Point Not Taken (Shaun Livingston article)

http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/news/story?page=espnmag/livingston

By Ric Bucher
ESPN The Magazine


Editor's note: This article appears in the February 12 issue of ESPN The Magazine.


They're all waiting. The father who made him do push-ups at 5 a.m. when he was 9. The high school coach who battled with the young phenom, only to see him win two state titles elsewhere. The current coach who refused to trade him for a seven-time All-Star. The teammates who long for a new floor leader, current floor leader included. The notoriously chintzy owner who is -- was? -- all set to give him a seven-figure extension even though, three years in, he has yet to lock up a starting spot.



Eric Ogden
Will Livingston ever live up to his enormous potential?
Add to the list anyone who has seen Clippers point guard Shaun Livingston offer his tantalizing amalgam of speed, handle, court vision and defense. Then add one more.


"I haven't even scratched my potential," Livingston says. "I can be The Man. I have the skills and the tools to do it. I just have to play to my potential. I just have to be me."


If ever there was a time for that, this is it, what with the Clippers face-planting out of the gate and all that long-term money hanging in the balance.


So what's the holdup?


The long answer is one short word: fear. But not of success. Livingston's fear is that everyone will see him racking up stats and think it's all about the extension and the adulation. Or that even a hint of selfishness will prompt cold shoulders from his teammates. Or that he'll walk into the locker room one day and it'll be Richwoods High all over again, with sideways glances and newspaper stories about a hotshot who's all about himself.


"I want to show my team I'm for the team," Livingston says. "I want them to see I'm in it for them, not for me. Growing up watching the league, Allen Iverson was my favorite player. But once I got here, Steve Nash instantly became my favorite. He can take 30 shots in a game, and not one person thinks he's doing it for himself."


So Shaun Livingston has a conscience.


And it's killing him.



* * * * *

Patience in L.A. is growing as thin as Livingston, all 6'7" and 194 pounds of him. The grace period for the first point guard drafted directly out of high school? Expired. The pass for injuries that limited him to 30 games as a rookie? Punched. The fact that he's still the youngest active Clipper, even as a third-year guy? Nice try.


It is no longer enough for the former No. 4 pick to break the staunchest pressure effortlessly, make a lateral pass ... then loop through the lane to stand and watch. Not when, in terms of basketball IQ, Livingston is an Einstein on a squad of Spicolis. "He should be flirting with a triple-double every night," says coach Mike Dunleavy, even though Livingston's not averaging a single-double in any category. This time, if the Clippers, fresh off of last year's unprecedented brush with the conference finals, happen to find themselves back on more familiar turf -- the lottery -- Livingston will assuredly share the blame.


It doesn't help that Allen Iverson could have been wearing Clippers blue and red rather than Nuggets blue and gold had the organization included Livingston in a deal. "Untouchable, huh?" an angry fan shouted at GM Elgin Baylor at the end of a five-point home loss to Houston on Dec. 17, in which Livingston did flirt with a triple-double -- 21 points, nine rebounds, six assists -- but wasn't able to carry LA to victory.



Eric Ogden
"I just have to be me," says Livingston.
That fan is not alone. "You can see the potential," says power forward Elton Brand.


"I get frustrated when I watch him play, because he could do so much more," says Livingston's father, Reggie.


Reggie met Ann Baer, Shaun's mom, at a teen nightclub in downtown Peoria, Ill., where they danced well past midnight and shared a double-cheeseburger afterward. He'd found The One. They married two years later, and Shaun arrived a month after that. Ann was only 21; she wasn't ready for motherhood. But when the couple split after 15 months, she took custody of Shaun. Soon after, Reggie went to a babysitter's house and said he found his young son sitting at the foot of a bed with a dozen other kids running around the house. He scooped Shaun up and told Ann he'd be taking care of him from then on. She didn't put up a fight.


