On sweltering summer days, players would come to this place and stay until parents ran them home.

Sunup to sundown, young men and grown men would arrive and compete, the bounce of the basketball keeping neighbors awake well into the night.

Oscar Robertson was one of those young men.

Before starring in college and the NBA, before his 1979 induction into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, even before he was the central figure on a historic all-black high school basketball team, Robertson forged his playground legend here.

This was his stage, this place they called the Dust Bowl, and he was the player everyone else wanted to be.

What legendary Rucker Park is to New York, the Dust Bowl was to 1950s Indianapolis. The best players, best games were here, regardless of race. The basketball court that served as a hub of social reform and changing attitudes was in Lockfield Gardens, a 748-unit housing project home to many poor black families. Much of the area is now the site of the IUPUI campus, just a few miles from the RCA Dome.

The rules there were the same as playgrounds everywhere -- winners stayed, losers watched. As a kid, maybe 10 years old, Robertson wasn't big enough to battle his way onto the court's prime time in the evening.

So he played when the court was available -- in the heat of the afternoon sun before the teenagers arrived and in the dark after most people had gone home.

For several summers, he played when allowed and watched older players in the evening, hoping, working for his chance to play.

"It was a gathering place," Robertson said. "No one had any money, so you were into sports. This is where people came to socialize.

"The older guys dominated the court in the evening, from probably 5:30 until dark. Your big chance was to get to play with these guys, to win and get some credibility."

The players were well-known around Lockfield Gardens, and so were their groups. Cliques developed, certain players usually sharing sides. Robertson was only a high school freshman when he became a winning fixture in the evening's main games.

"It helps everybody," he said of having to earn his way onto the court, little by little. "You'd see the older players, watch and see what moves they're doing and try to emulate them. You had to beat your defender to score to keep playing.

"Some of the moves worked, some didn't, but you were learning."

Tales of greatness

The Big O led Crispus Attucks to high school state championships in 1955 and 1956. He was a star at the University of Cincinnati, including two Final Fours, followed by 12 All-Star appearances in a 14-year NBA career.

But as other players came along in Indianapolis, the stories they heard about Oscar focused on his dominance at the Dust Bowl.

Decades later, those stories still stir emotions.

"It was, 'Oscar would have done this. Oscar wouldn't have stayed out here 'til 7 o'clock at night, he'd have been here 'til 9 o'clock,' " said George McGinnis, an Indianapolis high school star who went on to Indiana University and the Indiana Pacers.

"You heard how his mom would come and get him and run him off the Dust Bowl court, or neighbors would get mad because they'd hear the basketball bounce out there at night when they were trying to sleep. They'd go out there and it would be Oscar and some other guys."

Cleveland Harp graduated from Attucks in 1953 and played for the Harlem Globetrotters. He recalls watching a young Robertson work at his craft.

"It's been 50 years, but I can just picture it now," Harp said. "The ball and the hot sun...it didn't matter how hot and sweaty it was, you stayed out there all day long.

"The guy that used to run the Dust Bowl would tell the story that at 10, 11 at night, Oscar would still be out there shooting. He would shoot a BB gun at the backboard to let him know it was time to go home."

Robertson, 68, remembers well.

"When I was younger," he said. "I probably stayed out longer than I should have."

He said his mother didn't worry because she always knew where he was.

McGinnis said two moments established basketball in Indiana: Bobby Plump's shot that lifted tiny Milan High School past Muncie Central in 1954 and led to the movie "Hoosiers," and Attucks becoming the first team from an all-black school and first from Indianapolis to win a state title.

"And probably the greatest player ever to play the game was on that team," McGinnis said, referring to Robertson. "For us, in our community, basketball came alive when God said, 'Let there be Oscar.' "

Changing attitudes

Crispus Attucks opened in 1927. It was designed by the Indianapolis Public School Board to segregate the city's black students.

Decades later, as Attucks was winning basketball games, it had even white fans in the stands cheering.

In 1955, Robertson's Attucks team became the first from an all-black high school to win a state championship in an integrated sport. Attucks repeated in 1956, and the feats helped bring about integration in a state struggling with race relations.

"He was like our Rosa Parks," said Ray Tolbert, who was named The Indianapolis Star Indiana Mr. Basketball in 1977 out of Madison Heights in Anderson and started on Indiana University's 1981 national championship team.

Robertson says he didn't realize the implications at the time. He said he was a kid who grew up thinking racial divides were the way of the world.

Robertson never ate in a restaurant until 1955 when the state champions were invited to a Sunday dinner after the title game. He scored 30 points in that championship; 39 in the title game the next year.

"I didn't realize at the time all the things that were working against us," Robertson said. "When you're young and naive, you just wanted to play and win. That was the ultimate thing in our minds. Not to win a championship, just to win the next game, then the next game after that.

"We never thought about winning a championship."

He won two. Attucks also won 45 consecutive games, a state record that went unmatched until the 2006 season's Lawrence North powerhouse with 7-foot center Greg Oden.

McGinnis remembers watching Attucks' first state championship on television with his entire household yelling and celebrating.

"It was like a win for us," McGinnis said. "Oscar was anointed at that point. He was our prince, our standard-bearer. He was the guy every African-American kid who picked up a basketball from that point on emulated."

Robertson says Attucks' legacy is that it "opened up people's eyes to a better way of thinking about themselves."

"For a long time, people said blacks were lazy," he said. "They couldn't think. They couldn't play. They were not good students.

"I'm sure the guys who worked in those plants caught the devil from their white counterparts until we started winning.

"That gave them a chance to go to work the next day and brag like crazy. It gave people one chance, maybe in their lifetime, to say, 'Man, I don't care about the color of my skin.' "

All thanks to the kid from the Dust Bowl.

Call Star reporter Jeff Rabjohns at (317) 444-6183.

© 2006 The Indianapolis Star. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission.