During his illustrious 11-year career as a Pro Bowl wide receiver in the NFL, and his star turn at USC before that, Keyshawn Johnson was part of plenty of memorable finishes to football games. But none stuck in his mind like the way some of his games ended when he was playing at Susan Miller Dorsey High School in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Baldwin Hills — with gang members shooting out the stadium lights.
Johnson and his co-host on FS1’s “SPEAK“, NBA champion Paul Pierce, recently recounted their experiences growing up in inner-city Los Angeles in a special edition of Johnson’s podcast “All Facts No Brakes” on FOXSports.com, the FOX Sports App, YouTube and all major podcast platforms.
“Here at Dorsey, they done shot out the lights before,” Johnson recalled. “Just shoot ‘em out. ’Game over, go home. We beat y’all by 50, it’s time to go home. Ain’t no need to stick around, do none of that.’ All of that was intimidation.”
That helps explain why Johnson still refers to Dorsey’s Jackie Robinson Field by its nickname from back then: “The Terrordome.
A Sports Illustrated article published in 1992, shortly after Johnson graduated, described Dorsey thusly:
“This is the school where the Bloods, founded by Dorsey High student T. Rodgers in the early 1970s, first fought the Crips. It is a place where gangbangers jump students in class. A school in a war zone. Athletics traditionally have been a buffer between students and the violence of the inner city. At Dorsey that is not always the case.”
It was not always the case at plenty of other nearby high schools, either. After all, people in Los Angeles still refer to this area as “The Jungle.” The 2001 film “Training Day,” about Los Angeles police officers navigating gang-ridden neighborhoods, was shot on location nearby.
Both Johnson and Pierce, who grew up in nearby Inglewood and became a basketball star at Inglewood High School, have vivid memories of needing police escorts to get to and from rival schools, and seeing gang members on the sidelines of their games, both home and away.
“Gang culture and sports culture went hand-in-hand,” Pierce said. “If you was one of them ones, one of the top players, and you grew up with guys who were affiliated, it was either you were going to be with them, or they were gonna make sure you make it out.”
Pierce said he had to set boundaries early on with gang members in his neighborhood.
“You really got to stand up for yourself,” Pierce said. “I even had fights just to let them know, ‘Dude, I play sports.’ I had to fight because I hooped and I didn’t gangbang. … If you watched me play [in the NBA], how aggressive I was, how physical I was, it reflected playing at the park, playing against older dudes. Half the time, I wasn’t even playing guys who played basketball. I was playing against the neighborhood gangsters.”
As for Johnson, he credits longtime Dorsey assistant coach Darryl Holmes, “who essentially made me,” for not only recruiting him to the Dons after seeing him run routes in a chance meeting, but also keeping the future Super Bowl champion focused on athletics after a troubled childhood that included roughly 18 months in juvenile detention.
Johnson also credits Aaron Cox, a Dorsey alum who was a standout wide receiver at Arizona State and then returned to Southern California as a first-round draft pick of the Los Angeles Rams in 1988, as a role model for him to aspire to.
“He’d come and park his car in the end zone [at Dorsey’s football field] … and you’d see all of that, and you’re like, ‘Man, I gotta straighten up, I gotta get it right,” Johnson said.
“And then Coach Holmes was just like, ‘Man, you gonna be the best that there is. You just gotta do the right things. You can’t keep f—ing around. You gotta get serious in doing this, take it serious.”
Now, Johnson and Pierce hope to provide that same example for the next generation. Check out their full exchange of high school memories, their message to current Dorsey football players, and a heartwarming reunion between Johnson and Holmes in a special edition of “All Facts No Brakes” below, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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