Updated 9/8/2024 5:30 PM

Before attending the celebration of life for Jimmy Anderson held at Gill Coliseum in March, Dave Gambee leafed through an old scrapbook for a photo of his Oregon State basketball team when he was a senior in 1957-58.

“And I went, ‘I think I’m the only one left,’ ” Gambee says. “Everybody else in the picture is gone. I’m thinking, ‘Man. Really?’ I never thought I would be sitting here at 87 years old.”

But here Gambee is, in the kitchen of his southwest Portland home, reliving memories at the behest of a member of the Fourth Estate.

Gambee is the last of an era, the last man standing of those men who played for Slats Gill and Paul Valenti in the 1950s before Oregon State College became Oregon State University.

I am too young to remember watching Gambee play for the Beavers from 1955-58, but I recall following him during a 12-year NBA career that stretched from 1958-70. He earned a championship ring with one of the greatest teams in NBA history, the 1966-67 Philadelphia 76ers.

Gambee, a Corvallis native and a lifelong Oregonian, was always a striking figure when I would see him at Trail Blazers games or Oregon State sporting events, long, lean and handsome and, as the years went on, sporting a confident look with flowing silver locks. We had never met, though, until I called him for an interview a few weeks ago.

It took some prodding. We had three or four phone calls. Gambee resisted. Nobody was interested in him, he insisted. His playing career was too long ago. I persisted. His career and life story is interesting, if only for all of the greatness he was around for so many years.

Gambee somewhat reluctantly acquiesced. Over 90 minutes of conversation on a recent morning, I found him to be humble, charming and very likable. I took him back in time, and he took me on a first-person tour of basketball history.

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Gambee grew up in the Eastmoreland area of Portland before moving to Corvallis in the summer of 1949, before his eighth-grade school year. His father, Phil, had lettered in track and field at Oregon under the great Bill Hayward. His mother’s name was Mary Elizabeth Gallagher. They had two sons — Dave and younger brother Jack, who would go on to play basketball at Gonzaga and is now retired and living in Junction City.

Their grandfather owned Corvallis Sand and Gravel and Phil went to work for him as a truck driver. Phil and Mary split up the year after moving to Corvallis. The boys lived primarily with their mother after that.

Dave played baseball at Corvallis High as a pitcher and first baseman, and he played a season of varsity baseball at Oregon State, too. But basketball was his calling. He measured out at 6-6 3/4 after graduating from CHS at age 17 — “I was tall enough that I was ineligible for military service,” he says. He would grow to 215 pounds as a pro.

Gambee and his high school buddies were basketball gym rats.

“Especially in the summers, we would be at (outdoor courts of) fraternity houses I lived close to, shooting baskets or playing (pickup) games,” he says. “Or we would sneak into the Corvallis High gym or the Men’s Gym or the Coliseum (on the Oregon State campus). If I were paid $10 for every time I was kicked out of a gym, I would have quite a bit of money.”

Led by Gambee, the Spartans were ranked No. 1 in the state through most of his senior season but were knocked off by Eugene in the state tournament.

“They were a good team, but that was pretty upsetting,” he says. “I thought we were going to win the state championship.”

Gambee nearly went to college at Washington. After graduation from high school in 1954, he spent the summer in Seattle, stashed away by UW coach Tippy Dye, who had coached the Huskies to the Final Four in 1953. Dye lined him up with a job with the Olympic Stain Factory. Gambee lived in the Delta Upsilon fraternity house that summer.

“I was pretty much the only person living there,” Gambee says. “Bob Bryan was a senior on the Washington team, and he kind of looked after me.”

Unfortunate for Dye was the looming presence of another recruit, a 6-9 freshman-to-be from the Seattle area who would go on to become an All-American as a junior for the Huskies.

“By the end of the summer, I had grown tired of hearing about Bruno Boin,” Gambee says. “It was ‘Bruno Boin this’ and ‘Bruno Boin that.’ ”

Oregon State, with lead assistant Valenti the point man in recruiting, had also offered Gambee a scholarship.

“I thought, ‘If I go back to Corvallis and play for Oregon State, I know I will get a crack at playing time,’ ” Gambee says.

Like most children of the era, Gambee didn’t know a lot about the outside world. Other than watching Oregon State games in person, he didn’t know much about college basketball.

