Basketball, Brandon Roy thought, would be enough.
Academics might be important to most high-school sophomores, but Roy was an all-star basketball player, so good and so ready, that the game would sustain him. The game would take care of everything.
He only needed math to tally up his stat sheets. And reading just took time away from the gym.
Roy didn't know it, but his life was going in circles. He wasn't growing. Outside of basketball, he wasn't getting tested. Outside of basketball he was failing.
But after his sophomore year at Garfield, Roy was frightened into changing his life. Then-Arizona coach Lute Olson, an icon in the game, told Roy, "I can't give you a scholarship unless your grades are better."
For the first time in his life, maybe the only time in his life, Roy was scared.
"I always thought that if you're good enough at basketball, you're going to make it and I'm good enough," Roy said sitting in an office Friday at the Rainier Vista Boys and Girls Club. "But when Lute Olson told me that, I went home and talked to my mom for hours. I didn't know what I was going to do. It was close to being too late."
After Roy's sophomore year, Lou Hobson, a longtime AAU coach and mentor of many of Seattle's high-school hoop prodigies, found tutors for Roy.
Now, when Roy thinks about his journey from Garfield to the Portland Trail Blazers, he remembers what Hobson did for him and understands how those necessarily tough, extra hours in the classroom saved his career......................
