Billups Article

[rjm <robert900@hotmail.com>]

FROM DENVER POST:

 Celtics tab Chauncey 

 By Vicki Michaelis Denver Post Sports Writer 

 June 26 - Denver's Skyland Recreation Center was humming with the
delicious din of bouncing basketballs and brimming youth Wednesday.
Horace Kearney had his middle-schoolers there for another free summer
clinic.

 For 22 years, Kearney has been at this, teaching kids the basics about
basketball and some things about life. He prepares them for rec-league
teams, for school teams, for college teams. He's been playing them
one-on-one, massaging their skills, waiting for the first Skyland-bred
player to make it to the NBA.

 Now he'll be waiting for the next Chauncey Billups.

 Billups, Skyland's own and Denver's pride, Wednesday made the pros. He
was the first point guard taken in the NBA draft, going third overall to
the Boston Celtics.

 "They're a great, great team with great tradition," Billups said of the
Celtics. "I think every body in the draft right now was a Celtic fan
growing up because of how much they won - those guys, and the Lakers."
He added: "I cheered for the Lakers, because I liked Magic (Johnson)."
Last season, Billups led the University of Colorado to its first NCAA
Tournament appearance since 1969. The Buffaloes, who went 22-10, set a
school record for victories before losing to North Carolina in the
NCAA's second round.

 Now Billups, despite all that Celtic pride of the past, is back with a
team needing a major boost. Boston finished 15-67 last season, last in
the Atlantic Division.

 Billups likely will start at point guard for the Celtics, who expect to
lose incumbent David Wesley to free agency next month. Billups will be
playing for one of the NBA's newest crop of high-pay, high-expectation
coaches - Rick Pitino, who tried to recruit him fewer than three years
ago to Kentucky.

 "Coach Pitino's style is a lot like our style at Colorado - push the
ball and pressure defense," Billups said.

 Billups left CU after his sophomore season, in which he averaged 19.1
points, 4.8 rebounds and 4.7 assists while earning first-team
allconference and second-team AllAmerica honors.

 He surprised many two years ago when he announced he would sign with
CU, a perennial patsy of college basketball. He had his reasons, some of
them very personal. He felt his younger brother Rodney, for example,
still needed his big brother around.

 But now Rodney is set to enter high school, perhaps to become a local
sports legend on his own merit.

 "I think I've pretty much done my job. He's old enough to cope on his
own," Billups said recently.

 It was one thing that encouraged Billups to move on, to declare early
for the NBA. That, along with Billups' belief that "I was the best
person in college at my position, and I knew that somebody would want a
point guard." Call it a bit of hubris if you will, but Skyland's Kearney
still sees Billups shooting around with the younger kids every time he
stops by the center. He still sees the same modesty he did when Billups
arrived for his first free summer clinic at Skyland.

 "Success has never spoiled him," Kearney said. "He's always been the
same, easy-going Chauncey Billups." On the basketball court, though,
he's hard-driving. NBA scouts, shooting down notions that Billups is
better suited as a two-guard, have called him a "prototype point guard,"
one who can pass, shoot or penetrate with equal ease. Billups displayed
those qualities, along with beyond-his-years maturity, at the one group
workout he did for NBA scouts in April. It was enough to push him into
the top five.

 "High-school basketball in Denver isn't what high-school basketball is
in New York City or Los Angeles," Billups said. "So I really didn't get
that much national exposure. I was pretty big in Denver, but nationally
I wasn't that big a name. So I had to show what I could do." The folks
at Skyland already knew what he could do. They knew they could be
gathering at the rec center someday, as they did Wednesday, to watch
Billups go pro on national television.

 "It's everything you think of from the first time you pick up a
basketball," Billups said. "Coming to the draft, being able to walk
across the stage, shaking David Stern's hand, pulling on the hat."
Kearney figures Skyland will throw some sort of congratulatory party
whenever Billups stops back in town.

 "I'll just let him show up and go hug him and congratulate him on being
one of the first from this center to go so high," Kearney said. "Then
I'll give him some words of wisdom: Invest wisely and be careful of the
people around you. Run with the correct crowd." Kearney has been
offering such advice all along, such as when Billups left George
Washington Ñ where he led the team to two state championships - for CU.

 "I said, "Don't even think about the pros. Just let it happen to you,'
" Kearney said.

 It has happened. Skyland's own Chauncey Billups is an NBA player.