/ laugh at PosterX / GroupOfPeopleY who thought / believed *insert though/belief here*"
Tweet
http://www.indystar.com/article/2013...TS04/304190046
Mostly just fluff that's stuff we already know, but the Houston dustup and Jeff sitting him down and setting him straight were news to me. I remembered a team argument in Houston that Wells talked about listening to through the lockerroom door or something like that but I don't think we ever knew the specifics of it, at least I didn't. And Jeff Foster being the guy to get through to this brash young Brooklyn kid says a lot about Foster's interpersonal skills really, that dude's a gem.
And I'll admit back in 2010 when I saw Lance Stephenson scroll across the screen as our 2nd rounder I rolled my eyes and said "****." Didn't want him, thought he'd kill the image rejuvenation that had to happen. And he came close to doing it. But he's grown up, at least somewhat, and become a man. Never in a million years thought three years later I'd be copying and pasting postive writeups in the Star about him. Even though I didn't have anything to do with it the way the franchise basically broke him down and built him into a better person makes me proud to be a Pacers fan really. There's not many franchises that would even attempt that, let alone actually do it.
NEW YORK — The stench of urine and feces was unbearable.
Lance Stephenson had to block out the smell and keep his head on a swivel.
The Pacers swingman — often scared — ran the 15 flights of dark, dreary stairs in the Coney Island, N.Y. apartment building he lived in during the early part of his life to get in shape for basketball. Drug dealers and homeless people often frequented the stairwell for shelter.
Stephenson ran those steps every morning at 6 a.m. with his father, Lance Stephenson Sr., there to make sure nobody messed with his son.
“It was very rough,” Stephenson said. “I’d see bullet shots through the window in the lobby, drugs, there would be crackheads around. I used to be scared, but then I got tough and knew I had to be aware while I was running.”
It was on those stairs, at the beach a couple hundred yards away where he regularly ran 2.5 miles, and the basketball court 20 yards from where he lived, that Stephenson learned to be tough.
Coney Island is a place where people line the block waiting to get inside food kitchens. Bars are on the windows of most businesses and owners pull gates down at the end of the day to protect their establishments. It’s where outsiders draw the attention of the natives because they know you’re not from the neighborhood.
“Toughness is what you think of when talking about Lance,” said Gary Charles, one of Stephenson’s AAU coaches. “He was the kid who wanted to be the next Stephon (Marbury), the next Sebastian (Telfair) out of Coney Island. Sometimes kids don’t want to embrace it. He embraced it and wanted to enhance it. You have to be tough to get out of there.”
But Stephenson wasn’t a first-round pick like Marbury and Telfair. That toughness also manifested itself as an attitude that turned some NBA teams off when he was coming out of the University of Cincinnati and it had Pacers’ teammates wanting to fight him during his rookie season.
That toughness that got Stephenson to the NBA? It almost ended his career.
“I’m not going to lie, when Lance first got here, he was a (expletive), put that in the paper,” center Roy Hibbert said. “He’s way better now. He’s a lot more receptive. He’s light years where he was before.”
Meant to be
James Black, another of Stephenson’s AAU coaches, couldn’t believe what he was seeing on the court at Rucker Park.
It’s where the best of the best play in New York City and Stephenson, just 13 years old, was not backing down from anyone. He yelled at Marcus Hatten, a starter at St. John’s at the time, demanding the ball from him.
Stephenson finished with 12 points and never looked out of place.
“That’s when I knew,” Black said. “I was like, ‘Wow.’ Lance was in eighth grade playing on my 16-year-old team. He was going all around the city dominating people. He was tough and had no fear of anybody.”
The announcer first called him “Ice Water” because Stephenson made every shot he attempted. But then changed it to “Born Ready” because of Stephenson’s knack to hold his own against older competition.
Playing against competition the same age wasn’t an option for Stephenson. His mind frame was, “if you want to be the best, you have to play the best.” He had the physique to match players several years older.
Stephenson dunked for the first time in an AAU tournament when he was in sixth grade.
That was the start of things for the cocky player who showed up in the NBA. The better he played, the more he talked.
“That’s all we do in New York, you trash talk and then you go out and back it up,” Stephenson said. “If you’re not backing it up, you can’t talk. I felt like I was backing it up. I was killing everybody they were putting in front of me.”
