When LaVon Mercer signs an autograph, it’s worth taking a peek over his shoulder — even if that requires jumping onto a footstool.
The former Israeli basketball legend slowly and surely works from left to right, finishing with a large, oval-shaped crescendo encapsulating his last name before deftly switching from right-to-left to rapidly mark his moniker in Hebrew as well.
It’s a fitting double-signature for a man who has a foot planted firmly on both sides of the Atlantic, a Georgia native who can’t wait to buy beachfront property in Netanya, a 6-foot-10 black American who graced thousands and thousands of posters hanging over the beds of young Israeli sports fanatics in the 1980s and 90s.
After receiving an introduction from Alan Vann Gardner, the head of Brandeis Hillel Day School’s Marin campus, Mercer pulls the microphone about two feet higher and stares at the scores of middle-school kids sitting far below him on the gym floor. He smiles.
“How many of you play sports?” he asks, and is answered by a sea of hands.
“Are ya good?” he shoots back with a laugh.
For a man who banged bodies in the paint with basketball legends like Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Mercer showed he has a surprisingly soft touch — and knows how to talk to kids.
But it wasn’t just kids the 48-year-old talked to on a West Coast tour throughout early May arranged by San Francisco’s Israeli Consulate. On stops at the University of Oregon, Oregon State University, San Jose State, U.C. Berkeley and U.C. Santa Cruz, he gave audiences his unique perspective on Israel, where he became a citizen and served in the army during his 14-year pro career from 1980-94.
When a student in an African American studies class at San Jose State asked him which side he’d choose in a war between Israel and the United States, Mercer laughed and told him no such war would ever take place. But if it did, he’d be in trouble — he loves both countries equally.
“People in the Jewish community think African Americans know what’s going on in Israel, but nobody ever talks to them,” he said later.
Addressing the African American studies class “was such a positive, enlightening experience. There was so much they didn’t know, and they wanted to know.”
Mercer shifted into a different gear to speak to middle school-aged students from Brandeis and its San Rafael neighbor, the Las Gallinas School, on Thursday, May 4.
He told the students about being an orphan at age 15, going to college and then going overseas to a country he’d only known through Bible stories from his father, a Baptist minister.
“Most people see Israel in negative stories in the news media, but that’s not what Israel’s about,” he told the gathering.
“I met truly positive people there who’ve supported me in everything I’ve done.”
The children were a tad disappointed when Mercer declined to dunk a basketball for them — he’s had a complete knee replacement and his on-court days battling European legends like Drazen Petrovic, Toni Kukoc and Arvydas Sabonis (“one of the best centers to play the game of basketball, ever”) are done. But he quickly wowed the crowd when he gave an honest answer to the question of what was the most points he’d ever scored in a game: 50.
After Mercer ended his speech, students from both schools — Jews who’d been to Israel many times and whose parents may well have cheered for Mercer, along with white, black, Latino and Asian students from Las Gallinas — surrounded the basketball star, begging for autographs on scraps of paper, clothing or even on their arms. Mercer patiently signed (in English and Hebrew) until he’d drained at least two pens and the last kid was gone.
“I’m not a politician and I don’t try to be. But I met a lot of Israelis and they’re not portrayed as the positive people they are,” he said, explaining his outspokenness on behalf of Israel.
“The people make a state. And the people of Israel have been good to me.”