0303200272
DETROIT FREE PRESS
030320
Thursday, March 20, 2003
METRO FINAL
1E
MITCH ALBOM
Copyright (c) 2003, Detroit Free Press
SMALL-TOWN ROOTS LEAD CMU TO THE BIG TIME
Chris Kaman takes the pay phone. He yawns. It is not boredom. It is simply
lack of sleep. He was up until 2 a.m. and then awoke again at 4 a.m. and then
he traveled several hours from Mt. Pleasant to the Detroit airport and is now
awaiting the flight to Minneapolis to connect to the flight to Salt Lake City
to meet the bus that will take him and his Central Michigan teammates to the
hotel and then the arena where they will complete their longest trip of the
season -- heck, only their fourth plane trip of the season! -- and play today,
for the first time in their lives, in the opening round of the Big Dance.
Not that dancing seems likely at this moment.
"I'm so exhausted," Kaman says, laughing.
What were you doing until 2 a.m, he is asked. Partying? Celebrating the
Chippewas' season?
"I was watching cartoons," he says. Then he adds, almost sheepishly, "I was a
little nervous."
Can you blame him? Life is not supposed to move this fast for a 20-year-old
small-town son of a public works father and teacher's aide mother. This is a
kid who came late to basketball, who planned on "going into law enforcement"
-- in other words, becoming a cop -- and who never saw himself, even when he
quickly accepted a scholarship from CMU, as anything more than "a role
player."
Here is the truth about Chris Kaman now. He still has one year of college
eligibility left. He is 7-feet tall. He averages 22.7 points a game. And NBA
scouts are calling him a lottery pick.
A lottery pick?
"It's strange," admits the junior center from Wyoming Tri-Unity Christian. "I
never thought I'd be good enough for the NBA. I just wanted to play close to
home."
A word from the coach
Kaman passes the pay phone to his fresh-faced coach, Jay Smith. Airport scenes
like this are, for Smith, old and new. A decade ago, when he was the lowliest
level of assistant coach at Michigan, scraping by on $16,000 a year, trips
were not only the norm, they were a circus. It was the Fab Five era, Chris
Webber, Jalen Rose, Juwan Howard, et al. Reporters and TV crews followed
wherever they went.
Smith helped mold the big men -- particularly Howard -- then broke free in
1996 and returned to the small-town roots from whence he came. A year at Grand
Valley State led the Mio native to the head coaching spot at CMU, where he
inherited a losing program with a weak reputation. He rolled up his sleeves.
He dug in.
And then one day, a small-town tip led him to an even smaller high school,
where he laid eyes on a blond-banged 7-footer with "quick reflexes" and an
obvious passion for playing. He felt that coach's shiver down his spine.
"Were you worried other coaches would discover Kaman?" Smith is asked.
"Are you kidding?" he says, laughing. "I started looking around the gym in the
first 10 minutes."
No one else was there. Kaman, the kind of diamond in the small-school rough
that can make a program like Central Michigan's, became a focus for Smith, and
he recruited him intensely. And then came his first home visit, with the
family around the dinner table.
"They cleared the plates, and suddenly, Chris' older brother says, 'Aw, why
don't you just commit?' " Smith recalls. "I couldn't believe it! I didn't want
to pressure him. So I just sat there. Then Chris' father says, 'Yeah, you
should go there.'
"I actually interrupted and said, 'Hey, Chris, if you're not ready, it's OK,
don't rush it.' And Chris said, 'Nah, I'm ready. I'm gonna go.' "
You know what they call that in college basketball?
Jackpot.
A lesson for life
The climb since then has been steady -- for Kaman, Smith and the whole CMU
program. This season, they have peaked with a conference title, a 24-6 record
and a No. 11 seed for the NCAA tournament, their first such appearance since
the late '80s. The Chips play 15th-ranked Creighton tonight, and should they
somehow win, they would almost certainly face Duke, the royal family of the
college basketball world.
It's all heady stuff for the small-town coach and the small-town kid, neither
of whom are very small anymore.
"I've never even been to an NCAA tournament," says Kaman, who grew six inches
in one year in high school, then three more the following year. "I watched
them on TV. It is a little weird seeing your school name in a bracket."
Smith took the Chips to Salt Lake City early for precisely that reason. Like
Gene Hackman's head coach in "Hoosiers," Smith wanted to remind them that the
rims are the same height and the floor is the same length. The audience may be
nationwide, but the game remains the game.
Still, win or lose -- and stay or go, because Kaman is weighing the option of
leaving school early, depending on his NBA prospects -- there never will be a
moment like this for either of them again, standing in an airport, waiting for
the flight, crossing the threshold from outsider to insider, from unknown to
known, from dot on the map to entry in a million office pools.
"This," Kaman says, wistfully, as the airport voices echo through the pay
phone, "will be the furthest away I've ever played."
Then again, as he and Smith are proving, life isn't so much about where you've
been as where you're going.
Contact MITCH ALBOM at 313-223-4581 or albom@freepress.com. Catch "The Mitch
Albom Show" 3-6 p.m. weekdays on WJR-AM (760).
THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION MAY DIFFER SLIGHTLY FROM THE PRINTED ARTICLE.
COLUMN