Longshot (21 page)

The doctor took the nail bed and sewed it back in. He then clipped off what used to be my toenail and made a little shield with it to protect the damaged skin. He took the flaps of torn skin that were still salvageable and wrapped them around the nail shield to keep it down. Yes, I'm trying to gross you out.

I went home to Salt Lake City that night and slept. I woke up on Mom and Dad's couch in the middle of the night screaming, as the local anesthetic had worn off and my body was no longer in shock. That was the rawest, most cruel pain I have ever felt, yet it was superficial pain. What is a broken toe and nail in the grand scheme of things? Nothing—but man, does it hurt! I couldn't put my toe in ice water, which is my favorite painkiller: the stitches couldn't get wet, lest they come loose and carry bacteria down beneath the skin, increasing the risk of the real worry, which was infection to the bone. I had to make do with a bag of cold vegetables, which hurt because of their weight on the toe. It was just miserable.

A week later, I laced up my shoes and walked onto the floor of the Dee Events Center, ready to play Southern Utah. A week into an estimated six-week timetable of recovery, I was back out on the court. People have called me a lot of things and will continue to do so, but no one who knows me can call me soft. Crazy maybe, but not soft.

I had eighteen points and seventeen rebounds that night, but to no avail, as we lost. It was a hard and humiliating defeat. Coach Cravens came into the locker room and chucked a whiteboard eraser to the back of the locker room, near Danko Barisic, who, having grown up in what is no longer Yugoslavia, instinctively flinched and covered his head. Yet the terrified look on Danko's face said he was anything but war-hardened.

 

By late December, we were on a terrible losing streak. The only bright spot at the time was the national attention I was getting for leading the NCAA in rebounding. Andrew Bogut, who was at my former school, the University of Utah, and I put on an interesting show for the world to see. Throughout the season Bogut and I battled for the national rebounding title, going back and forth in a seesawing race. When we played head-to-head I came in with twenty and he had twenty-two. But he had seventeen rebounds that game and I had only seven. It was a pretty frustrating game, as their team scouted us well and knew we always sent two guards back on defense immediately when the shot was taken. So his teammates at the guard spots would come and block me out on either side, and Bogut chased down the rebound. I was inclined to dislike Bogut, but I knew he and Coach Rupp had a good relationship. If he was a friend of Rupp's, he was a friend of mine.

How often does the basketball world get to see two big men, at universities only a half hour from one another, battling for an NCAA rebounding title? Not often. It was a special year.

As the regular season ended, I held the rebounding title at 12.4 rebounds per game. We had pulled off a great turnaround at the end of the season, winning our last seven conference games.

The next game, my second to last, was against tournament host Portland State. I got into quick foul trouble with two terrible calls. Terrible. I have the film to prove it. I was sent to the bench in the first two minutes of the game, where I sat and watched as my team destroyed Portland State. I ended up with three rebounds that game, and played only a few minutes. Coach and I agreed it was best that I sit out and watch, to spare my energy for the championship game the next day. For the sake of my team, hoping to better our chances of winning the tournament, I risked my rebounding title.

I lost both.

We played the University of Montana in the championship game. It was televised nationally on ESPN. We came out strong and led at halftime by ten, by which time I had also secured my twenty-first double-double of the season, with twelve points and ten rebounds at the half.

We lost by two. Jamaal Jenkins missed a last-chance Hail Mary from thirty-five feet out. I finished with twenty-four and twelve in my final collegiate game.

I went into the locker room and sobbed. My collegiate career was now over. Six long years. I was twenty-four years old.

I loved my teammates at Weber. But I was also glad to move on. Six long years of collegiate basketball, with coaches monitoring my actions 24/7, holding my hand and walking me to class, evaluating and judging everything I did, giving their two cents on each and every issue, whether I asked for it or not.

But I also knew that with it I'd be losing that camaraderie in the locker room, that rapport with my teammates. Since then, I have traveled around the globe with no team or home to call my own.

