MILWAUKEE COUNTY

Precious Lives: 'The team to beat'

Ashley Luthern
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Wesley Higgans shoots during a game at Meaux Park in Milwaukee on July 20.

Devin Cameron reaches through the open window of her van, stretching her arm over a sheet cake decorated with her 13-year-old son’s photo, and grabs a plastic bag of markers. Her son was shot and killed one year ago today, July 8.

She walks to the center of the residential street, only about a half-mile from where her son used to play basketball. Her relatives pass out purple and gold star-shaped balloons.

“Hey everybody, I’m Gio’s mama and we are having a one-year anniversary for Giovonnie Cameron so we’re going to put the hurt on the balloon,” she says, her voice cracking.

She brushes tears from her face and continues.

“It’s the aim of getting your hurt out, what ya’ll want to say to him, just write it on the balloon,” she said.

The markers squeak as friends and family scrawl messages. The group counts down “1-2-3” and shouts “Gio gang!” as they let go.

The metallic balloons shimmer, float up and snag on a tree. The wind picks up and shakes most of them free to continue skyward. A few remain trapped in the limbs.

• • •

Although they were at the vigil earlier, Gio’s basketball teammates had to leave before the balloon release. They have a game starting in a few minutes.

Kyhli Maxey, 13, had stormed off after the team’s third game, but returned and is now warming up with his teammates. He’d calmed down after getting a text from his coach, Eric Moore, who took the blame for a miscommunication that prompted an argument between Kyhli and a teammate.

After Gio was killed last season,the players dubbed themselves Team GoGo in his honor. But a rift soon developed between the players.

One group knew Gio outside of the team and had been friends with him for years. The other had met him on the team and had known him only for a couple of weeks before his death.

Moore tried to diffuse the tension, but it lingered and dogged the team the whole season. They didn’t play together. They played frustrated and angry, every play a possible powder keg.

Moore knew that anger. He had felt it himself after his best friend, John David Wess III, was fatally stabbed during a fight when they were teenagers.

He did not want his team to handle things the way he had. He knew that if they did, the path would lead them to one of two places:

Prison or death.

• • •

Moore’s sister was 16 years older than him, so in many ways he grew up like an only child and developed tight bonds with his friends, including the Wess brothers.

John David Wess III

When Moore was about 12, he asked Steve Wess to give him a basketball training regimen, and Wess came up with this: 50 push-ups, 60 pull-ups, a series of jumping jacks, stair runs, 200 jump shots and suicide runs. It took Moore all day to complete it. The results showed on the basketball court and soon Steve’s younger brother, John, joined Moore in training.

Moore and John, known as John-John, acted more like brothers than friends. They played in the Warning league and John practically moved in with Moore's family during his last year of high school. Everyone agreed John had the skill and character to play college ball.

In March 1987, their senior year, John played varsity for North Division High School and his team lost to Washington High School in the playoffs. The coach, Robert Kern, didn’t see John in the locker room after the game and assumed he had disappeared because he didn’t want to talk to his teammates. Later, he found John in the Washington locker room, congratulating the other team.

A month later, while on spring break, Moore and John went to a teen dance night at the VIP Lounge on W. North Ave. John’s brother, Steve, and another friend joined them.

At the dance, Moore and John saw one of their old teammates, an 18-year-old recent North Division graduate, with several friends. The 18-year-old had quarreled with their friend over a girl the week before. When the two groups ran into each other in the parking lot, they fought.

As security began to break it up, the 18-year-old ran. John chased him. The 18-year-old, who had a knife, later told police he thought John was going to kick him so he swung at John, stabbing him in the stomach.

After he was wounded, John ran about a block. Then he collapsed.

Moore and his friends found him in an alley.

Eighteen months later, the man, whose attorneys argued had acted in self-defense, was convicted in the killing and sentenced to six years in prison.

At the time, Moore was consumed with grief and rage. More than 650 people paid their respects at John’s funeral. Moore went only because one of his coaches pulled him out of a dark attic bedroom where he had taken refuge.

He refused to cry.

• • •

“Hey coach, coach!” says Da’Breion Ferguson Toombs, 14, who’s wearing a tribute T-shirt with a half dozen photos of Gio printed on it. On the back it reads: “Ball in Heaven.”

