Mr. Basketball bounces back - 13 WTHR Indianapolis

In the city of Anderson, everyone knows Maurice "Kojak" Fuller. He gained statewide recognition as Mr. Basketball in 1993. But Kojak's life ran into big trouble after high school. Now he's bouncing back.

"Move them feet!" yells Fuller on a summer afternoon at the Greater Community Center in Anderson. "Go. Good job!"

Fuller passes on the basketball skills that made him famous at Anderson High School.

"Anybody who is a basketball player in Anderson, Indiana, and a good one, is going to be a star in the community," said former Anderson High School basketball coach Norm Held. "Kojak happened to be a very good one, and at 5-7 he attracted a lot of attention."

Almost 20 years have passed since that dynamic little guard dazzled fans at the now closed Wigwam Gymnasium and became Madison county's all-time scoring leader.

"They put you on a pedestal so big, there's no 16-, 15-year-old kid...it's hard to handle," says high school teammate Terry Johnson, now an assistant coach to Brad Stevens at Butler.

Fuller fathered his first child as a freshman, two more while in high school, and six children in all with five women before he was 25. Kojak recalled those days while speaking to a group of students at the Paramount School of Excellence in Indianapolis.

"I would walk into the grocery store and kids would be like to their parents, 'Man, Dad, that's him.' They would come up and I'm signing autographs and all that as a young man. But guess what? I was never prepared in how to deal with that type of success," said Fuller.

Fuller dropped out of college and into trouble. In 1999, Fuller received a 20-year sentence for dealing crack cocaine. Later that year, Eyewitness News interviewed Fuller at the Wabash Valley Correctional Institution in Carlisle, Indiana. Fuller appeared to be a humbled young man.

"I can't get to the person that I want to be in life until I can drop who I used to be," Fuller said in that 1999 interview. "And I done dropped that person."

13 years later, Fuller is back in Anderson, on the same courts where he grew up, with a powerful message about bouncing back.

"Everybody can identify with making mistakes," said Fuller in a recent interview in his hometown. "However, everyone doesn't really know how to come back from that. So this is what it's all about, bouncing back."

"I thank God he went to prison because he was a changed man," said Katherine Nunn, Fuller's mother. God changed him."

Fuller made a deal with God behind bars.

"I'm going all the way with you and if you don't work, then I'm going to tell people this stuff don't work," Fuller recalls praying. "That's been 14 years ago. I haven't told anyone yet that it doesn't work."

While Fuller served his time, his mother battled breast cancer.

"He would always call me and say, 'Mom, read this scripture. Read that scripture,'" remembers Nunn. "I was going through my chemo and radiation and I had kind of given up. He would call me and say, 'Mom, please don't give up.' He said, 'I gotta have you there when I get out.'"

Fuller also got married while in prison to his high school sweetheart, Tamara. The couple recently celebrated their 10th prison wedding anniversary.

"I always dreamed of having this huge wedding," said Mrs. Fuller. "I think I actually had the biggest wedding ever, because as they walked me in to get my husband, all the inmates were out."

Fuller served less than eight years behind bars because of his model behavior. He has been free six years, sharing his story.

"As you grow, as you live, you're going to make mistakes," Fuller told a student audience. "But your mistake is not who you are. Don't allow your mistake to define you."

Fuller's oldest child, Moriah, is a now a 21-year-old nursing student.

"He's really inspired me in life, period," says Miss Fuller. "And I really feel like if he didn't go through what he went through that he wouldn't be that way."

Basketball remains a part of Kojak's life. But he teaches young people that basketball doesn't prepare you for life. A group of citizens in Anderson is raising money to explore a movie project on Kojak's life.

Learn more about the Bouncing Back project