Play Their Hearts Out

by George Dohrmann

  He bought a slice of pepperoni pizza and a Powerade and walked to the center of campus, to an open quad where students congregated. He passed a thin Latino girl talking with other girls in a small circle. She stepped away from the group, into Demetrius’s path, and smiled. “Hi, D,” she said. Demetrius gave her a half smile and walked around her.

  “Did you see that? That girl is into me. She’s in one of my classes. But I’ve got to be careful with her, ’cuz she’s Mexican. I could get in trouble just talking to her. She might say she doesn’t have a boyfriend, but you know she does. Or there is some guy that likes her or used to go out with her, and if he sees me talking to her, he and some of his friends might try to fuck me up. So I don’t even talk to Mexican girls.”

  In the center quad, students sat at cement tables or on patches of brown grass, eating their lunches and socializing. Demetrius walked across the quad and then up a few steps to the front of the science building. About thirty kids, the only African Americans in sight, congregated there, and Demetrius greeted most of them with a hug or slap of hands. A girl with big silver hoop earrings and her hair in a bushy bun atop her head approached Demetrius, and he teased her about the size of her earrings, which prompted a dirty look.

  “See, you are always mad-dogging me,” he said, meaning she gave him cross looks.

  “I do not.”

  “You do. You got the sweetest voice, but you’re always mad-dogging me.”

  She stormed away in fake protest, making sure to look back at Demetrius and smile.

  Demetrius sat between two boys and ate his slice of pizza while looking out over the quad. The homogeneousness of the student body was striking; everywhere you looked were clusters of Latino students. Asked if this was what he expected when he enrolled at FoHi, he said flatly, “No.” He expected to be the BMOC, the Big Man on Campus, he said, but instead he was a Black Man on Campus. “I knew there were a lot of Mexicans but not like this. Man, I’m, like, the minority here. How often does a black guy say that?”

  The problem, as he would describe it later, was not only that the school was 80 percent Latino but that “Mexicans don’t care about basketball.” The high school experience he envisioned included hordes of girls chasing after him, boys anxious to be his friend, and teachers willing to doing whatever was necessary to keep him happy. But the boys didn’t care that he was a basketball prodigy, and he couldn’t talk to most of the girls because of fear that he would get jumped. His teachers, like Ms. Chavez for biology, seemed to go harder on him because he was a basketball player, perhaps to prove that times had changed.

  That evening, FoHi would play Eisenhower High, its second home game of the season, but you wouldn’t have known from surveying the students or the grounds. Players did not wear jerseys or lettermen’s jackets. There were no cheerleaders wearing the school’s crimson and white, no banners promoting the game. Principal Tom Reasin hoped to restore “Steelers Pride” through the success of the basketball program, but six months into Demetrius’s high school career there was no noticeable progress.

  The team had not done its part, losing five consecutive games to start the season. They won their home opener over Colton High but were a paltry 3–7 going into that night’s game. They were a motley group—Demetrius and eight players who would have had trouble making the junior varsity at some schools. Keller had failed to come through on his promise to surround Demetrius with good players, running off Aaron and Vondrae and losing Terran, Rome, and the others. He did manage to import a six-foot-six kid from France, but “Frenchy,” as Keller called him, couldn’t play on the varsity team because of CIF rules. “Even if he could play, he wouldn’t help,” Demetrius said. “He’s terrible.”

  Demetrius was not blameless. The Riverside Press-Enterprise had covered FoHi’s season opener as if it were the sports equivalent of Neil Armstrong’s moon landing. The lengthy article, titled INAUSPICIOUS DEBUT FOR FONTANA FRESHMAN, included a picture of Demetrius sitting on the bench with his hands covering his face. He scored only 7 points in a 62–33 loss to Ocean View High from Huntington Beach, making only three of fourteen shots. “Nothing was falling for me today, but every player is going to have those games,” Demetrius told the newspaper. “Even Michael Jordan had bad games, and if the ‘The Great One’ can have bad games, then I can have one too.” But the bad games outnumbered the good. Demetrius scored more than 20 points in only two of his first ten high school games, rarely resembling the player who once dominated on the grassroots scene. The obvious change in his game was the position he played. He was now a guard, forced to handle the ball more and shoot jump shots and guard smaller, quicker players. His unfamiliarity with that role hindered him, even against mediocre competition. The more striking difference, however, was in his demeanor. He often played afraid—the criticism Dave Taylor had first voiced at the Superstar Camp—as if he was more worried about protecting his reputation than enhancing it.

