In Seton Hall’s run, praise for a most valuable parent

By Dave Caldwell, New York Times News Service

Thursday, March 17, 2016 | 12:22 a.m.

SOUTH ORANGE, N.J. — Isaiah Whitehead, the sophomore point guard from Coney Island who led Seton Hall to its first Big East men’s basketball championship in 23 years last weekend, is still saying, politely, that he does not know if he will jump to the NBA after this season.

But whatever the future holds, Whitehead is sure of one thing: He wants it to be easier on his 45-year-old mother, Ericka Rambert, who drove a Metropolitan Transportation Authority Route B82 bus around Brooklyn for more than a decade until she had back surgery 13 months ago.

“My main goal in life,” Whitehead said last week, “is to get her off that bus and put her feet up for the rest of her life.”

The truth is, the Pirates would probably not be playing in this year’s NCAA Tournament, in which sixth-seeded Seton Hall (25-8) opens against 11th-seeded Gonzaga (26-7) in Denver on Thursday, without Rambert. Coach Kevin Willard said unequivocally that Whitehead, who was an all-American at Abraham Lincoln High School in New York, would not have chosen to attend Seton Hall were it not so close to Brooklyn and to his mother.

Rambert, who also has two daughters, has lived for 23 years in a three-bedroom, second-floor duplex at Surfside Gardens, a New York City Housing Authority complex a few blocks from the Coney Island boardwalk. Until Whitehead went to Seton Hall, about 30 miles to the northwest, Surfside Gardens was his only home. Rambert took care of him there, in essence shielding him from the rough streets of the neighborhood. Even his babysitters kept him inside.

“I kept him close to me,” she said.

Willard said that instinct had endured since Whitehead headed to college.

“She has really protected him,” Willard said. “She has kept a really small group around him when he started getting all the hype. She’s very smart about who she lets in her circle. I think that’s what’s really helped him mature, because he hasn’t had a lot of other people telling him what to do.”

Rambert has attended every Seton Hall home game, and she went to Madison Square Garden over the weekend for the Big East tournament, which the Pirates won by upsetting top-seeded Villanova in the championship game. She plans to be in Denver on Thursday.

When told that Whitehead, 21, had spoken about providing her with a comfortable future, Rambert laughed. “He’s such a good kid,” she said, “but all kids want to take care of their mothers.”

But not all mothers look after their children’s teammates. After Desi Rodriguez decided to transfer to Lincoln High School from Frederick Douglass Academy III, near his home in the South Bronx, he faced a three-hour round trip for school.

But Rodriguez did not have to make that trip every day. Several nights a week, he stayed with Whitehead at Rambert’s apartment at Surfside Gardens.

“It was something I could call a second home,” said Rodriguez, a 6-foot-6 forward who joined Whitehead at Seton Hall after they led Lincoln to the Public Schools Athletic League city championship as juniors.

College coaches did not pursue Rodriguez quite as vigorously as they did Whitehead, but Seton Hall became interested. This season, he started every game but one, and he ranked third on the team in scoring and second in rebounding. But he admits that like Whitehead, he might not have made it to Seton Hall without Rambert.

“She’s one of the reasons why he’s having so much success,” Rodriguez said, referring to Rambert. “She’s been there for him since Day 1. But she’s been there for me. She’s just a great person. I can’t really explain how great a person she is. She cares for everybody, wants everybody to do well.”

Whitehead’s freshman season at Seton Hall was challenging. He sat out six weeks after he developed two stress fractures in his right foot, and he felt singled out for blame as the Pirates collapsed late in the season, losing nine of their final 10 games.

Although Whitehead now says of reporters, “Basically, everything they were saying were lies,” team chemistry was said to be upset by the presence of the former Lincoln players and their coach, Dwayne Morton, who had joined Willard’s staff.

“I just didn’t want him to get sidetracked,” Rambert said of her son. “We know that wasn’t his fight. That was a fight that people put on him.”

Morton returned to Lincoln, and two starters, Sterling Gibbs and Jaren Sina, left Seton Hall. Whitehead said he just concentrated on playing basketball.

“Everybody thinks he really has a lot of gusto,” Willard said. “He’s the complete opposite. He didn’t get to go out a lot because she shielded him from the surroundings. He’s just starting to come out of his shell a little bit.”

Whitehead said of Seton Hall’s stirring late-season run: “It’s kind of bigger for her than it is for me. Especially with the way last year ended and all the negative press and stuff that was written about me. She really took that on her shoulders.”

Rambert said of last season: “It’s life. It was an unfortunate situation. He got through it. He learned one sentence can make or break you. Last year was a little stumble. He got there.”

Rambert said she was now trying to give her son a “little bit of space.” That process includes watching him trying to do his own laundry.

Regardless of what her son decides about the NBA, Rambert wants to hop back on her bus soon. She said that she loved her riders like family, that she missed them. But she will not say no to a new home far from Surfside Gardens someday.

This is what her son wants. Any son, he said, “wants his mom to just be able to lay off and enjoy the rest of her life.”

“And it’s a blessing,” he added, “that that might happen.”