X-Men: College Basketball Superheroes

One is the blur. A streak of orange with bouncing braids.

One is the sniper. A cocky marksman with a devilish grin.

One is the beast. A ferocious beacon of strength and power.

One is the assassin. A killer who mentally unwraps his opposition, while fighting fearlessly in spite of a debilitating illness.

One is the warrior. A brilliant gladiator, seemingly fearful of his own unlimited arsenal.

They aren’t a new pack of superheroes. They are the five most important college basketball players in America.

Dee Brown, J.J. Redick, Marco Killingsworth, Adam Morrison, and Rudy Gay each represent a different segment of the glorious game. They are black. They are white. They are young and they are old. They are all enamored and they are all hated.

But they are each important because of what they each exemplify.

Dee Brown & J.J. Redick

You probably love Dee Brown. Fans cherish undersized dynamos who ooze adorability. He shreds through opposing presses, while shredding the hearts of opponents. For the NCAA, he is a public relations dream:  An extraordinarily talented senior from a high-profile program.

The image of Brown’s nearly neon orange jersey blazing down court has become a stock image for college basketball advertisements. Media guides. Commercials. NCAA rules don’t allow individual athletes to promote a product, unless – of course – that product is the NCAA itself. And Dee Brown is one of the NCAA’s best spokesmen.

So is J.J. Redick. However, if Brown is the black hero of the college game, Redick is the white villain.

The sharp looking kid with the Abercrombie haircut knows how much you despise everything about him. And he knows that excelling in the face of your loathing only makes you loathe more. Rarely do star athletes realize and – more importantly – thrive in riling the ire of opposing fans.

Former Indiana Pacers great Reggie Miller was the all-time master of opposing disdain. Redick is a prodigy from the same mold. He is arguably the greatest pure shooter in the history of college basketball and yet the mere mention of his name incites only two possible responses:  A creative expletive or a blushing confession of love for Duke.

Brown and Redick are college basketball’s senior citizens. As they aged into manhood by passing on the NBA riches, they were granted iconic status as poster boys (more specifically, poster student-athletes).

For choosing to stay in school, they are lauded by NCAA Chairmen and applauded by Sportscenter anchors. But, notably, their decisions (and the decisions of many like them) were not based on some inherent desire to expand their own scholastic horizons. They exhausted  their four-year eligibility because of the pulsating question marks about their pro potential.

Redick was incorrectly labeled as solely a spot-up shooter. Brown was thought of as a point guard with a shooting guard’s soul. Last year, both could have entered the NBA Draft and been chosen in the late first or early second round. In fact, Brown even made professional declarations, before a cracked bone in his foot at an NBA pre-draft camp sidetracked his plans.

Instead, they each gave college basketball one more year. One more chance to sell their jerseys and sell their likenesses. In return, the game itself has given them exposure and, possibly, a valuable lottery ticket they’ve been waiting four years to cash in.

Marco Killingsworth

He didn’t start here. You need to understand that. He wasn’t an Indiana schoolboy legend who dreamed of one day playing in Bloomington, just like every other blade-of-grass-chewin’ Indiana schoolboy.

No, the most valuable man in Hoosier-land actually started his career under an Alabama rock.

He was always under something. For three seasons at Auburn, he was an underappreciated SEC star. In fact, the prefix “under-” sums up just about everything Marco Killingsworth probably thought about himself. Undervalued… Underutilized…

After his three-year run with the Tigers, he figured NBA scouts weren’t as ignorant to his talent as the rest of the nation was. He was wrong. So, after attending the Chicago pre-draft camp, he saw scouts mouthing those same five letters he’d whispered to himself many times: U-N-D-E-R…

Turns out they were referring to this 6-foot-8, 265 pound mammoth as under-sized. At least as an NBA power forward with his supposed lack of skills.

So his journey from AU to IU was simply a personal search for some northern exposure.

Problem was, transfers typically struggle. New offenses to learn and new teammates to lean on. New tutors. New dining hall food. New social scene. Even a new home gym. The new-ness usually dims the light’s in an athlete’s eyes.

