Who is Lee Benson?

["Berry, Mark S" <berrym@BATTELLE.ORG>]

I was completely confused by Way's post of a week or so ago about "Would the
Celtics draft Lee Benson and other arcane speculations?" I didn't know who
the hell Lee Benson was. Well, now I do. The following article is from the
Dayton Daily News. Sounds like big, big trouble to me, but he has the Dayton
connection with Obie, so who knows? Anyway, I thought others might be
interested.
 
Mark
 
 
Brown Mackie College basketball coach Francis Flax has had great success
recruiting the Dayton area. 
Three players from the city were members of his junior college team from
Salina, Kan., that won the Division II national championship in 1999.
Another, Erik Shontee, a Colonel White graduate, is a starter for him now. 
But to land the biggest prize of all from Dayton, Flax would have to go to
extraordinary lengths. 
He would have to go to the Warren County Correctional Institution. 
Lee Benson Jr., who was a 6-foot-11 basketball sensation at Dunbar High
School before he dropped out in 1991, was convicted in 1993 of multiple drug
trafficking charges and abduction with a firearm and was sent to prison. If
he served the maximum sentence, Benson, considered perhaps the best center
prospect the area had produced, wouldn't be released until 2020. 
Assistant prosecutor Rick Hanes said at the time: "So he's 6-foot-11 and can
jam with both hands. He's literally one of the biggest dope dealers in the
Mount Crest Court area. This guy's a very violent character." 
But Flax saw a different side of Benson. After learning of his whereabouts
through Benson's cousin, Marcus Stewart, who was a reserve on the national
championship team, a two-year courtship began. 
The coach corresponded with Benson by mail and then began visiting him at
the prison. And when Benson was paroled in August after serving nearly nine
years, the coach was there to greet him. 
Flax said other colleges made overtures to Benson, but "they just didn't
stay with it. I pursued it and stayed with him the whole time, and we built
up a sense of trust and loyalty toward one another." 
Flax helped Benson pass his GED and gave him a scholarship to Brown Mackie. 
"If I thought he was going to be any kind of a problem, I would have dropped
it," Flax said. "I felt, after all my years of coaching, when I sat down
with him face to face for the first time, he was somebody I wanted to help
establish himself in life. There's more to this than just basketball. Lee's
a very good person." 
And a very good player. 
Although he hadn't suited up since the 1990-91 season when he was the city's
co-player of the year, Benson, now 28, has been practically unstoppable at
the junior-college level. 
He is leading the nation in scoring with a 29.1 average and is pulling down
13.3 rebounds per game. He's also knocked down 10 three-pointers for the 9-4
team. 
"How good is he? He has NBA potential," Flax said. "He's not ready for the
NBA now, and he might not be this year. But he has NBA potential. 
"I like to associate him with Kevin Garnett's game. That's who he reminded
me of the first time I saw him play." 
In a 94-91 win over Fort Scott on Tuesday, with a scout from the Milwaukee
Bucks on hand, Benson scored 45 points. 
"He's creating a stir all over the basketball world," Flax said. "I have
probably 30 messages on my desk right now from coaches - anything from NAIA,
Division II, Division I to pro." 
Benson's age wouldn't necessarily be a deterrent from playing at the NCAA
level, according to an association spokesman. But Flax foresees Benson going
straight from the junior-college ranks to the pros. 
Benson is taken aback by such predictions. 
"If it happens, it happens," he said. "If it don't, I'm just glad to be
successful. There's a lot of people who doubted me. A lot of people gave up
on me. I'm getting my chance to prove they was wrong." 
Benson admits academics have been a problem. 
"I'm a little rusty," he said. "I've been out of school for almost 10 years.
But I'm learning it. Everything's computers now. I never worked on a
computer. But I'm learning." 
He takes responsibility for his past. 
"I was a knucklehead running around the streets," he said. "I thought 'cause
people wanted to hang around me, it was cool. But you learn who your friends
are." 
He spent time in eight Ohio prisons in all and hated every moment. When he
was released, Flax asked to pose for a picture with him in front of the
Warren prison. Not wanting any reminders of his stay there, Benson refused. 
"It's a terrible experience," Benson said. "Any young man shouldn't have to
go through that experience. (But) I learned who I was. It helped me grow
up." 
Flax had to clear Benson's enrollment with his superiors, including the
college's director, Judy McClintock. She had reservations, but Flax had
proven himself with other questionable prospects. 
McClintock said no one from the community or student body has complained
about Benson's presence there. The media coverage he is receiving has been
all positive, she said. 
"As long as coach Flax had been working with Lee, he had a good feel for the
kind of person Lee really was," McClintock said. "We felt that we were doing
him a good service, but then he's also going to help the school." 
Lee Benson Sr. and his wife, Neva, have suffered unimaginable trials as
parents. Their son, Ryan, was shot nine times in a 1992 incident but
survived. Two years later, he was shot again and died, at age 18. 
Lee Sr., a teacher at Colonel White, is cautiously optimistic that for his
family a new era is dawning. Another son, Prince, will enroll at Brown
Mackie in January. 
Of his oldest son, the elder Benson said: "He just got with the wrong
people. I think Lee was always a good guy." 
In a conversation with his father last August, Lee Jr. vowed to prove that. 
"Before I came down here, I looked him in the eye and said, 'I'm going to
make you proud,' " he said. 
"But I didn't know I was going to do this well."