wolves/nba

Almost every night that Timberwolves guard Sebastian Telfair can remember, two spotlights beside his Coney Island housing-project court nicknamed so contradictorily shone bright at 10 o'clock, illuminating until midnight pickup games that had started there before noon.

On Wednesday night, the Garden was silent, its asphalt and chain-link fencing lit by candles placed across the court in memory of the man who taught Telfair, his cousin Stephon Marbury and two generations of New York City street-ball players the game of basketball.

If he had been back home in Brooklyn, Telfair could have seen the vigil remembering the man everyone simply knew as Mr. Lou from the bedroom where he was raised in the Surfside Gardens projects.

Robert Williams -- a nursing-home manager by day and basketball mentors to hundreds by night and weekend -- died of a heart attack at age 64 on Tuesday afternoon in his apartment next to the Garden court.

"If you looked outside the window of my room, right down there was the court," Telfair said. "And Stephon's room was right on top of my mine. I lived on the third floor, he lived on the fourth floor. I grew up five steps from there. I'd walk out of my building and step right onto the court."

Nearly every time he took that court, there was Mr. Lou, who coached every great player who ever came out of Coney Island since 1971. Marbury and four of his brothers, Telfair and Sacramento Kings guard Quincy Douby are among the many.

"That's where we'd go hoop, in all seasons," Telfair said Thursday after the Wolves beat the Kings to for their first victory after five consecutive losses. "Cold, hot, that's where we were at. And Mr. Lou was the guy who ran all that there. He coached me ever since I was seven years old.

"No, nope, nobody knew his real name. They just knew Mr. Lou. All over Coney Island, everybody knows that name, whether you're into basketball or not."

Marbury left his New York Knicks team on a West Coast trip Tuesday after an altercation with coach/general manager Isiah Thomas. It became a national sports story in which Marbury threatened to blackmail his boss one moment, then said he had permission to temporarily leave the team and miss a game at Phoenix the next moment.

"People don't know," Telfair said. "But that's why Stephon left, to go to Mr. Lou. I wish I had the flexibility and the leverage to do the same, to be there for him and his family at this time."

Williams died about 3 p.m. and his son told the New York Times that by dinnertime, Marbury was there in the apartment where Telfair spent sweltering summer evenings after playing all day.

"We all know his wife; he fed some of us the majority of the days," Telfair said. "... I'm not exactly sure what he did, but I always remember him coming home from work with a green uniform on."

Telfair won't forget Williams arriving home every afternoon. He'd park his old, green rusted car next to the court, step across the court lines and stay there until every kid had left. Last year, Marbury bought him a white Cadillac, with a license plate that read MISTERLU and so many options Williams didn't know how to operate.

People crowded around the Garden court -- "So many people you could hardly see the lines around the court," he said -- and beyond the fences when Telfair, a New York City schoolboy legend played games there while he was in high school.

"Madison Square Garden, that's the Garden for the professionals," Telfair said. "Our Garden is the Garden for street-ball players."Mr. Lou coached Telfair as well as Telfair's older brother and younger brother in the 36 years he held court there.

When asked how many hours he spent at Coney Island's Garden, Telfair grew puzzled by the small increment of time.

"Hours? Hours ... there's a decade's worth of hours there," he said. "He was there for all of it. He taught us everything, everything. I wouldn't be here, none of us could have done it without him."

Jerry Zgoda • jzgoda@startribune.com