An Athlete Takes His Eyes Off the Prize

CHICAGO â€”  Leon Smith was beaming that June night, and who could blame him: At 18, he was about to become a millionaire. Playing in the NBA. Life couldn’t be sweeter if he’d caught a genie in a bottle.

“Lee-bo! Lee-bo!� His buddies chanted his nickname, slapping him on the back and tugging at his arms to congratulate him moments after he was chosen as the final first-round pick in the NBA draft.

Leon had returned to Sullivan House that night, his home for much of his teen years, to celebrate with other boys who, like him, were wards of the state.

Bill Green, the group home supervisor, a bear-like man old enough to be Leon’s grandfather, lifted the 6-foot-10 teen in the air, just as he had many times after a victorious high school game.

“Ho, ho! What a deal!� he roared, hugging Leon as a TV sportscast blared in the background with news of the superstar from King High School.

What a deal it was for a kid who scrounged for food before he was removed from his mother’s custody at age 5. Who grew up in shelters and group homes. Who saw enough counselors and psychologists to fill a hospital and yet kept his eye on the prize: a pro basketball career. And straight out of high school, no less.

It was a Cinderella story, with a size 17 sneaker.

But after Leon left, Green began to wonder.

“I remember saying to myself, ‘I never thought it would happen,’ � he says. “I thought it was going to be a fast life for him. Leon was not a quick adjuster. . . . I just thought it was going to be a bit too much for him. He had so much to overcome.�

*

Seven months later, the fairy tale has turned into a soap opera.

Since the Dallas Mavericks acquired Leon in a trade last summer, his life has been in constant turmoil: A run-in with an assistant coach on his first day of practice. Conflicts with two agents. A suicide attempt and a stay in a psychiatric ward. Two arrests. A suspended contract.

All before he has played a single game.

Now Leon Smith is reportedly negotiating a deal for the Mavericks to buy out his $1.4-million contract over 10 years, though the team’s new owner also is considering bringing him back next season.

“I want to play,� he recently told TV station KRIV in Houston, where he moved after being released from a psychiatric program in Dallas. “I’m really ready to take on responsibility now.�

Others have jumped from high school to the pros in recent years.

Kevin Garnett did it, joining the Minnesota Timberwolves. But the Chicago prep star was an extrovert with phenomenal basketball skills and a single-mindedness rare in someone so young.

Kobe Bryant did it, with the Los Angeles Lakers. But he came from a stable family, had lived in Italy (he speaks fluent Italian) and had a role model under his own roof: his father, Joe, a former NBA player.

Both have been spectacular successes.

But Leon was a different kid from a different background.

He had the raw talent. But he wasn’t disciplined in high school. He didn’t always practice hard. He didn’t always shake hands after a game.

He had drive. But there was little in his hard-knocks childhood to prepare him mentally for the pressures of the NBA. He wounded easily.

“I kind of handled him with kid gloves,� says Green. “He seemed so fragile. You could see there was a lack of trust in everything and everybody. . . . I just know how he hurt a lot, but he would never let it out.�

Sometimes Leon would skip school, feigning illness. “When I would criticize him, he would almost get sick,� Green recalls. “He would just lay down on the bed and put his hands over his head.�

Almost everyone involved in Leon Smith’s life has been labeled the villain in this saga: The Dallas Mavericks, especially coach Don Nelson. His flamboyant high school coach. The recruiters in expensive sneakers. The juvenile justice system. His mother, maybe most of all.

Moving from college to the pros is hard enough, but from high school it’s “a quantum leap,� says NBA spokesman Brian McIntyre. “Everybody needs to have someone to lean on. It appears . . . Leon did not have that support.�

A kid needs more than a hoop dream to succeed, says Darryl Dawkins, who bypassed college for the Philadelphia 76ers in 1975 and became known for his ferocious dunks.

“If you’re stable and steady, and you’ve got something to hold on to besides basketball, you can do it,� says Dawkins, now coach of the Winnipeg Cyclone, a minor league team.

