Dean Tolson

A Life of Turnovers

Dean Tolson graduated from Kansas City Central High School in 1970. He was a first team all-state 6’8” post man for Coach Jack Bush. He was given a full scholarship to the University of Arkansas. He played four years for the Razorbacks and his basketball prowess while in Fayetteville lead to his jersey number being retired. In 1974 he leveraged his four years at the university into a professional basketball contract with the Seattle Supersonics. In 1978, after a four-year NBA career, Tolson took to barn storming the world with an ear always out for a new and higher bidder. He lived for the next six years by a “have jump shot, will travel” motto leading a vagabond and gypsy lifestyle, wandering the basketball courts of the world. In 1984, after a decade of pro ball and at 34 years of age, his body was done with basketball. He had little to show from his career other than a passport with many exotic ports of entry and a travel trunk loaded with world-wide memories. 

Tolson was woefully unprepared for his post basketball life. Despite staying academically eligible to play varsity basketball for three years at Kansas City Central High School, earning a diploma, qualifying for admission to the University of Arkansas and maintaining his academics to a level to play four seasons of college basketball; Dean Tolson could not read or write beyond a fifth-grade level. Talking was painful, and writing a hellish exercise. He was a 32-year-old functional illiterate.

In 1998, Tolson told Sports Illustrated, "No one knows what it's like to be recognized all your life for something, to be a basketball star—to be somebody—and then, to no longer have that. You're a zero. I affected hundreds of thousands of basketball fans at Arkansas, in the NBA and all over the world. But when my career was over, I was worth $3.50 an hour. That's all. Do you know how much that hurts?"

The years of abusive lack of regard by those assigned to educate Tolson for anything besides a basketball commodity, on every level, goes all the way back to his pre-high school days. Raised in poverty by a single mother, from the ages of 9 to 13 years he and his siblings were put into a state-run Kansas City orphanage, the Niles House. To survive, the reed thin and passive young man was forced to fend for himself. He says he learned to fight. "It was a very lonely time. I felt like I didn't have anybody to love and that nobody loved me."

Finally, reunited with his mother for his junior high years, Tolson revolted, spending time with a group of similar young street toughs looking for trouble. He admits he was out of control, incorrigible and is fortunate to have survived his adolescent years. He credits his Uncle Raymond for stepping into his daily life and giving him the male tough love, he had been so lacking in his life.

Tolson avoided failing the 7th grade by a unique agreement. He had already repeated the 5th grade and could not afford to be held back again and fall two grade levels behind his chronical age.  "The principal told Uncle Raymond I couldn't pass unless I took 10 swats on the butt with a board," Tolson says. "Uncle Raymond said, 'Dean, do it for me. I'll take you out for some ice cream afterward.' "

While at Central High School he readily admits he took the path of least academic residence. Tolson never received a grade of above a C in the core classes of math, science or language arts. His final high school transcript showed an abysmal GPA of 1.83, ranking him in the bottom 1/3 of his graduation class. That lowly standing was achieved with a steady school day menu of classes such as metal shop, auto mechanics, printing, cooking, speech and family relations.

His father never made it past the third grade, his mother no farther than the eighth grade. Growing up, education was not a priority for Tolson. Basketball was. “I would rather dunk on you than eat,” he recalls of his starring high school years. By his senior year, he was a dominant force on the basketball court, averaging 23.6 points and 14.9 rebounds per game.

Tolson claims Coach Jack Bush squeezed many of his high school teachers to give his star player a higher grade than he had earned. Bush denies the allegation but does so with a bit of pragmatic logic, "A kid Dean's size could've been given a little leniency along the way. Face facts. That still happens today." 

Fayetteville, AR  has all the ingredients that make college towns a desirable modern habitat. Locals enjoy a cultural identity from the University of Arkansas found nowhere else in the state. The area is a prominent arts and music center with a vibrant college entertainment district, anchored by numerous trendy and exotic bars and restaurants. And of course, there are the Razorbacks. Fayetteville's passion for the Hogs earned the city a #15 ranking on Forbes' latest "Top College Sports Towns" list.

