Not all the good die young, and other bits of flotsam as college basketball`s long-and-winding road finally reaches Denver . . .
– Your name is Kenny Anderson, and you began your freshman year at Georgia Tech surrounded by a mound of press clippings as high as the nearby Stone Mountains. Your position is point guard, the single, most vital position in the college game, and it was widely predicted that your inexperience would cause you occasionally to falter and fall. Even your coach, the excitable Bobby Cremins, worried about that combination of forces, worried about it and said in November, ”People are going to expect a lot.
”It`s going to be a problem, and if he doesn`t deal with it, it`s going to hurt him. He`s going to have bad games. We`re going to have bad games as a team. So right now, he has to fight that high-expectation thing. But if he hangs in there, he`s going to have his day in the sun.”
That day is here, already, and you loom as one of the most mesmerizing characters who this weekend will take the Final Four stage. Your position in the spotlight, that defies all the accepted tenets of your game, but you know it is not all that surprising. Why, in your very first appearance as a collegian, you lit up a touring Soviet team in an exhibition with 21 points and 13 assists. You then would go on and, over 34 games, only twice fail to score in double figures, and earn just about every All-freshman bauble out there to be grabbed.
Oh, sure, you had some stumbles along the way, but none was fatal, a fact you proved with your after-the-last-second shot in regulation against Michigan State in the Southeast Regional semis. (As accomplished as you are, you can`t be faulted for the faulty officiating that counted your shot good and paved the way for your team`s overtime victory.) That bit of legerdemain, it gave the Spartans fits, but isn`t that just what you said a player at your position should do?
”A pure point guard,” you said, emphasizing pure, ”is somebody who can penetrate and get inside and give (the other team`s) big people trouble. A pure point guard gives a whole team trouble. A pure point guard gives people fits. A point guard should be able to take over without scoring a point. Or you can score your points at the end of a game and be effective that way. You have to know when to shoot, when to pass. You have to get the ball to certain people at certain times. You have to be in control.”
You, in turn, played with remarkable control in your remarkable season, and that led to some fairly remarkable comments. Marty Blake, the NBA`s director of scouting, said you were ”the best freshman point guard to come into college in 50 years.”
Georgia coach Hugh Durham, who entered the college wars in 1960 as a Florida State assistant, said, ”He`s the most complete backcourt freshman I`ve ever had the misfortune of going against.”
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Temple coach John Chaney compared you to Cavalier coach Lenny Wilkens, who just played the point well enough to make the basketball Hall of Fame, and N.C. State coach Jim Valvano took even that a step further. You might remember a guy named Michael Jordan was a frosh at North Carolina when his jump shot won a national title for the Tar Heels, but here was Mr. V effusing, ”In the 10 years I`ve been in the ACC, there hasn`t been a freshman guard to come along like him. Maybe (LSU`s) Chris Jackson was this good last year, I don`t know. But nobody in this league has been.”
Well, to pause a minute for some statistics, let`s compare. In Jordan`s freshman year, he played 34 games and averaged 13.5 points, 4.4 rebounds and 1.7 assists. You, through your first 34 games, have averaged 20.7 points, 5.5 rebounds and 8 assists.
Your numbers are quite obviously better, but-let`s be honest now-that is not a fair comparison because Jordan was not a point, and played under Dean Smith`s restrictive system. So let us go further, and compare your numbers to a couple of other fair guards who just happen to play the point. As a freshman at Indiana, Isiah Thomas averaged 14.6 points, 4 rebounds and 5.5 assists. As a freshman at Michigan State, Earvin Johnson averaged 17 points, 7.9 rebounds and 7.4 assists.
So, yeah, you do hold your own against the best, and neither Magic nor Isiah managed to make the Final Four as a frosh. But, then, the expectations you have for yourself, they`re as high as all those that surrounded you just five months ago. ”I know,” you once said, expressing your own hopes, ”that people will say, `Oh, you`re just a freshman.` But I have certain things I expect of myself, and when I throw a chest pass when I should`ve thrown a bounce pass, I get upset.
”I just want to keep excelling. I want to excel at every level, at high school and college and the pros. Guys like Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan have done that. I want to, too.”
– ”What`s up, fat boy?” Brian Oliver asked when he first met Dennis Scott at the 1987 U.S. Olympic Festival. They are now Anderson`s partners on Lethal Weapon 3, as Tech likes to call its trio of bombers. But until this season, Scott was known in Atlanta by the name he had picked up back home in Reston, Va. ”Legs `n` Butt,” that was the name.
His 259 pounds, they were what earned him that name, and when he refused to slim down even after Cremins` earnest pleadings, he earned others as well. Fat, lazy and unmotivated were some of them, and accompanying them was the reputation of being nothing more than a fine jump shooter.
It was only last summer that he decided to attack those slights, and he returned to Atlanta in the fall minus 39 of his pounds. His svelte self has proven to be (no surprise here) a quicker and more-mobile weapon, a fact attested to by a very simple stat. In 64 games as a freshman and sophomore-games when he would do little more than run to a spot and wait for a shot-he averaged less than 2.4 free throws a game. In 34 games this year-games when he cut off picks and sometimes penetrated-he averaged a little more than 5.7 free throws a game.
– Anderson is not the only precocious point who will be on display in Denver. Duke`s Bobby Hurley also is a mere frosh, and Arkansas` Lee Mayberry is only a sophomore. . . . Blue Devil coach Mike Krzyzewski becomes the sixth coach to make four Final Four appearances. (Indiana`s Bob Knight also is part of that group.) Leading the way in this category is former UCLA coach John Wooden with 12, followed by Carolina`s Smith (seven).. . . And finally, for you stat freaks: For the second year in a row, only one No. 1 seed made it to the Final Four. Last year, it was Illinois. This year, it`s Nevada-Las Vegas. Each of the previous eight Final Fours included two top seeds. And the last top seed to win the title? Indiana in 1987.