Da’Breion used to see Gio every day. Sometimes he sits with his headphones on, music blaring, and looks through photos of him and Gio and their friends. It makes it easier to imagine Gio is still there, sitting and talking with him.

“You hear me coach?” he continues. “How many buckets did I score last game?”

About 12 or 15, coach responds. Da’Breion thinks it’s more like 20.

“You got a lot of layups,” Moore admits. “You playin’ good D.”

Da'Breion Ferguson Toombs during a game at Meaux Park near Lincoln Park in Milwaukee.

Da’Breion smiles, a shiny grille glinting from his mouth. Last season was terrible, he says. Their minds weren’t right; they weren’t playing together. This year, it’s different.

“As long as we work together and be straight and keep Gio on our mind, we’re gonna win every game,” he said.

Da’Breion has taken his coach’s advice about letting out his emotions. Moore has a motto that he adopted from the late basketball legend Jim Valvano: “Laugh, think and cry every day” — and he lives it, often shedding tears when discussing everything from his players to his basketball memories to his family. Da’Breion appreciates his honesty.

“That shows you they’re true to you and they really care about you to show you their feelings, because any other man, they won’t show you their real feelings,” he says.

Da’Breion went to the earlier event for Gio and now he’s starting in the evening game, a physical contest with several fouls called in the first few minutes. Spectators crowd around the other team’s bench. They’re too close and the scorekeeper tells them to back up.

At halftime, Team GoGo leads, 16-13.

“We in a dog fight,” Moore tells his players. “Catch your breath.”

He chides them for not communicating on defense.

“Fellas, we gotta talk up on D,” he said. “If you know where the help is, y'all can funnel it that way, so you know the pass can only come from that angle. If you’re sitting in the middle, it’s a pick every time.”

The ref blows his whistle. Moore counts off “1, 2, 3,” and his players answer: “GoGo!”

A few minutes of play go by. The fans who earlier had been shooed to the end of the court migrate back to the sidelines. The other team’s players keep dropping swear words — and so do their fans — despite the nearby scorekeeper’s requests for them to stop.

Abruptly, the scorekeeper shouts “Hold the ball.” The scorekeeper, who also happens to be one of the league’s chief organizers, has had enough. He and the referees call the game, a forfeit.

Team GoGo is 4-0.

• • •

After John’s death, Moore wanted revenge.

He got his chance at a Warning basketball game in 1988, the year after the fatal fight when the suspect was free on bail. Moore was in the layup line and heard whispers rising from the crowd: “Dude that killed John-John is here.”

Moore’s coach took the team by a tree and told his players to let it go. Moore ignored his coach. He put on his black hoodie, a pistol tucked in the front pocket, and walked through the crowd with his head down.


Suddenly, someone came up behind him and gave him a bear hug, pinning his arms to his sides. It was a close friend and teammate.

The two walked back to the tree. “Give it here,” his coach said. Moore turned over the pistol.

The moment had passed. Years later Moore would make peace with the man who killed his friend. But back then, Moore wasn’t “Coach” or even “Eric.”

He was “Droop,” a childhood nickname given by some friends who thought he looked a little like the cartoon dog Droopy. Even now, many people in the basketball world know him as that. But to him, the name carries a stigma. Yes, he was Droop when he played as a teen. But he also was Droop when, in a fit of pain, rage and fear, he carried a gun and lived recklessly after John’s death.

“We had this don’t care attitude, kill or be killed,” Moore recalled.

He worked asbestos abatement in the warm weather, but turned to drug dealing and gambling in the winter to double or triple his earnings, becoming addicted to both. Eventually, he got caught and sent to prison on drug-related charges. While there, he was assigned a therapist who helped him deal with his grief and anger over John-John.

He finally cried.

Once he was released, Moore worked to develop a youth foundation in honor of his slain friend. He coached basketball and taught chess. He was there for his son and daughter.

Milwaukee's Warning League: A Barometer for Talent and Community Bonds

But in December 2008, he was unemployed despite putting in 10 or more applications a week. He was taking care of his sick mother. He had assembled a basketball team, but didn’t have the money for uniforms or the registration fee for an indoor league. His daughter’s 18th birthday was coming up, as was Christmas. He was desperate.

A relative, later described by authorities as a “career bank robber,” concocted a plan targeting a bank in Germantown. Moore carried a BB gun during the robbery. They got caught. During his sentencing, Moore apologized for his actions and told the judge it was only by God’s grace he was not dead.