“We had no TV in our house in growing up,” he says. “I never spent any time watching television, and there was very little basketball on TV then, anyway.”

Freshmen were ineligible for varsity sports at the time, so Gambee starred for the Rooks while watching the Oregon State varsity — led by 7-3 Swede Halbrook and 6-5 Tony Vlastelica — go 22-8 during the 1954-55 season, including 15-1 to win the Pacific Coast Conference crown. The Beavers advanced to the NCAA West Regional finals where, before a Gill Coliseum crowd of 11,206, they lost 57-56 to Bill Russell and top-ranked University of San Francisco, falling a game short of the Final Four. The Dons went on to win the NCAA championship.

“It was a great game,” Gambee says. “Oregon State missed two shots to win it at the end. Ron Robins — who was my roommate at the (Sigma Nu) fraternity house — missed both of them, two-hand set shots.”

With Halbrook and Vlastelica gone, Gill went into rebuilding mode for the next two seasons, going 8-18 in 1955-56 and 11-15 in 1956-57. Gambee was the centerpiece, averaging 17.9 points and 10.4 rebounds as a sophomore and 20.2 points and 10.5 boards as a junior. Amazingly, Gambee played semi-pro baseball — mostly as a pitcher — in the summers during his college years. He also lettered in baseball for the Beavers as a junior in 1957.

“But coming straight from basketball and pitching was not ideal,” he says. “It wasn’t until the summer that I could do halfway decently control-wise.”

Gambee’s semi-pro ball was spent in Roseburg after his freshman year, Klamath Falls after his sophomore year and Lethbridge, Alberta, after his junior year.

“In Roseburg, I set chokers for 10 hours a day, five days a week, and for six to eight hours on Saturdays,” Gambee says. “I was making pretty good money for a college student. In K-Falls, I worked at a sawmill. In Lethbridge, I didn’t have a job. (OSU teammate) Ken Burns and I hung out at the pool hall most of the time.”

What did Gill think of Gambee spending his summers playing baseball, along with having somewhat dangerous job responsibilities?

“He never said a word,” Gambee says.

When I ask for an appraisal of Gill — who would win 599 games over 36 seasons from 1928-64 — as a coach, Gambee takes a moment to respond.

“He was dedicated to his job,” he begins. Then he adds, “I resented having to learn how to teach myself to shoot free throws underhand. We had to do it from the minute we walked in the door as freshmen.”

Gill changed his inflexibility for making players shoot “Granny style” shortly thereafter, because Mel Counts shot them overhand during his career at OSU from 1960-64.

“It was just so unnecessary,” Gambee says. “I did poorly my sophomore year (.578), but by my senior year I had it figured out (.753). It took a few years to become comfortable doing it. You don’t shoot many shots underhand in basketball.”

Ironically, Gambee used the underhand style — his trading card called it a “dipping method” —through his NBA career to great success, carrying an .822 career percentage at the foul line. By the time he retired in 1970, Gambee was the only player in the league using the style.

“I got used to it,” he says. “I had one foot ahead of the other. It was a simple weight shift from the back foot to the front foot to finish the shot.”

Gambee says he had “not much” of a relationship with Gill, who was decidedly old-school.

“At times we were at odds,” he says. “I was just a kid. I was immature. I probably shouldn’t have done some of the things I did that irritated Slats. I know he always made you feel like he was trying to bring the best out of you.

“Paul was a younger guy. It was easier to relate to him. I always felt he was a straight shooter and one of the last of the good guys.”

For more than 60 years, Gambee had a close relationship with Anderson, his OSU teammate who would go on to a long career as a coach with the Beavers.

“We would often visit with each other to see how the other was doing,” Gambee says. “I’m sad that he is gone. He was a wonderful guy. I am going to miss him.”

During his sophomore and junior years, Gambee lived with teammate Ken Nanson in an apartment in the basement of McHenry Funeral Home. During the summer after Dave’s junior year, he married his girlfriend Joyce, who had also attended Corvallis High, one year behind Dave in school. They would have four boys — Mike, Greg, Brad and Kent. The Gambees, who have been married 67 years, now have 14 grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren.

