Feature Stories

Filipino Basketball’s Forgotten Trailblazer: The eternal legacy of Raymond Townsend

An AMAZN HQ Feature Story

by Pranav Iyer
(Instagram @amaznhq)

In 2014, the basketball-crazy Filipino American community finally had their shining moment. With the 46th pick of the second round, the Los Angeles Lakers selected Filipino American guard Jordan Clarkson via the Washington Wizards.

Starting alongside Jeremy Lin in his first season with the Lakeshow, the two became the first Asian backcourt in the history of the sport. Clarkson is still going strong today and just inked a brand new four year, 52 million dollar deal with the Utah Jazz. A man who is celebrated with high regard by the Filipino and Filipino American communities, and rightfully so. 

But Clarkson wasn’t the first. 36 years before him, a tall, lanky 22 year old named Raymond Townsend became the first Filipino American player in NBA history and just the second ever Asian player, after Wataru Misaka. 

THE BIRTH OF AN UNKNOWN LEGEND

SAN JOSE, CA — If you take a trip today around the Bay Area, you’re bound to run into one of the seven Jollibee locations or pass by Daly City’s Manila Town. The Bay is the home to the most vibrant Filipino American community in all of the United States. The family-like mentality has given so many their sense of belonging in this country and has sprouted local legends like P-Lo, Dante Bosco and members of the world famous Jabbawokees. And it’s no secret that Filipino Americans love their basketball. If you’re in search for some OG Warriors fans — from way before the Steph Curry era — look no further. 

But this wasn’t always the reality of the Bay Area. In the 60s and 70s, the Townsends experienced a different Bay Area welcoming. The mixed-race family of seven spearheaded by 5’1” Filipina immigrant mother Virginia Marella, was often shunned. Mind you, it was only in 1948 that interracial marriage was legalized in California. And back then, they didn’t have a strongly established Filipino American community to find solace in. 

The father, Ray Sr. had a short stint in pro baseball before embarking on a legendary high school basketball coaching career. So naturally, the Townsends were a sports family. Competitive in every sense, the five siblings all were standouts in nearly every sport they played, ranging from football to field hockey. According to Kurtis, the younger of the two brothers, the family had amassed 300 to 400 trophies over the years. This, he says, was before participation medals were a thing.

Raymond, the eldest, quickly developed into one of the top athletes in the area, both in basketball and baseball. But having success as a Filipino athlete at any level at the time was virtually unheard of. 

“I could tell people I was Filipino all my life and nobody would believe me because Filipinos aren’t good basketball players,” Raymond said. “That’s the stereotype. We’re too small, we’re not quick enough. I can go on the list of all the stereotypes why we can’t make it.”

Even being Filipino, in general, was something outside of the public conscience.

“Back then, you were either black or white, there weren’t really any brown people,” Kurtis said. “… You’d hear people yell stuff out of the stands but you kind of block it out. And you know the only reason they were doing it was because you were one of the better players on your team.”

It was hard for Raymond to find hoopers to play against in the San Jose area, so he would go out to Hunter’s Point in San Francisco where many of the region’s top Black players would compete. Both he and his brother said that they were embraced by the Black community and found belonging there.

Playing for Camden and Archbishop Mitty HS, Raymond developed into one of the greatest athletes the Bay Area has ever seen to this day. 

 “I had 125 scholarship offers out of high school,” Raymond said. “I averaged 29 points a game without a three pointer.”

He truly was the talk of the town, a dominant baseball player as well. Having a plethora of options to choose from, it took him until the spring of his senior year to make his decision. And that was to take his talents to UCLA, becoming John Wooden’s last ever recruit. But before committing, he made Wooden promise him one thing — that he could play baseball at UCLA as well. 

Raymond would go on to play three years on the diamond for the Bruins and win a PAC-8 championship along the way.

“I ended up hitting .310 career average. I switch hit. I hit .356 my senior year and I was the 120th pick in the nation with the Cincinnati Reds. And people don’t understand how bad I wanted to be a Yankee.”

Raymond Townsend

But his success in basketball led him elsewhere. 

As a freshman, he was a part of John Wooden’s tenth and final national championship team. Wooden called this 1974-75 squad one of his all-time favorites. 

Raymond continued to live up to his ‘125 scholarship’ hype, as he developed into an All-American. Meanwhile, Kurtis began his own path towards dominance in the high school ranks. But each step he took, he was always reminded of whose footsteps he was following. 

After a game in which he poured in 40 points, the first sentence in the paper’s game article the next day started like this: ‘Although not quite as good as his brother…’

He knew that statement was true. And he was extremely proud of Raymond for what he was accomplishing. But that didn’t eliminate the unmatchable comparisons the teenager was being faced with.

