Twinipedia

Mitchell Evan Lilly (born June 19, 1959) is an American former high school basketball standout at James Madison High School in San Diego, California. Mitchell became the county's first 30-points-a-game scorer, setting two prep records by averaging 31.9 points per game and scoring 61 points in a single game. Named the 1977 CIF Player of the Year, he appeared in the April issue of Sports Illustrated's Faces in the Crowd.

Mitchell picked up the game of basketball in the sixth grade at Mission Beach Elementary school in South Mission Beach, where he and his identical twin brother, Marshall Earl Lilly, learned how to dribble, pass, and shoot on an outdoor fan-shaped backboard and halfcourt on the blacktop of the outdoor playground area. The school closed in 1973.

The naturally coordinated and quick-footed 11-year-olds might have picked up any other sport better suited to their white men can't jump athletic prowess, including tennis or surfing, but as fate would have it they they fell in love with hoops.

Of all sports, they chose the sport of biologically engineered Africans.

Early Life and Education

During his development years as a somewhat agile but physically limited future high school basketball star, Mitchell and his twin brother Marshall honed their skills practicing and playing on various courts and teams from their elementary and middle schools, local churches, Boys Clubs, and recreation centers.

During the 1972-73 season, their father, Thomas Earl Lilly (February 2, 1928-March 7, 2013) moved the family to Iceland, where he worked for one year as a civil engineer at Naval Air Station Keflavik. A massive and fully equipped basketball gymnasium on the base became Mitchell and Marshall's second home.

Then 13, the twins spent countless hours playing pickup games with older men and also competed in their combined school's league for eighth graders. Marshall, whose skills and knack for the game had by this time Mitchell's, earned a position as a starting guard on the junior varsity squad.

The following year, Mitchell's family, including his father, Thomas, his mother, Marsha Ann Lilly (September 11, 1935-April 16, 2016), his older brother Byron Joseph Lilly (born June 14, 1957), and his younger sister Anne Grace Lilly (born July 9, 1963) returned to San Diego, where Mitchell and Marshall graduated from the ninth grade at Pacific Beach Middle School.

As ninth graders, the twins excelled in physical education class and displayed above average athletic ability and competitiveness in a number of other sports, including over-the-line, a bat-and-ball sport first played in Mission Beach in the 1950s.

Together with a third player, the twins won the Old Mission Beach Athletic Club (OMBAC) junior tournament in the summer of 1973.

High School Career

In his sophomore year at Mission Bay High School, Mitchell struggled to keep up with his savvier brother. Both twins made the varsity squad, but at the start of the 1974-75 season Marshall was a first string guard while Mitchell was a scrub sitting on the bench.

Several games into the season, the twins' mother, Marsha, visited Mission Bay Buccaneers coach Larry Willis in the coaches' office. She explained to coach Willis how devastating and demoralizing it was for Mitchell to watch his identical twin brother get unlimited playing time. She told coach Willis that she could not allow one of her twins to suffer the emotional trauma of going through an entire season sitting on the pine, and begged Willis to make Mitchell a starter.

Willis agreed, and Mitchell played on the first team for the rest of the season. The Bucs finished the rebuilding year somewhere in the middle of Coastal League, but Mitchell gained valuable experience to improve his skills and stay a step behind his slightly more talented twin.

In their junior year, Mitchell and Marshall lead Mission Bay to winning records in both the summer league at Municipal gymnasium and the regular 1975-76 season. The Bucs won the annual holiday tournament at the University of San Diego and were crowned champions of the Coastal League.

The twins received multiple press clippings in the local Sentinel newspaper and were also featured as players of the week in the San Diego Union-Tribune. Marshall made the first team All-Coast League, and Mitchell was named to the second team.

At the end of the school year, Marshall told Mitchell he wanted to leave Mission Bay and play for Kearny High School. The idea of transferring to another school for their senior year had never crossed Mitchell's mind. Although two minutes older, his temperament was docile and easygoing compared to Marshall's rebellious and hardnosed nature, and as such, Marshall had become the natural leader of the pair. Mitchell would follow his brother wherever he lead him, and surprisingly, their father also acquiesced to Marshall's traitorous plan.

Thomas marched his twins into the Mission Bay attendance office one bright May morning and approached the attendance secretary's desk.

"Good morning, Mr. Lilly, are we checking in today?"

"No, we're checking out."

And that was it. The twins' playing days at Mission Bay were over.

The twins walked around the campus for several minutes, getting their final grades from their teachers. While doing so, Coach Willis got wind of the mutiny and caught up with his star players in one of the school's long chain-linked walkways.

"What's going on?" he asked, a stern but confused look on his long, gaunt face.

"We're moving to the Kearny district," Marshall blurted out.

The coach looked at Mitchell, who immediately looked away, out through the chain-link fence at the manicured bushes and shrubs growing in the green space along the breezeway.

Willis looked at Marshall, who stood in the middle of the hall like a stone statue, staring defiantly back at his former coach.

"What do you mean?" Willis asked, his voice cracking with disbelief.

"We're moving, coach. We're transferring to Kearny High," Marshall crisply answered. He turned to Mitchell and said, "Let's go, Mitch."

As the twins moved on to the next classroom, Coach Willis turned and eyed them with the suspicious gaze of a shellshocked general seeing his two best soldiers turn into traitors right before his eyes.