Gambee enjoyed an excellent senior season for a finally mature Oregon State team in 1957-58. He averaged 18.3 points and 11.0 rebounds for an OSC team that went 20-6 overall and 12-4 in PCC play, tying with California for the conference regular-season title. The Golden Bears beat the Beavers 57-45 in a playoff game in Eugene for the right to participate in the NCAA Tournament, ending their season.

“It was upsetting to be that good and not get further,” Gambee says. “But they made it difficult for us in that game as far as their defense was concerned.”

Gambee left Oregon State as its career leader in scoring and rebounds. Today, he still stands fourth on the rebounds list (behind Counts, Tres Tinkle and A.C. Green) and 11th on the scoring list — this despite having played in only 78 games, far fewer than anyone ahead of him on either list. Gambee’s scoring average, 18.8, ranks third behind only Counts (22.2) and Jose Ortiz (19.8). He averaged 10.6 rebounds, trailing only Counts at 15.4.

Gambee feels mostly satisfied about his college career.

“I got a chance to play from the minute I walked in the door,” he says. “I can’t complain about that. Coming out of high school, I was curious how I was going to do in college. Oregon State was the only advanced basketball I had watched. I wondered how I’d do. Fortunately, I was maybe a little quicker than the people my size who I played against.”

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The NBA of the late 1950s was a far less sophisticated operation than it is today. There were only eight teams. Television coverage was almost nonexistent. There were no “war rooms” or “draft night” festivities. Gambee swears he “never thought about” playing in the NBA, even as a senior at Oregon State.

The 1958 draft took place in late April. Gambee was chosen with the sixth pick in the first round by the NBA champion St. Louis Hawks (Guy Rodgers went first to Philadelphia with a “territorial” pick). Nobody from the Hawks told Gambee, at least immediately.

“I was on campus and somebody came up to me and said, ‘Hey, did you know you’ve been drafted?’ ” Gambee recalls. “I said, ‘No, I couldn’t have been. I was told I’m too tall.’ I thought they meant the military draft.

“I guess I wasn’t surprised. I thought I had done OK in college. (The NBA) just wasn’t on my mind very much.”

Eventually, he received a call from Hawks general manager Marty Blake with the news. Gambee negotiated on his own a one-year, $10,000 no-cut contract with Hawks owner Ben Kerner. It was a portent of things to come. Like many players of that era, Gambee eschewed use of an agent.

“I had 12 one-year contracts that I negotiated myself, usually with the owner of the team,” he says. “Except for the superstars, everybody’s salaries in those days were in the same range. I was able to work my salary up to $50,000 my last year (with San Francisco in 1970).”

The average annual NBA salary today is $12 million.

“You think about it,” he says. “You see guys who are at my skill level and making $8 or $10 million a year. It just doesn’t seem like money is a realistic thing anymore. It has gone off the charts. But I am happy for the guys who are doing well in today’s game.”

Gambee’s NBA career got off to a slow start. Two games into the season, he was sidelined after an attack of appendicitis. He sat out the rest of his rookie season.

“They said, ‘Why don’t you just get well, and we can start all over again next year,’ ” Gambee says.

St. Louis was a very strong, veteran-laden team that season, the league’s defending champions featuring future Hall of Famers Bob Pettit, Cliff Hagan, Slater Martin and Clyde Lovellette. The Hawks went 49-23 and won the NBA West regular-season title but lost in the West finals to Minneapolis.

“I practiced with the team, and I was going against players who were very good,” Gambee says. “I played mostly inside and had enough quickness and things I could do that I could usually get a shot off. I never made any real determinations about how good I was just from practicing, but I learned a lot from watching guys like Pettit and Hagan.”

For Gambee’s first eight years in the league, Boston won the championship every time. Did he grow to hate or resent the Celtics?

“No,” he says. “They were very good, with a center in Bill Russell who was defense-oriented and a great team leader. It was something that came with the territory. Everybody pretty much accepted it, and of course, we all tried to beat them.”

Did Gambee come to dislike Celtics coach Red Auerbach?

“He was a bit of a character, but we never talked about the fact that we didn’t like Red,” Gambee says. “We knew he was the enemy, and when it came time to play them, we knew it was not going to be easy game.”

