text: Jason Kidd, the basketball Hall of Famer and Lakers assistant coach, pulled out his phone after his team’s win over Dallas on Christmas Day to find a string of text messages about another celebrated player from Oakland. The news shocked him: Demetrius “Hook” Mitchell, the texts said, was dead.
  The story spread swiftly on social media, with fervor befitting a longtime playground legend. One tweet called Mitchell the “Superman of Street Hoops” and “Blacktop God.” Another paired his demise with that of Boston Celtics great K.C. Jones, who died the same day. Former NBA All-Star Isaiah Thomas posted condolences and kind words.
  Only it wasn’t true. Hook Mitchell was alive.
  After the flurry of public tributes and private anguish — odes to a freak athlete who famously jumped over cars to win dunk contests, reflections on a troubled if good-natured man with powerful demons — it turned out Mitchell had spent Christmas in an all-too-familiar place: jail.
  Mitchell, shown dunking in 1989, says he’s been clean of drugs for over two months.
  Jason M. Grow / The Chronicle 1989
  That came as a relief to Bernard Ward, who heard Mitchell, 52, had succumbed to a drug overdose. Ward has known Mitchell since they were 8, two sports-loving kids in the rough Lower Bottoms neighborhood of West Oakland.
  “My heart dropped,” Ward said. “At first, I didn’t believe it because I’ve been around Hook and I feel like he’s got nine lives. I’ve seen him bounce back from so many things. The only reason I kind of believed it was someone said they saw his body being brought up.”
  The rumors of his death marked the latest twist in Mitchell’s complicated odyssey. He gained acclaim on the Bay Area basketball scene in the late 1980s. Mitchell, standing barely 5 feet 10, flashed his dynamic skills and athleticism in organized and high-level pickup games, routinely soaring for crowd-thrilling dunks.
  But his path didn’t lead to the NBA, as many expected. Instead, Mitchell tumbled from playground legend to a man drug-addicted and often homeless, periodically running afoul of the law. His story came to represent the sometimes harsh realities of life in the inner city, and the long odds of overcoming a parent-less upbringing in a crime-ridden environment.
  Demetrius “Hook” Mitchell visits his boyhood neighborhood at Eighth and Campbell streets in West Oakland. On Christmas, false rumors on social media were reporting Mitchell’s death.
  Paul Kuroda/Special to The Chronicle
  “The streets grab you up, man,” Mitchell said this week in an occasionally rambling, hour-long conversation with The Chronicle. He’d returned a call after his mother told him the paper planned to write about him. “I know it’s drugs controlling me and messing me up, but at the time you’re so far in, you’re running from the truth.”
  Alonzo Carter, an assistant football coach at San Jose State, met Mitchell in second grade. They lived in the same Campbell Village housing project and attended the same elementary school (Prescott), middle school (Lowell) and high school (McClymonds). Carter’s mother often babysat Mitchell.
  The news that his old friend had died, Carter said, sent him to a “weird space mentally.”
  “It really shook me up,” he said.
  But Carter, like several others close to Mitchell, knew little about his most recent legal troubles. He was arrested Dec. 20 in Emeryville, according to the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office, after leaving Home Depot with stolen merchandise. A subsequent check revealed Mitchell, listed as a transient on the arrest report, had an outstanding bench warrant to face 2018 assault charges in San Francisco.
  Mitchell takes a break from a game at Mosswood Park in Oakland in 1989.
  Jason M. Grow/The Chronicle
  So on Dec. 25, while the grim rumors swirled and the basketball world mourned him, Mitchell sat in Santa Rita Jail in Dublin awaiting his transfer across the bay. He was handed over to San Francisco Sheriff’s custody on Dec. 26 and released three days later, with orders to wear a GPS ankle monitor.
  Mitchell faces two felony charges of assault with force likely to cause great bodily injury. He’s accused of punching another man during a fight on Aug. 29, 2018, near the corner of Turk and Leavenworth streets. Public defender Sliman Nawabi said the case is based partly on “blurry video” and Mitchell insisted he was visiting a friend in Richmond at the time.
  Nearly 2½ years later, case No. 18016887 continues to slowly wend its way through the court system. On the morning of Feb. 8, outside the double doors of Department 12 at the San Francisco Hall of Justice, the name “Demetrius Mitchell” appeared on a flat-screen video monitor. He was scheduled to appear before Judge Carolyn Gold in a courtroom rearranged to conduct business during the pandemic.
  His attorney waited, expecting to see him.
  A basketball player shoots hoop at Mosswood Park, where Demetrius "Hook" Mitchell played pickup games.
  Noah Berger / Special to The Chronicle
  Hook Mitchell built his legend with unforgettable feats on courts around the Bay Area, from Mosswood Park in Oakland and playgrounds in San Francisco to gyms at McClymonds High, Contra Costa College and Cal State Hayward.
  Carter watched Mitchell jump over cars to dunk at Mosswood — not over the hoods, as Carter still marvels, but the roofs. Ward also recalled Mitchell pulling off crazy, 360-degree dunks while leaping over bikes and even other players, including Kidd.
  The Town lost a legend today!
