Character Driven (12 page)

That feeling was frightening but far more exhilarating. For a while, I wanted to keep the news to myself, but that didn’t last long. The first person I thought to call was my mother. I knew that she was at work, and I knew my girlfriend was in class. My dad would likely have been home; he was no longer working and no longer living with my mom at our place, and that made it difficult to pull the trigger on any phone call. I’d just let the good vibes continue to work their way through me. I’d figure it all out soon enough. I’d always been wary of thumping my chest and drawing too much attention to myself, and that wasn’t going to change because of this news. Wrapped up in all this confusion about whom to call, what to say, and how to feel were some practical realities as well. Playing a sport at an NCAA Division I institution had been like having a full-time job. I was constantly having to juggle the priorities of my family, my sport, my classwork, and a social life. I’d been doing that for years, but suddenly the stakes felt a lot higher.

I’d been living in a kind of heightened state of anticipation and preparation. I don’t mean that my every moment was freighted with importance and I was a stressed-out wreck who worried about every little thing possibly ruining my prospects in the NBA. I do mean that I had to live my life consciously and deliberately, which was probably different from how most teenagers and young twentysome-things did. I was cool with that. I was so used to living my life that way that I no longer gave it much thought. That phone call was a reward and a thrill, but also a wake-up call, alerting me that all those things that I had been doing for so long had put me on the brink of achieving something pretty amazing. In some ways, it was like stepping up to the free throw line with the game on the line. I was more comfortable when shooting than in the moments before I toed the line and put the ball into the air. I was used to blocking out distractions, but this was different. I just couldn’t push some thoughts out of my mind no matter what. Then and now, I think that was a good thing. I could have tried to act all nonchalant, but I would have been doing exactly that—acting.

Being drafted and making it into the NBA mattered to me. I’m not ashamed to say that. As each year of my college career had gone on, that goal that I had visualized had come into sharper focus. The feeling is something like what you experience when you plan a vacation. You pick a spot, research all the accommodations, linger over descriptions of the things to do, restaurants to dine at, museums to visit, and you think about it and think about it and then you look at your calendar and it’s two weeks away. Then a week away. You have all kinds of things at work and at home to finish up so that you can have a clear mind when you go, then some other assignment lands on your desk or some problem comes up that needs your attention. You finally get things squared away, then you are on your way to the airport, sitting on a jet, taking a cab into Paris or wherever, and you’re on your way to the Louvre to see the
Mona Lisa
, a painting you’d always seen in books or on TV, and it all seems unreal to you.

That’s where I was at. In the unreality-of-it-all zone, but I knew that I had to get out of there as soon as I could. I didn’t want to have things hanging over my head or have my attention pulled in different directions. That’s when one of those distractions popped up and I knew that I couldn’t figure this one out all on my own. Coach Sanderson called me again to let me know that I’d been invited to another predraft camp, this one in Phoenix. The Phoenix camp was already under way, and I’d missed a day of practice and the first two games. A couple of the players had been injured, and one of the teams was out of point guards. The organizers were hoping that I could fill in. I didn’t know what to say. My initial reaction was that I’d done what I’d needed to do—I’d got the invitation to Chicago, the one real shot I’d have at making a big-time impression on the scouts. What if I got hurt as those other guys had? I’d demonstrated in Portsmouth that I had what it took, but still the skill level in Phoenix was a step up. I wouldn’t be competing against just the best seniors, but against the best of the draft-eligible nonlottery picks.

I talked to my dad about my mixed feelings, and he helped put things in perspective.

“Son,” he said, “you’ve shown them what you can do on the court. What you have a chance to do now is to show them something about your character. They’re asking for your help. Are you the kind of guy who’s going to do the right thing or not? Pack your bag, son.”

