"One listened, one didn't."

The story of John Turner is one of missed opportunities and bad decisions, ones which abbreviated what could have been a multi-million dollar career in professional basketball.

Turner grew up in Glenarden, MD, attending Eleanor Roosevelt HS and earning All-Met honors in 1986 while averaging 23 points and 16 rebounds a game. Georgetown and Maryland recruited Turner in 1986 but his SAT scores were below the NCAA guidelines, and he moved on to Allegany CC, playing one season there and finishing his career with a 30 point, 30 rebound game versus Hagerstown CC. Georgetown opted to enroll him in 1987 without finishing junior college, forcing him to sit the 1987-88 season, where he played intramural basketball with Dikembe Mutombo.

Turner's 6.6 points and 6.3 rebounds per game in 1988-89 understated his potential alongside that of Alonzo Mourning, Dikembe Mutombo, or Charles Smith, each of whom would earn All-America status at Georgetown. But Turner's association with Washington's most notorious criminal of the 1980's led to his departure from Georgetown.

John Turner and Rayful Edmond III had known each other since 7th grade when their mothers worked in the same government office. Edmond was a good student and a promising basketball player at Dunbar HS, but dropped out of UDC in the fall of 1986 to focus on the family's other business, which was drug dealing. Edmond's parents were reported to be active in the growing drug trade in the Washington area and Rayful had been involved as early as the age of nine. By 1989, Edmond controlled nearly $2 million of crack cocaine sales per week in the District, employing a network of suppliers, dealers, and enforcers that totaled up to 150 people. The group even included his mother, sisters, brothers, brothers-in-law, a cousin and an aunt, all of whom were arrested in a 1989 DEA operation that eventuallty sentenced Edmond to two life terms without parole.

Edmond was a big basketball fan and a Georgetown one at that. He had no ties to the program before Turner arrived but would attend games at courtside at Capital Centre. When Turner joined the team, he would meet Turner and various teammates at clubs during the season, and invited Turner and Alonzo Mourning over to one of his houses to watch TV. Thompson told the players in no uncertain terms to stay away from Edmond and, in a famous one on one meeting, told Edmond to stay away from his team.

Mourning promptly disassociated himself with Edmond. But citing his close friendship with Edmond, Turner did not follow Thompson's order and reports continued to reach Thompson that the two were seen together, including at a Washington Bullets game and again at a local playground. In May, Turner said he was told by Thompson to get off campus within an hour, while the official release cited that Turner had voluntarily stepped aside because of unsatisfactory progress towards his degree.

Disputing the Georgetown account, Turner's family hired an attorney to see if they could get the scholarship reinstated, but that all fell through a month later when Turner and three other men were arrested for intent to sell 51 grams of crack cocaine at a D.C. playground. Charges were eventually dropped and Turner saw this as an opportunity to get out of town and start his life over again. In addition to his arrest, Turner was exposed by the Washington Post as playing under a false name in a summer league (as "John Taylor"), rendering him ineligible for NCAA play.

He found an opportunity at Phillips University, a now defunct NAIA school in Enid, Oklahoma. In two seasons at Phillips, he averaged 23.7 points and 13.6 rebounds, which surprisingly led to a first round draft selection by the Houston Rockets in 1992. Turner averaged less than three points a game in his only season with the Rockets, and spent the next 12 years playing in Europe.

Before leaving for Phillips, Turner visited Edmond at the Marine base at Quantico, VA housing Edmond under maximum security during his trial. "I wished Rayful good luck with his trial and he wished me the best with my [new] school," he told the Washington Post. "Then Rayful told me, 'Man, just stay out of trouble. You've got to be careful with the people you'll be around. It's getting real bad out there.'"