Stephenson spent five minutes going back and forth at O.J. Mayo, three years his senior and one of the premier high school players in the country at the time, during a summer camp. Stephenson played on the same AAU team as future-NBA players Joakim Noah and Danny Green, both older than him.
Producer Paul Rivera followed Stephenson his entire junior year for an online documentary called “Born Ready.”
“We had never seen anybody like Lance, and that says a lot considering all the great players to come out of New York,” Rivera said. “There were other good kids, but they weren’t manly like Lance. You had players like Ron Artest and Stephon Marbury going crazy every time they saw Lance play and the things he was able to do.”
Stephenson originally attended Bishop Loughlin High School in Brooklyn, N.Y., but transferred to Lincoln, which also produced Marbury and Telfair, two days into the school year.
Stephenson led Lincoln to four city championships, something Marbury and Telfair can’t claim. He left as New York’s all-time leading scorer (2,946 points).
“Lance was a die-hard Coney Island guy, so he had to go to Lincoln where we bleed blue here,” Stephenson’s high school coach, Dwayne “Tiny” Morton, said, referencing the school color. “He had the desire to be better than the next guy. Every coach wants a player who wants to do better than the guy who went to the NBA before him.
“That was self motivation for Lance.”
Avoiding trouble
Stephenson’s agent, Al Ebanks, had to back his 7 series BMW up and drive it on the sidewalk to get around the ambulance that sat in the center of the one-way street in Coney Island last weekend.
The medical team was busy trying to revive the person inside the vehicle.
Trouble was there for Stephenson if he wanted it. Selling drugs on the corner or robbing people at night would have been a quick way for Stephenson to get his hustle on to make money.
But he had no interest in that. His family wasn’t going to have it, either.
Lance Stephenson Sr.’s family has lived in Coney Island for more than a hundred years, so having protection wasn’t a problem.
And if Stephenson did step out of line, his parents were there to discipline him.
“His parents did a wonderful job raising him,” Morton said of Lance Stephenson Sr., a construction worker, and Bernadette Stephenson, who cleaned apartments.
“They’re a close-knit family. What his parents really did is if he ever got out of order they would rein him in.”
Trouble did find Stephenson during his junior year at Lincoln High School in 2008.
He was suspended five games after getting in a fight with a teammate. Stephenson and a teammate were charged with sexually assaulting a female student near the high school that same year. He pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct.
Stephenson was also involved in a legal issue in Brooklyn during the summer of 2010. Prosecutors said he pushed his girlfriend, Jasmine Williams, down a flight of stairs during an argument. A criminal complaint said the Stephenson then slammed her head on the bottom step. Williams told police she hit her head during the fall. The case was later dismissed.
“My mistakes were really bad and I regret it,” Stephenson said. “At the same time, I learned from them. I learned to keep my distance from things that could get me in trouble and sacrifice my career. I just try my best to stay focused and limit all the things that would get me in trouble.”
Not well liked
It didn’t take long for many realize why colleges backed off Stephenson and NBA teams passed on him in the first round of the 2010 draft.
Stephenson never had to listen to anybody on the basketball court because he was the best player out there. He diverted from plays his coaches called and told his teammates what to do.
That approach did not work when he joined the Pacers, who drafted him with the 40th overall pick.
“I always felt like I was the man and nobody could tell me anything,” Stephenson said. “Somebody would say, ‘Get in the corner,’ and I was like, ‘No you get in the corner.’ I never had anybody talk to me like that. Everybody was telling what to do and I didn’t like it.”
Stephenson reached a boiling point with the veterans — particularly Danny Granger and Dahntay Jones — being too hard on him during a game in Houston in March 2011.
Granger stood up like he was going to go after Stephenson inside the locker room after the game, according to those there at the time. That started a full-fledged team argument that could be heard in the hallways of the Toyota Center.
“To be honest, I thought some of the vets were too hard on him,” Pacers coach Frank Vogel said. “When you get that type of leadership, human nature kicks in and instincts kick in and you get defensive. I thought that’s what Lance’s issues were. He was taking offense to the vets being overly harsh to him.”
Whether it was his fault or not that night in Houston, Stephenson didn’t learn his lesson. Vogel made him the fourth point guard after he was caught using his phone on the bench during a game.
The name “Born Ready” didn’t fit Stephenson’s game any longer. He only appeared in 12 games during his rookie season despite then-team president Larry Bird urging the coaching staff to give Stephenson playing time.
