In four years at Kansas, Keith Langford scored 1,812 points, won three Big 12 regular-season titles and played in two Final Fours, a remarkable run of collegiate success that earned him a lifetime of free drinks and adulation in Lawrence.
Yet for a long time after his KU career ended, the last place Langford wanted to be was Lawrence. The place where he made a name for himself had become his discomfort zone. The community that embraced him instead made him feel unworthy.
It's not what anyone did. They still treated him the same, asking for his autograph, slapping him on his back.
It's what they said, unwittingly cutting to his core with the simplest of questions:
An honest query, those six words instead felt like daggers to Langford because, in them, he heard the implication:
Why wasn't he in the NBA?
What's wrong with you? You did so much in college. What happened? You're a failure.
"It becomes too much to explain," Langford said. "On campus, in your hometown, you're just so ashamed that, for a while, it's easier to just not be around."
It's ludicrous, really, to think that someone as accomplished as Langford could ever feel like a bust.
Statistics tell us that only 2 percent of all high school athletes earn Division I scholarships. Only 15 will be named All-Americans (that's including first, second and third teams) and only five to an All-Final Four team, like Langford was. Far less will play in a Final Four and an infinitesimal percentage will play in two national semifinals, as he did.
By any normal number crunching, he is the elite of the elite. Yet on the basketball yardstick, which measures one to D-Wade, he felt like he came up short.
If only Langford were unique.