Late in the 1959-60 season, Gambee was traded along with forward Hub Reed to hapless Cincinnati for forward Dave Piontek. Gambee’s rights were eventually sold to Syracuse, and he stayed with the organization for seven years. Gambee played a key role for the Nationals as a sometimes starter and sixth man under coach Alex Hannum. For two seasons, he was a teammate of former Beaver Halbrook, who then was the tallest player in NBA history.

Gambee averaged in double figures scoring for five straight seasons from 1960-65, including a career-high 16.7 points with 7.9 rebounds in 28.8 minutes per game in 1961-62.

“It’s all about minutes played and if your coach trusts you,” Gambee says. “If I got enough minutes, I usually did pretty well.”

Led by such talent as Hal Greer, Larry Costello, Johnny “Red” Kerr and Dolph Schayes, the Nats went 41-39 that season but lost to the Philadelphia Warriors in the first round of the playoffs. There was much change in 1963-64, when the Nats moved to Philadelphia and became the 76ers. Hannum left to coach the San Francisco Warriors and Schayes took over as player-coach. Schayes retired as a player after that season and the 76ers went 40-40 in their first season with Wilt Chamberlain at center. Wilt’s attorney was Ike Richman, also co-owner of the Sixers.

In 1965-66, they finished with an NBA-best regular-season record of 55-25 but again lost to Boston in the East finals. “We should have won it all that year,” Gambee says. “Dolph was a nice guy, but scatterbrained as a coach. Nothing like Alex Hannum.”

Hannum returned as coach for the 1966-67 season, and the Warriors hired Jack Ramsay — who a decade later would coach the Trail Blazers to their only NBA title — as general manager. The roster remained largely intact from the previous season, with starters Greer and Wali Jones at guard, Chet Walker and Luke Jackson at forward and Chamberlain at center. Second-year forward Billy Cunningham, Costello, Gambee and Matt Guokas were the key reserves.

It was a golden year. Philadelphia started the regular season 46-4 and finished 68-13, then the best mark in NBA history, playing its home games at Convention Hall. The 76ers averaged a league-high 125.2 points. Wilt led the league in rebounds (24.2) and averaged 24.1 points and 7.8 assists, the latter mark third in the league behind Guy Rodgers and Oscar Robertson.

“Wilt wanted to lead the league in assists,” Gambee says. “I always thought he handed the ball off reluctantly, but he still got enough points. We wouldn’t have won a world championship unless Wilt changed his priorities a little.”

Greer averaged 22.1 points and was second on the team in assists with 3.8 per contest. Walker (19.3 points, 8.1 rebounds), Jackson (12.0 points, 8.9 boards) and Cunningham (18.5 points, 7.3 boards) got most of the minutes at the forward positions.

Gambee averaged only 12 minutes per game, but chipped in 6.5 points and 3.1 rebounds while shooting .435 from the field and .856 from the line. He played sparingly in the playoffs  as Hannum went to an eight-man rotation that included Cunningham, Costello and Guokas off the bench. Even so, Gambee gives Hannum much credit for the team’s success.

“If he could get along with Wilt for two or three years, it speaks pretty highly of him,” Gambee says. “I always had good feelings about Wilt, but he made people dance to his music. If he didn’t like you, things could get untracked real easily. He was such a force and had so much clout in Philadelphia with his buddy Ike Richman, who was like his personal owner. He was the guy who did the most to bring Wilt from San Francisco.”

What was it like playing with Chamberlain?

“We weren’t buddy-buddy, but we got along well,” Gambee says. “I just treated him like everybody else. One year, we were having a players meeting in Convention Hall. Wilt got up and said, ‘I think Gambee should be the player representative (to the union).’ I hadn’t even thought about that. The guys voted, I won, and I served that role for two or three years.”

Chamberlain or Russell?

“Not a fair question,” Gambee says quickly. “Russell was a defensive specialist, but wasn’t much of an offensive threat. How important is defense? It can win games. But Wilt averaged 50 points one year and that was something, too. And he couldn’t shoot. He dunked and had some little shots around the basket, and nobody could stop him, even Russell. But Russell played with Wilt’s mind as much as stopped him.

“I saw Wilt do amazing things on the court, but he was always in a frame of mind. Russell was all about, ‘I’m going to do whatever I can to win the game,’ and it was usually at the defensive end. Wilt maybe thought about things too much, and his thinking might have prevented him from becoming a better free throw shooter. Of course, Russell wasn’t very good at it, either. Early in his career, I am sure Wilt was mostly about his numbers, but as he evolved, he changed on that.”