“But if you don’t, you’re going to suffer.�

Brothers Roamed City Streets Seeking Food

Leon learned about suffering early.

By the time he was 5, his father was gone. His mother couldn’t cope. Sometimes she was AWOL. The state took custody of him and five siblings, ruling them to be victims of neglect.

In interviews last year, Leon offered a glimpse into his childhood: Wandering the streets with his younger brother, Jerry, searching for food. Ending up in a police station, where he was so amazed by the revolving doors and cleanliness, he didn’t want to leave. Seeing more than 100 psychologists and counselors.

The brothers moved to Lydia House, a residential home in a middle-class community on the Northwest Side. They whiled away hours at the YMCA across the street, playing soccer, baseball, football--and basketball.

They had toys, clothes, food, security and holiday celebrations, but something was desperately missing: the warmth of a family.

“You can get all the presents you want, but when it comes down to having that love inside, it doesn’t equal,� Leon told the Chicago Tribune last year. “It’s like with rich people. You can have a big house and a lot of cars. But if you don’t have people to love, you’re not going to be happy.�

Doris Bauer, who ran Lydia House and became close to the boys, says the brothers were competitive and inseparable. They were just 10 months apart, but opposites: Jerry outgoing, Leon intensely private.

“He doesn’t want people to know his business,� she says. “He’s always been very sensitive.�

After several years, their mother wanted her sons back. But a judge granted their wish to stay put. (She did regain custody of two daughters, however.)

Then, as Leon neared high school, he had to leave because Lydia House had no teen program. The inseparable brothers were separated.

“I thought it was terrible,� says Robert Harris, chief deputy Cook County public guardian, who watched over the boys as wards. He worried Leon would see it as one more rejection.

“Most kids . . . there’s some consistency in where you’re going to go,� Harris says. “He didn’t have that.�

Jerry eventually found a foster family, but Leon kept moving. An aunt. A boys’ home. A shelter. Then Sullivan House, on the South Side.

Soon he enrolled at King High School. The 6-foot-7 freshman was a welcome sight to Landon “Sonny� Cox, the mink-coat-wearing, Mercedes-driving basketball coach, who has built his Jaguars into a nationally ranked team.

Leon was so shy at first that he ate lunch in the coaches’ offices. He cared little about money. He returned every penny in change when he ran fast-food errands for coaches. He often gave away part of his weekly $10 allowance at Sullivan House.

The boys there liked his easygoing ways; they were awe-struck by his backboard-breaking dunks. But Leon shunned group bowling outings. And although boys hung out in his room (the neatest in the house), he rarely ventured to theirs.

When his mother visited, sometimes bringing his sisters, Leon said little, Green recalls. “I don’t think she ever felt comfortable,� he says. “I don’t think he ever made her feel comfortable.�

Linda Smith now bristles when others talk of relationships with her son.

“It’s like he doesn’t have no one,� she says. “Everyone’s coming out and saying they’re a surrogate parent. I was his mother all along. Everyone is trying to claim him as theirs.�

By senior year, Leon was making a name for himself in high school basketball camps around the country that serve as coming-out parties for promising recruits.

He was 6-foot-10, 235 pounds, with an eagle-like “wingspan� of 90 inches--2 1/2 yards. He averaged 25 points, 14.5 rebounds and eight blocked shots a game his senior year, leading King to the city championship.

“Leon was a natural,� gushes Ormon O’Quinn, a former assistant King coach who became so close to his player that he considered adopting him. “He could run the floor like a deer. He could do all the things a little man could do. He could shoot the three.�

Pro scouts and college recruiters took notice.

The Atlanta Hawks, the Houston Rockets, the Lakers and others were interested. So were several colleges, including Fresno State and DePaul, Green says.

Recruiters came calling, some driving Mercedes Benzes and Lincolns. The phone kept ringing. The kid who grew up looking for a home had his choice of places to bunk now.

Nearing graduation, and not having taken college entrance exams, Leon approached a man he had met months earlier: Sonny Vaccaro, a behind-the-scenes power broker who runs basketball camps for Adidas.

