Boys Among Men

by Jonathan Abrams

  Young still had to prove himself on the court when the NBA reconvened. Joe Dumars, at the end of his stellar playing career, recalled listening to Young speak during one early practice. “When he got on the court, you could see he had talent, but you knew the process was going to be hard because he was just so young for the league,” Dumars said. “He sounded like a young high school kid all of a sudden thrown into the NBA world.” But the Detroit staff still held out hope that Young’s size and skill set would make him an asset for the team. John Hammond, who had worked out Kevin Garnett before scouts a couple years earlier, watched when Young sometimes matched up against Grant Hill in practice. No one in the league could capably contain Hill at that time. Young was among the closest, Hammond thought. Still, Alvin Gentry, Detroit’s coach, had doubts about whether Young would ever mature as a player. Young dominated in the paint in high school. Though he was strong, his height of 6 feet 7 inches did not allow him to dominate the game from the interior as he had done in high school—he would need to develop a perimeter game if he ever hoped to succeed in the NBA. “I just thought that his game needed so much improvement,” Gentry recalled. “Needed improvement in ball handling, needed improvement from transitioning from an inside player in high school to being a wing player. Defensively, guarding guys on the floor. I just thought he needed a ton of improvement.” Young, Gentry said, was the beneficiary of unusual sympathy in a normally cutthroat business. “We kept him for a year, really, because we just felt sorry for the kid,” he said. As time went on, Young’s role with the team turned hazy. On a few occasions, the organization sent him to attend community events while the team practiced, according to Young. Am I even on the team? he wondered. Meanwhile, the combination of money, idle time, and an introduction to the local nightlife proved destructive. He traveled from Auburn Hills, the suburb where the Pistons played, to downtown Detroit’s strip clubs and nightclubs. Even though he was just 19 years old, Young knew that he would not be carded if he arrived with a teammate. Some players looked out for him. Young fondly recalled spending time with Christian Laettner. Bison Dele taught him how to drive a stick shift. But Young spent most of the season on the injured list with back spasms. When he did finally dress, the Pistons veterans asked him to lead them onto the court. An excited Young rushed out ahead as the crowd began to cheer. Young looked back and noticed something horrifying: he was all by himself. His teammates stood waiting in the tunnel, giggling at the perfectly played prank on the rookie. The joke, Young later said, represented one of the best and worst moments of his life. He played in just three games that season and totaled 15 minutes on the court. Detroit declined to pick up the second year of Young’s option. He spent the next fall trying to catch on in Philadelphia’s training camp. (Larry Brown, Philadelphia’s coach at the time, had also graduated from Hargrave.) One morning, as he walked in Philadelphia’s Center City, two men struck Young from behind and robbed him of his cash and jewelry. Philadelphia cut him before the season started.

  He had burned through two organizations, but Young was just 20. He still anticipated an NBA future. Then, the past caught up to Myron Piggie, Young, and the rest of the paid AAU players. In April 2000, a federal indictment accused Piggie of paying $35,550 to players, including $14,000 to Young. One of the players, Andre Williams, told Tom Grant that he felt uneasy about the money Piggie had given him. When asked about the payments by Grant, Piggie denied them. Grant then delivered a secretly recorded audio tape of Piggie discussing the payments with Williams to federal investigators.

  “This is not a case of fifty dollars, a pair of shoes, and a prom corsage,” U.S. Attorney Stephen L. Hill Jr. said. “He paid these players with the expectation that he would be paid later.” Piggie pleaded guilty to a conspiracy charge for defrauding four universities and the NCAA by paying players and affecting their eligibility. A federal judge sentenced him to 37 months in prison. “[The kids] know my heart, and I know their hearts. They know I didn’t intentionally set out to hurt anyone,” Piggie said at the sentencing. “And I’m sorry for the way it all went down.”