Tolson partook in  none of the cultural offerings of his home from the ages of 18-22. He was in Fayetteville to play ball and enjoy the campus perks his athletic standing gave him. "I'd sleep in, eat lunch, then go to practice," he explains. "Then I'd drive around in my car, drink beer, and pick up girls."

Admitted to the University of Arkansas based on what Tolson claims was an ACT test score taken by someone else for him (the University denies this charge), he not surprisingly showed little interest in collegiate academia.

His Animal House style  college experience was, according to Tolson, "like being at camp." His class load resembled his high school transcripts, filled with worthless and endless classes of physical education activities. He didn’t bother to buy text books and often, when he bothered to show up, turn in tests with only his name written on his submission.  "As long as I played basketball, I'd never be kicked out," he says.

"Every semester, the coaches would go around and ask teachers to give me a grade," Tolson said. "Some would do it, some wouldn't. Some gave me a D, or some gave me a C because I came to their class. Those were gifts. Some wouldn't be willing to talk to my coaches at all and told them to get out of their office."

Dean Tolson departed Fayetteville in 1974 as the school’s all-time leading rebounder, averaging 13.2 caroms per game. He averaged 22.5 points a game in his final season. He left after 8 semesters of college work nowhere close to earning a degree.

Frank Broyles was the Athletic Director at Arkansas when Tolson was a student-athlete. Broyles is candid in admitting the university was complicit in Tolson’s lack of academic progress.  "In the '70s, all of us in athletics found ways to take advantage of school rules to keep athletes eligible," he says. "A coach did all he could do to save his job. We just jumped at great athletes. Dean was enrolled in classes only to stay eligible; he made no progress toward a degree. That was within NCAA (National Collegiate Athletics Association) rules."

Tolson’s final undergraduate class transcript was a perfect poster for the abuse of student-athletes by athletic manipulation. The illiterate Tolson had 38 hours of failing grades and a 1.43 grade point average, based on a 4.0 scale His passing grades were in courses like golf, tennis, swimming, square dancing, typing and coaching football. The only purpose for this type of curriculum was to keep Tolson eligible to play basketball. Earning a degree was never a serious goal the university set for Tolson and he was complicit, he admits today, in his own academic failure.

Tolson left Fayetteville with no degree but he did have  an NBA contract to show for the four years spent there as a student-athlete. The Seattle Super Sonics selected Tolson in the fifth-round of that spring’s NBA draft. It was the start of Tolson’s decade long and bumpy roller coaster ride through pro basketball. Seattle released him in their  rookie pre-season camp but then resigned him the day after Christmas. Tolson survived on the Supersonics roster for the rest of the season. During the following season’s training camp, the Supersonics cut him again.

After a stint with the Hazleton, PA franchise of the Eastern League, where he earned the princely sum of $100 per game, Tolson was in 1976, back with the Supersonics. He signed for a salary of $45,000 a year. Popular with the local fans because of his aggressive and high- flying style of play, 1976 would be the  apex of Tolson’s life as a pro basketball player.

By the start of the 1977 season, feeling he had finally carved out a niche for himself in Seattle, Tolson set down roots and bought a $200,000, six-bedroom house beside a golf course in suburban Bellevue, WA.  Six games into the season, Seattle for the third and final time cut ties with Tolson. He remembers the day he was released as one of many low points in his life. "Sitting in my house, my Mercedes in the driveway, I never felt emptier in my life," he recalls.

Tolson took to the road to make a living the only way he knew how, selling his basketball talents to the highest bidder. He gave Sports Illustrated a stop by stop tour of his post-NBA life as a basketball gypsy.

•The Anchorage Northern Knights, 1977-78. "When I arrived it was 30 below. At one point, we had daylight around the clock. I remember taping tinfoil to the windows to sleep. I rode dogsleds and snowmobiles."

