Everyone can recite his catchphrase. But did you know local lawyer and superfan David Gruber was a good basketball player?

As probably to be expected of Wisconsin's most visible sports fan, David Gruber's office is littered with memorabilia.

There are autographed Green Bay Packers helmets, baseball bats and basketballs on every surface. There's a wall of framed basketball jerseys that include ones from Gruber's close friend Bruce Pearl. Every local Division I college is represented, a few with nameplates that say "One Call" in a nod to the lawyer's ubiquitous catchphrase.

Gruber's two children, both former college athletes, have uniforms on the wall. The one next to them, a Delaware No. 22, might draw quizzical looks from visitors. It sits above a program for the 1979-80 Blue Hens men's basketball season that features a photo of a scrappy guard battling for a loose ball. Anyone who has watched television in the Milwaukee area would recognize that guard's face from local commercials.

Yup, Gruber isn't just a passionate fan, he's a baller at heart with NCAA Division I pedigree. He played competitive hoops until about a decade ago when he finally put away the sneakers. The grit, creativity and teamwork that Gruber learned in basketball also helped him find success as a lawyer.

"I probably got better when I was in my mid-20s," Gruber said. "After college, in my 20s, 30s, 40s. Played until my early 50s and people always would say to me, 'Man, I bet you were unbelievable when you were 18, 19, 20, 21.'”

Gruber was supportive teammate at Delaware

Ken Luck couldn't believe it when he was told that his former teammate at Delaware was something of a local celebrity in Milwaukee.

“No, I didn’t know that," Luck said. "That’s good to hear.”

Luck is one of the most talented players in Blue Hens history, a former honorable-mention All-American who was selected by the Washington Bullets in the eighth round of the 1982 NBA draft. He and Gruber haven't spoken since they overlapped for two seasons from 1978-80.

“He was a decent player," Luck said. "The thing with Gruber, he was definitely supportive. He played hard.”

Gruber averaged 6.8 points in 17.2 minutes per game over his three seasons with the Blue Hens. But Luck remembers Gruber's infectious enthusiasm, the same passion that comes across these days in his commercials.

"He was always an inspiration," Luck said. "Just like ‘Come on, guys, we can do this.’ It was great to have him around. He had a great sense of humor. Oh my gosh, he was always cracking jokes. Jokes about the coach. Jokes about other stuff. He was a good person.”

Gruber excitedly recalled using guile against the younger Luck, always getting the natural athlete who set jumping records with the Delaware track team to bite on his pump fake during practices.

"I was a fierce competitor," Gruber said. "Believe me, people had more jumping ability and more talent, but I didn’t back off. I had a different personality on the court than I did off."

Gruber grew up in tough New Jersey town

Gruber got that toughness growing up in Passaic, New Jersey.

As a kid, he was more of a baseball player, but he also remembers going to a basketball camp at East Rutherford High School run by its young coach named Dick Vitale.

Passaic High School boasts a rich tradition of basketball – it still holds the record for longest winning streak in the sport – and Gruber had to earn his place.

“I was on a really good team as a sophomore," Gruber said. "I came off the bench. I’d see the nervous look on (the coach's) face when he put me in. It was very high-level competition in high school.

"Then my junior year, I got kind of good playing with real players. And he trusted me. I had a couple breakout games."

As a senior, Gruber said he averaged over 25 points per game.

"I couldn’t go left," he said. "I couldn’t jump. I had no position. I wasn’t a good ball-handler. But I could score like heck."

The competition was fierce. Passaic's archrival was Paterson Eastside, the hardscrabble school famously depicted in the film "Lean On Me."

"I would guard their weakest athlete," Gruber said. "Their weakest athlete was Rory Sparrow, who played 10-12 years in the NBA.

"They had Franklin Jacobs ... read about Franklin Jacobs. He was a guard on Paterson Eastside. He was barely 5-9 and had the world (indoor) high-jump record. That was the boycotted Olympics (in 1980), so the world never found out about Franklin Jacobs. He was just another guard at Paterson Eastside.”

Gruber and Bo Ryan had the same college coach

How Gruber ended up playing at Delaware is a pretty simple story.

"Recruiting wasn’t that big of a deal at the time," Gruber said. "I did very well academically in my high school. So schools like Middlebury, Vermont, which wasn’t D1, and Yale were interested.

"But Delaware really fit the bill and I think I recruited them as much as they recruited me. It was 135 miles from my house."

Gruber was at Delaware from 1975-80 but played in only three seasons.

“The first year I went there, interestingly, us and the Ivy League and one other school, we were the only ones where freshmen weren’t eligible to play in the whole country," Gruber said. "There was no three-point shot, either. It was a different game. That’s why my game never changed. It was mid-range. It was up-and-under. Very unorthodox game. I was 6-3 on a good day.”

By the time Gruber was on the varsity, the Blue Hens had a new coach in Ron Rainey. Before Delaware, Rainey coached at Wilkes University and Chester High School in Pennsylvania, and at both stops his star player was Bo Ryan.

Ryan would eventually bring Rainey to UW-Platteville as an assistant, and Rainey would hang around practices when Ryan was head coach at the University of Wisconsin.

