ReturnOfJudah
Veteran
Baylor's Gathers isn't letting offseason trouble define him
Baylor's Gathers isn't letting offseason trouble define him
WACO, Texas -- Baylor star Ricardo "Rico" Gathers yearned for a new chapter, to swipe left on a bad night and salvage a future convoluted by a shoplifting charge he incurred last summer. In June, he left a Wal-Mart in Waco without paying for a variety of household items, and once his actions were publicized, the potential two-sport prospect figured he'd marred his chance to compete for a slot in the upcoming NBA and NFL drafts.
So he called Coach Carter. Yes, that Coach Carter -- the former high school basketball coach portrayed by Samuel L. Jackson in the 2005 film of the same name.
And Ken Carter had a solution, one met with hesitation by the 22-year-old married father of a 1-year-old son, Ricardo Gathers Jr.
He told Gathers to chop off his braids and erase the man who made that mistake.
Taurean Prince] thinks the power is in the hair. But it's really the beard."
Carter and Gathers met at the Baylor gym -- a few miles from Carter's prep school in Texas -- where Carter challenged the younger man to a free throw contest. Carter won.
His initial assessment of Gathers echoed the thoughts of everyone else in his life: "I think he's a wonderful young man."
Gathers had never found trouble prior to June.
Only the potential his Samson-like frame possessed.
He's an eclipse of a human being with sandbags for shoulders and oaks for biceps. The infantile chuckle of Baylor's 6-foot-8, 275-pound rebounding king belies the overt power he has honed his entire athletic career. He's easy to handle in the paint, if you put a linebacker on him.
Shawn Long (19.1 PPG, 13 RPG). Orlando Magic star Elfrid Payton played point guard for one of his youth squads. And he never missed a meal whenever he went to Texas senior Javan Felix's house.
Ben Simmons or Joey Bosa, this would be easy. But that's not how the evaluation process works for fringe NBA prospects and NFL hopefuls who haven't played the game since middle school.
"I still don't know, to this day, what's going to happen after this," Gathers said. "I still don't know. I can only wait."
But he knows he'll sit down with scouts and officials from the NBA and NFL one day. And they'll ask him about that shoplifting charge. They'll ask him what he has learned and how that moment has affected his life. They'll ask him if that was a mistake or a pattern.
Long ago, he prepared his answer.
"I'll be like, 'Look at the dude in the mug shot,'" Gathers said. "'Is that the same dude you see today?' And I'd just leave it at that. Because I'm different."
Shaving his head was just the first step toward proving that.
