Former Suffolk star rebounds — with God’s help

There was a time when it looked as if Michael Britt could do no wrong.

He’d grown up on Wilson Street in downtown Suffolk and attended Suffolk High School, where he was something of a legend on the basketball court.

He played college ball for University of the District of Columbia, where in the 1979-1980 season he scored a record 52 points in a game against Southeastern University.

He was picked in the second round (32nd overall) of the NBA draft by the Washington Bullets, and he played all around the world in a variety of overseas leagues after being cut by the Bullets.

P-Bird, as he is still known by many, had it all.

But drugs ruined everything.

“After coming home from overseas, I wasn’t happy,” he said recently while preparing to head up to Washington, D.C., to be honored in the inaugural class of the University of the District of Columbia Athletics Hall of Fame.

Some friends introduced him to crack cocaine, and everything began to unravel.

He was preparing to head off to Israel to play in a league there when it all blew up on him. Two days before he was to have left, he was arrested for possession and distribution.

“Instead of going to Israel, I went to the penitentiary,” he said. He’d been indicted on seven drug-related counts.

“Really, that’s what destroyed my basketball career,” he recalled. “And it almost destroyed me.”

That was around 1992, and he spent most of the next 18 years in prison, including a six-and-a-half-year sentence that ended Feb. 23, 2009.

“And I ain’t going back,” he said.

But he wasn’t always so sure. After his last release, he got back into drugs once again, and his life began spiraling out of control again.

“I just got tired, and I said, ‘God, help me,’” he recalled.

He asked his sister for help, and she put him in a car and drove him to Victory Gospel Chapel in Portsmouth. That was on Dec. 13, 2010. Sometime that month — he’s not sure of the exact date — he asked Jesus into his heart. Today, he said, everything is different.

“I don’t hang with the people I used to, and I don’t do the things I used to,” he said. “I’m a living testimony. I’m a miracle. I can’t go back and change what I did, but that’s a part of my testimony today.”

The mission of Victory Gospel’s residential program, according to Pastor Vernon Smith, is to “house, clothe and feed men and women who are homeless or bound by drugs and alcohol.”

Smith said the program has an 85 percent success rate in its six years operating in the area.

Britt, who has lived in the organization’s group home for the past 15 months, attests to the power of Jesus Christ in his life and to the faithfulness of family members and friends at Victory Gospel.

“There were good people in my life that never gave up on me,” he said. “Somebody prayed for me — my grandma, my mama. I remember them praying for me.”

Now, he believes that God has a plan for his life.

“God is definitely, as the Bible says, doing a new thing in me,” Britt said. “I still answer to P-Bird, but I am now a minister — Michael Britt, a servant.”

Now that he has entered the “work-release” part of the Victory Gospel program, he has begun thinking about how he can use his basketball skills and his testimony to change young lives.

“I always had a vision to want to just teach kids to play basketball, so they won’t make the same mistakes I made, the same decisions and choices I made,” he said. “I know that I can be of use. I’ve got the Word of God inside of me.”

But first, he’ll head to Washington, D.C., later this week for the Feb. 17 Hall of Fame celebration. He’s received help from various churches and individuals in getting together the funds for the trip, and he’s thankful for their kindness.

But mostly he’s thankful that God took what had become a disaster and turned it around.

“I give all the honor and glory to my Lord and savior,” he said. “He preserved me for this day.”