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Inside the NBA
Posted: Tuesday June 20, 2000 05:22 PM New Jersey's New Boss | Around The Rim Mock Draft: Swap Meat? Fast-blooming sophomore Stromile Swift of LSU is sure to rise high in the lottery By Ian Thomsen
Swift didn't start playing organized basketball in his hometown of Shreveport, La., until the eighth grade, when he was 6'3". "He was shy and really self-conscious about his height," says Fair Park High assistant Ken Prude. "Nobody thought he could play. He heard people say, 'You're too tall to be so sorry.'" Prude worked to make him feel less nervous in front of big crowds. "If he did something funny at practice I would laugh," Prude says. "I wanted him to know it's not a problem to be laughing at yourself." "The character trait in Stromile that is going to make him a very good player is his sense of humility," Brady says. Tattooed on Swift's left shoulder is an image of Jesus holding a basketball, framed by the words a gift from god. "That's what my mom has always told me about my talent," he says. Swift was so coveted coming out of high school that Brady offered to play one of LSU's home games 200 miles up the road in Shreveport if Swift would sign with the school. Even then, Brady worried that Swift's initial failure to meet the NCAA academic standards would drive him to the NBA. "He must have taken that ACT test a half-dozen times at least," Prude says. But Swift knew that he needed to attend college. "I really wanted to go to Michigan," he says, settling instead on LSU because he could live in Baton Rouge with Jones, an electrician, until he qualified midway through his freshman year. At LSU, Swift was assigned to guard the lowest-scoring frontcourt player, which allowed him to roam the paint like a free safety for many of his 130 blocks in just 50 games, a total second only to Shaquille O'Neal's in school history. In the low post Swift will probably need help guarding the burlier NBA power forwards, and Brady doubts that Swift is ready to guard the quicker small forwards on the perimeter. His graceful, explosive athleticism will have to carry him until he gains muscle and experience. Swift came away from his June 5 workout with Vancouver convinced that it was seriously considering him as its selection. It makes sense: The Grizzlies want to replace power forward Othella Harrington, who's unhappy in Vancouver, and new team president Dick Versace has a four-year rebuilding plan, which means he can afford to be patient. "I looked at all the magazines and Stromile wasn't mentioned on any of the all-SEC lists or All-America teams before last season," Brady says. "Then you look at where he ended up -- co-MVP of the SEC, second team All-America. As fast as he developed here, he can develop in the NBA. With the right team he can become one of the top 15 to 25 players in two years."
The Draft's Big Sleeper Searching for an anti-Shaq weapon? Scouts, coaches and general managers from at least 20 NBA teams at the predraft camp in Chicago this month hoped they had found one as they looked up (and up) at Brad Millard, a 7'3", 360-pound behemoth from tiny St. Mary's in Moraga, Calif. Millard was nicknamed Big Continent by big-man coach Pete Newell -- but that was before Millard suffered a series of foot injuries that limited him to 16 games over the past three seasons. "So then I started calling him Atlantis," says St. Mary's coach Dave Bollwinkel, "because for the last three years he's been the lost continent." Millard was surprisingly nimble during the individual workout he held at a private health club in Chicago. After a couple of trips up and down the court he was short of breath, but he exhibited a smooth stroke from 15 feet. All this despite his footwear: low-cut Reebok running shoes. "I got these out of a catalog from a company in Atlanta two months ago," said Millard, 23. "These are the only pair of shoes I can wear. If you see me walking down the street tomorrow, I'll be in these shoes." Big Continent's big feet -- size 23 EEEE -- have been his biggest problem. After averaging 12.4 points and 7.6 rebounds in 31 games as a sophomore, Millard suffered a broken metatarsal bone in his left foot the following October and was sidelined for the season. A year later he missed all but three games after breaking the navicular bone in the same foot, and last season an edema around the navicular in his right foot cost him his final 17 games. Millard blames his woes on the (relatively) tiny size-22 shoes he had to wear. "If you were a size 12 and you had to play in a 10, your feet would be pretty messed up too," says Millard's agent, Bill Duffy. "Brad's father says Brad hasn't had a comfortable pair of shoes since he was 17 years old." "His feet are structurally sound," says Arthur Ting, team physician of the San Jose Sharks, who had performed surgery on Joe Montana and Tiger Woods before encountering Millard's Sasquatchian feet. "His shoes definitely contributed to his injuries. To fix his metatarsal we had to use fragment screws three times the size of normal screws." Other players on the cusp of their NBA dream talk of buying themselves a huge house or a fleet of luxury cars. "Once I'm in the league," says Millard, gazing off to the horizon, "I'll take some of that money and make myself some shoes."
New Jersey's New Boss Since taking over as Nets president on June 2, Rod Thorn has watched the team's foundation crumble. Because of injuries, center Jayson Williams and shooting guard Kerry Kittles may never play again. Still, Thorn has no regrets about leaving his job as the NBA's deputy commissioner and chief operating officer. "I was aware of these things," Thorn says, "and I'm still very optimistic." As general manager of the Bulls from May 1978 until March '85, Thorn endured all the headaches endemic to running a third-rate club -- selfish players, drug problems and other public scandals, the firing of several coaches. Then, nine months before the end, Thorn made the decision that would alter the NBA's landscape: With the third pick, he drafted Michael Jordan. Thorn's experiences in Chicago, bad and good, have made a patient man of him. Now he has the No. 1 choice, and though no one remotely Jordan-like is in the draft, he doesn't want to trade the choice for short-term help. "If we feel strongly about a player at Number 1, we'll stay there and take him," Thorn says. He's also in no hurry to bring in a coach before the draft. Says a rival general manager and friend of Thorn's, "I asked him who he's going to hire, and he said he has no idea. He's going to take his time." Lamar Odom has let the Clippers know that he wouldn't mind seeing them draft Hofstra senior Speedy Claxton with the No. 18 pick, Los Angeles's second choice. Odom and Claxton were teammates at Christ the King High in Queens, N.Y.; when Claxton, who is 1 1/2 years older, went to college, Odom would spend weekends in his dorm room. If L.A. would rather not take Claxton, it could pick St. John's sophomore Erick Barkley, who replaced Claxton as Christ the King's point guard and who is also close to Odom. The Clippers, who are looking for a point guard anyway, won't do itself any harm by making Odom feel happy. ... The biggest surprise at the predraft camp in Chicago was Michigan freshman Jamal Crawford, who played only 17 games this season because he accepted money from a Seattle businessman while in high school, and was suspended by the NCAA. Scouts see the 6'5" Crawford as the one big point guard in the draft. "He might have played his way into the lottery," says one Western Conference G.M. ... When Michael Jordan said he would take 18-year-old Darius Miles if he had the No. 1 pick, he did so from personal experience. Miles played last summer at Jordan's camp in Santa Barbara, Calif. "He always picked me on his team," Miles says. "We played against college players, and Michael was talking noise at them -- 'You're not going to let the high school players beat you.' We won mostly all the games."
Issue date: June 26, 2000
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