“Lance was always told that he was the best thing since slice bread growing up,” Stephenson’s uncle, Corey Ridges, said. “It didn’t take long for him to realize he was no longer the best.”
The light didn’t come on for Stephenson until Jeff Foster, who used a blue-collar mentality to have a 13-year career with the Pacers, sat Stephenson down for what the veteran center called one of the most serious conversations he ever had with a teammate.
“Lance was a different kind of rookie,” Foster said. “He didn’t have to really work for anything in his basketball life. He really pushed back at first. I took him in a corner and told him he needed to decide very soon what he wants to be. Be a guy who plays 13 or 14 years in the NBA and makes a lot of money. Or be a guy who is 30 years old and regrets not doing things differently.”
Today, Stephenson is a completely different person.
He makes eye contact when holding a conversation. He acknowledges people when he walks by them. He’s punctual to places he’s required to be. He even enjoys opening up during a conversation instead of looking like he rather be else where.
Clark Kellogg, the Pacers vice president of player relations, isn’t one to raise his voice. His approach was to keep a close eye on Young and talk to him like an adult instead of a teenage phenom known strictly for his basketball skills.
“Lance was rough around the edges when he first came here,” said Clark Kellogg, the Pacers vice-president of player relations, who has worked with Stephenson.
“It took some work and, at times, (you had) to have a firm stance with him, but he’s turned the corner. He’s turned into a fine young man. Like with every young player, there’s still more work, but he’s headed in the right direction.”
A knee injury that has caused Granger to miss all but five games this season has provided Stephenson the opportunity to fulfill the potential Bird saw.
Stephenson still has some streetball in him and a tendency to try to do too much. The Pacers can handle that because the positives he brings to the court — starting with confidence — outweigh the negative.
“I’m happy for how he has played and how he has matured over the years,” Bird told The Star. “If he continues to work as hard as he has been, he’ll only get better. He still has enormous potential to be fulfilled and if he keeps working at it, keeps maturing, he can be great.”
Stephenson started 72 of the 78 games he played this season and has transformed the toughness and cockiness he developed growing up in Coney Island into confidence. Many call him the ‘X’ factor during the playoffs for the Pacers, and it also likely has Bird smiling somewhere because, while others wanted to give up on Stephenson, he stuck with him.
“It’s neat and very rewarding,” Vogel said. “There’s a lot of different areas in this job that are gratifying, but watching a kid that comes in with so many question marks about him and to see him achieve success at this level is very rewarding.”
Lance Stephenson had to block out the smell and keep his head on a swivel.
The Pacers swingman — often scared — ran the 15 flights of dark, dreary stairs in the Coney Island, N.Y. apartment building he lived in during the early part of his life to get in shape for basketball. Drug dealers and homeless people often frequented the stairwell for shelter.
Stephenson ran those steps every morning at 6 a.m. with his father, Lance Stephenson Sr., there to make sure nobody messed with his son.
“It was very rough,” Stephenson said. “I’d see bullet shots through the window in the lobby, drugs, there would be crackheads around. I used to be scared, but then I got tough and knew I had to be aware while I was running.”
It was on those stairs, at the beach a couple hundred yards away where he regularly ran 2.5 miles, and the basketball court 20 yards from where he lived, that Stephenson learned to be tough.
Coney Island is a place where people line the block waiting to get inside food kitchens. Bars are on the windows of most businesses and owners pull gates down at the end of the day to protect their establishments. It’s where outsiders draw the attention of the natives because they know you’re not from the neighborhood.
“Toughness is what you think of when talking about Lance,” said Gary Charles, one of Stephenson’s AAU coaches. “He was the kid who wanted to be the next Stephon (Marbury), the next Sebastian (Telfair) out of Coney Island. Sometimes kids don’t want to embrace it. He embraced it and wanted to enhance it. You have to be tough to get out of there.”
But Stephenson wasn’t a first-round pick like Marbury and Telfair. That toughness also manifested itself as an attitude that turned some NBA teams off when he was coming out of the University of Cincinnati and it had Pacers’ teammates wanting to fight him during his rookie season.
That toughness that got Stephenson to the NBA? It almost ended his career.
“I’m not going to lie, when Lance first got here, he was a (expletive), put that in the paper,” center Roy Hibbert said. “He’s way better now. He’s a lot more receptive. He’s light years where he was before.”