"You're going to regret this!" he yelled.

But the twins didn't look back. They keep on going, glad to be rid of a coach they never really liked or respected.

Tom Lilly rented a studio apartment a few blocks away from Kearny High, and the twins lived there for the last few weeks of the school year.

Staying in the studio was harder on the twins than they knew. Except for the time they spent five days at a John Wooden basketball camp, they had never been on their own. Their dauntless yet foolhardy decision to bail on the Bucs had suddenly thrust them into a strange place and the unpleasant position of having to fend for themselves.

Marsha Lilly was against the idea from the start. The thought of putting up her 16-going-on-17-year-old twins in the apartment alone made her heart sink. Despondent but ever resourceful, she delivered groceries and household supplies to the studio every Saturday morning. Once there, she would sit and talk with her boys at chipboard breakfast table in the tiny kitchen before driving them back home.

"So, what do you guys want for your birthday this year?" she asked one day in early June.

"New Converse for the summer league," Marshall shot back.

"No, new Duck Feet," Mitchell quickly chimed in. The classic body surfing fins made by Voit looked like the webbed feet of ducks.

"Which is it, then?" asked Marsha, giving the twins' a make-up-your-minds look.

Mitchell and Marshall looked at each other. At first glance the twins appeared practically identical. Marshall looked more like his father, with higher cheekbones and slightly bigger, wider set blue-green eyes; Mitchell looked more like his mother, with a longer face, pointier chin, and smaller, beadier eyes the same color. Both had fine, medium-length reddish brown hair atop high foreheads, Greek noses, square jaws with dimpled cheeks, and small mouths with thin upper lips.

Despite some differences in their facial features it was usually hard at first for strangers to tell the twins apart, but as people got to know them it got easier to know which one was which.

They were good looking boys, with pleasantly attractive faces and lean, well-proportioned, six-foot athletic bodies. As such, the twins had had many girlfriends and sexual encounters starting from the seventh grade. Then, at the height of their high school jock power and popularity, they gave it all up for a dream that would never come true.

Compared to the airy, laidback vibe at the Mission Bay campus, with its calming sea breezes and friendly, familiar faces, Mitchell saw Kearny as frightenedly territorial, like a mixed-race turf war ready to explode. He got stink eye from many students, including jocks on the Kearny Komets football team and a few graduating seniors from the basketball team.

One of the players was Alan Trammell, who played shortstop for the Detroit Tigers for 20 seasons and was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2018.

Five months earlier, during a semifinal game against the Bucs in the holiday tournament at USD, Trammell had suddenly slapped Mitchell in the face just for being in his jock on defense. Coach Willis immediately jumped up from the bench screaming and pointing, but neither official saw the technical foul. Mission Bay won, upsetting the top-seeded Komets in a close contest.

Walking down the school's crowded and contentious central hallway, Trammell gave Mitchell a gladiatorial sideways glance only once, then never looked in his direction again.

Summer League

The Komet's varsity coach, Tim Short, reluctantly welcomed the Lilly twins with half open arms. Coach Short already had all the players he needed to contend for championships in both the Summer League and regular season.

During afterschool practices the twins quickly earned starting guard positions, but during the summer league Coach Short frequently rotated his top junior players in and out of games. As a result, the twins sat on the bench for nearly half of the Summer League championship, which Kearny handily won.

After the game at San Diego State University's Peterson Gym, Marshall stopped Mitchell on their way out to the parking lot.

"We need to find another team," Marshall said, gripping both ends of a towel slung around his neck and shoulders.

"What do you mean?" asked Mitchell, looking around to make sure no one was listening.

"I mean we we're not gonna play for Kearny next year."

He leaned in closer, putting his right hand on Mitchell's left shoulder. "We're not gonna sit on the bench for half our senior year," he whispered mutinously.

"Where are we gonna play, Marshall?

He nodded and said, "I think I know where."

Senior Year

The place Marshall had in mind was Madison High, home of the Warhawks. Madison was in a rebuilding year without any top players, which meant the twins would spend most of their senior year on the court rather than the pine. When he heard the news, Madison coach John Hannon said he was tickled pink. Tom and Marsha went along with the plan, and at the end of the summer they rented a house in Clairemont Mesa where the family lived for the 1976-77 school year.

Moving into the Madison attendance zone meant the family had to pack up and leave the 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom bayfront house they had rented for the past five years. The oddly designed yet stunningly remarkable beach shack sat on a large plot of land at 3930 Bayside Walk.

Built in the 1960s, the one-of-a-kind aesthetic of the quirky single-story residence included a sizeable outdoor parking area next to a big front yard filled with sand, a partially enclosed and covered laundry and storage area with an outdoor shower and hidden doorway along a narrow alleyway on one side, a small, unmanicured yard and garden area along the Bayside Walk side, and wall-to-wall sliding glass doors along the front offering panoramic, million-dollars views of Sail Bay. At high tide, the family could jump from the retaining wall in the front yard right into the water.

Early Romance and Relationships

Mitchell lost his virginity at the tender age of nine.

Professional Career

Mitchell had many jobs, including short and long stints as a bus boy, waiter, model, stripper, basketball referee, word processor, public relations specialist, mobile disc jockey, television news and wedding videographer, TV news reporter and sports anchor, and English as a Second Language teacher, tutor, and trainer.