  Young’s view of Piggie remained conflicted. Yes, Piggie tried to profit from Young’s talent. But it was also in Piggie’s interest for Young to succeed. Piggie didn’t just hand off duffel bags stuffed full of cash. He would chip in the extra $50 for a tournament registration or even the box of pencils Young needed for school. Piggie became the father figure Young had always sought. “He was my consigliere,” Young explained. “If he told me to do it, then I did it. So to throw anyone under the bus for the decisions that I made is tough. But when you’re a child, you got a lot of different people influencing you.”

  For years, Young toiled in basketball’s lower echelons. His first layover was with the Rockford Lightning in the Continental Basketball Association, where he averaged 18.3 points and 7.3 rebounds under former Bull Stacey King. He had mostly stopped talking to reporters during this period. “My dream is to play in the NBA again,” he told the Wichita Eagle in a rare interview in June 2001. “That’s where I belong.” Stacey King ran the triangle offense and Young’s knowledge of the system eventually earned him an invitation to the Lakers’ summer league team in 2001. “The most intriguing thing right now, in addition to the things that got him drafted three years ago, is his age,” Lakers general manager Mitch Kupchak told the Los Angeles Daily News. But he failed to make the roster and spent that fall with the Canberra Cannons of Australia’s National Basketball League. His career went downhill from there. He ruptured his Achilles tendon in his first Australian game. The following January, Young crashed his car while driving in Canberra, Australia’s capital city. He had been at a club, drinking. A friend offered to drive him and teammate Emmanuel D’Cress home. “Man, I got it,” Young replied. In his haze, Young drove as though he were in the United States and not Australia. He drove the wrong way on a roundabout. He avoided hitting another car, but swerved his Holden into a ravine. Young’s airbag deployed and knocked him out. The radio had been tuned to a fast beat before the crash. Young awoke to the radio playing in slow motion. He believed his seat belt saved his life and still carries the scar it left across his neck. When he regained consciousness, his senses slowly returned. He looked at D’Cress, still knocked out. Young said he carried D’Cress nearly two miles back to his apartment. D’Cress sustained a broken neck. Doctors, Young said, later told him that if he had carried D’Cress much farther, D’Cress would have never walked again. The Cannons and Young agreed to terminate his contract after the accident—with Young’s visa now void. He contemplated retirement. Instead, Young embarked on a self-destructive cycle. Though waning interest in him remained from overseas teams, Young slipped out of shape. He treated the tryouts with foreign squads like paid vacations. Young did stints in Australia, Russia, China, and Israel from 1999 to 2006. The farther he traveled, the further he got from his dream of returning to the NBA. He thought of himself as a victim. He drank. He smoked. He partied. He struggled with depression, racked by the mistakes he had made. “Shit, I was so dumb,” Young said. “I leased shit then. I had a Ford Explorer. I had a Chevy Corvette. I had a couple mopeds. I was a big kid. I had toys, man. Kids have toys.”

  During this time, Young employed a financial adviser to oversee his affairs. But he would sabotage himself by telling the adviser that he planned to visit his daughters in Houston for a couple of weeks. The adviser would give him the money he needed for the trip, then Young would leave Houston after a couple of days, return home, and burn through the surplus on more cars and clubs, and on fronting more money to more friends and more family. His father asked for money every once in a while. Young said he gave what he could when he could. The cycle continued until Young could no longer secure a roster spot on a team overseas. Back in Wichita, police arrested him for missing a hearing over child-support payments.

  Rashard Lewis and Al Harrington both carved out successful NBA careers as reliable professionals. Neither had heard Young’s name for a while. “I always ask
about him,” Harrington said to a journalist. “Have you heard about him?”

  “Me, him, and Al Harrington played against each other,” Lewis said as his Miami Heat prepared to play in the 2013 NBA Finals. “Al is still in the NBA. He had a successful career. But Korleone Young coming out of high school that year was the best player in our draft out of the high school kids. He was by far the most dominant player in our era. After Detroit, I don’t know what really happened to him. It seemed like he just kind of disappeared.”

  •••

  The NBA faced an assortment of problems by the end of the lockout-shortened season. Television ratings had plummeted without Jordan. Players rushed to work themselves into shape at the season’s start and were made weary by the relentless onslaught of games. The SuperSonics, Pacers, and Pistons all had aspirations of replacing the fractured Bulls on the throne. Seattle hit turbulence and missed the playoffs completely. Detroit fell in the first round against Atlanta. The Pacers advanced to the conference finals, but could not get past the Knicks. The 1999 finals featured the Knicks against the San Antonio Spurs. It became obvious that Tim Duncan, San Antonio’s young center, had been one of the most complete players to enter the NBA in years. He was efficient and well coached, a tower who nailed his bank shot from all angles on the court, an impossible shot to guard, and he always made the right play. He linked with David Robinson in San Antonio’s post as a connection to two generations. Duncan could have probably left Wake Forest at the end of his sophomore year in 1995 and been the league’s top draft pick. He certainly could have departed at the end of his junior year and been swiped first overall. But Dave Odom, Wake Forest’s coach, never thought his star would prematurely leave college. Duncan’s mother died before his 14th birthday and had stressed the importance of college and an education. I’ve never seen a kid enjoy college life more than Tim, Odom occasionally thought to himself. What had cemented Odom’s belief was a trip he and Duncan took to Los Angeles to attend a banquet for the John R. Wooden Award. “Out here, there’s going to be some different writers and television people,” Odom told him. “They don’t know you well. They know you’re a great player, but they don’t know you. They’re going to ask you why you stayed for another year when you could have gone number one and that’s a lot of money for you and your family. You’re going to need an answer. I don’t know what that answer is, but you’re going to need one.” “Coach, it’s not really hard,” Duncan said. “I’ve always thought why should I try to do today what I’ll be better prepared to do a year from now?” Odom could not have thought of a better answer.

  Television ratings for the finals dropped 39 percent in the first two games of a finals San Antonio would win, compared with a season earlier when Jordan battled the Jazz. The NBA was inferior that season. Teams averaged just 91.6 points—down 4 points from a season earlier—the lowest since the inclusion of the shot clock in 1954. The perception—more than the frantic schedule, out-of-shape players, and the aging of a previous generation of superstars—was that the league had gotten too young, too fast. It was being overrun by players unprepared for the NBA. For the first time, David Stern gave serious thought to how he would logistically implement an age minimum of 20 years for new players. “I am prepared to go forward and try to put some rule in that would have the effect of raising the beginning age at which players can come into the NBA,” Stern said to reporters. In Indiana, Antonio Davis did not think it was necessarily a bad idea. He again thought about his own fragile mental state when he had left high school. For that reason, he had helped and mentored Harrington, and was kind and nurturing. The Pacers traded Davis to the Toronto Raptors after the NBA Finals, gaining the fifth overall pick in the approaching draft. The Pacers used the selection on Jonathan Bender, another high school prodigy, from the small city of Picayune in Mississippi. Stern still needed a groundswell of support to implement an age rule. There were not enough cautionary tales. Kevin Garnett, Kobe Bryant, and Tracy McGrady were developing into stars. Taj McDavid and Ellis Richardson were not heavily recruited by colleges, let alone ready for the NBA. Korleone Young had yet to become a full bust. But the approaching case and sad story of Leon Smith would offer Stern support in his burgeoning cause.

  13.