Meant to be
James Black, another of Stephenson’s AAU coaches, couldn’t believe what he was seeing on the court at Rucker Park.
It’s where the best of the best play in New York City and Stephenson, just 13 years old, was not backing down from anyone. He yelled at Marcus Hatten, a starter at St. John’s at the time, demanding the ball from him.
Stephenson finished with 12 points and never looked out of place.
“That’s when I knew,” Black said. “I was like, ‘Wow.’ Lance was in eighth grade playing on my 16-year-old team. He was going all around the city dominating people. He was tough and had no fear of anybody.”
The announcer first called him “Ice Water” because Stephenson made every shot he attempted. But then changed it to “Born Ready” because of Stephenson’s knack to hold his own against older competition.
Playing against competition the same age wasn’t an option for Stephenson. His mind frame was, “if you want to be the best, you have to play the best.” He had the physique to match players several years older.
Stephenson dunked for the first time in an AAU tournament when he was in sixth grade.
That was the start of things for the cocky player who showed up in the NBA. The better he played, the more he talked.
“That’s all we do in New York, you trash talk and then you go out and back it up,” Stephenson said. “If you’re not backing it up, you can’t talk. I felt like I was backing it up. I was killing everybody they were putting in front of me.”
Stephenson spent five minutes going back and forth at O.J. Mayo, three years his senior and one of the premier high school players in the country at the time, during a summer camp. Stephenson played on the same AAU team as future-NBA players Joakim Noah and Danny Green, both older than him.
Producer Paul Rivera followed Stephenson his entire junior year for an online documentary called “Born Ready.”
“We had never seen anybody like Lance, and that says a lot considering all the great players to come out of New York,” Rivera said. “There were other good kids, but they weren’t manly like Lance. You had players like Ron Artest and Stephon Marbury going crazy every time they saw Lance play and the things he was able to do.”
Stephenson originally attended Bishop Loughlin High School in Brooklyn, N.Y., but transferred to Lincoln, which also produced Marbury and Telfair, two days into the school year.
Stephenson led Lincoln to four city championships, something Marbury and Telfair can’t claim. He left as New York’s all-time leading scorer (2,946 points).
“Lance was a die-hard Coney Island guy, so he had to go to Lincoln where we bleed blue here,” Stephenson’s high school coach, Dwayne “Tiny” Morton, said, referencing the school color. “He had the desire to be better than the next guy. Every coach wants a player who wants to do better than the guy who went to the NBA before him.
“That was self motivation for Lance.”
Avoiding trouble
Stephenson’s agent, Al Ebanks, had to back his 7 series BMW up and drive it on the sidewalk to get around the ambulance that sat in the center of the one-way street in Coney Island last weekend.
The medical team was busy trying to revive the person inside the vehicle.
Trouble was there for Stephenson if he wanted it. Selling drugs on the corner or robbing people at night would have been a quick way for Stephenson to get his hustle on to make money.
But he had no interest in that. His family wasn’t going to have it, either.
Lance Stephenson Sr.’s family has lived in Coney Island for more than a hundred years, so having protection wasn’t a problem.
And if Stephenson did step out of line, his parents were there to discipline him.
“His parents did a wonderful job raising him,” Morton said of Lance Stephenson Sr., a construction worker, and Bernadette Stephenson, who cleaned apartments.
“They’re a close-knit family. What his parents really did is if he ever got out of order they would rein him in.”
Trouble did find Stephenson during his junior year at Lincoln High School in 2008.
He was suspended five games after getting in a fight with a teammate. Stephenson and a teammate were charged with sexually assaulting a female student near the high school that same year. He pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct.
Stephenson was also involved in a legal issue in Brooklyn during the summer of 2010. Prosecutors said he pushed his girlfriend, Jasmine Williams, down a flight of stairs during an argument. A criminal complaint said the Stephenson then slammed her head on the bottom step. Williams told police she hit her head during the fall. The case was later dismissed.
“My mistakes were really bad and I regret it,” Stephenson said. “At the same time, I learned from them. I learned to keep my distance from things that could get me in trouble and sacrifice my career. I just try my best to stay focused and limit all the things that would get me in trouble.”
Not well liked
It didn’t take long for many realize why colleges backed off Stephenson and NBA teams passed on him in the first round of the 2010 draft.