  Rip Demetrius "Hook" Mitchell! pic.twitter.com/61dCL02rBU
  — BIG REID (@BigReidRadio) December 26, 2020
  Once, during a game in Palo Alto, Ward said Rex Walters, a former NBA guard and more recently USF’s head coach, lobbed a pass to Mitchell, who caught the ball with one hand in mid-flight and dunked so forcefully that he shattered the backboard. A spectator walked through the glass fragments to retrieve the rim as a souvenir.
  Another time, Contra Costa College teammate David Barksdale remembered, he was prepared to jump for a rebound when he felt a hand on his shoulder, heard Mitchell mumble, “Watch out,” and saw him rise high above everyone to jam the ball home.
  Mitchell goes to the hoop at Campbell Village housing projects in 1994.
  Peter DaSilva / The Chronicle 1994
  Mitchell’s stunning vertical leap, once measured between 46 and 50 inches, largely fueled Hook hysteria. But in a 2004 documentary, “Hooked: The Legend of Demetrius ‘Hook’ Mitchell,” several former NBA standouts from Oakland — Kidd, Gary Payton (another Hall of Famer), Brian Shaw and Antonio Davis (who played with Mitchell at McClymonds) — also raved about Mitchell’s all-around game.
  Payton: “He was better than me, better than Antonio, better than Jason. He was better than everybody.”
  Kidd: “There’s no comparison to Gary, myself, Brian Shaw.”
  Shaw: “He’s superior to all of us.”
  Davis: “He had everything it took to become a premier NBA player.”
  Mitchell was especially close with Payton and Shaw. They introduced him to the younger Kidd, who joined Mitchell for pickup games in Piedmont and dunk contests at Mosswood and in San Francisco.
  “He could do so many more things than we did,” Kidd said in a recent phone interview. “We could only dream about jumping the way he could, and shooting the way he could from way beyond the 3-point line. Hook was stocky and pit-bull strong.”
  Or, as Carter said, “Hook was the biggest ‘What if?’ you’ve ever seen. He could play basketball, football, baseball, kickball. There was nothing like Demetrius ‘Hook’ Mitchell. Nobody close.”
  In 2004, Demetrius “Hook” Mitchell (right) plays basketball with Derrick Bailey, age 14, in Berkeley. Mitchell worked with kids at Project Straight Path in Oakland.
  Penni Gladstone / The Chronicle 2004
  This sporting spectacle unfolded amid a troubled childhood in Lower Bottoms. Mitchell’s parents had drug problems and spent long stretches in prison; his maternal grandmother, Johnnie Mae Mitchell, raised him and nine other grandkids. His nickname came from an aunt’s remark about the shape of his head.
  Mitchell started smoking marijuana at age 10, he said in the documentary, then moved to cocaine. He also said local drug dealers gave him $100, or sometimes a gram of cocaine, for every dunk his senior year at McClymonds.
  His acrobatic on-court shows attracted a large following, including many West Oakland residents who drove to Cal State Hayward for his college games in 1989 and ’90. Mitchell, though, would admit he didn’t enroll in classes, and his basketball career soon fizzled.
  “My life was a waste,” Mitchell, then 35, said in the documentary. “Everybody can tell you I’m supposed to be playing in the NBA right now. This should be my 11th or 12th year in the league.”
  In 2004, shortly before the film was released, Mitchell left prison speaking optimistically about getting his life in order. Reebok had sent him apparel in prison and signed him to a shoe contract after the documentary came out.
  The arc of his story seemed pointed toward redemption. That’s not the way it played out.
  Mitchell visits his old neighborhood at Eighth and Campbell Streets in Oakland.
  Paul Kuroda / Special to The Chronicle
  Mitchell’s criminal record stretches back more than 25 years, according to Alameda County Superior Court documents. There are 12 cases attached to his name, dating to a 1995 misdemeanor for grand theft.
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  That doesn’t include his arrest for the December 1993 robbery and killing of 65-year-old Willie Robinson in West Oakland. Those charges were dismissed 10 months later, The Chronicle reported, after one witness admitted falsely identifying Mitchell.
  Most of Mitchell’s criminal charges have been drug- or weapons-related misdemeanors, but he was convicted for the December 1999 robbery of a Blockbuster video store in Oakland. Mitchell, who served 51 months of a five-year sentence in state prison, later acknowledged pretending he had a gun and stealing $4,500 from the store.
  “I regret being a menace to society,” he said. “I really believe I was a menace to society at one point in my life.”
  Mitchell also pleaded no contest to grand theft after a December 2008 incident in Alameda County. He was sentenced to three years in prison in that case.
  Again, his release sparked optimism among his friends, at least for a while.
  “Every time he’d get in trouble, we were all so hopeful he’d be back,” Carter said. “None of us wanted to accept the fact that when you struggle with addiction, even though you go through rehab and ‘beat it,’ you’re fighting demons. It’s going to follow you.”
  Or, as Ward said, “You’ve got to come to a point in your life where you say, ‘That’s it, I’m done.’ We’ve tried to get Hook help. But from my experience, the person on it has to want it. I believe one day he will.”