Reggie dropped out of community college and worked the swing shift at McDonald's while his grandmother Marie Crooks watched Shaun. Later, Reggie and Shaun moved into an apartment with Reggie's father, Frank, so they could afford the $400-a-month tuition for Shaun at Concordia Lutheran, a private, predominantly white school. Reggie, having been bused to a suburban, all-white school in the 1970s, wanted a similar opportunity for his son. But he also wanted Shaun to see "both sides of the coin," so after third grade, he moved Shaun to Roosevelt Magnet, a public school as rough as Concordia was gilded. But by the time Shaun was in sixth grade, there were questions about the school's ability to motivate him, so Reggie had him transferred back to Concordia.


All the while, father and son spent every free minute molding Shaun into a point guard. He dribbled blindfolded and two balls at a time; he dribbled a heavy ball and through cones and in the snow. Shaun even pounded the rock as he hung out the window of a moving car, a drill Reggie picked up from a tape of Pistol Pete Maravich. Training started in the early morning hours so Shaun could still sing in the choir, play drums, quarterback his football team, pitch for his baseball team, help out at a local soup kitchen and go to church. "I raised him the way I wanted to have been raised," says Reggie.


Shaun's pickup competition was always older, so Reggie taught his son that a kid who could handle and distribute would always get picked, no matter how young he was. By fourth grade, Shaun was a major draw at the local, 2,000-team Gus Macker 3-on-3 tournament. By eighth grade, he was rated the best ballhandler in the country by BasketballPhenoms.com.


None of which meant squat to Bobby Darling, the coach at Peoria's Richwoods High, the school Reggie had handpicked for Shaun. Richwoods is just what it sounds like: an affluent school with a proud tradition in both athletics and academics. It's the kind of school that prides itself on being bigger than any individual.


So it didn't play well when Verdell Jones, Reggie's close friend, tried to give Darling advice on how to handle a talent as rare as Shaun's. "We didn't get off to a great start," Darling admits. "His camp had visions, and Shaun was a shy, fragile young man when I got him."



Vincent Dixon
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A broken foot followed by a broken wrist as a freshman limited Shaun to 16 games off the bench. He started as a sophomore, but walking pneumonia stifled his effectiveness. And because Richwoods had gone to the state tourney without Livingston, Darling felt no particular urgency to use him as anything more than a press-breaker off the bench. Jones, though, kept pushing for more, and soon Shaun was being labeled a prima donna by his teammates. "That hurt," he says. "I've never forgotten it."


Until then, the embraces of teammates had always been a substitute for the ones Shaun never got from the usual sources. "Basketball was my mom," he says flatly. Worse, by this time, Shaun and Reggie weren't getting along. Reggie looked at the sacrifices he'd made and the successes Shaun had previously enjoyed and wondered why all of a sudden his son was taking the counsel of others in his circle. Meanwhile, Shaun wondered why Reggie was spending time with girlfriends who saw his son as a third wheel. Before his junior year, and against Reggie's advice, Shaun transferred to Peoria Central. A few months later, he finally had it out with his dad and moved back in with his grandfather for his senior year.


Asserting himself off the court led to a greater presence on it. He won two state titles at Central and was named Mr. Basketball as a senior. Despite Reggie's desire that he fulfill a commitment he'd made to Duke in November 2003, he declared for the NBA draft. It could have been the right move too -- if only he hadn't looked back.



* * * * *

Point guard Sam Cassell was a big reason for the Clippers' success last season. There's nothing like a braying, bowlegged, bald man with two championship rings to keep a team loose and focused at the same time. He was the one who convinced Brand to take crunch-time shots, who kept Cuttino Mobley and Chris Kaman in line, who persuaded Dunleavy to let the team run.


But a year later, the league is a beat quicker and the 37-year-old Cassell another step slower. And that was before he developed a sore left heel in November. He knows the torch has to be passed. Then again, he's not just going to hand it over. Livingston has to snatch it.


He reaches for it in the third quarter of a Dec. 29 win over the Kings. After the young point guard is nearly invisible in the first half (one point and one assist in 12 minutes), Cassell, his heel relegating him to street clothes, begins to bark orders from the bench. "Sam," Livingston says, "I got this. Let me handle it."