  Bill Peterson felt helpless as he watched doctors and medical personnel scramble to save Leon Smith at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas. Peterson was there to check on Smith, a Dallas Mavericks rookie drafted out of high school, who had tried to take his own life. He was far outside the realm of his job as an assistant coach for the Dallas Mavericks. With the team, he was a new breed of tutor, hired from the college ranks in 1998. An infant NBA once featured a single coach who presided over an entire team and occasionally doubled as a player. By 1999, coaching staffs stretched four or five deep and the Mavericks gave Peterson a wide-ranging job description that included developmental duties. Not only was he charged with advancing a player’s basketball skills, but, as the league annually introduced more teenagers, his portfolio included helping them acclimate themselves to adulthood and their new lifestyle. Because NBA teams were investing millions of dollars in young players largely based on potential, it became more financially responsible, even essential, to cultivate and extract that potential. The pool from which teams now drafted was vast. The NBA draft had expanded globally, with scouts spanning the world for premier talent. They were not to be disappointed. Dirk Nowitzki was part of a young, talented crop of players influenced in 1992 by watching Michael Jordan and his Olympic teammates tear through their competition in Barcelona. Nowitzki was tall and scrawny, a pure shooter who immediately drew comparisons to Larry Bird. The Mavericks drafted him from Germany in 1998 after he had played three and a half years of professional ball there, assigning him to Peterson’s watch. Peterson was patient, a useful trait developed in his days coaching at small junior and community colleges. In Nowitzki, Peterson found a willing and energetic worker who needed educating not only about the NBA, but also about American customs. Nowitzki was still learning English. The two often ran errands together. Peterson would take Nowitzki shopping for supplies and essentials like groceries and a bed. Nowitzki struggled on the court that first season. He barely played. When he did, he was often physically outmatched. “I’m going to fight this,” Nowitzki promised Peterson. “You watch. I’m not going to let those guys dunk on me and push me around. They ain’t going to push me around next year. I’m going to spend time in the weight room. I’m going to get after it.” True to his vow, Nowitzki returned with a larger build and a better shooting stroke the following season after regular visits by his German coach, Holger Geschwindner. He was on his way to stardom. “I knew he was going to be successful,” Peterson recalled. “It didn’t matter how he started when he first got here. With him, you just knew.”

  In all, it had been a good experience, one worth repeating, Peterson thought. The Mavericks were ahead of the curve in drafting international players. Donnie Nelson, another assistant and the coach’s son, also helped coach the Lithuanian national basketball team and was well known within international basketball circles. The Mavericks took pride in developing other lesser-known prospects and Peterson had been integral in boosting Steve Nash’s early career. Peterson hoped to have a similar experience, like the one he had shared with Nowitzki and Nash, when the Mavericks drafted Leon Smith. Smith was an unpolished player with imposing physical attributes. Dallas took Smith in 1999 out of a high school in Chicago. But from the beginning nothing had gone right. In life and on his quick ascent to the NBA, Smith had been let down in every conceivable manner by nearly everyone close to him. Everyone said they had helped, accepting praise for his rise. No one took responsibility for his downfall. Now Peterson found himself in the hospital with Smith. The young basketball player had attempted suicide by ingesting 250 aspirin tablets. He had painted his face, telling paramedics that he was an Indian fighting Christopher Columbus. Peterson was summoned to the hospital and unsure of what to do amid the frenzy. He sug
gested that a nurse remove an intravenous line from his right arm because that was Smith’s shooting hand. He did not know what else to offer and thought of all the other people who were supposed to be in Smith’s life, yet were absent in his time of need.

  •••

  Leon Smith had never seen anything so new, so clean. He did not want to leave the police station, with its revolving doors and shiny benches. Smith was about five years old and accompanied by his younger brother, Jerry. Living in Chicago, the brothers were often on their own. Sometimes, they rummaged through trash cans for food. Sometimes, they stole candy from convenience stores, a tactic of survival they practiced skillfully for some time because they were not being fed at home, wherever home happened to be at that moment. But this time they had been caught. The cop asked the brothers where their mother was. They responded that they did not know. That was enough for the cop. They were named wards of the state, their mother losing custody of them, their father long out of their lives, and sent to the Lydia Home Association. The boys’ home was founded in 1913, originally to house the city’s orphaned children. Doris Bauer, the home’s executive director, recognized the look when the young brothers arrived. It was the same mix of caution and confusion that she had seen in other children. The boys were surprised that they could now eat whenever they wanted and, for the first time, had their own clean beds. Leon Smith still suffered from a lack of love. He wanted it desperately. But he had most other essentials met, a step up for him in his young life. One day, a lady approached him and Jerry in the park and asked if the boys knew who she was. They said they did not and the woman said she was their mother. The reunion was short-lived.