Drew Mckenzie

Joe Pace in the U District with one of his talking robots.

The most important thing in Joe Pace's life is a 7-foot-4-inch talking elephant named Rudy. A work in progress, Rudy's skin is papier-mâché, his innards wooden, and his eyeballs photographic—the product of an ongoing Dumpster dive by his resourceful 53-year-old owner, an incidental sculptor if there ever was one.

Rudy is just one of several half-finished "robots" that crowd Pace's small, publicly subsidized University District apartment. Here, the robots vie for shelf space with a dozen scavenged television sets and at least as many similarly acquired stereo speakers. There is barely room in the apartment for Pace to sleep. Then again, Pace doesn't sleep very well anyway, his back permanently pained by the wear and tear that a nearly two-decade career in pro basketball affords.

At 6-foot-11, Pace is perennially clad in dark sweats and pearly white sneakers, except when he puts on one of his suits. Most of these clothes are hand-me-downs from his former Washington Bullets teammate Mitch Kupchak, who is now the general manager of the Los Angeles Lakers.

Some five years ago, Pace put on one of Kupchak's suits and headed to Morton's Steakhouse armed with a $100 gift certificate (also courtesy of the Lakers GM). After his meal, he was approached by a shoeshine man. When Pace declined his offer to shine his shoes, explaining that he didn't have any money, the man looked at him in disbelief. What the shoeshine guy didn't realize was that, at the time, Pace was "the best-dressed homeless man in the world," in the words of former KOMO-TV reporter John Sharify, who produced a documentary on Pace that aired in late 2002.

A college superstar who claims that his "secret weapon" was munching on flatulence-inducing foods before games so as to distract his opponents, Pace was a reserve on the 1977–78 Washington team that defeated the Sonics in seven games to claim the NBA title. The Bullets' decisive victory came on the Sonics' home floor, where Dennis Johnson suffered through his worst game as a pro, shooting 0-for-14 from the field. (The Sonics would turn the tables on the Bullets the following year by claiming their one and only league championship. Johnson was named series MVP.)

That game in Seattle would be Pace's last in an NBA uniform. After a long sabbatical playing professionally in ports all over the world, Pace found himself back in the States in the '90s, where he continued a cycle of drug and alcohol abuse that had marked his entire career. This behavior soon rendered him homeless and distraught about any prospects that didn't involve a basketball in his hand—an emotion that pervades to this day.

"I'm lost out here," he says, his faraway eyes surveying the bustle of First Avenue outside the Virginia Inn. "Basketball was like therapy to me."

Since retiring, Pace has struggled with depression, but refuses to treat it with prescription drugs. Where he once self-medicated with beer and cocaine, Pace, a voracious eater, sometimes consumes two whole rotisserie chickens in one sitting when he gets the blues (which doesn't do much to affect his hummingbird metabolism). Or he pours his energy into crafting his robots and a triple-rimmed pop-a-shot contraption, which he hopes to include in a "basketball boot camp for kids" that he would like to put on at schools, community centers, and playgrounds.

By his own admission, Pace's concept is "too much for a lot of people to follow." But here goes: Imagine a backboard with three rims affixed to it, two alongside each other at the standard 10-foot level, the other centered above at approximately 12 feet, surrounded by several different stations featuring papier-mâché pencils and foam robots with miniature basketballs electronically spinning on their tips and extremities. Each robot's torso is equipped with a speaker, which is attached to a microphone or television set, through which Pace will transmit taped messages about nutrition, safety, education, and other life lessons. At the center of it all is the 7-foot-4-inch Rudy, whom Pace describes as a "security elephant" with camera lenses for eyes.

Pace constructs the entire display with his own two hands, and acquires most of his materials—and all the electronics—from other people's refuse. Every day, once his morning shift as a security guard at the Millionair Club in Belltown ends, Pace returns to the U District by bus and sets to scavenging for discarded elements that might enable him to finish his exhibit.

In this light, his robots seem not crude but ingenious. And while Pace struggled in school and reads at a rudimentary level, his innate mechanical wherewithal is off the charts. A motorized toy in someone's trash bin is apt to be the engine that enables a ball to spin on one of the robots or papier-mâché pencils in Pace's boot camp.

"I'm like Sanford and Son," Pace says. "I recycle."

Stuck behind Hall-of-Famers Wes Unseld and Elvin Hayes on the Bullets' frontline depth chart, Pace was traded after the '77–'78 season to the Boston Celtics. Frustrated, Pace abruptly fled to Europe, where he immediately caught on with an Italian team. He spent the next 15 years playing professionally in various countries—including Argentina and Mexico—but would never again suit up in the States. While Pace developed a fondness for several of the nations he lived in, he considers his decision to abandon the NBA to be "the biggest mistake of [his] life."