“It was really hard for me because no matter how good I was, I think I averaged 23 or 24 a game in high school with no three, I didn’t really get the credit,” Kurtis said. “… But the part that made up for it was that Raymond was the best big brother that anyone could ask for. … And deep down, I think he really wanted me to be better than him because he knew what I went through.”

It wasn’t until a few years later that he would realize that ‘comparison is the thief of joy.’

In 1978, Kurtis was living and training down in Los Angeles with Raymond for the summer. The younger of the two was preparing for his first season at Western Kentucky, while Raymond was getting ready for the big leagues.

On draft night, the two of them were together and Raymond got a call from Jerry West of the Lakers. West told him that they were going to keep him in LA and select him with the first pick of the second round. But just 30 minutes before the draft started, Al Attles of the Warriors dialed Raymond’s line and told him that he would be coming back home.

So with the 22nd pick in the first round of the 1978 NBA draft, history was made. The first Filipino American ever drafted in the NBA. 

A huge celebration across the country ensued. The Filipino American community rejoiced. One of their own had made it, 32 years in the making. 

Actually… none of that happened. 

“It wasn’t ever really publicized or I was never really embraced until the NBA became globalized and went international,” Raymond said

Raymond knew himself that he was the first. But he truthfully didn’t realize the importance of it. Because for his whole life, society had either told him that he wasn’t Filipino or that being Filipino didn’t matter. 

A WORLDWIDE AMBASSADOR

So for nearly twenty years, his story went virtually unnoticed. People knew him to be Wooden’s last recruit, an All-American and an NBA guard — he went on to play two seasons with the Warriors and alongside Larry Bird on the Pacers for another (with a trip to the CBA playing alongside Kurtis in between) before continuing his journey overseas in Brazil and Italy. A 6’3” hooper with an afro, who was in the eyes of the public, a light-skinned African American. 

It wasn’t until almost two decades after being drafted that he started to receive some recognition. The NBA began making efforts to have their brand and the sport known around the world and attempted to celebrate the different cultures that made up the league and its fans. 

As basketball began to erupt back in the Philippines, people were amazed to hear that one of their own had made it. In fact, there was more appreciation overseas of Raymond’s feat than there was within the Filipino American community. 

And Raymond embraced it all.

“It was underneath everything that he was Filpino American,” Raymond’s uncle Benny Magdael Jr. said. “… Then it came around. It started coming around as Filipno American awareness itself started to take off, Raymond was at the forefront of the athletes.”

As the years went, he used his newfound platform to help create a bridge between the Filipino/Filipino American communities and the NBA, including serving as the director of the Filipino Hoops and Heritage Tour.

He organized the NBA’s first ever Filipino Heritage Night at Oracle Arena in 2008. Today, it exists in 17 other cities. 

He has partnered with NBA Asia, traveling back to the Philippines to host basketball camps and serving as a source of representation for the Filpino youth who are still eagerly waiting for their first native-born player in the NBA — Kai Sotto is expected to break that barrier in the 2021 NBA Draft. 

A FATHER TO THOUSANDS

But if you were to ask anyone, the place where he had the greatest impact has been right at home. After his playing career came to an end, he had every intention to become a NBA coach. And he believed he had the mind to do so, having played under some of the greatest coaches in the sport’s history.

At the same time, he went through a divorce and ended up with the custody of his two daughters. So as a single father, he realized that being an NBA coach — a year-round travel-filled profession — was out of the question at that point. A devout believer in Christ, stemming from the teachings of his mother, he prayed and prayed for guidance from above as to what his next steps should be.

And the rest is history. He created a basketball league He ended up creating a school for at-risk youth which served over 10,000 students in ten years. In 1992, he started RT Basketball, his very own training company and developmental league. In 18 years, he has worked with over 23,000 kids, embodying a teaching that Wooden used to bestow on him and his teammates. 

“Coach Wooden used to always tell us, ‘There’s no greater service than to serve someone who could never, ever repay you,’” Raymond said.   

He has grown to become the most influential basketball trainer in the Bay Area and has coached virtually every pro player to have come through the area. Jeremy Lin came through his leagues. He personally trained Tyler Johnson for eight years. He has coached the last eight MVP’s of the most competitive high school league in the area. And this past season, he coached 12 out of the top 20 scorers in the Central Coast Section. 

Not only has he had a huge impact on Bay Area basketball as a whole, but more specifically, the Asian American youth that have come through his program. It’s one thing to relate to Jeremy Lin’s story and experience his success from afar but being up close and personal to a living and breathing example of success on a daily basis has truly impacted so many that have come his way along the years. 

“It gives them hope that [even though] you’re Asian American, you can play and you can do it,” Raymond said. “… I can teach them about the journey, being a Filipino who nobody believed in and open up a lot of peoples’ eyes.”