•Gilbey's Gin team, Manila, 1978-81. "They were calling me Filipino Deano. I ate dogmeat and drank gin.... I attended a lavish party at the Marcoses' palace. In the entry, there were guards with M16s. We feasted on roast pig. I slow-danced with Imelda."

•Carabobo team, Valencia, Venezuela, 1981-82. "I was known as Jirafa—that's giraffe in Spanish. For one game, we had to drive into the Andes Mountains, through clouds, in a rundown bus. There were white crosses on the side of the road where cars had gone over. I saw mountain people, guys skinning cows alive and picking coffee beans."

•Panteras team, Caracas 1982-83. "There were teenage boys, barebacked, with iguanas on leashes. That was their pet. I learned to habla a little espa‚Äö√†√∂¬¨¬±ol."

•A.E.K., Athens, 1983-84. "I lived near a nudist beach.... The Greeks found me a curiosity because of my seven-foot wingspan. My outstretched arms are longer than I am tall."

By 1984, he was washed up, his hoops odyssey done. He made the decision to return home to Kansas City. He had nowhere else to go. It would eventually turn into a fortuitous choice. It took some motherly tough love to finally set Tolson straight, to get his life in order and stop living off a now defunct dream of an NBA basketball career.

"You've spent every penny you've ever made," his mother said. "I've never asked anything of you. Please do this for me. Go back to school and get a degree. Make something of your life."

Tolson says he was gripped with uncertainty about a return to Fayetteville; not sure he could master college level work with a reading ability that tested at the 5th grade level. He told his mother his self-doubts. If he was searching for sympathy from his mother, he was disappointed.  She unloaded on her son. "You don't know what you can do," she challenged, "because you've never really tried!"

In the fall of 1984, Tolson returned to the University of Arkansas, determined to make his mother proud and to earn his Bachelor Degree. Fourteen years after starting school on the Fayetteville campus, he was back, fortified this time with the wisdom of his past mistakes. A degree, he knew was his only hope to live the life he wanted. It was a second chance and in all likely hood, his last. The quest for a college degree proved to be a long and winding road.

He studied nine hours a day. Finally, he got help for what was a treatable learning disorder that had limited his ability to read and comprehend written words. In due time, his tutors were amazed that he possessed a photographic memory. “If I could get an image in my mind, I would never forget it,” he remembers. It was a life changing discovery.

Tolson made believers of the skeptics on campus that questioned his resolve. ‘It was such an uphill battle," says associate registrar Guy Nelson. "I told Dean several times to start over at another school. With his transcript, he had a better chance of graduating from someplace else." Tolson refused. Donald Pederson, vice-chancellor for academic affairs, says: "Any other student would have dropped out and never gone back to school.”

The Razorback Foundation, an athletic department fund raising organization, based upon Athletic Director Broyles’ recommendation, provided Tolson a full scholarship.   "Dean's first year back, he'd come into my office," Broyles recalls. "He'd say he couldn't do the work, that he needed help. I suggested tutors, and soon after that a $2,000 bill for private tutoring hit my desk. He insisted tutors were the only way he could get his degree. After-hearing that, I never thought he'd be able to graduate."

Broyles now viewed the Tolson story as the proverbial taking lemons and making lemonade; finding success in failure. "It is a story that will encourage any athlete who went into the termination of his career unprepared, because he thought pro ball would last forever," Broyles said. "It's a great example of what can be done. We were determined to help him, no matter the cost. It didn't cross my mind to check the cost."

Through a self-discipline he never knew he had and with a new found grit he knew he needed to survive, the former apathetic student became a stickler for his own self-imposed rules: “Never miss a test or class, always turn in assignments on time, get to know the professors.”

It took seven long semesters of battling self-doubt, of constant self-pep talks and the support of many on campus support personnel; but against all odds, Dean Tolson in 1988 earned his Bachelor of Science degree in education. He became, at age 36 years, one of the oldest Razorback athletes to ever earn a degree.