In federal prison, he became known as “the busiest man on the compound,” coaching and refereeing basketball, taking carpentry and theology courses and creating his own ceramic chess pieces. He kept himself busy, he said, to distract from the fact that his mother was terminally ill. He was locked up when she died and missed her funeral.

Of his time in prison, Moore says: “I studied myself to the point where I knew the things I did that I didn’t like about me and the things I can thrive in.”

“I’m going to leave that person alone and try to stay as far away from him as possible,” he said. “Droop is someone else. I’m Eric.”

“I’m Coach.”

• • •

As Team GoGo warmed up, they could hear the buzz from the sidelines: The Victor Berger team is good.

Team GoGo’s past two games had been blowouts: wins by 30 or more. Now, in the seventh game of the season, every point would be hard-fought.

Team GoGo takes a team photo during a game at Meaux Park in Milwaukee on Aug. 1.

It doesn’t matter that the other team’s starting line is a foot shorter than most players on Team GoGo. It doesn’t matter that they have a loss or two.

Moore has a simple message for his players: “This is the team to beat."

The game starts with a fast back and forth, each side scoring. Sweat pours down the players’ faces. Spectators fan themselves and cluster in the shade of a tree. A heat advisory has been issued for the next day, but the wilting heat is already here.

As the players race up and down the concrete court, Moore shouts instructions: “Get the rebound!” “Get back on defense!” and “Go, go, go!” — pushing his players to flood the lane.

The pace is even faster in the second half. Da’Breion steals the ball, sprints down the court and shoots a layup.

He misses and comes crashing to the pavement, landing on his back. He pauses for half a second — shaking his head in frustration — before getting up and running back to play on defense. He has yet to score this game.

Deandre gets fouled and steps to the line to take his two shots.

He bends his knees, exhales and releases the ball.

It soars toward the basket, bounces twice on the rim and rolls along the rim before finally dropping in the net.

The second shot is more direct: Swish.

Terrance Johnson, Da’Breion’s mentor and former teacher and coach, steps away from the other spectators and urges the players to slow it down and take control. Team GoGo is up by eight with three minutes left.

Instead, they keep pushing ahead, passes whipping back and forth.

At one point, the ref calls Kyhli for traveling.

“I dribbled the —" Kyhli says, then stops, censoring himself.

A year ago, he probably would have let the ref have it, cuss words and all. He cost the team two games last season by doing that.

“It’s all right, Kyhli, don’t worry about it!” coach yells.

One of Kyhli’s teammates tries for three and misses.

Soon, it’s a tie game, 35-35.

The surrounding court's empty. Most people head to the parking lot, but a few join the excited crowd on the sidelines.

Two teens, thinking the game must be over, pedal their bikes through the court.

The minutes wind down and the teams keep matching each other, point-for-point.

Da’Breion, so frustrated in the first half, snags a pass from a teammate and puts the ball up. It drops in for two.

Then, in a don’t-blink-or-you’ll-miss-it moment, Deandre steals the ball under the hoop as the other team tries to throw it in and makes a layup.

The ref blows the whistle. The crowd cheers. Team GoGo wins by four points.

Deandre smiles widely and slaps high-fives with his teammates. Da’Breion looks relieved. He was thinking too much, he says, and that’s why his game was off.

“We needed that,” Moore tells them as they collapse, exhausted, on the wood bleachers closest to the court. “Now you know you can be beat if you don’t come to play. It will happen.”

But the next two teams fall easily and there it is, 9-0.

Team GoGo heads into the playoffs undefeated.

Editor's note: An earlier posted version of this story incorrectly identified John David Wess III as John Ryan Wess III.

A two-year, 100-part series about young people and gun violence in Milwaukee.

How we reported this story

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter Ashley Luthern and Precious Lives producer Emily Forman spent two months this summer chronicling the season of one youth basketball team in the city-backed league, "Warning: Project Respect, We Must Respect Each Other."

The scenes presented throughout the series were either witnessed by the reporters or were re-created based on detailed interviews with those who were present. Details and quotes also were obtained through court records, transcripts and past news reports. In a few instances, a person's thoughts are described. In all such cases, people described their thoughts to the reporters.

More from Precious Lives

For past stories in the Precious Lives project, which looks at the causes and consequences of youth violence, as well as an audio piece related to this story, go to jsonline.com/preciouslives.