In “Tall Tales — The Glory Years of the NBA,” author Terry Pluto quotes Hannum as saying,  “We had Dave Gambee on the bench and I’d use him to stir things up. When Gambee guarded you, you usually got so sick of him hanging onto you that you wanted to fight him.”

“Alex said that?” Gambee asks with a laugh. “I don’t get mentioned in books very much. I usually defended guys like Elgin Baylor. I wouldn’t call myself a defensive specialist, but I felt like I always worked hard on defense. I tried. Some of the guys I played against were damn good. You never stopped them; you just tried to get them to change a few things.

“Alex was a man’s man. He didn’t have a wife at that time and was pretty much available. He loved to coach, to try to outthink people. I never saw him play, but I have a feeling he was a rough-and-tumble type of player. I bet he was the kind of who brought out the physicalities of the game.”

Gambee says he didn’t get to know Ramsay well.

“I don’t think Jack had really good feelings about Alex,” Gambee says. “Jack could talk basketball. Alex was more like, ‘Let’s go kick the crap out of them.’ ”

Philadelphia ousted Cincinnati in the first round of the playoffs, took Boston in five games in the East finals and then beat San Francisco 4-2 in the championship series. Though Gambee’s role in the playoffs was insignificant, “it didn’t bother me that much,” he says. “It was my 10th year in the league. I was tickled to death we won a world championship.”

How good were the 1966-67 Sixers?

“I think we were the greatest team ever to play basketball,” Gambee says. “It was an amazing team.”

Each member of the 2024 NBA champion Boston Celtics earned more than $800,000 in playoff shares. Gambee’s share for winning the 1967 title was just under $8,000. He recalls his salary that season as somewhere between $30,000 and $35,000.

Like most players of that era, Gambee always held a side job in the offseason. For some time, he sold insurance. One summer, he played on an NBA All-Star team that toured Europe and went behind the Iron Curtain.

With the exception of one year in San Diego, the Gambees always kept their home in Portland.

“Our kids would start in school in Portland, then come to wherever I was playing and go to school there,” Dave says. “Then after the season in the spring, we would come back and they would finish the school they started at that year. It worked out fine. I give all the credit to my wife. She was the backbone of the family for all those years.”

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After the 1966-67 season, the NBA expanded to 12 teams by adding franchises in San Diego and Seattle. Gambee was exposed to the expansion draft and chosen by the Rockets.

“If I was going to go somewhere, it might as well have been there,” Gambee says. “Joyce and I liked it in San Diego. (Coach) Jack McMahon was a good, personable guy. Early in the season I hardly played, but then we had a bunch of injuries. In the last half of the season, I think I played about 35 minutes a game.”

Gambee had an excellent season, averaging 13.4 points and 5.8 rebounds in 21.9 minutes over 80 games. He scored a career-high 39 points — hitting 14 of 23 from the field and 11 of 13 from the line — in a loss to Boston that season.

“It was getting toward the end of my career, and my knees hurt,” Gambee says. “I was never the guy they ran a play for, but I could score.”

One of Gambee’s teammates in San Diego was Jim Barnett, then a second-year guard out of Oregon.

“What a great guy,” Barnett says. “Dave was a veteran. He was always very calm, which was good because we had a lot of young players. He had been around forever. He knew how to play and took things in stride. He didn’t ever get upset, win or lose, play good or bad.”

For the first month of the season, the Rockets were allowed to carry 15 players, “so we still had cuts to make,” Barnett says. “I was insecure about my status and worried I would get cut. I got taken out of a game and came back to the bench and sat down real hard. Dave could tell how nervous and unsure I was. He said, ‘Jim, relax. We have 74 more games to play.”

“I think I said 81,” Gambee says with a laugh. “It was our opener in San Diego. He was emotional. He got wound up so tight that he would cry.”

Barnett also remembers the Jaguar XKE 2+2 Coupe that Gambee drove around San Diego.

“That was some kind of car,” Barnett says.

Another teammate with the Rockets was Pat Riley, who would go on to bigger things as an NBA coach and executive.