"That was an interesting tie and bond that Bo and I had," Gruber said. "We used to laugh all the time about Ron."

Ryan used to bring Rainey to the NCAA Final Four every season and they would run into Gruber, who would be there with his family as a fan. Rainey, who Gruber recalled as an irascible old-school coach, died in 2021.

“I once asked Coach Rainey to tell my son, who was younger at the time, what did you used to say to me all the time?' " Gruber said. "Just to egg him on. ‘Gruber, you could blank up a one-car funeral.'"

The old East Coast Conference during Gruber's era was an incubator of coaching talent.

“The coach at Temple was Don Casey," Gruber said. "Don Casey coached the Clippers, the Celtics. Jimmy Lynum coached St. Joe’s ... double-digits coaching in the NBA. Paul Westhead was the coach at La Salle. They had Michael Brooks, he was a first-round pick who tore up his knee after a few years in the NBA. He was a great player.

“Paul Westhead (later the coach of the Los Angles Lakers) was innovative. He played a 2-2 zone against us, put somebody at halfcourt to tempt us to play against them because he had Michael Brooks and a 7-footer. You can’t forget certain things, when teams tell you they’re so much better than you that they play a 2-2 zone to tempt you to play 5-on-4.

“American U was in my league, they had a young coach that nobody had every heard of named Gary Williams. The superstar-to-be at Maryland. Dr. Tom Davis finished his last year at Lafayette before going on to a bunch of places.”

Delaware had a 30-42 record in Gruber's three seasons. There might have been some opportunities to play low-level professional basketball overseas, but Gruber knew he had to figure out his future.

Gruber studied law – and found time for basketball – at Marquette

Gruber majored in criminal justice and political science at Delaware, and his mother wanted him to go to law school. Gruber's former roommate was studying at the Medical College of Wisconsin and encouraged Gruber to check out Marquette.

“The only thing I knew about Marquette was I knew it was a basketball school," Gruber said.

As a law student, he played pickup basketball against MU players and became friends with future city leaders Marc Marotta and Ulice Payne.

"Ulice would see me and say, ‘David you got to stop. You got to go to the library,'" Gruber said. "'You got to stop playing basketball. We’re done.’ To this day, when I see Ulice, we laugh about the advice he used to give me about that.”

Gruber also met his future wife, Nancy, who works at Gruber Law Offices.

“My wife was very near the top of my law-school class and I wasn’t, we’ll leave it at that," Gruber said. "The first time my wife asked me to do something with her, there were very, very fine seats for a Buck game, which were her dad’s. My wife, as usual, did her homework.”

Gruber a fixture in Milwaukee community

Bruce Pearl knows a thing or two about scouting players, and the college basketball coach recognized a savvy operator in Gruber. They met when Pearl arrived in town to coach UW-Milwaukee in 2001, and Gruber was a hard-working lawyer who hadn't yet found local fame.

“David could always shoot it," Pearl said. "He was still playing rec ball.

“He played at 'The J' – the Jewish Community Center. They had great runs, a lot of hairy old Jewish guys."

But there was a day when Gruber couldn't do it anymore. It came about a decade ago when he drove baseline and couldn't muster his usual acrobatic finish.

"I literally jammed it into the rim," he said. "Eight o’clock on a Sunday morning. I watched everyone run the other way. I came home and told my wife, ‘I’m done.’ Believe me, I was used to being the best player on the court.”

Pearl, now the head coach at Auburn, and Gruber remain extremely close and their sons are best friends. Gruber's firm negotiates Pearl's contracts. Gruber and his wife have been at every NCAA Tournament game Pearl has coached in. While Gruber might not play basketball anymore, Pearl sees his friend as a passionate player for his adopted hometown.

"David, if he wasn’t doing what he’s doing, he’d be the president of the Chamber of Commerce," Pearl said. "He loves Milwaukee. You wouldn’t know that he wasn’t born there. He even brags on the weather. He loves it with all of his heart. He cares about it. And he wants it to be successful and he wants it to be safe. He wants people to do well."

Gruber's roots are now deep in Milwaukee. His kids were stellar athletes at Whitefish Bay High School. His daughter, Lauren, played tennis at UW. His son, Steven, played hoops at Brown University and works at Gruber's firm.

“My son was the most unselfish, overpassing player you ever saw," Gruber said. "In high school and college. Just pass, pass, pass. I couldn’t believe it.

"Because of my shortcomings, I’d go to the rim all the time. I couldn’t pass, I couldn’t dribble. I’d slash."

People in Milwaukee know Gruber thanks to a deft marketing touch with his commercials and free t-shirts handed out at local events. He's in prominent seats for seemingly every sporting event in the city.

Gruber credits being a basketball player for his success.

"I think it created my career," he said. "The ups and downs. The mental toughness. The wins. The losses.

“I hate to lose. Can I accept losing? Yeah, under the right circumstances. But all the BS I talk about is real. The discipline, the sacrifice, the late nights, the preparation for trial when I was younger. All these other things. That’s sports.”

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Milwaukee celebrity lawyer David Gruber played basketball at Delaware