Berry Sr. started an inner-city basketball league with around 600 kids in the Orlando area when his eldest children, daughters Kourtnie and Kasie, were young. Berry was younger still, just 6 years old.
While Berry Sr. was coaching an all-girls team, Berry was following his father around as his “little ball boy.” But that wasn’t going to be enough for the 6-year-old child.
“He kept saying, ‘Let me play, let me play, let me play,’ and we were like, ‘No, you’re too small,’” Berry Sr. remembers saying.
But one Saturday not long after, Berry Sr. and his wife, Kathie, relented.
“We decided to just pad him up,” Berry Sr. said. “My wife put (on) the knee pads, elbow pads, and we let him play. And it just took off from there.
“He got in the game — he was 6 years old playing against the kids that were like 8- and 9-year-olds, and he was handling his own on the court.
“And we were like, ‘Wow, this is something special.’”
‘Iron sharpens iron’
“One of the first times I remember meeting Joel,” says Dustin Bowlin, who was Berry’s assistant basketball coach at Lake Highland, “We were actually doing a little game we call Seven Up.”
This was Berry’s first year at Lake Highland, before the coaches really knew who he was. They had heard of him, of course. He was well known in the area for his basketball skill. So much so that head coach Jason Vallery got a call from Jacksonville University.
“(Jacksonville University’s) head coach said, ‘Well, your school and your program has just been blessed.’ And we got excited about that,” Vallery said. “And we got to see what that meant.”
Bowlin found out something of what that meant during that game of Seven Up.
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“We got into this little shooting competition, and I’m kind of being a coach to him, like, ‘I got you here, I got you here!’ I mean, he absolutely obliterated me,” Bowlin said, laughing. “And he did it so respectfully. I think the final score was like 42-21, but I felt with the way he treated me that I had made it a game.
“And it wasn’t close.”
Over the next four years, Bowlin and Vallery would come to realize Berry was not only an incredible talent on the court — becoming the first player in Florida high school history to win the state’s Mr. Basketball award three times — but an incredible leader and worker off it.
Waking up at 6 o’clock in the morning to ride to school in the white truck with his father, Berry was constantly in the gym.
“Every time I got to school, he was already probably 45 minutes into his workout,” Vallery said.
When he wasn’t in the gym or texting Bowlin about getting in the gym, he might have been cracking jokes with his teammates or impersonating Bowlin and making fun of his height. He liked to laugh, and he liked to make the people around him laugh. Despite being the butt of his jokes, Bowlin nicknamed Berry Kevin Hart.
“I think that’s what makes him a great leader,” Bowlin said. “One of the hallmarks of a leader is to connect with individuals ... His ability to make people laugh, you know, just defuses situations.”
Whether through his talent, his humor, his work ethic — or the combination of them all — Berry became the leader of his team by his sophomore season, constantly trying to improve himself and his teammates around him.
Bowlin likes to draw a comparison of Berry to his favorite bible verse, Proverbs 27:17: “As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.”
“I think Joel Berry lives by that,” Bowlin said. “Not only do I hope that in my time that I was able to sharpen him, but he sharpened me.”
‘Enjoy the journey’
Now, Joel Berry stands outside of the locker room in the Smith Center one day ahead of the ACC Tournament, a sophomore and starting point guard on the top-seeded North Carolina men’s basketball team, averaging 12.3 points per game and shooting a team-best 36.9 percent on 3-pointers.
He’s turned into a pivotal player for the Tar Heels after missing much of his first season in Chapel Hill because of injuries.
“You watch him play with the confidence that he has this year compared to last year,” Vallery said. “Because he’s been able to stay pretty much injury free and get playing time and get confidence through that. He’s just starting to soar.”
But even after becoming an ACC regular season champion and solidifying himself in perhaps the toughest collegiate basketball conference in the country, Berry thinks back to those conversations with his father.
“We would just sit there and talk about things going on in my life and things to do to improve myself,” Berry said. “And not as a basketball player but as a person ... When I leave here I want to be able to say that I have a bond outside of just being out on the court. I want to be able to know my teammates and just laugh and joke around with them.
“And that’s what builds chemistry, and that’s what I love most about this team.”
That’s what Berry anticipated when he visited UNC back when he was still a recruit, not yet a star player. It’s what he thought about when he walked through the Carolina Basketball Museum and realized when he came to Chapel Hill he would be joining more than a team. He would be joining a brotherhood.
“When he saw those pictures and how close all those guys were from year to year and how those guys still come back to Carolina during the summer to play, I told him that’s what you want to be a part of,” Berry Sr. said.
“Those are the guys that are selfless ... you can see they build a lifelong relationship, and that’s what it’s all about.”
Berry Sr. would be proud — he is proud. For him, it’s never been about the stats or the awards or the championships.
It’s always been about more than basketball.
“That’s basically it,” Berry Sr. said. “Just be patient, and don’t rush the journey. Enjoy every moment of it.
“Put it in God’s hand, and enjoy the journey.”
Enjoy the ride in the white truck.
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