Vaccaro said Leon talked to him about everything from authors to animals to his childhood. Then he said he wanted to go pro.

Vaccaro replied:

“I will help you.�

Conflicts and Confrontations

The downward spiral in Dallas began almost immediately.

At Leon Smith’s first pro practice at rookie camp, assistant coach Donnie Nelson (coach Don Nelson’s son) ordered players to run extra wind sprints. “Why don’t you run it?� Smith retorted. He flung his jersey to the floor and stormed off to the locker room.

TV crews recorded the confrontation. It made the 10 p.m. news in Chicago.

There were other problems. He missed some summer games. He refused to carry team baggage, a traditional rookie chore. He fired his first agent.

Reportedly he had agreed to a plan: If he wasn’t ready to play with the Mavericks at summer’s end, he would spend a year maturing in a minor league or in European basketball. But then he balked.

Under NBA rules, as a first-round pick, Smith was guaranteed a three-year contract. His was $1.45 million.

In early November, he joined the Mavericks but had almost no contact with teammates.

Two weeks later, he unraveled.

His Chicago girlfriend--still in high school and one of the nation’s top basketball prospects--had recently broken up with him. Her first name had been tattooed on his right arm.

On Nov. 14 he hurled a rock through a car window and swallowed 250 aspirin.

“I was trying to end my life,� he told the Houston TV station. “I was trying to get rid of the pain.�

When he awoke, he said, “part of me was like, ‘I should’ve died . . . and a part of me was like, ‘Well, God gave you another chance; make the best of it.’ �

Doris Bauer of Lydia House, who was in Dallas with other family members to help Leon get settled, thinks he was just overwhelmed. There was a fancy apartment. Famous people. “Plus,� she says, “the pressure of other people calling him up, old friends, cousins, saying, ‘Give me some money, I need some money. You’re rich now.’ �

Green drove Smith’s mother and three of his sisters to Dallas to see him. But he was already gone, receiving treatment in Atlanta when they arrived.

By then, Mavericks Coach Don Nelson--who had not met or seen Smith play in person before he was chosen--declared the decision to draft him was “looking like a mistake.�

Weeks later, Smith probably reinforced that impression.

According to Chicago police, he flashed a handgun at his former girlfriend outside her high school, got out of jail, then broke the windows of her mother’s car and rammed it with his truck.

Hearing the news, the senior Nelson said: “The young man is in serious need of help. I’ve known that for quite some time, and I hope he gets it.�

Leon Smith’s supporters have criticized the Mavericks for not knowing enough about his background and for not supporting him enough when his troubles surfaced.

But others defend the team, saying officials made numerous offers to help him with living arrangements and had someone spending 10 to 12 hours a day with him.

“People have been pretty fair,� says Matt Muehlebach, his second agent, fired earlier this month. “People know the odds he faced to get to where he was. He has been an incredible success story up to this point. . . . Leon’s a good kid with a great heart.�

And Pete Babcock, general manager of the Atlanta Hawks, who interviewed Smith last year and found him “very open� about his troubled childhood, doesn’t blame the Mavericks.

“None of us in the NBA are qualified to help someone with those types of issues,� he says.

Coach Cox, from King High, doesn’t see it that way.

“They treated him like junk,� he fumed after attending a Chicago court hearing last month for Smith. “God don’t make no junk.�

After the court date, Smith returned to Dallas, where he was receiving psychiatric treatment. He was escorted by two members of the NBA Players’ Assn. assistance program.

As they hustled him into a black Cadillac, his mother rushed to the car and peered in. The door slammed, leaving her alone on the street.

In her hand she held a piece of paper she had tried to give to her son. It was her phone number.

*

Leon Smith now lives in Houston, where he is working out, undergoing therapy and being guided by the players’ association.

He told KRIV he isn’t bitter about the Mavericks’ actions and believes he is stronger and wiser now.

He wants another shot at the NBA. And folks back home hope he gets it.

“He’s got things about him that are a lot tougher than people think,� Green says. “There are situations when he could have given up, and he bounced back.�

Will he this time?

“I’m keeping my fingers crossed.