Many of the locker rooms I have occupied since college have been empty and cold. They can be like morgues, rusty, dripping faucets making the only noise as we all lace our shoes up in silence, with nothing to talk of or share other than the common denominator of money. No longer would I be laughing and mocking the coaches and those on the
outside looking into the locker room. No longer would I be posting pictures of look-alike celebrities above the lockers of my teammates. No longer would I arm-wrestle on the floor as teammates wagered bets. No longer would I smile with my friends and peers—a team of men who committed and sacrificed for a game they love, without hope of pay or financial reward. Money didn't talk in that locker at Weber. Only we talked.

The locker room, as I was warned so many times, is what I miss the most of my college days. We thought we were men, and we were, but we were also innocent.

The last month of my senior season,
I was flooded with phone calls from agents looking to represent me. I ultimately went with an agent out of San Francisco, Dave.

Dave flew me out to Southern California to work with a personal trainer to help prepare me for the Portsmouth Invitational Tournament, which was the first of two NBA predraft camps. Portsmouth was for seniors only, those who had completed their collegiate careers. Sixty-eight players were invited. I was glad to be invited, but at the same time I had hoped to skip over the tournament and just attend the Chicago predraft camp, which was much more prestigious and more likely to further a player's chances of being selected in the draft.

Portsmouth was a “damned if you do, damned if you don't” situation. When you're invited to Portsmouth, it means you're not a lock to be drafted but are at least considered to be a prospect, though not a high enough prospect for the Orlando and Chicago predraft camps. If you chose not to attend Portsmouth, it told the scouts that either you thought you were better than you were or you were afraid: both were bad impressions.

Dave recommended I put on some weight for Portsmouth that I had lost throughout the course of the season. I fired up the Lance Weight Gain 2004 program once again, and after two weeks with my trainer, Andre, I bloated up from 255 to 275.

This was a mistake. While I was doing strength and conditioning drills with Andre, I wasn't playing a lot of basketball. And the best way to get in basketball shape is to just play a lot of basketball. I showed up at Portsmouth a burly and cut 275, but it was the first time I had played a full-court game since losing to Montana a month earlier. Two trips down the court and I was winded, unused to the extra weight. What
good was I as a rebounder if I couldn't even get to the other end of the floor?

Rather than hunting my shots, I tried to be a good team player and move the ball around and defend as well as I could. I ended with five points and seven rebounds in sixteen minutes in that first game. The scouts were not impressed. I wasn't athletic enough or talented enough, they said.

My second game was even worse.

Portsmouth is a catch-22. If you're athletic and hog the ball and try to dazzle your way out of the gym, the scouts will pass you off as not being a team player. If you try to play it simple and pass it, and get your teammates involved, the scouts will pass you off as not athletic or talented enough. For a guy like me, who has been well coached on how to properly play basketball, I need structure. I play team basketball. I'm not a baller. I'm not a track star. I'm merely a basketball player—nothing more, nothing less.

Portsmouth was a setting where they just threw the ball out and told us to play, structure be damned. I wasn't going to outjump anyone. But if you give me smart teammates in a structured format, I'm the antithesis of pickup ball. At Portsmouth I was thrown into an environment that I had not been groomed for, and I paid the price for it. Only one senior who attended Portsmouth was drafted: Jason Maxiell, by the Detroit Pistons. Out of a total of sixty-eight who attended Portsmouth that year, one senior was drafted. It was an exercise in futility.

It was an uphill battle coming from the Big Sky Conference, where, I was continually reminded by the scouts, I had been playing with poor competition. In the eyes of many at Portsmouth, I was just another Mormon boy who had done well in a small-time conference; I had reached my potential and could grow no more, as my ceiling of talent stretched only so high.

Basketball is a business of first impressions. If you go to a restaurant and are unimpressed with it, you'll be hesitant to give it a second look. And when an assessment, especially a negative one, has been made about you, you have to go through hell and high water to overcome it. There are millions of people in the world who want to play basketball. With so much ground to cover, GMs and scouts rarely have the time to give people second looks, especially if they were not impressed the first time. Their job is to find the next superstar, and if someone beats them to it or finds that diamond in the rough they may have overlooked, they will
have to answer to their team owner. It's a cutthroat, survivalist league, where loyalty comes second to self-preservation.

