When Josh Cunningham called back home to Chicago on Friday for his daily conversation with his mom, LaTanya – who was on her lunch break from her job as a payroll supervisor with the Chicago Public Schools – she said she greeted him with a loving:
“Hey Pumpkin …What’s going on?”
And she said he responded with: “Nothing Mom, just checking on you.”
From the upbeat tone, she could tell everything was fine with him.
This time of year, as you know, a pumpkins can come one of two ways.
They can be carved happy and smiling, sometimes with a toothy grin.
Other times, they get a countenance that’s been sculpted showing anything but cheer.
These days his face flashes the former. He’s all smiles, which was the case Saturday after he led the Red Team with 12 points and eight rebounds in the annual Red and Blue Scrimmage at UD Arena.
It was the 6-foot-7 redshirt sophomore’s first time in a Flyers uniform in front of the hometown crowd and a significant step forward after more than a year and a half in the college basketball shadows.
Cunningham’s last real game was a March 6, 2015 for Bradley University against Northern Iowa in the Missouri Valley Conference tournament.
The loss ended the Braves season and his one-year career at Bradley, where he had been the team’s leading rebounder (7.5 per game) as a freshman and the third-leading scorer (7.9 points per game.)
In June of that year, he decided to transfer to Dayton, where he would be reunited with Kyle Davis, his teammate at Morgan Park High School in Chicago, a school where they won two state titles.
Not only did he have to sit out a year because of NCAA transfer rules, but he wasn’t even able to practice with the Flyers because he had to come back from two significant surgeries – one in July to repair a torn meniscus in is knee and another in October to fix a torn labrum in his shoulder.
“Last year was really tough,” Cunningham said Saturday.
And yet it was not the toughest stretch – basketball related and otherwise – he endured in his lifetime.
For a while it made for a “Pumpkin” who was missing a smile.
When Cunningham was growing up on Chicago’s South Side, his father died of a gunshot wound when his son was just 9.
Today, Josh remembers his dad with the name JOHNNY tattooed down the inside of his left arm. But back then he was crushed by the loss.
“My mother was the one who really kept me on the right path after that,” he said. “She knew with something like that happening, I could have gone the wrong way.”
The mother and son bond – which already had been strong before the tragedy – was deepened after that and that, in part, explains their daily phone calls and text messages between them.
He said his mom was tough on him back then, too. He was her only child and she was determined to keep him safe.
That protective way was what influenced her decision when Josh – after his father’s death — first asked her if he could try out for the fifth grade basketball team.
“I told him ‘No!’ “ LaTanya said Saturday afternoon by phone from Chicago. “I had no way to pick him up because of my work and I had no one else to pick him up either.
“The next year, in sixth grade, he asked me again and this time he said: ‘And Mama, I’ve already asked Mrs. Charles and she said I can ride with her when she picks (her son) Mikey up.’
“I said, ‘OK, since you’ve already made arrangements, you can.’
“But then he didn’t make the team”
Cunningham recalled the rejection Saturday: “The day after I was cut I started working on my skills so I could get better and it wouldn’t happen again.”
In seventh grade his did make the team, but he got little playing time, his mom said.
“Jabari Parker, who plays for the Milwaukee Bucks now, was on the team,” she said of the 6-foot-8 wonder kid, who was a McDonald’s All American in high school, a first team All American and the National Freshman of the Year in his only season at Duke University and then the No. 2 overall pick in the 2014 NBA Draft.
“Besides Jabari, Josh’s best friend, Michael Charles, played in front of him,” she said of the current Millikin University guard.
“That seventh grade year there was a young lady, Linnae Harper, who was in front of Josh, too,” his mom said. “She plays for Ohio State now (and Kentucky before that.) She was great. She might be one of the next stars in the WNBA.”
“Eighth grade year though, Josh finally got his chance and I was like, ‘Oh wow! This boy can really play ball!’”
He later showed it at Morgan Park, where he averaged 21.6 points and 14.5 rebounds a game and won first team All-State honors. And at Bradley he was named to the Missouri Valley Conference All Freshman Team.
Now comes his chance with the Flyers.
“The big thing for Josh, you want him to be a veteran, but he’s not,” coach Archie Miller said after the scrimmage. “He did not practice a whole lot last season, so you’re watching a guy who in his first year with us. You’ve got to be patient with him.
“He’s learning on the run now, but he’s very, very gifted physically and he’ll be a presence for us around the rim, both on offense and defense. He’ll help us this year.”
You already could see some of that Saturday and that’s why afterward Cunningham was all smiles as he headed up to a post-game autograph session on the arena concourse.
And as soon as he was done, he would be calling his mom.
From his voice, she’d know exactly which Pumpkin she was getting.
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