“A lot of these kids learned and had confidence from Raymond that you don’t have to be white to succeed,” Magdael said. “You don’t have to be that second class guy or take a back seat.”

Derek King, a Chinese American pro player, started training with Raymond in 2018 after his senior season at Cal. He was amazed after hearing about his journey, knowing how much more difficult it must’ve been then given that there was hardly any Asian American representation in any sector of society at the time. So he took Raymond’s teachings to heart, from the slight alterations in footwork to the more mental aspects of the game. 

“He was huge for my growth as a player because I think he saw a lot of potential in me and when he had the utmost confidence in me, that gave me more confidence just knowing who he was,” King said.

RISING FROM THE SHADOWS

Parallel to Raymond’s success as a trainer, Kurtis himself embarked on a legendary coaching career. After a successful journey as a player at Western Kentucky, where he was finally able to emerge from the shadows of his brother’s image, and professionally in the CBA, he was asked to come back as an assistant at WKU while he was finishing up his final credits for graduation. And that’s where he caught the coaching bug. He headed back home to become a HS coach and ended up competing against his dad on several occasions. 

His first full-time coaching position was at Cal in 1993 and his first ever recruit was Jason Kidd. So it’s safe to say that he was a natural at this coaching thing from the start. He then went on to hold assistant positions at Eastern Kentucky, Michigan, USC and Miami before joining Bill Self at Kansas in 2004. 

Kurtis is currently one of the only Asian American coaches in all of DI basketball, and likely the only at a blue blood program like Kansas. During his 17-year tenure with the Jayhawks, he has coached countless future NBA players and has played a crucial part in the history of one of college sports’ most storied programs. But it was never about the wins and losses to him. Like his brother, he too was in this for greater reasons.

“Although winning a national championship was great, it’s just the amount of kids that you’ve been able to help along the way, that you are able to mentor and you meant something in their life,” Kurtis said. “And a lot of them maybe didn’t have dads growing up.

It meant the world to Kurtis to see Andrew Wiggins drafted No. 1 overall in 2014 and celebrate that with his family. He says that seeing how far Ben Macklemore has come, from visiting him for the first time at his broken-down house while recruiting him to all the success he is having now in the NBA, makes this the most rewarding profession Kurtis could have ever imagined. And the list goes on and on for the lives he has touched. 

“Jamal Crawford, who I recruited, asked me to come to the green room,” Kurtis said. “He told me that I had more of an impact than anybody on him, outside of his mom and dad. So to be there and share that with him, his family, and to stay as close as I have. He invited me and my wife to his wedding five years ago and to celebrate those kinds of days with him, after knowing him as a teenager, it’s something special and something you’ll never forget.”

THE ROAD FORWARD

The next time Raymond travels to the Philippines with NBA Asia, he plans on bringing his original Warriors jersey with a big Philippines flag embroidered on it. His next step once the quarantine lifts is pitching to the NBA the idea of him becoming its official Filipino ambassador

Kurtis, too, understands the position that he is in and plans on getting more involved in advocating for Asian American coaches around the country. 

“There’s not a whole lot like me that coach in the United States so I hope I can be an inspiration to them too,” Kurtis said. “… It’s a lot of people who work really, really hard and may never get the chance, so I do have a duty to try to help as many as I can.”

And regardless of what they were told much of their lives — that they weren’t Filipino or that being Filipino was just an afterthought — they continue to embrace their Kababayan roots and pay respect to their family’s history.

“We were a proud Filipino family,” Raymond said about the Townsends. “In this day and age, it’s hard to get Filipino Americans to talk about their heritage. …  As I followed up my heritage, I know who sacrificed their lives over there to come to America so I could live my dream.”

What Raymond’s legacy will end up being in the sport of basketball and the Filipino community is still to be told, as the lives of the thousands he has impacted both directly and indirectly continue to unfold. 

“By how many kids he will have inspired, how many kids that go to bed at night thinking that, ‘Oh my god, if he can do it, it gives me hope,’” Kurtis said. “I think Raymond’s given a lot of kids hope and inspiration to do great things in their life, things they never thought they could dream of doing without him being in their life and hearing their story.”

Their mother, Virginia Marella passed away over 15 years ago. But according to her sons, there was no one more passionate about being Filipino than her. Coming to America and being ostracized by society for being simply who she was, Kurtis wishes that his mother could witness the historic feats of Barack Obama and Kamala Harris, as well all that he and Raymond have been able to do for her community.

“I think she’s looking down and so proud of me and Raymond for what we have done and knowing that she did a good job,” Kurtis said about his mother. “She knows what her contribution to us was and it was about the family and the proud heritage and making sure that we knew where we came from and what was important in life. So I think she would be proud of both of us like she was when she was here on Earth.”

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