Miles Dabord
In 2005, I was working for LegaLink, a video deposition company. Our VP David Perry, had box seats at the Oakland coliseum. It was a brilliant team outing, I loved it.
I was thinking the last time I was there, it was a very long time ago, I went with this man, Miles Dabord (Kevin Williams) I met at the JCC. He stood 6’6, I saw him as a gentle giant, he had deep soulful eyes and was very smart. I was a bit of a geek myself, so we could relate to each other on different subject matters.
He spoke fluent Russian and a couple of other languages. He took my cousin Sarah and I to a basketball game, with his girlfriend and another friend. His brother Brian Williams, who later changed his name to Bison Dele, was playing for the LA Clippers at the time, had a game against the Warriors. It was such a fun evening.
I saw him like a mentor, at times, I wished he was my basketball coach. Don’t get me wrong, my basketball coach was cool, but he played favourites.
I remember I had a bust up with my coach and stormed out, Miles followed me and calmed me down. He spoke about his experiences growing up and we both had pretty bad asthma. He told me Bison was going to be in town and if I was interested in bringing a friend with me, he would get us tickets and take us to the game. I thought that was so cool and kind of him. He knew the coach played favourites and he wanted to just do something nice for me.
It was a great evening, I can’t remember who won that game, I think it was the Clippers. We went downstairs as close to the court as we could get, Miles was SUPER EXCITED to introduce my cousin and me to Bison. I couldn’t wait to get him to sign a couple of my cards.
We got stop by security, Miles pleaded with them to let us in. The security wouldn’t budge, I could tell Miles was getting annoyed, finally the security guy reluntantly went to go check the locker rooms. This was way before fancy cell phones. I can’t remember if it was 1995 or 1996. Miles really had no way to reach Bison.
The security guard came back and informed us the Clippers bus had already left. Miles looked like he got punched in the gut. I never seen him looked so sad. I tried to tell him it was ok, I had a fun evening. He gave me a cool smile, but even as young teen, I could tell it really bothered him.
I saw less and less of him at the JCC after that, I think I may have called him a couple of times, but I never heard back. Eventually my mom just told me he was probably busy. I just gave up. I really wanted to let him know how much I appreciated his gesture and had a fun time hanging out with him, his girlfriend and his friend. It didn’t matter to me whether I got to meet Bison or not, I was a fan, but not a super fan.
I decided to look him up after the baseball game, my jaw dropped. I read this detailed article from Rocky Mountain Newspaper (ceased publication in 2009), Bison played for the Denver Nuggets, I think it was after his stint with Orlando Magic. According to the article, Bison walked away from his Detroit Pistons contract, he was done with the NBA and just wanted to be free. He traveled the world, he fell in love with a local Bay Area woman, they were excited about the prospects of spending the rest of their lives together.
Miles randomly showed up, it apparently caused a lot of tension and friction. And then something happened, no one knows what, the only thing was Miles returned to Tahiti with his brother’s boat under a different name. But Bison, his girlfriend and the captain were nowhere insight.
The story gets even weirder, he tried to buy gold from an Arizona dealer and passing himself off as Bison. The dealer thought something was suspicious and Miles was arrested. His story kept changing throughout the course of the investigation, but I think he knew his time and luck were running out.
He fled to the Mexico border where he was found on a beach, comatose from overdosing on medications. Eventually his mother gave her consent to switch off the machines.
I was shocked, it had happened in 2002. Towards the beginning of HS, I kind of stopped watching basketball all my favourite players were retiring and it just wasn’t as exciting to me anymore. I had no idea Brian had changed his name to Bison, it probably just slipped under my radar.
There’s always three sides to every story. “Yours” “Theirs” and “The Truth”
We always seek the truth from stories, often the truth will be discoloured or distorted.
We’ll probably never find out what happened that night, but the truth is four people are gone and families are grieving.
Every time I pass be the Coliseum, I think about that evening and probably there were signs of resentment but they weren’t verbally expressed, more like it was an internal struggle within himself.
