Life Lessons From A Man Of Steel

Far too many African-Americans wind up on the athletic scrap heap, and even those who make it to the pros are often ill-equipped for life after their careers end. This is a story about an exception, a black athlete who used his conspicuous success in professional sports as a springboard to equally laudable accomplishments as a businessman, philanthropist and civic leader. Although few young blacks should realistically hope to follow the same route to economic success, Dave Bing is, in one respect, an excellent role model. Early on, he understood that success in life involves much more than making jump shots or scoring touchdowns.

There's always something crazy going on in the Motor City. On July 20, it was the discovery of the body of a 15-year-old girl, on fire, in a city trash bin. The girl, a cheerleader at East Catholic High in Detroit , had allegedly been strangled and torched by a 19-year-old friend, who was charged with first-degree murder.

Dave Bing , the former Detroit Piston guard who was elected to the NBA Hall of Fame in 1989, shakes his head and clenches his jaw as he ponders the news. Bing , 47, now the CEO of Bing Steel and two other Detroit companies, is seen as a knight of hope in a city that needs hope as badly as a desert needs water. Societal forces and global business trends have conspired against Detroit . White flight to the suburbs after the 1967 race riots, the decline of the U.S. auto industry, the collapse of the city's housing market, the twin whipsaws of drug use and the disintegration of the black family—all have helped turn Detroit into a sinkhole of chaos from which little escapes. " America is in bad shape," the city's mayor, Coleman A. Young, has said. " Detroit is in worse shape." Indeed, a recent story on the city in U.S. News & World Report reported that in Detroit "spectacular crimes have become a kind of civic tradition."

"It's a very sick society," says Bing , meaning Detroit specifically but also much more. "The breakdown in so many things, the meanness, the callousness—life itself doesn't seem to matter. Drugs have been here so long that you wonder if they have altered people's minds."

Bing says this quietly, as he says most things. Then he adds, firmly, "All of us have a responsibility to reinstill the moral fabric in our young. But we can't save everybody. Forget rehabilitation; let's prevent. Somebody's gonna lose, so cut your losses. I don't want to waste my resources on those who are lost."

Bing 's bottom line: Do good while doing well. Save Detroit , but save money, too. Bing is a Samaritan, a man with a heart the size of a bucket of pig iron, but he is first and foremost a capitalist. He works 75 hours a week, 60 on business, 15 on charity. Sundays are reserved for himself, to attend the Hartford Memorial Baptist Church in midtown Detroit and, as he says, "get energized with the singing, the sermon, the fellowship"; to read novels, business periodicals and the Bible; and maybe to play some tennis. He is as good a role model for young men of any color as you are likely to find, but he is particularly important to young African-American athletes. But Bing—and he'll tell you this right off—ain't no charity. No sir.

"I'm in business to thrive, not survive," he says. "If I'm a role model, well, it's largely because I have a big payroll, I spend time in the community and I'm successful. I've never yet seen a role model who was broke, bankrupt and out of work."

All of which Bing has nearly been in the 11 years since he started Bing Steel, a firm that had $61 million in sales last year and thus was ranked 10th in the nation among black-owned industrial and service companies by Black Enterprise magazine. In recent years he has added Superb Manufacturing, a metal-stamping company with gross sales of $28.4 million in 1990 (31st on the Black Enterprise list), and Heritage 21, a $3.6 million construction firm, to his enviable business stable. His companies employ more than 300 people, but these are not easy times.

"Gross sales," says Bing with a chuckle. "That doesn't mean diddly. We almost lost it all in the last 12 to 18 months. I'm in this business because I like it. But when people say, 'Would you do it over again?' you don't have to be a genius to say, 'No.' "

Detroit should thank God that Bing did it once. While he was scoring more than 18,000 points for the Pistons, the Washington Bullets and the Boston Celtics , and averaging a 20.3 points a season in his 12-year career, nine with Detroit , he was always checking things out, reading "two or three hundred [books] while we traveled," he says. In essence, he was preparing for life after basketball. During the off-seasons, while his teammates played golf, Bing worked at a bank, for the Chrysler Corporation , for the now-defunct Paragon Steel company. He learned about finance, business, the art of the deal.