But not Killingworth. He has exploded. In turn, he supplanted former Arizona State star and current Golden State Warrior rookie Ike Diogu as America’s premier low post player. Against Duke’s Shelden Williams – the 2005 National Defensive Player of the Year – Killingsworth shot 15-of-20 for 34 points and 10 rebounds.

His is the happy tale every transfer dreams of telling. And now NBA GM’s are under-lining his name on their draft wish lists.
 

Adam Morrison

Two seasons ago, he was just a fresh faced kid with a buzz cut. A sweet-shooting freshman pining for minutes on a solid Gonzaga team.

Now he’s the next Larry Bird.

The sheared head is now a mop top and the clean philtrum is wearing a wispy mustache. And yet the comparisons extend far beyond the look of his head. Morrison’s 6-foot-8, 205 pound frame is eerily similar to Bird’s lanky college dimensions (6-foot-9, 210 pounds). Bird also attended a small conference school (Indiana State) and won the same honors Morrison is the leading candidate for (Wooden, Naismith, and All-America).

Everyone recalls Bird’s meticulous passing for the Boston Celtics, but the Sycamores mostly needed him to fire at will. Morrison leads the nation in scoring.

But, of course, the trait that most fans commonly connect them by is the nearly-identical melanin make-up. In other words, they are both pale, white guys. Pale, white guys with high release points on their jumpers.

And Bird, himself, recently said the league needs more white superstars.

"You know, when I played, you had me and Kevin [McHale] and some others throughout the league. I think it's good for a fan base because, as we all know, the majority of the fans are white America. And if you just had a couple of white guys in there, you might get them a little excited. But it is a black man's game, and it will be forever. I mean, the greatest athletes in the world are African-American."

Yet Morrison is far more than a Larry Bird impersonator. He is a brawler. On the court he is a cocky, elbow-spearing aggressor and on the sidelines he is in a daily street fight with diabetes.

When teammates break for Gatorade, he injects himself with a needle. And, in the process, injects a sliver of hope to the over 21-million people living with diabetes in the U.S.

When the name “Adam Morrison” falls out of David Stern’s lips sometime during this summer’s lottery, don’t expect him to be a franchise savior, the next white hype, or even the next Larry Legend. Just look at him the same way those with diabetes do:  As an inspiration.

Rudy Gay

Everything about Rudy Gay is seemingly effortless. The gentle way he glides past defenders. The stroke of his jump shot. Even the quick ascension as he floats upwards for a slam. So effortless.

And, as his detractors explain, that’s the problem.

Gay’s game is so smooth and his talent is so blatantly obvious, they say that he should be dominating every single game. He should be the premier player in the country. He should be… well, so much more.

Gay seems to suffer from a fear of greatness, the same affliction that plagued former Husky great Ben Gordon early in his career. But he is just 19 years old. He is still, essentially, a child.

Yet all children eventually grow up and during this, his sophomore season, Gay has matured. His scoring, rebounding, and assist numbers have risen substantially. He has tripled his steals per game.

And, on occasion, he is even dominating.

And, on occasion, he is not.

During a November win against Arizona, Gay shot just 2-of-12 from the field, totaling 6 points, 5 rebounds, and 5 turnovers. He totaled just 10 turnovers in his next seven games combined.

In a 94-79 loss to Marquette, his first game in 2006, he scored just 8 points on 3-of-12 shooting. He followed up that embarrassing display with a 19 point, 8 rebound performance against a solid LSU front line.

Gay recently explained his inconsistency to the Washington Post as merely a lack of assertiveness.

"I think that just comes with focus, focusing more on what I'm doing. Sometimes I have lapses."

Kids will be kids. This one just happens to have more potential than most.

***

For these five Clark Kents, the locker room is their phone booth. They each have distinct superpowers, yet they step onto the hardwood floor as more than superheroes; they are college superstars. They are simply representatives and, justly, they are the five most important men in the college game.