  All across the country, talented young players were facing the same challenge as Demetrius, adjusting to a new position while also playing against older kids. Dexter Strickland in New Jersey, with whom Demetrius kept in contact, and Leslie McDonald, the center for the Bellevue War Eagles, realized they wouldn’t be tall enough to play forward or center in college. They were both in the process of changing their game, and while it was frustrating, the fruits of their labor would pay off later. In a few years, Strickland would be one of the top five point guards in the nation; McDonald, a top-10 shooting guard. They would both sign with North Carolina.

  Demetrius’s future hung on him making the same transition, but he appeared averse to change, or at least to the labor that came along with it. Over and over, Mark Soderberg reacted to something Demetrius did or didn’t do by stating: “D … I just don’t understand him.” He didn’t heed requests to eat healthier; he showed up late to practice or didn’t stay after to work extra; he refused to lift weights, because his uncle said it would hurt his jump shot. Soderberg was not a taskmaster, and his approach was the opposite of Keller’s. He made himself available to Demetrius but didn’t call to make sure he would attend a voluntary workout or pick him up and drag him to practice. “If D needs me, all he has to do is ask, but I’m not going to hold his hand,” he said.

  Soderberg complained to Keller about Demetrius’s ways, but Coach Joe was too busy or disinterested to intercede. He kept only a finger in Demetrius’s life, probably out of guilt and perhaps because he had yet to find the best way to cut him off completely. Keller’s competitiveness resurfaced from time to time, such as after Demetrius’s poor showing at Nationals. The Hoop Scoop dropped Demetrius from number 1 in the class of 2009 all the way to number 29. “No way Demetrius is not at least in the top ten,” Keller said. “He’s gonna prove a lot of people wrong. I’m gonna get him fixed, and then look out.” But he rarely followed up on his promises to “fix” Demetrius. He was simply too busy expanding the Jr. Phenom brand, coming up with new camps and moneymaking ventures. He also bought a nearly 4,000-square-foot home in Moreno Valley, a thirty-minute drive from Fontana. The distance kept him from helping Demetrius, as did his focus on his new abode. He filled it with flat-screen televisions and was in the process of having the kitchen remodeled and a pool installed in the backyard. “When it is all done, my house is going to look like something you would see on MTV’s Cribs,” Keller boasted.

  Demetrius noticed Keller pulling away, but Keller called just enough and mailed him enough shoes that Demetrius thought his absence was temporary.

  “I’ve been with Coach for … for forever, basically. All through my basketball career he’s been there for me, helping me through everything,” Demetrius said. “Now he’s not around as much, but I know he will be there for me when I need him.”

  The game between Fontana and Eisenhower was the first of Demetrius’s high school games that Keller attended. He was one of only 150 people in the Fontana gym, and that included the ten-member cheer squad for Eisenhower and the twelve cheerleaders
for the home side. It was a far cry from the overflow crowds Keller had told Tom Reasin to expect. The Fontana cheerleaders had made signs, painted in the school colors, for each player. Demetrius’s was the most prominent, and the cheerleaders, most of whom were black, paid him special attention. One girl, wearing blue overalls over her cheer outfit, yelled at Demetrius just before the tip: “Show us your game, D!”

  Eisenhower carried the same 3–7 record as Fontana and was undersized, with no one capable of guarding Demetrius; he should have dominated. But he missed his first four shots, including two long 3-pointers, and then he disengaged. He seemed most intent on letting the crowd know that he disapproved of his teammates. After one committed a turnover, he looked up into the stands at Keller and rolled his eyes. When one of FoHi’s guards failed to hit him with a pass when he was open in the left corner, he walked back on defense, his bottom lip covering his top as he shook his head. There were so few people in the gym, and he was so demonstrative, that it was impossible not to notice him showing up his teammates.