When I looked at things from my dad’s perspective, I realized that I had to go back to the fundamentals—when called on, you respond. If there’s a game, you play and put in your best effort. My dad was right. I’d be showing the scouts something else about me besides my outside shot. If I had enough confidence in myself and my abilities, then I didn’t need to worry about damaging my chances or lowering the opinion that the scouts already had of me. I went to Phoenix. Four teams were there and the team I joined had lost its first two games. The guys seemed a bit disarrayed, but I was comfortable running the team even without practicing with the fellas. Over the next two days, we won three of our four games, and I was playing as well as I ever had, hitting my shots, dishing the ball off, and helping to control the game’s tempo. I’d done nothing to diminish the value of my stock and had probably raised it a bit. My dad was right. Teams would be likely to draft and keep around someone they knew they could count on to do what was asked over an equally talented player with a bit of an attitude.

Once again, I found myself on a flight to Little Rock thinking about what was to come, but this time I hadn’t even bothered to pack my books. I definitely felt that I’d arrived at a crossroads. With all the travel I’d been doing, I’d missed more classes than I was used to even at the height of basketball season. I was feeling overwhelmed. I knew how important my getting a degree was to my mom and dad. It was important to me, but with the Chicago camp coming up in just another week, it was hard to serve two masters. With so much on the line, I felt I had to make a choice—disappointing my parents or not give my dream every possible chance of success. I don’t think I’d ever felt so much trepidation in approaching my mom and dad to talk with them about something. I’d spent a few hours organizing my thoughts, and as I drove to the house to meet with them, I put the finishing touches on my arguments.

I started out by telling them, “Mom, Dad, I think I should withdraw from school for this semester.” I looked at my mom and saw a bit of confusion and hurt in her expression. “I promise you this. If you let me focus on just basketball and the upcoming camp, I honestly feel that I can make it. I will get drafted. If I do, that could change things for all of us.” I saw my dad flinch at that last statement just a bit. I didn’t think he liked the idea of my feeling I could step in somehow to help out. I plunged ahead. “If I don’t make it, then I’ll go back to school.”

My parents looked at each other, and my mother managed to smile. My dad’s stern expression didn’t change, but he said, “Thanks for thinking of your mother and me. We both trust you and your judgment. You know we have your best interests in mind.”

The rest of what he had to say went in one ear and out the other. Certain moments in a child’s life mark the passage from one phase to the next. Hearing my dad say, “We both trust you and your judgment,” was one of those milestones, such as getting my driver’s license, falling in love for the first time, graduating from high school, and heading off to college. This was far more meaningful than those.

My mom had a few tears in her eyes, and I could hear her breath catch when I went to hug her. “I want you to live your dream, Derek. But you have to promise me you will get that degree.”

“I promise, Mom, and I will.”

I’m still eighteen credits short of my degree, but I will keep that promise to my mother.

The Chicago camp was held in early June while the Bulls were squaring off against Seattle in the NBA Finals. The town was going nuts, and I could feel the buzz in the air when I stepped off the plane at O’Hare. I had more of a rooting interest than I would otherwise have had during the finals because a former UALR player, Pete Myers, played for the Bulls, as did Scottie Pippen. I wished that I could have gone to a game, but we were kept busy with two-a-day sessions. Unlike the other two camps, where we did nothing but play games, we were put through a series of skill drills in Chicago. We also played some games, but we’d clearly arrived at another level entirely. A few times during the other camps, I’d see some of the scouts sitting around in a cluster, half paying attention to what was going on out on the floor. Not in Chicago. Each scout seemed to have come with a specific mission and didn’t want to let any of the others know what that mission was. The same kind of ratcheted-up vibe moved through the players. If the atmosphere at PIT and Phoenix had been competitive but friendly, the Chicago camp was intense. We all knew that we were competing for just a few spots. The goal was to get into the first round. A few second-round picks might make a team’s roster, but the odds on that weren’t good.