“Pat was a nice kid,” Gambee says. “He was just a young guy then. I didn’t realize that he was going to do all the things he did and do such a good job. He turned out to be a real fixture in the NBA. My wife and I both liked him. He was more of a leader than a basketball player, although he was a good player, too. He turned out to be somebody who is very respected and thought highly of.”

The next season, Gambee was again exposed to an expansion draft and was taken by the Milwaukee Bucks. The coach was Costello, his teammate for seven seasons in Syracuse and Philadelphia.

“Larry was a friend and had a good basketball mind, but he wasn’t like Alex Hannum,” Gambee says. “Larry would get angry. Alex was tactful. He knew he was dealing with mature people most of the time. He went about things pretty even-keel.”

Gambee got traded at midseason to Detroit. Since the kids were already in school in Milwaukee, he wound up driving from Milwaukee to Detroit for home games for the final two months of the season.

Dave intended to retire after the 1968-69 season and landed a job working as a lumber broker in Portland. He had been on the job for six months when San Francisco owner Franklin Mieuli called to ask if he’d play another year. When his boss from the lumber company, Hal Saltzman, assured him he would have a job when he returned, Gambee signed with the Warriors and had another solid season, averaging 7.3 points and 3.3 rebounds in 13 minutes over 73 games. And he wound up being a player-coach.

“The season started with George Lee as head coach,” Gambee recalls. “We had a team meeting before the season, and (GM) Bob Feerick tells everybody, “and Dave is going to be the assistant coach.’ Well, nobody had told me that.”

Lee was fired at midseason and replaced by Al Attles, who was on the tail end of his playing career. The Warriors ended the season with a pair of player-coaches.

“It was fine,” Gambee says. “I enjoyed Al. He was so aggressive. There were times things weren’t going quite right and he would be on the floor and I would take him out of the game. He was trying so hard. I was just glad he didn’t get mad at me for it.”

Gambee says he has been told he played with or against more Hall of Fame players than anybody in history.

“I have no way of knowing if that’s true,” he says, “but I know I played against a lot of great players.”

By my count, Gambee played with 14 Naismith Hall of Famers — centers Wilt Chamberlain, Red Kerr and Nate Thurmond, forwards Bob Pettit, Jack Twyman, Dolph Schayes, Jerry Lucas, Ed Macauley, Clyde Lovellette and Chet Walker and guards Hal Greer, Dave Bing, Slater Martin and Cliff Hagan. When I ask him to pick an all-time starting five of former teammates, he demurs.

“That’s a barroom question,” he says. Gambee mentions three players — Chamberlain, Pettit and Greer — but won’t go any further.

In 450 career regular-season games, Gambee averaged 10.6 points and 5.2 rebounds while playing an average of 19.6 minutes. His per-36-minutes projections are outstanding: 19.5 points and 9.6 rebounds.

When he looks back, how does he feel about his NBA career?

“Going in, I wondered if I could do it,” Gambee says. “I did it. It’s something that a lot of people would have liked to have done. It took me into my third year to realize what I needed to do to be able to play with the best basketball players in the world. That’s what it was about.

“I took it pretty seriously. I could pretty much do the things I figured I had to do, and I was able to have those 12 years. Then I was fortunate to find something afterward that I could make a living doing.”

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Gambee, a member of the OSU Sports Hall of Fame and the state of Oregon sports Hall of Fame, worked more than 40 years in the lumber business, from 1969 until he sold the company to two of his sons in 2010.

“I’m not surprised that I would take the path that I would not be involved with basketball after my playing career was over,” he says. “When I was done with basketball, I was done with basketball.”

Gambee’s lumber company held season tickets for the Trail Blazers and for Oregon State basketball for many years, but he hasn’t gone to watch either team in person now for some time. He and Joyce were members of the Portland Golf Club for 35 years, but they no longer play. They made the move from their home in Raleigh Hills to one in Garden Home in 2015.

Family and health are the most important things these days. In recent years, Dave has had knee replacement and back surgeries and had a Squamous cell carcinoma growth removed from a leg. He weighs 210, about the same as his playing days.

“Knock on wood, I’m doing pretty well,” Gambee says.

I will second that.  What a basketball career Gambee had. What a life he has led. What a gentleman he has become.

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