  Demetrius scored only 2 points in a first quarter that ended 13–13. In the second he didn’t score at all, and FoHi trailed 26–23 at the intermission. He picked up his fourth foul one minute into the second half and sat for the rest of the third quarter. As his teammates fought back to take the lead, 27–26, he didn’t cheer them on or even pay attention to their efforts. Soderberg called a time-out with 5:54 remaining in the third, and Demetrius stayed seated at the end of the bench as Soderberg addressed the team in a huddle on the court. Demetrius remained seated again when Soderberg later called a time-out to slow a run that had put Eisenhower ahead 33–28.

  Rome, Sr., who arrived just before halftime, saw Demetrius fail to join his teammates in the huddle and said, “If I was his coach I’d tell him, ‘Go ahead and take off your shoes. You ain’t going back in with that kind of attitude.’ ”

  FoHi went on a 16–5 run to seize the lead 44–38, with Demetrius on the bench. The players moved the ball better and played better team defense without him. They were short on talent, but Soderberg had coached them well. As the fourth quarter started, Soderberg reinserted Demetrius, and he scored two quick baskets. He then committed a needless reaching foul with 3:42 left, fouling out with 6 points. His teammates held on for a 70–54 victory.

  “I knew it would be bad. Sod told me they weren’t any good. But I had no idea they would be this bad,” Keller said after the game. “Next season, D will have some horses around him. I promise. I’ve already got some things in the works.”

  Keller did not attend Demetrius’s next three games as the Steelers lost to Redlands and Yucaipa and then defeated Colton to reach 6–9. He reemerged before the biggest game of the season: a matchup with Lincoln High of Brooklyn at Iona College in New Rochelle, New York. The game was part of the Basketball City Shootout, a showcase event organized by Jared Rice, an attorney and former player at New Rochelle High. Showcases were becoming more common as promoters tapped into the public’s obsession with seeing future college and NBA players in action. They were marketed not as games between top teams but duels between highly ranked stars, more like boxing matches than basketball games. One showcase in Cincinnati, featuring Oak Hill Academy and a local school, North College Hill, drew a crowd of 16,202 to U.S. Bank Arena with the promise of a showdown between Oak Hill’s Michael Beasley and O. J. Mayo. The year before, the ESPN networks televised nine showcase games, and regional networks televised games as well. The shoe companies’ involvement with some events added a whiff of controversy, as did the backgrounds of some of the organizers. Rodney Guillory, who was a well-known middleman for sports agents, organized the Reebok Rise or Fall Challenge in Los Angeles and got Mayo and North College Hill to participate. Guillory would later come under NCAA scrutiny for giving Mayo cash and other gifts at the behest of a sports agent while Mayo was at USC. Rice, the attorney behind the Basketball City Shootout, later expanded his practice to include athlete representation, which made the event look, in hindsight, like one big recruiting effort.

  Several elite players went head to head in the Basketball City Shootout, including Kevin Love (who would eventually attend UCLA) versus Justin Burrell (St. John’s), and Darrell Arthur (Kansas) against Curtis Kelly (UConn). Those matchups were eclipsed, however, by the hype surrounding Fontana versus Lincoln. In flyers promoting the event, the game was billed as a showdown between Demetrius, the number-1 player in the class of 2009, and the player just below him in the rankings, Lance Stephenson. After two years of dancing, finally, the top-ranked players in the class of 2009 would meet. Or so Rice, the promoter, thought when he agreed to pay the airfare, hotel, and other expenses for the FoHi players and coaches.

  Demetrius flew with the team to New York, but he sat on the bench in jeans and a jacket adorned with the logos of all the NBA teams. He claimed he had an injured hamstring and watched as Stephenson scored 16 points on 8-for-10 shooting in only twenty-one minutes, and Lincoln routed the Steelers 71–42.

  “I wanted to play against him,” Stephenson told reporters after the game. “I heard he is really good.”

