Maduro State of Mind | Karma Cigar Bar, Merrillville, Indiana
Few people in Northwest Indiana have lived a life quite like Roger Powell Jr. The kid from Joliet who went to the national championship game. The undrafted player who took his game to five countries across three continents. The ordained minister who became a college basketball coach. He sat down at Karma Cigar Bar to talk about all of it — and where a good cigar fits into a life that refuses to slow down.
It started with Michael Jordan and a cigar.
Roger Powell Jr. grew up in Joliet, Illinois, watching the Bulls. This was the nineties — the championships, the celebrations, the confetti still falling when the cameras would find Jordan in the locker room, cigar lit, grinning that grin. For a kid in Joliet with a basketball in his hands and a hero in Chicago, that image landed somewhere deep.
“My inspiration for cigars is probably Michael Jordan,” Roger said, settling into a chair at Karma Cigar Bar. “Watching the Bulls, watching every time they won a championship — seeing MJ with the cigar. That probably started it.”
Twenty-plus years later, Roger Powell Jr. has earned a few cigars of his own.
29 and 0
In the 2004-2005 season, the University of Illinois Illini went on one of the most electric runs in college basketball history. Roger Powell Jr. started all 39 games. The team went 29-0 before losing their first game — and then kept winning. All the way to the national championship game against North Carolina.
One game from the title.
That kind of run — that level of pressure, that level of expectation, that many consecutive wins — is a different kind of experience than most athletes ever know. You’re not just playing basketball. You’re carrying a state, a fanbase, a year-long story that the whole country is watching.
“What did that pressure cooker feel like day-to-day?” Dhirien asked.
It’s a question worth sitting with. Because two decades later, that season still defines part of who Roger Powell is — what he knows about competition, about resilience, about the difference between being good and being great at the exact right moment.
The Morning After
June 2005. The NBA Draft.
Roger Powell Jr. — one of the key pieces of a 29-0 Illinois team that had just played on the sport’s biggest stage — went undrafted.
Think about what that morning feels like. The night before, you were a national finalist. The morning after, the phone doesn’t ring.
Most people never recover from that kind of whiplash. Roger Powell Jr. used it as a starting line.
He took his game overseas. Italy. Israel. Spain. France. Germany. Three continents. Five countries. The kind of professional basketball journey that the highlight packages don’t show you — the different languages, the different expectations, the lonely nights in apartments far from Illinois, the process of rebuilding your identity when the path you expected disappears.
“What’s the reality of overseas basketball that Americans don’t see on TV?” — that’s the question. And the honest answer is that it strips everything down to the basics. You play because you love it. Because you’re good enough to be paid for it somewhere in the world. And because walking away from the game before it’s ready to let you go is something you’re simply not willing to do.
The Minister
Here’s the detail about Roger Powell Jr. that most people don’t know.
While he was still an undergraduate at the University of Illinois — before the 29-0 season, before the draft, before the overseas career — he was ordained as a minister.
That’s not a footnote. That’s a foundation.
It shapes how Roger talks to people. How he listens. How he thinks about young men who are trying to figure out who they are while also performing under enormous pressure. When you’ve been ordained to counsel people in their hardest moments, and you’ve also lived through being undrafted the morning after a national championship game, you develop a particular kind of language for what resilience actually looks like.
“What do you say to a kid who has just been told he isn’t good enough?” That question, posed in the episode guide for this conversation, gets at the heart of why Roger Powell Jr. matters beyond basketball.
The answer, you’d imagine, comes from somewhere that has nothing to do with box scores.
Gonzaga and the Second Near-Miss
After his playing days, Roger Powell Jr. moved into coaching — eventually landing on the staff at Gonzaga University under Mark Few, one of the elite programs in college basketball.
In 2021, Gonzaga went undefeated heading into the Final Four. They were forty minutes from a national title.
Roger Powell Jr. had now been forty minutes from a national championship — twice. Once as a player. Once as a coach.
There’s a particular kind of athlete and competitor who gets that close twice and keeps going. Who doesn’t become bitter about what didn’t happen. Who understands that the work is the point, not the destination.
The Cigar as Constant
Through all of it — Joliet, Champaign, the overseas years, the coaching rooms — cigars have been a consistent thread.
“A lot of it’s just relaxing,” Roger said. “I watch a lot of film. A lot of times, during the season, when it’s late, or when there’s a lot of stressful moments in college basketball, I’ll sit down — whether it’s here or on my deck — and I have a cigar. I’ll put my laptop out and watch film.”
That’s a specific, real image. A man who has competed at the highest levels of his sport, now coaching the next generation, finding the same pause that entrepreneurs and business owners find here. The cigar doesn’t care about your record. It doesn’t care about your schedule. It just asks you to slow down for an hour and be present.
His combination: “My cigar, my coffee.”
He’s also found something else here. “Sometimes I come in and I’ll meet a very successful business owner, or someone who does business, and we have an engaging conversation while smoking a cigar — and I end up making relationships that help my foundation, or help me with what I’m doing.”
Roger Powell Jr. runs a foundation focused on community impact in Northwest Indiana. Karma Cigar Bar has been among its supporters — the kind of relationship that starts in a room like this one, over a shared smoke and an honest conversation.
Why He Comes Back
Dhirien has known Roger for years. Watched him come through the door after long days, during difficult seasons, and in good moments worth marking.
When Roger talks about Karma, he doesn’t reach for superlatives.
“It’s a great place where I can come and enjoy and relax,” he said. “Dhirien and Karma Cigars have been a great supporter of some of the things I’m doing in the community.”
Simple. Earned. The kind of loyalty that doesn’t need to be advertised.
A kid from Joliet who watched Michael Jordan celebrate with a cigar. A man who built a career across three continents, two near-national-championships, and a ministry before he was old enough to rent a car. He found his place in Northwest Indiana.
And his place has a humidor.
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850 W 81st Ave, Merrillville, Indiana 46410
All cigar content intended for adults 21 and older.