It’s hard to describe my performance there. The scouts weren’t looking at the usual statistics and were more analytical. They looked at such minute things that we all felt we were under a microscope. My only gauge of my success at the Chicago camp was to count the number of teams that contacted my agents—I’d gone with the guys who had represented Corliss Williamson, my friend and former AAU teammate and standout at the University of Arkansas—to get me to fly into their city for a workout. I went to ten or twelve cities between the end of the camp in early June and the draft on June 26. Normally, a team would bring in about four different guys at a time, and the routine was somewhat similar. We had to do ball-handling drills, shooting drills, and even an old, reliable fundamental—make layups with each hand. We also did a lot of strength and fitness work. Fortunately I’d been put through all that at UALR by my strength-and-fitness coach, and his football background really helped. We maxed out on the bench press, squats, and in some cases the overhead press. We also met individually with assistant coaches and definitely got the feeling that our every move was being assessed. Generally, I was in and out of each city the same day, then it was on to the next. A lot of the time, I was with some of the same guys going from city to city. I can’t say it was exciting because I didn’t get to do much except go from the airport to the workout facility and then back. There were a few overnighters, but I was too exhausted and too preoccupied to see anything of the cities I was in. Lying in bed flipping the channels endlessly, occasionally stopping on ESPN’s
SportsCenter
, was about the extent of my exploration.

I was excited and sometimes stopped to try to take it all in, but there was always another plane to catch, another set of questions to respond to, another look of skepticism to face from one team official or coach or another. No one gave you any sense of what he was thinking. This wasn’t like being recruited by a college. No one was trying to impress you—you were the commodity, the item up for bid, and the buyers didn’t feel the need to behave as if they were your buddy. People weren’t rude or indifferent, but clearly this was a serious business, and the people in it were professionals.

By the time June 26 rolled around, I was more than ready for it all to be over, good or bad. My agent was confident that I would go in the first round, and I was too. In my mind, the Knicks were the likely choice. They had three first-round picks as a result of some trading—the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twenty-first.

The athletic department at UALR had graciously provided us with a room in the athletic complex where family and friends could gather. We had people from our church, all kinds of cousins and aunts and uncles and family friends, all crowded into a single room to watch the draft on television. I was in the locker room with my mom and dad, Coach Sanderson, Corliss, and my agents, Elbert Crawford and Bill Ingram. Coach Sanderson knew several big-time agents, but I kept in the Arkansas family and went with two local guys. I wanted my being drafted to be about me and my skills and not about whom I had in my corner. Following a work stoppage in 1995, the new collective-bargaining agreement took a lot of the negotiating out of rookie contracts. I was satisfied with my guys and liked keeping it all low-key.

I was pretty cool during the first part of the draft. I knew that I wasn’t likely to go in the top ten, so I was more curious than really involved as the draft unfolded. I was happy for the players who got to attend the draft in New York City, and seeing them react when their names were called, seeing them hug their family members and stride onto the stage to greet Commissioner Stern and put on the team hat was cool. Allen Iverson went number one, and the names that followed are all familiar to NBA fans—Marcus Camby, Shareef Abdur-Rahim, Stephon Marbury, Ray Allen, Antoine Walker, Lorenzen Wright, Kerry Kittles, Samaki Walker, Erick Dampier, Todd Fuller, Vitaly Potapenko, Kobe Bryant, and Peja Stojakovic.

By the time the fifteenth-round selection was announced, I started to get nervous. The Phoenix Suns selected Steve Nash out of Santa Clara. I’d played against Nash in Chicago and thought I’d matched up well against him. I knew that he had a bad hamstring, and I thought that might have worked against him, but it didn’t seem to. With the first round halfway over, I was getting a bit worried about how far down the pole I might slip. The difference between a first-round selection and a second-round one was huge. No disrespect to these guys, but how many NBA fans remember the names Shawn Harvey, Joseph Blair, Steve Hamer, Joe Vogel, or Jamie Feick? It’s tough to make it into the league from that position, with a huge difference financially also between first- and second-round picks.

When it got to the Knicks in the eighteenth round, the locker room got real quiet. When my name wasn’t announced, we all exhaled and shook our heads. What was going on? Looking back on it now, I can understand why I had to wait so long to hear my name called. Many experts consider the 1996 draft one of the strongest ever, right up there with the 1984 draft that produced Hakeem Olajuwon, Michael Jordan, Charles Barkley, and John Stockton—all likely Hall of Famers. Eventually, one-third of those of us selected in the first round in 1996 would become NBA All-Stars (not to mention Ben Wallace, who went undrafted). Three of our crew have won the Most Valuable Player Award (Bryant, Iverson, and Nash) and seven guys out of that twenty-nine have been named to at least one All-NBA team—more than from any other draft.