The legacy of Hank Gathers doesn’t just hang over Binghamton’s star guard D.J. Rivera. It drapes over him, inviting comparisons at every turn of his basketball career.
Gathers, Rivera’s uncle, was an All-American forward out of Philadelphia who starred at Loyola Marymount University from 1986-90. Gathers led the country in scoring and rebounding during his junior year; Rivera is first in scoring and eighth in rebounding in the America East conference. Gathers wore No. 44, and his nephew wore 44 in high school to honor him. Gathers, a righty, was famous for shooting free throws with his left hand; Rivera, who shoots with his left, has kept it quiet during his career that he is actually a righty when it comes to everything else (he thinks the switch might have happened when he broke his right arm as a child).
“In games coaches say, ‘force him right! force him right!’ and I’m thinking, they don’t know I’m right-handed,” Rivera said.
Rivera was just a baby when Gathers tragically collapsed and died with a heart disorder on the court during his senior year in a West Coast Conference tournament game. As his game blossomed during his high school career in Philadelphia, Rivera heard Gathers comparisons around the city.
“All the time. They tell me I’ll never be as good as him,” Rivera joked. “I grew up working out in his gym, so people always compared us and talked about him.”
The comparisons almost went a step further. After his freshman year, Gathers transferred from the University of Southern California to Loyola Marymount. When Rivera was looking to transfer from St. Joseph’s last year, he considered LMU on a list of schools that also included Virginia Commonwealth, Marist, Rider and Robert Morris. Luckily for Binghamton, Rivera’s childhood Pee Wee football buddy Malik Alvin signed up to play for the Bearcats and helped lure Rivera to Vestal.
“I was the good one in basketball; he was good in football,” Alvin said. “But he couldn’t even make layups or anything like that.”
Rivera’s list of transfer schools stood in stark contrast to the type of schools he considered out of high school: Georgetown, Villanova, Virginia Tech and Temple. He raised his recruiting profile with an impressive senior year but remained committed to St. Joe’s, where he was considered a pivotal member of a big recruiting class. Rivera had a solid freshman year, but disagreements with the coaching staff and a suspension early in his sophomore year had him searching for a transfer destination.
Many were surprised to see Rivera, whose reputation was primarily as a defensive player, lead the AE in scoring. While his reputation as a defender turned out to be well deserved, he knew his potential on the offensive side of the ball even more than his new coaching staff.
“At St. Joe’s I had some breakout games showing my potential to be a scorer when I got playing time and got to play my game,” he said. “Back home I’m known as a scorer, a guy who scores a lot. When I was at St. Joe’s, the coach tried to put me out there as a defensive player. That was the word around me, so a lot of people didn’t know about me.”
In just one season, Rivera has already made the case that he is Binghamton’s best player of all time. No one can deny that he is the school’s most focused player. Rivera’s on-court intensity would suggest that he’s all business off the court. But he insists that he’s “silly” when he’s not playing basketball.
“I want my opponents to see that I’m serious. That might be the 52 fake-out,” he said. “I’m kind of like the guy who breaks the ice when everybody’s mad. Basketball’s supposed to be fun; I’m not one to hold in my laughs.”
But no one’s laughing when Rivera takes over a game. Opposing fans are too busy pulling out their hair. He took over in overtime against Vermont, hit a game winner in the return game at Burlington, sent a game into overtime at Stony Brook and hit a big 3-pointer to come back against New Hampshire. Just as impressive as his clutch plays are his athletic dunks, which have attracted attention across the conference.
Rivera’s favorite dunk was a backwards alley-oop at the final buzzer in Binghamton’s upset win over Rutgers, which features his high school teammate Earl Pettis. Along with Pettis, Rivera’s high school buddies play all over the big-time college hoops map, including Syracuse, where Scoop Jardine and Rick Jackson play.
Those are some big-name players, but one can argue that Rivera is having more success than any of them. His success is no accident; it comes from staying in the gym early in the day and late at night. That’s just one more area where Rivera emulates his uncle, Hank Gathers.
“When I was younger I wasn’t that talented,” Rivera said. “Neither was he. But he worked hard to get where he was, and that’s kind of showing in me now.”