Stephenson never had to listen to anybody on the basketball court because he was the best player out there. He diverted from plays his coaches called and told his teammates what to do.
That approach did not work when he joined the Pacers, who drafted him with the 40th overall pick.
“I always felt like I was the man and nobody could tell me anything,” Stephenson said. “Somebody would say, ‘Get in the corner,’ and I was like, ‘No you get in the corner.’ I never had anybody talk to me like that. Everybody was telling what to do and I didn’t like it.”
Stephenson reached a boiling point with the veterans — particularly Danny Granger and Dahntay Jones — being too hard on him during a game in Houston in March 2011.
Granger stood up like he was going to go after Stephenson inside the locker room after the game, according to those there at the time. That started a full-fledged team argument that could be heard in the hallways of the Toyota Center.
“To be honest, I thought some of the vets were too hard on him,” Pacers coach Frank Vogel said. “When you get that type of leadership, human nature kicks in and instincts kick in and you get defensive. I thought that’s what Lance’s issues were. He was taking offense to the vets being overly harsh to him.”
Whether it was his fault or not that night in Houston, Stephenson didn’t learn his lesson. Vogel made him the fourth point guard after he was caught using his phone on the bench during a game.
The name “Born Ready” didn’t fit Stephenson’s game any longer. He only appeared in 12 games during his rookie season despite then-team president Larry Bird urging the coaching staff to give Stephenson playing time.
“Lance was always told that he was the best thing since slice bread growing up,” Stephenson’s uncle, Corey Ridges, said. “It didn’t take long for him to realize he was no longer the best.”
The light didn’t come on for Stephenson until Jeff Foster, who used a blue-collar mentality to have a 13-year career with the Pacers, sat Stephenson down for what the veteran center called one of the most serious conversations he ever had with a teammate.
“Lance was a different kind of rookie,” Foster said. “He didn’t have to really work for anything in his basketball life. He really pushed back at first. I took him in a corner and told him he needed to decide very soon what he wants to be. Be a guy who plays 13 or 14 years in the NBA and makes a lot of money. Or be a guy who is 30 years old and regrets not doing things differently.”
Today, Stephenson is a completely different person.
He makes eye contact when holding a conversation. He acknowledges people when he walks by them. He’s punctual to places he’s required to be. He even enjoys opening up during a conversation instead of looking like he rather be else where.
Clark Kellogg, the Pacers vice president of player relations, isn’t one to raise his voice. His approach was to keep a close eye on Young and talk to him like an adult instead of a teenage phenom known strictly for his basketball skills.
“Lance was rough around the edges when he first came here,” said Clark Kellogg, the Pacers vice-president of player relations, who has worked with Stephenson.
“It took some work and, at times, (you had) to have a firm stance with him, but he’s turned the corner. He’s turned into a fine young man. Like with every young player, there’s still more work, but he’s headed in the right direction.”
A knee injury that has caused Granger to miss all but five games this season has provided Stephenson the opportunity to fulfill the potential Bird saw.
Stephenson still has some streetball in him and a tendency to try to do too much. The Pacers can handle that because the positives he brings to the court — starting with confidence — outweigh the negative.
“I’m happy for how he has played and how he has matured over the years,” Bird told The Star. “If he continues to work as hard as he has been, he’ll only get better. He still has enormous potential to be fulfilled and if he keeps working at it, keeps maturing, he can be great.”
Stephenson started 72 of the 78 games he played this season and has transformed the toughness and cockiness he developed growing up in Coney Island into confidence. Many call him the ‘X’ factor during the playoffs for the Pacers, and it also likely has Bird smiling somewhere because, while others wanted to give up on Stephenson, he stuck with him.
“It’s neat and very rewarding,” Vogel said. “There’s a lot of different areas in this job that are gratifying, but watching a kid that comes in with so many question marks about him and to see him achieve success at this level is very rewarding.”
And I'll admit back in 2010 when I saw Lance Stephenson scroll across the screen as our 2nd rounder I rolled my eyes and said "****." Didn't want him, thought he'd kill the image rejuvenation that had to happen. And he came close to doing it. But he's grown up, at least somewhat, and become a man. Never in a million years thought three years later I'd be copying and pasting postive writeups in the Star about him. Even though I didn't have anything to do with it the way the franchise basically broke him down and built him into a better person makes me proud to be a Pacers fan really. There's not many franchises that would even attempt that, let alone actually do it.
Comment