UGA's Ware honors late brother

Playing the role of on-court comptroller, Dustin Ware is quietly doing his part to start something at Georgia.

There are the stirrings of life within Bulldogs basketball, green shoots poking through parched earth.

The gym has a shiny new face. Inside, there have been back-to-back packed houses the past week, indicating there might be an audience for the ball that bounces true. The coach is inching the bar upward each year. The Bulldogs, 14-4 after Saturday’s 86-64 win over Mississippi State, were even ranked for about 90 seconds at one point this month.

Ware’s contribution to all this is to be the dutiful guard, to be the responsible one on the floor, keep his team in balance. He, thus far, has played the most minutes of any starter and yet has averaged the fewest points of the five. He is defined by the assist-to-turnover ratio — his is 3.76-to-1, which ranks best in the SEC and top five in the country. But most fans don’t much cotton to that fancy math. That number is about as hip and sexy as bib overalls.

Coaches, however, live and die by that kind of dependability. “Dustin is such a stable person and a stable player,” said the Bulldogs’ Mark Fox. “He keeps us organized; he manages the tempo and keeps defenses honest as far as his shooting goes. He’s really a key for us.”

Meanwhile, just as quietly, Ware is finishing something at Georgia.

He is completing a familial circuit, stepping up for a half brother who never had a chance to find himself in college.

Following the trail

Ware listed many reasons for coming to Georgia out of tiny North Cobb Christian: playing close to home; playing right away; helping to rebuild a basketball presence at a football school.

Courted by Fox’s predecessor, Dennis Felton, Ware committed to the Bulldogs early, before his junior season in high school. Georgia had one singular, insurmountable advantage over anyone else. Stacy Ware had gone there — if only briefly.

A freshman in his second semester at Georgia, Stacy had came back home to the Atlanta area on an April weekend, 1990, in anticipation of the birth of his father’s first child with his new wife, Lisa. But there was no movement on that front by the time he had to return to school for Monday classes. He promised his father he’d come back to see his new brother the following weekend.

But back in Athens, Stacy was struck by meningitis. He died with frightening swiftness.

Four days later, his family navigating cross-currents of emotions, Dustin Ware was born.

It was only through family lore that Dustin got to know his late brother. “He was an influence in the trail he left,” he said. “Dad told me all the stories about him. He almost was like a fictional character because I never met him, but at the same time he was very real.”

And, while Dustin certainly owed nothing to the memory of a brother he never met, remember he is a point guard at heart. And a point guard is all about making sense and symmetry out of chaos, about making things right.

“We told him that, when it come to basketball, wherever he wanted to go, we’d support him a hundred percent,” said his father, Nolan Ware. “And he would talk about his brother. He said, ‘What I want to do is go to Georgia and finish that part of the story.’”

“I felt it was upon me to finish what [Stacy] started here. That was a pretty big factor in my decision,” Dustin said.

To this day, family members tell him how much he reminds them of Stacy, aside from an unfortunate genetic lapse in growth. Both Stacy and his other half brother, Sean, were well over 6 feet. His younger brother, 14-year-old Hunter, an up-and-coming guard himself, already is eye-to-eye with 5-foot-11 Dustin. Thus, it is Dustin’s lot to forever guard players taller than himself, to dodge and dart among the trees on both ends of the floor and rely upon lateral quickness rather than any natural vertical advantage.

Otherwise, he carries many traits of the brother he never knew.

“My dad said we act the same,” Dustin said, “both eager to learn and get better in whatever it is. Whatever our goals are, we go 100 percent after them.”

College transition

Where Stacy wanted to be a broadcast journalist, Dustin had basketball on his mind from the time he was old enough to tear up the little plastic toddler basket he had at home.

It always seemed like a contest of wills as to which would wear out first, Dustin or the rim. “He has an unbelievable drive to get better each day,” said Greg Matta, his coach at North Cobb Christian. “He would wear me out: ‘Coach can I get into the gym? Coach, can I get into the weight room? Coach, can you open the gym for me?’”

Ware began at North Cobb Christian in the sixth grade, after the family moved to Powder Springs. As his talents grew, so did the pressure to move to a bigger school with a more established program and more potential exposure to college recruiters.

But the family stayed put, recognizing the small school as a place Dustin could thrive. “We have faith. We put him here for a reason and thought that, if God wants him to play ball somewhere, he’s going to make a way for that,” his mother said.

He won plenty of games, grabbed the eye of recruiters and, yes, thrived, maintaining a strong connection with the Kennesaw school. After beating mighty Kentucky two weeks ago, Ware celebrated by going back to his room and taping a short promotional video for his alma mater.

For as much as Ware believed Georgia was where he was meant to be, it wasn’t an easy and comfortable fit. He had lost 12 games throughout his entire high school career and would lose that many before the first three months of his college career were done. Thrown into the deep end of running the point as a freshman — splitting with Zac Swansey (now at Tennessee Tech) — Ware was learning to drive a team on a demolition-derby course known as the SEC.

“But that was good for me,” said Ware of that first 12-20 season (3-13 in the SEC), “and that’s what I wanted. I wanted to get out there and play. I knew I was going to make a lot of mistakes and that I’d learn from them.”

Felton was dismissed in January of that season. And, after finishing it out with interim coach Pete Herrmann, Ware would have to introduce himself to yet another head coach — Fox.

A junior now, he remains a guy who has to be dragged off the floor. His minutes have not waned even as the Bulldogs have gained depth at the position.

Ware has a long, wide competitive streak. His family tells him Stacy was like that, too. Channeling that competitiveness, learning the gift of effective communication that Stacy possessed, that was another thing. As a young boy, Dustin would punctuate losses to his father in checkers and chess by flipping over the board and sending the pieces flying.

“My mom thought I had anger problems when I was a little kid. Dad said that was just my competitiveness, that’s something we just have to keep working with and hopefully point in the right direction.