I was now a vagabond. As much as I wanted to cling to the hope that I could still make it to the Chicago predraft camp and redeem myself, and possibly still be drafted, instinct told me that I was done for and I was in for a long road ahead.

 

Ending up in third for the national rebounding title earned me the right to have one predraft workout with an NBA team. And it was with the Utah Jazz. I was thrilled. I had watched Utah Jazz games since I first moved to Utah as a kid. Growing up in the Stockton and Malone era, I saw how basketball was supposed to be played. I experienced the pain and disappointment of the playoffs for so many years. I cried when the Jazz lost to Houston in '95, when it was supposed to be “our year,” after Jordan had retired, or so we thought. I watched as Jordan came back and ruined the party, two years in a row: in '97 and '98. I loved the Jazz, and I was ecstatic for the opportunity to meet Coach Sloan.

I was scheduled to work out with Charlie Villanueva and P.J. I knew Villanueva from watching him play for UConn, but I had no idea who P.J. was. I did some research on him and saw that as a senior he had played in NAIA Division II and averaged something like twenty points and seven rebounds. I also saw that he had a shady past, with a criminal record, but I'm not writing this to crucify him. I mention this only as I thought that there was no way the Jazz—and Jerry Sloan, with his no-nonsense attitude—would really be interested in a guy with such a past.

Coach Sloan came out with his head assistant, Phil Johnson, who came up to me, shook my hand, and said, “You had a nice career up there.” Back in the late 1960s, Johnson had coached Weber State.

“You too,” I remarked.

Practice began, and Ty “the Milkman” Corbin, one of my all-time favorite supporting cast members in the Stockton-Malone era, led the workout. All things considered, I had a great workout. I shot the ball well, completed the drills in time, and did everything they asked me to do. When I completed the last conditioning drill in good time, I went over to the garbage can and threw up. Nerves.

After having been deceived by Majerus, I always swore I'd never get starstruck again. But I did with Coach Sloan. This was a different case,
though. He never gave me the illusion that he was anything but grouchy and demanding. What you saw with Coach Sloan is what you got.

The media came out onto the floor, and I gave an interview with many familiar faces of the media that had covered me throughout my college career. They asked me what I expected would happen or where I expected to go. I had no clue.

“I'm not a freak. I'm not the type of player you spend a draft pick on. I'm the type that will make a team through the back door, so to speak. Wherever I go, you'll see me again,” I told them, with as much confidence as I could muster. But I was lying. I was terrified.

I then had an interview with the Jazz front office, with Coach Sloan and his staff sitting in on the meeting.

When I sat down they asked me, “Why should the Jazz draft Lance Allred?”

I sat there for a moment, and then said, “Lots of reasons. One, I'm the hometown kid that everyone knows. That Mormon boy they have watched grow and develop since he was just a teenager. Two,…”—I turned to Coach Sloan—“…no one will work harder than me. People may work as hard as me, but no will ever work harder than me. Coach Sloan, if I may be so blunt, I'm your archetype player. This meeting alone means so much to me. That I get to sit here…” I began to choke up.

I felt it had been a great interview, and I walked away proud, knowing I did the best I possibly could.

Draft night came, and some friends held a barbecue at their place to watch it. I really didn't want to go. I wanted to be far away. But I went, and Mom and Dad and all of my friends gathered. I watched Andrew Bogut selected first in the draft. The Jazz took Deron Williams at three.

Charlie Villanueva went to Toronto at number eight. And then I watched as the Jazz took P.J. in the second round.

I was heartbroken. I sat there graciously as all of my loved ones, unsure if I wanted their sympathy, sat and idled for a while and then slowly began to trickle out. I wanted to just get up and leave, and drive far, far away. I didn't want anyone to see how bad it hurt. Instead I had to sit there stoically until it was finally time for me to leave. I thanked my friends, went out to my car, and wept. I cried at the wheel for two hours.

