Spurs Brazil
10-17-2007, 02:57 PM
http://www.mysanantonio.com/sports/basketball/nba/spurs/stories/MYSA101707.01C.mikefinger.en.33f673f.html
Mike Finger: Washington unfazed by long odds
Web Posted: 10/17/2007 01:09 AM CDT
Mike Finger
San Antonio Express-News
The clichés come tumbling out of Darius Washington's mouth, almost by reflex, but it's obvious he doesn't believe them all.
One minute, he says "there's no reason to cry about spilt milk." Then he insists he isn't ashamed of the moment in which a national TV audience saw him sobbing in the middle of a basketball court. Later he says, quite forcefully, "you can't predict the future." But in the next breath, he tries anyway.
"I'm going to be an old man, eating in a Denny's somewhere," Washington says. "And someone will say, 'You're the guy who missed those two free throws.'"
In Washington's mind, "those two free throws" — the ones he clanged in a pivotal Conference USA tournament game 21/2 years ago — don't define him any more than the two he made at the end of a monotonous Spurs practice Tuesday afternoon. But he also says he realizes those infamous misses will stick with him forever, and that's OK, because they remind him of a cliché he actually knows to be true:
Things seldom are as bad as they seem.
Washington is an unabashed optimist, which is a curious personality trait for a 21-year-old man already resigned to having his most public failure follow him until his golden Grand Slam Breakfast years. Even after no NBA team drafted him when he left college after his sophomore season at Memphis, even after the Houston Rockets and Dallas Mavericks decided to cut him loose before last season, and even though the Spurs already have 15 players signed for their 15-man roster, Washington is conceding nothing.
No one else at the Spurs' practice facility even pretends Washington, or any of the other free agents at training camp, have a chance to survive the final cuts. As coach Gregg Popovich said last week, "Everybody that's trying out for the team can count, one to 15."
But when someone suggests Washington's best path to the NBA might be to catch the eye of another team during the preseason and catch on somewhere else, he scoffs. He hasn't been cut yet, he says. Stranger things have happened, he says. And the odds, like those bleak days at the end of his freshman year in college, aren't as bad as they seem.
"No matter what, I'm trying to make this team," says Washington, a 6-foot-2, 195-pound guard. "Who knows how things will turn out? It's like the free throws. Who'd have thought I'd be laughing about them now?"
Certainly no one at Memphis' FedEx Forum March 12, 2005. That was the day Washington — Conference USA's freshman of the year — had his Tigers on the verge of an unlikely NCAA tournament berth. With no time remaining in the league championship game against Louisville, Memphis trailed by two points, and Washington had three free throws coming. If he made them all, the Tigers would win the conference title and the automatic NCAA bid, and their season would continue.
Washington, who had scored 23 points and dished out six assists to put Memphis in position for the upset, sank the first. On the second, the ball rimmed out.
Everyone gasped, but the Tigers were still OK. If Washington made the next one, Memphis could go to overtime.
Then he missed again.
Washington fell to the floor, tears streaming down his face. He pulled his jersey over his head. Teammates and coaches tried to console him. Even the Louisville player who fouled him offered him his hand. Nothing worked.
"It was devastating," Washington says.
The clip was played over and over again on highlight shows, and in the days that followed, it seemed to Washington like the end of the world. But slowly, he started to figure it out. Things weren't as bad as they seemed.
He remembered that on draft night in 2006, when he sat through both rounds and never heard his name called. He remembered it during his stint in Europe last winter, when he played 14 games in Greece and 26 in the Czech NBL league. And he remembers it every time he sees the replays of his missed free throws on March Madness flashbacks.
"You can't run from it," Washington says. "You have to look it right in the eye and deal with it."
So that's what Washington does. And by the time he's an old man at Denny's, he might have something better to reminisce about.
Mike Finger: Washington unfazed by long odds
Web Posted: 10/17/2007 01:09 AM CDT
Mike Finger
San Antonio Express-News
The clichés come tumbling out of Darius Washington's mouth, almost by reflex, but it's obvious he doesn't believe them all.
One minute, he says "there's no reason to cry about spilt milk." Then he insists he isn't ashamed of the moment in which a national TV audience saw him sobbing in the middle of a basketball court. Later he says, quite forcefully, "you can't predict the future." But in the next breath, he tries anyway.
"I'm going to be an old man, eating in a Denny's somewhere," Washington says. "And someone will say, 'You're the guy who missed those two free throws.'"
In Washington's mind, "those two free throws" — the ones he clanged in a pivotal Conference USA tournament game 21/2 years ago — don't define him any more than the two he made at the end of a monotonous Spurs practice Tuesday afternoon. But he also says he realizes those infamous misses will stick with him forever, and that's OK, because they remind him of a cliché he actually knows to be true:
Things seldom are as bad as they seem.
Washington is an unabashed optimist, which is a curious personality trait for a 21-year-old man already resigned to having his most public failure follow him until his golden Grand Slam Breakfast years. Even after no NBA team drafted him when he left college after his sophomore season at Memphis, even after the Houston Rockets and Dallas Mavericks decided to cut him loose before last season, and even though the Spurs already have 15 players signed for their 15-man roster, Washington is conceding nothing.
No one else at the Spurs' practice facility even pretends Washington, or any of the other free agents at training camp, have a chance to survive the final cuts. As coach Gregg Popovich said last week, "Everybody that's trying out for the team can count, one to 15."
But when someone suggests Washington's best path to the NBA might be to catch the eye of another team during the preseason and catch on somewhere else, he scoffs. He hasn't been cut yet, he says. Stranger things have happened, he says. And the odds, like those bleak days at the end of his freshman year in college, aren't as bad as they seem.
"No matter what, I'm trying to make this team," says Washington, a 6-foot-2, 195-pound guard. "Who knows how things will turn out? It's like the free throws. Who'd have thought I'd be laughing about them now?"
Certainly no one at Memphis' FedEx Forum March 12, 2005. That was the day Washington — Conference USA's freshman of the year — had his Tigers on the verge of an unlikely NCAA tournament berth. With no time remaining in the league championship game against Louisville, Memphis trailed by two points, and Washington had three free throws coming. If he made them all, the Tigers would win the conference title and the automatic NCAA bid, and their season would continue.
Washington, who had scored 23 points and dished out six assists to put Memphis in position for the upset, sank the first. On the second, the ball rimmed out.
Everyone gasped, but the Tigers were still OK. If Washington made the next one, Memphis could go to overtime.
Then he missed again.
Washington fell to the floor, tears streaming down his face. He pulled his jersey over his head. Teammates and coaches tried to console him. Even the Louisville player who fouled him offered him his hand. Nothing worked.
"It was devastating," Washington says.
The clip was played over and over again on highlight shows, and in the days that followed, it seemed to Washington like the end of the world. But slowly, he started to figure it out. Things weren't as bad as they seemed.
He remembered that on draft night in 2006, when he sat through both rounds and never heard his name called. He remembered it during his stint in Europe last winter, when he played 14 games in Greece and 26 in the Czech NBL league. And he remembers it every time he sees the replays of his missed free throws on March Madness flashbacks.
"You can't run from it," Washington says. "You have to look it right in the eye and deal with it."
So that's what Washington does. And by the time he's an old man at Denny's, he might have something better to reminisce about.