  Three days later, Soderberg became convinced that the injury was a fake, an excuse devised by Demetrius and endorsed by Keller. On the day of a game against Redlands East Valley, Demetrius said that he was good to go, that his hamstring felt fine. “D, don’t you think all those people back in New York will be watching to see when you come back?” Soderberg told him. “You can’t just come back that quick. They will think you were scared to play.” Demetrius agreed to sit out one more game; he made his return two days later against Rialto. Soderberg brought this up with Keller, who admitted that he had advised Demetrius not to play because being outclassed by Stephenson would have been harmful to his reputation.

  Fontana finished 8–15 and missed the CIF playoffs. It was a humbling season for Demetrius, who did not make first-team all–Citrus Belt League, and his poor attitude and work ethic suggested darker days ahead. But then Keller announced that he’d hired someone to transform Demetrius, the perfect tutor to get him back on track.

  “If anyone can fix D, it’s him,” Keller said.

  In the near decade since he starred for SCA and Pat Barrett, Schea Cotton had played at Long Beach City College and the University of Alabama and professionally in Europe and South America. The closest he would get to the NBA career that had once seemed his destiny were short stints with the summer-league teams of the Orlando Magic, the Los Angeles Clippers, and the Golden State Warriors. Yet who better to counsel Demetrius than another grassroots phenom who had also been prematurely hyped in the pages of Sports Illustrated? Who more qualified to guide his transition to a new position than a player who started high school as a burly forward but became an all–Southeastern Conference shooting guard with the Crimson Tide?

  “If he questions me, I can say, ‘Okay, let’s roll the ball out. Let me show you.’ I can still play, can still show him how things are done,” said Cotton. “I can also relate to Demetrius beyond basketball. The stuff he is going through, it is what I went through at an early age.”

  Twice a week, Cotton arrived at FoHi after Demetrius’s sixth-period class and they went into the gym, which they usually had to themselves. Cotton dressed to play, in shorts and a tight T-shirt, and Demetrius noticed his considerable biceps. He was in fantastic shape, around 230 pounds, and still harbored hopes that an NBA team would call.

  “D, don’t read the articles. Don’t pay attention to the rankings,” Cotton told him one day as they stretched. “All they do is stagnate your growth. Just worry about getting better, and all the rest will take care of itself.”

  Being closer to Demetrius’s age than Soderberg and Keller were, Cotton framed instructions in a more relatable way. In one drill, Cotton had Demetrius run around without the ball, moving from one side of the court to the other, often down the baseline. Demetrius then sprinted to the wing, coming around a chair Cotton had set on the court, where he received a pass and either sho
t or drove to the hoop. “You know how Rip Hamilton runs around and around and then comes off a screen and hits a shot?” Cotton said, referring to the Detroit Pistons’ shooting guard. “That is what this is teaching you.”

  It shocked Cotton how out of shape Demetrius was so soon after his high school season, but he was encouraged by his willingness to learn. “When Coach Joe used to show how to come off a screen, he would tell me to pump-fake, then take a power dribble to the side and pull up,” Demetrius said. “Now I’m noticing that when I take that power dribble to the side, kids are getting faster, so they can recover. So Schea tells me to just shoot or cut the angle and go right at the basket.”

  Demetrius shot free throws after every drill so he’d get used to shooting them when tired, and they worked on his ballhandling for the majority of one practice a week. They also played one-on-one every day. “He’s a beast, and we are just banging,” Demetrius said. “I’m learning how to handle it when players hold me and bump me and how to shoot over a bigger opponent.”

  After two months of working with Cotton, Demetrius’s shot and ballhandling were noticeably better. He had a long way to go, but he now understood the work he needed to do. “I’m in such a good situation now,” he said. “I know why I struggled last summer and that I didn’t play my best in high school. [But] I feel like this is going to be my comeback summer.”

  Keller paid Cotton $150 per session. That came out to about $75 an hour, not counting the time it took Cotton to drive from Orange County to Fontana. Given how much Keller gained from leveraging Demetrius’s talent, it was a pittance. But in the early spring, when asked how his workouts with Demetrius were progressing, Cotton said, “I’m not doing that anymore. Joe stopped paying me. I don’t know if he thought it was too much or what, but he just decided he didn’t want to pay me anymore. I wasn’t going to do it for free.”