coming off the bench or starting, at the three or four. I think there's a lot of versatility there.”
Gordon is also already making an impact with the Birmingham community. Gordon and his girlfriend, India Williams, have a non-profit organization called Project Give. They’ve arranged toy drives in Dyersburg and help the homeless and needy. Recently, Gordon said he handed out blankets and food to the homeless in downtown Birmingham. He said he’ll continue to help in similar ways.
“I go out and show them that people care,” said Gordon. “I know how it feels to grow up with nothing, I understand. I want to help any way I can. My Auntie was homeless, too, if she just had a little bit more help, she would have made better decisions. I love to give back. I try to get all my teammates involved with it because I feel like it cleanses the soul. It’s not even about making you feel better, it’s just knowing that you’re helping somebody else.”