Tolson decided to take his certification as a high school history teacher and become a mentor to young people, to stress the avoidance of the folly of youth and the pitfalls that often follow.

The story of Dean Tolson would make great screen play for a Hallmark movie, if it ended in 2010. Unfortunately, as happens often in life, it did not.

For a few years Tolson seemed to have conquered his demons, having become a true American success story. He became a much sought-after education and motivational speaker, claiming through his website to have given over 1200 lectures and motivational talks. "I'm helping kids," said Tolson, at the time.  "That's my only purpose for any of this. I didn't make it as a professional sports star, I made it in education, and maybe they can do that, too." He was living the good life in the Seattle are, still cashing in on his popularity as a retired Super Sonic.

In 2005 Tolson returned to Fayetteville and at age 55 earned his Master’s Degree in Education. But the red flags of concern were again blowing in his personal life.  Soon they would be at full mast.

In 2006, Tolson had injured his back playing in a charity basketball game.  He became a hard-core addict to Vicodin and other pain killers. Feeding his addiction was easy. "Eventually, I didn't even have to go to the doctors. They would just mail me my prescription drugs."

By 2010, the addiction dominated his life. He celebrated Christmas day that year alone in a Miami rehab center. Tolson had hit rock bottom.

Dan Miller is a Seattle area blogger who had befriended the former basketball star. He sees real Greek Tragedy in the crash, rise, but then fall again life of Dean Tolson. He became concerned when he could not locate his friend. “Halfway through 2011, I tried to get hold of him a couple of times without any luck,” writes Miller. “Then I just tried to locate him anywhere all through 2012 and all this year (2013), too. This is a guy that you can find on Wikipedia now gone from public view. It seemed he had apparently just fell off the face of the Earth and was nowhere to be found.”

In January 2014, Tolson reemerged as a tattered shell of his pre-addiction days. “He must have just checked into another drug rehabilitation program earlier in the month,” Miller states. “I had Googled ‘Images of Dean Tolson’ and there he was with the counselors. Poor Dean was starting over again in another drug rehab home, this time in Florida.”

Tolson, in 2016, enrolled in a new and unique program called Pain Alternatives, Solutions and Treatments (P.A.S.T.). Based in New Jersey, the clinic has partnered with the NBA, the NFL and Major League Baseball to treat former players addicted to pain killers. The services are free. Tolson, like most of the fallen former regaled stars enrolled in the rehab program, had neither the income or the health insurance to pay for the medications and treatments.

In 2016, now 65 and living in Scottsdale, AZ; Tolson’s now chaotic life took another sharp and unpredictable turn. He was accused of harassing a local consignment store clerk. The police were called and he was given a warning for trespassing. Tolson, as he had done many times in his life, refused to drop his guns and walk away from a volatile situation before it became toxic. He filed a law suit against the Scottsdale Police Department alleging violation of his civil rights and emotional distress. He hired a lawyer who he found out latter was under suspension by the state bar association. Tolson was entering the senior citizen golden years’ in a downward spiral.

Tolson was raised a child of the streets, a physically talented waif besieged by the demons of poverty and deprivation. He was a high school graduate and every college recruiter in the nation pursued him but, he struggles to this day to order off a restaurant menu. After four years of “study” at the University of Arkansas, he left diploma less and illiterate.

Somewhere along the way the joy has been wrung from the game. It is the distressing ugliness that has turned many former fans into cynics of apathy. Shoe companies, shady AAU coaches, agents, groupies and assorted leeches;  they deserve  a pox on all their houses. Once they were sought now the ignored - the collateral damage of a system that enriches all but the Dean Tolsons. 

In 2019, no working phone or email address can be found for Tolson. His business website has been taken down. His Facebook page shows no engagement since 2016. The search for himself, on basketball courts from Alaska to Venezuela , through grad school and drug rehab, may never end. Perhaps, he has returned to the very streets he could never quite remove himself from. Once again, he has disappeared.