  Ward bounced between nostalgia and candor in a recent interview — exuberantly telling stories of Mitchell’s exploits on the basketball court, earnestly extolling his intelligence and warmth, wistfully talking about his continuing problems.
  Asked how basketball might have played a role in Mitchell’s troubled journey, Ward flashed back to the money-for-dunks scheme in high school and similar trappings of his acclaim.
  “I think the main thing hurting Hook right now is everybody gave him everything,” Ward said. “That’s what messed him up, since he was a young kid. I don’t think he ever recovered. People giving him everything took away the work ethic, the hunger and desire.”
  Mitchell near his old apartment in Oakland.
  Paul Kuroda / Special to The Chronicle
  On Jan. 1, a week after the rumors of his death surfaced, Mitchell appeared in a video posted on his Facebook page.
  “I apologize to everybody and I appreciate y’all’s support,” he said. “Thanks for everything. May God not scare you like that next time.”
  In his conversation with The Chronicle, Mitchell said of his supposed demise and the social-media tributes that followed, “I didn’t hear about it until I got out (of jail). ‘Oh, you’re still here.’ ... I was blown away by the good things people were saying. That means I wasn’t totally bad.”
  Nawabi, his lawyer, said Mitchell told him he spent time in treatment in the wake of a “huge scare.” Mitchell denied the scare was a drug overdose, though he acknowledged a longtime addiction to heroin and cocaine and confirmed he had been in a treatment program.
  He insisted he has been clean for more than two months.
  “It took me 40-some years to say it’s not good for you,” he said.
  But staying clean, as he admitted, has proven a major challenge over the years.
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  Mitchell walks through the Campbell Village housing project in Oakland in 1994.
  Peter DaSilva / Special to The Chronicle 1994Show MoreShow Less
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  Hook does pushups with children in Berkeley in 2004.
  Penni Gladstone / The Chronicle 2004Show MoreShow Less
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  Mitchell chats with Hazel Dixon at his childhood apartment in Oakland.
  Paul Kuroda / Special to The ChronicleShow MoreShow Less
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  At his boyhood home, Mitchell chats with his friend James Candley.
  Paul Kuroda/Special to The ChronicleShow MoreShow Less
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  Mitchell with a GPS unit in Oakland.
  Paul Kuroda / Special to The ChronicleShow MoreShow Less
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  A basketball hoop at Campbell Village, Mitchell’s former home.
  Scott Strazzante / The ChronicleShow MoreShow Less
  Mitchell, who still looks fit, doesn’t have a permanent address. He sometimes stays with his mom in San Francisco, sometimes with friends around the Bay Area, sometimes on the streets. Over the past two months, he said, he’s occasionally lived in his car.
  Barksdale, the onetime Contra Costa College teammate, hosted Mitchell three or four times in recent months. He always was in good spirits, Barksdale said, and didn’t bring up his legal issues.
  “Sometimes, circumstances cause you to do evil things,” Barksdale said, “but he’s not an evil person.”
  Nawabi, who has represented Mitchell since his 2018 arrest, pointed to the difficulty of finding stable housing and employment with prior convictions. Nawabi knows it’s an uncommon mix: a onetime basketball celebrity with an engaging manner and abundant spirit, perpetually unable or unwilling to escape the cycle of drugs and crime.
  “Based on what I’ve seen, there were a lot of expectations and pressure, especially after the documentary,” Nawabi said. “And I think the fact he never made it to the NBA always comes back to haunt him.”
  But the attorney found hope in Mitchell’s pledges to straighten out his life. So he went to the Hall of Justice with some anticipation on Feb. 8. The pretrial hearing was scheduled for 9 a.m., but one hour went by without Mitchell.
  Then another hour went by. And another and another.
  Mitchell never showed up.
  He missed the hearing, Mitchell said later, because of an allergic reaction to Suboxone, an opiate blocker he was taking. The court issued another bench warrant for his arrest.
  On Thursday, though, Mitchell contacted Nawabi and asked the attorney to add his case to the court calendar. Nawabi will ask the court to recall the warrant, given Mitchell’s participation in the treatment program. His new court date is Monday.
  Nawabi expressed confidence Mitchell will show up this time. His friends, meanwhile, cling to faint optimism that Demetrius “Hook” Mitchell can finally turn his life around.
  “I’m constantly praying for Hook,” Ward said. “I ain’t never going to give up hope on him.”
  Ron Kroichick is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: rkroichick@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @ronkroichick
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  Ron Kroichick has worked at The San Francisco Chronicle since 1995, when he came from the Sacramento Bee. Kroichick is The Chronicle's golf columnist, covering the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am and all major championships in Northern California (including the 2019 U.S. Open at Pebble Beach and 2020 PGA Championship at Harding Park). He also writes features on the Warriors during the NBA season, and on various other topics - ranging from the 49ers/NFL and major-league baseball to college football and basketball - the rest of the year. In 2016, Kroichick and photographer Michael Macor earned "Best Sports Feature" from the California Newspaper Publishers Association, for their series on Antioch High running back Najee Harris, the nation's No. 1 college football recruit. In spring/summer 2020, during the coronavirus pandemic, Kroichick moved to Metro to cover higher education and general-assignment news.
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