Okafor learned from his dad how to be great

[CeltsSteve@xxxxxxx]

Okafor learned from his dad how to be great 


COMMENTARY 
By Mike Berardino
South Florida Sun Sentinel
April 5, 2004 


SAN ANTONIO - Emeka Okafor walked into a room filled with reporters Sunday afternoon, glanced at the elaborate setup and froze in his tracks. 

"I get my own room?" Okafor asked an NCAA media official, sounding genuinely surprised. "A little pitcher of water, too?" 

College basketball's living, breathing advertisement for whatever remains right with its troubled game shook his head and chuckled softly. 

"Dang," he said, using one of his favorite words. ("Y'all" is another.)
 
With that, Connecticut's otherworldly center applied some Chapstick, settled his 6-9 frame into a chair and spent the next 40 minutes sharing his remarkable story. From high school afterthought to double all-American, both athletic and academic, to the verge of the national basketball championship. 

He did so with good cheer and sound reasoning despite working on about four hours' sleep. A few times he asked people to repeat their questions, but that was only because he was still flying from the previous night's comeback from a 9-point deficit in the final four minutes against Duke. 
A comeback he triggered, by the way, with 18 second-half points after playing just four scoreless minutes in a foul-marred first half. A comeback he capped by ripping a loose ball out of Luol Deng's hands and laying it in for the go-ahead points. 

Unfailingly polite, Okafor didn't want to just pollute the air with a stream of cliches. Face open, eyes bright, he wanted to process each question fully so he could give a proper answer. 

You want to know why Chukwuemeka Noubuisi Okafor's ego hasn't exploded yet? You want to know how he remains humble and focused amid a daily deluge of adulation at this Final Four? 

You want to know how he remains unspoiled by success as he prepares for tonight's rematch with upstart Georgia Tech at the Alamodome? 
Start with his father. 

Pius Okafor was still in high school when a civil war broke out in his native Nigeria in the late 1960s. He and his family wound up at a Biafran refugee camp, but there wasn't nearly enough food to go around. 

So the elder Okafor joined the federal army, fighting in the 30-month conflict out of survival more than anything else. 

"He wasn't sure he was going to eat the next day, much less graduate," Emeka says. 

Pius survived even as 1 million of his countrymen paid with their lives, many through starvation. He then emigrated to the United States in the mid-1970s, attending Grambling and Texas Southern universities. 

By 1982 he had a master's in business administration. By 1988 he'd added a master's in accounting. Since 1997, Pius, now 53, has attended the University of Missouri-Kansas City in pursuit of a doctorate in pharmacy. 

And you wonder why his son is so fanatical about education?
 
"My father's story gives me perspective on everything," the Huskies star says. "You always hear about guys whose fathers walked 10 miles in the snow or whatever. That actually happened to my dad. It actually snowed in Houston the first winter after he moved there, and he had to walk to school." 

Young Emeka soaked up all of his father's stories, as well as those of his mother, Celestina, who met Pius during a trip home to Nigeria in 1980. The lessons took root. 

"He would tell me horror stories about working two jobs, going to school, trying to get a little sleep, riding a bike all around town," Okafor says. 

More than once, the son has told his father, "Dang, you had it rough. How did you do it?" 

Perseverance. Character. Commitment. 

The same sort of traits that have guided Okafor this far. 

"He's the total package," Huskies coach Jim Calhoun says. "Incredible player, incredible person."