City of Basketball Love

By David Comer
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When Eric Chamberlain was a middle schooler growing up in Southwest Philadelphia and just starting to play competitive basketball, his father, also named Eric, offered his son simple yet powerful advice.

“My dad always told me to play defense,” said the younger Chamberlain. “He told me ‘defense is how you’re going to get on the court.’”

Chamberlain didn’t just listen to that advice — he lived it — and it started a hoops journey that has taken him from Cardinal O’Hara High to West Catholic High and now to the final stages of a record-setting career at Albright College.

“Everyone likes to play offense, but a lot of people don’t like playing defense,” said the 6-foot, 170-pound senior guard.

Count Chamberlain as one of those who like playing defense.

“I like to frustrate the other point guards, get in their head, take them off their game,” said Chamberlain, a 2021 West Catholic grad who earned third-team all-Philadelphia Catholic League honors as a senior. “I like the feeling of making someone uncomfortable.”

Chamberlain made an impression on his coaches and teammates since he first stepped onto campus at Albright, a private liberal arts school in Reading with an enrollment of approximately 1,650.

“He made life hell for our guards in practice,” said longtime Lions coach RIck Ferry. “He was completely relentless. I’ve never had somebody like that.”

Jeremiah Stanton, a junior guard from Baltimore who starts in the backcourt alongside Chamberlain, remembers first playing against Chamberlain when he got to Albright.

“The first day of pick-up games, he was guarding me full court,” Stanton said. “He definitely helped make me better. He was like a one-man press. It was like nothing I had ever seen before.”

As a freshman, Chamberlain played in all 25 games off the bench and averaged 5.9 points in 15.6 minutes per game. His father was right. Defense got him on the court.

“Not a lot of freshmen play here,” he said. “I was able to get in the rotation my first year.”

He was even better than Ferry anticipated.

“He was a kid we really wanted, and we were thrilled to get him,” Ferry said. “He was more than what we expected.”

Chamberlain started to earn his reputation that freshman year in a game against Alvernia University when he was hounding their first-team all-league point guard Keon Taylor up and down the court and making life miserable for his opponent. It was a sign of things to come.

“He was his own full-court press,” Ferry said. “He was a pain to play against. We had zero coaching in that. He’s a very respectful person off the court, but on the court he just turns into this man possessed.”

Chamberlain moved into the starting lineup as a sophomore and did not disappoint. He set the school record for total steals in a season (71), steals per game (3.0) and tied the school record for steals in a game (7). He also became the first player in school history to win the Middle Atlantic Conference Defensive Player of the Year.

“I felt appreciated,” Chamberlain said.

He also increased his offensive output to 12.1 points per game to complement his defensive prowess.

“First of all, he lives in the gym,” Ferry said. “He’s constantly getting shots up and working on his game.”

As a junior, other teams in the league started game planning to minimize Chamberlain’s impact on defense - quite an accomplishment for a 6-foot guard who was able to change a game by playing with the traits that cannot be taught - intensity, hustle and desire.

Chamberlain scored his 1,000th point in December and is Albright's all-time steals leader. (Photo courtesy Albright College)

Other teams stopped having their point guards bring the ball up the court against Albright. Instead, they’d have a forward or center - anyone except the player Chamberlain was guarding. It is similar to how in football an opposing quarterback will not throw in the direction of a star cornerback.

“Coaches stopped letting their point guards bring the ball up,” Chamberlain said. “It kind of took me out of what I do.”

But he continues to make a significant impact defensively.

“I’m just active around the ball,” he said. “I have quick hands. I get a lot of deflections. I get way more deflections than steals.”

He averaged 15.9 points per game as a junior and earned honorable mention all-league honors.

While Chamberlain had enjoyed considerable individual success during his first three years at Albright, his team didn’t win as much as he would have liked. The Lions went 10-15, 9-15 and 11-14, respectively, during his freshman, sophomore and junior years.

This season, as a senior, Albright is playing the best basketball of his career. Despite playing without injured sharpshooter Akhir Keys out of Chichester High and 6-foot-7 Hasson Massenburg, the Lions are 12-7 overall and 7-2 in league play. They have won four straight and six of seven and tied for second place in the MAC Commonwealth; the top four teams make the league’s postseason tournament.

A big reason for the success has been Chamberlain. He leads the league in steals per game (2.5) and is second in scoring (17.2) and fifth in assists (3.3).

The increased scoring hasn’t been an accident.

“I’m the kind of player who is in the gym everyday,” he said.

He said he gets up 500 shots on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays and does all-around skills workouts on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Keep in mind that this is all in addition to the team’s regular practices. 

Albrights plays games on Saturdays. Sunday is a well-deserved day of rest. 

“That’s been my schedule the last three years,” he said.

This has been a memorable season for Chamberlain. He scored his 1,000th career point in a game in December and the next month he became the school’s all-time steals leader when he broke the previous record of 200 steals held by Hill School product Dave Singleton. Chamberlain now has 219 steals and counting. He is the reigning MAC Commonwealth Player of the Week and has averaged more than 25 points per game in his last three games.

Chamberlain said that teams are now trying to take him out of the game both defensively and offensively.

“Lately, I’m getting my teammates involved and still finding my shot,” he said. “I’ve found a way to do both.”

The Lions have five regular-season games left and then what Chamberlain hopes is an extended postseason run that ends with a league championship and a trip to the NCAA tournament. 

Chamberlain will get to play a few more games in front of his parents. He said they live in Lansdowne and come to all of his home games and rarely miss away games.

The business management major has a job lined up as a manager with Amazon in the Reading area after graduation. But, first, he has more games to play, more shots to make, more steals to get, more opponents to frustrate. 

Chamberlain heard his father’s advice all those years ago to play defense and listened. As a result, he will leave Albright with his name splashed throughout its record book. But, in addition to his statistics that can be found in black and white, it is the stories that his coaches and teammates will tell about Chamberlain that will live on.

“You don’t replace a player like that; you enjoy a player like that,” Ferry said. “We will miss him immensely.”