Why were all of these kids being rewarded for their talent and potential and not their production, when I had produced? Why were all of these terrible European kids with stat lines resembling a final soccer score being given all of this free money?

I had no answers to these questions, and Dave couldn't give me any.

As I had my entire life, I tried to objectively and logically understand it all. But I couldn't, because there's no objectivity to it. It's an arbitrary process. The more I tried to understand, the more it hurt as I sat there in my beat-up old Nissan, which I now knew I'd be keeping much longer than I had been expecting. As I tried to evaluate what had happened, logic could find me no answers. It led only to more pain. The only thing I could make of it was the doubt creeping in my mind, telling me I was of very little worth. I was a basketball player, and not a desired one. If I wasn't a basketball player who was valued, what was I?

Looking back now, I see and understand so much of the draft process that I didn't then. What is talent? What is potential? These are relative terms that are completely at the behest of the beholder.

At that time, I didn't understand that European kids are often drafted by an NBA team that does not have any roster space. They draft the young European kid knowing they will maintain his rights while he stays overseas and continues to play and develop; hopefully a few years down the road the kid may be able to come to the NBA ready to help, when the team has need of him. Whereas, if they take an American college player in the first round, they're obligated to give said kid guaranteed money. While they're not required to pay an American kid if they draft him in the second round, if they choose to keep his rights they don't have as much control over his development overseas as they do with a European kid. Economics.

I couldn't see at the time that it was all economics; I could see only that it was personal, and I wasn't valued as much as these other players.

I'm one of thousands that have come and gone, suffering the cold shoulder of the NBA. I was no exception. There were others in my class, hundreds before and since, just as good as or better than me, who, too, were at the raw end of the deal.

Most of it, just as life, is luck and timing. Many of my teammates will tell you it was simply their time, when they were fortunate enough to be drafted or to sign to a lucrative contract. Aside from the obvious superstars, there's such a thin, fine line that divides a man from being a reserve player on an NBA team and being a star in the Development League. The line is nearly invisible, if it isn't entirely. Timing—being in the right place at the right time—determines to such a great extent who will reap what they have sown.

When the lights and glamour of the draft die down and the night is done, the race is still on. The draft isn't a finish line; it's simply a
dog-and-pony show. And anyone else who sits in an NBA locker will tell you the same.

I sat in my car until 2 a.m., and then went to my old church gym and laced up my shoes.

 

A week later, I was invited to an NBA summer camp, which is where several teams gather in a setting to play their teams of young players, draft picks, or free agents so that they can evaluate what they have. I joined the L.A. Clippers, who kept true to their word when they said if I averaged ten rebounds a game my senior year, they'd invite me to their camp.

I was nervous and worried up till the time I arrived in Las Vegas. Rory White, Mike Dunleavy's assistant, was the summer coach. He liked me and was very complimentary of my efforts. He even pulled me aside one day and said, “You're doing such a great job with your attitude and your effort. And I'm hesitant to tell you this, because I can't guarantee you anything, but people have been asking around about you.”

I was playing behind Chris Kaman, their center out of central Michigan that they drafted the year before. Chris Kaman is a heck of player. I'm a big fan of his. I appreciate it when a big man can score with either hand, which is a rarity these days. Chris has it mastered to an art. I actually spent time in college watching film of him, just to study how he did what he did to get drafted.

Chris played most of the game, and I'd come in and give him a breather. The Clippers were investing a lot of money in him, and so they were going to see him develop as much as he could before next season. I wasn't high on their priorities. But they all complimented me on how I made the best use of the time I was given. In one game against Sacramento, I scored six points in four
seconds.
Top that.

When camp was over, I shook hands with the coaches and they congratulated me on a job well done, but they all had a look in their eye that sadly said, “Good luck. Your place isn't here with us, but may you find fortune elsewhere.”

I flew home that day with no regret. I had very little hope that I'd get a call from the Clippers inviting me to fall preseason camp. I knew that playing in Europe was a foregone conclusion. But I wasn't worried. Let's not forget, I'm a European history major. I love that stuff!