As a boy growing up in Galesburg, Dale Kelley used to watch the Kimbrough twins — Northwestern football players — running through the neighborhood in the snow before dawn. He told his father: "Something's wrong with those boys."

Eight years later, he was doing the same thing.

By then, he understood what those early mornings were really about. Not the running. Not the cold. The discipline that makes everything else possible.

A 1966 graduate of Galesburg High School, Dale Kelley was one of the most celebrated athletes ever to wear a Silver Streaks uniform. He was a top scorer, a scholarship recruit, a young man whose talent drew interest from programs across the country. His mother narrowed the choices to two: the University of Iowa or Northwestern University. Both were drivable. "You're not going to California," she told him — which meant the UCLA scholarship, and a chance to play alongside a young star named Lew Alcindor — who would later become known as Kareem Abdul Jabbar — was off the table. Dale still smiles at the memory. There was no wisdom in the choice, he says. Just a mother who wanted to see her son play.

He got to Northwestern and declared a speech major with a minor in economics and mathematics. Coach John Thiel ran the program on the floor. But Dale has always been clear about who his real coach was: "My mother was my coach. John Thiel was the coach on the floor. She coached me in every other aspect."

Basketball wasn't even his first love. As a senior, he was drafted by the Pittsburgh Pirates. His father — a Cubs fan who wanted his son to go to college — wouldn't sign the contract. At 17, Dale was underage. As he looks back on it now, "It was a tough decision for him. But it was the best decision he ever made."

The freshmen eligibility rule at Northwestern kept him off the varsity floor his first year, which turned out to matter. If freshmen had been eligible, he'd have sat behind a star shooting guard and likely transferred. Instead, he developed his game, found his footing academically, and emerged as a varsity contributor the following season. After graduation came a brief professional tryout — invited to the New York Nets rookie camp, where he performed well enough to be asked back. Lou Carnesecca told him directly, "You outplayed everybody, but I don't want any small guards." Dale heard it as God closing one door. He was never angry about it. The game was changing, and he understood the situation.

What followed was banking, then business ownership — a sheet metal manufacturing company, a golf apparel business, and automobile dealerships. Then, in his early fifties, the Holy Spirit spoke to him, and he sold the businesses and entered the ministry. For seventeen years, he pastored a church on Chicago's West Side. It was the most natural thing he'd ever done.

When Dale talks about Galesburg, he starts with something that surprises people who grew up elsewhere: he had no real experience of racism until he arrived in Evanston. His street in Galesburg was integrated. His school was integrated. His teammates were Black and white. His wife, a St. Louis woman who attended Sumner High School — the historic all-Black school that Arthur Ashe attended — was stunned when she learned that. "I grew up in a community," Dale said simply. "Black and white, green and silver and gold. Doesn't matter. They're all my friends." Four houses from where he grew up, the city of Galesburg has named a park in his honor.

But what Dale keeps coming back to isn't the park, or the 21-game winning streak, or the trip to the state championship game. It's the team. He makes the argument carefully, the way a basketball thinker makes it: Barry Swanson was the leader of the Silver Streaks. Bob Jasperson was the best all-around player — the rebounder, the defender, the one who made everything else work. Dale was the scorer, and scorers get the accolades. He draws the same line through the Bulls: "They never won a championship until they got Pippen. Because Jordan scores all the points, he's looked at as the team. Pippen was the best player on that team." People argue with him when he says that. He doesn't much mind.

Before he hung up the phone, he made sure to say it one more time — his closing argument, the one he wanted on the record:

"All the honor goes to my teammates."