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DEL.ICIO.USWilkins blazed trail for today’s migrant talent
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Terence Moore
Are you wondering why it is easier for the first time in 10, 20, 30 years to do your income taxes than to fill out your brackets for March Madness?
Consider this:
Kevin Durant is from Baltimore, but he plays for Texas. Chris Lofton is from Mason County, Ky., but he plays for Tennessee. Greg Oden and Mike Conley are from Indianapolis, but they play for Ohio State. D.J. White is from Tuscaloosa, but he plays for Indiana. Tyler Hansbrough is from Poplar Bluff, Mo., but he plays for North Carolina. Terrence Williams is from Seattle, but he plays for Louisville.
Then there is Winthrop, the epitome of what is happening these days as the most unlikely of No. 11 seeds. The Eagles’ nest is somewhere in the nothingness of Rock Hill, S.C. Still, their key guys are from New Zealand (Craig Bradshaw), as in kiwis, and Kingston, N.C., (Michael Jenkins) as in why didn’t such a talented guard stay around Tobacco Road?
You can blame the basketball gifted going from here to everywhere on a rapidly expanding mobile society. Well, that, along with cable television willing to show anything that dribbles to make it easier for the folks to see you back home. You also have the epidemic of AAU programs that expose players to different regions while giving coaches a chance to recruit multiple youngsters in one place.
As a result, you haveyoungsters willing to leave time zones and comfort zones. Which means the NCAA tournament never has been more stuffed with quality teams. Which means your brackets will be a mess by Monday.
Which means Dominique Wilkins was a fluke for his time.
Wilkins had the audacity during the Neanderthal Days of college basketball in the late 1970s to take his considerable skills to another state after high school. More shocking, he left the hoops-laden hills of North Carolina for Georgia, where basketball is just something to ignore between the end of football season and the start of spring practices.
“The majority of the guys in those days went to school in the state that they grew up in, and you call tell by those old Kentucky teams,” Wilkins said. “You’re talking about guys like Mel Turpin, [Dirk] Minniefield, all of those guys. Some of those Kentucky players were from other parts of the country, but a lot of them were from the Kentucky area.”
More than half of them. Now the Kentucky team in this year’s NCAA tournament has nobody — that’s right, nobody — on its current roster from a state that likes to suggest it invented hoops.
Elsewhere, Florida is the defending champion, and there have been more than a few decent athletes from that state (Deion Sanders, Chris Everett, Gary Sheffield, Michael Irvin, Tracy McGrady, Chris DiMarco, Warren Sapp). Even so, among the starters for the Gators, Corey Brewer is from Portland, Tenn., Joakim Noah is from New York, Al Horford is from Grand Ledge, Mich., and Lee Humphrey is from Maryville. Tenn. Only Taurean Green is from Florida (Fort Lauderdale).
That’s opposed to those Neanderthal Days, when the majority of Wilkins’ contemporaries rarely left for distant basketball lands. Charles Barkley went from Leeds, Ala., to Auburn. Larry Bird went from French Lick, Ind. to Indiana University before settling at Indiana State. Ralph Sampson went from Harrisonburg, Va. to the University of Virginia.
Plus, you had Magic Johnson deciding that there was no place like home by remaining around Lansing to play at Michigan State. Not only that, you had Michael Jordan scooting across North Carolina from Wilmington to Chapel Hill.
“Everybody thought I was going to stay in state like James Worthy, and that we were going to North Carolina together, because we were in the same year (1979), which would have been one hell of a college team,” said Wilkins, chuckling at his understatement. “In hindsight, looking back on that, and it’s like, wow. It could have been me, Michael Jordan, Worthy, Jimmy Black, Sam Perkins. But at the last minute, I decided to go to Georgia.”
So Wilkins was a pioneer, with the slam-dunk and otherwise.
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