And he does. He nails jumpers, mixes in drives and fires laser passes that lead to layups, and the Clippers saunter to a 102-93 win. Livingston even shows a mean streak when he yanks down Mike Bibby by his ankle after being knocked over on his way to the hoop. "We looked more like a team tonight," he says afterward. "I pushed, attacked, explored, and they responded."



Barry Gossage/Getty Images
The passing of the torch at the point guard position hasn't gone as smoothly as possible.
A week later, though, his bravado has evaporated again, and the Clippers disappear right along with him. Livingston fails to take advantage of an eight-inch advantage over the Hawks' Speedy Claxton and winces or curses after every one of his nine misses in a 2-for-11, eight-point outing during an 86-74 loss in Atlanta. "It's not like we're not going to listen to him," says swingman Tim Thomas. "But he has to learn to be vocal. That comes with the job." In the postgame locker room, Cassell, who was in uniform but didn't play, stands six feet from Livingston. He says, for everyone to hear: "It's not X's and O's. We're missing leadership, missing direction."


Two nights later, in Oklahoma City, Cassell shows everyone what he means. When the Hornets, minus Chris Paul and two other starters, jump out to a quick lead, Dunleavy pulls Livingston for Cassell. The energy surge is immediate. "Yeah, boy!" Cassell yells at Brand after a quick bucket. "Take the move away from him!" he scolds Mobley after a drive by Desmond Mason.


The Clippers pull away in the fourth as Cassell scores 12 of his 31 points. Livingston finishes with nine points and seven assists, but his presence is barely felt down the stretch. After the game, the old vet takes a final shot. "When you have the ball in your hands, people from your team are looking for you to do something with it," he says. "You can't be afraid to take chances. If Shaun is open, no matter what time is on the clock, he has to shoot. He's got to understand that aspect of professional basketball."


Livingston is not around to hear him this time. But he's listened to versions of it before. Maybe the words sting for a moment, but they never seem to stick, and he always finds a way to make peace with Cassell, just as he has with Darling, whom he went back to visit after his rookie year. And just as he has with his mom, whom he agreed to meet after she abruptly reached out to him when he was 16.


This is, at heart, still a fragile 21-year-old man-child who wants there never to be hard feelings. When his mother told him he had a second younger half sister -- he already knew Reggie's 12-year-old daughter, Sarah -- he had portraits painted of Sarah and 17-year-old Blair and hung them outside his bedroom in his Playa del Rey house. "When I come up the stairs, regardless of what kind of day I've had, they're here with me," he says.


And he's not giving up on his relationship with Reggie, who says it's no accident that Shaun's December surge coincided with his visit. "I could tell him what he needs to work on, but he's got to come to me on his own," Reggie says. "We're going to sit down after the season and talk. Two years, and he'll be where he needs to be. He'll be a leader."


But that's the problem: Shaun doesn't have two years. The Clippers may have resisted the Sixers' AI overture earlier this season, but more recently they were prepared to send their stalled point guard and Mobley to New Jersey for Vince Carter and Marcus Williams. Only the Nets' insistence on getting Corey Maggette, not Mobley, torpedoed the deal.


So for now, his teammates will continue to marvel at the ease with which he breaks pressure and whips passes, even as they plead for him to do more. Meanwhile, the Clippers will meander along, possibly making the playoffs but coming nowhere close to last season's run, and Livingston will stew and curse himself when he doesn't live up to expectations.


And everyone will wait.


"We're not winning, and maybe that would change if I took more shots, but I'm still going to play the right way," he says. "I feel I have to."


At least now you know why.


Ric Bucher is a senior writer for ESPN The Magazine

 

http://www.clipsnation.com/
By ClipperSteve
Posted on Mon Feb 05, 2007 at 04:15:07 PM PST


Posted on Mon Feb 05, 2007 at 04:15:07 PM PST

I finally got a chance to read the Ric Bucher article on Shaun Livingston in the Mag this weekend. (I've had the flu, if you're wondering about the relative dearth of ClipperSteve posts. What's that? You didn't notice? <sigh>) Citizen John R posted the link in the diaries on Friday, so most of you have probably read it by now. It's an interesting piece. Bucher's main point seems to be this:


So what's the holdup?
The long answer is one short word: fear. But not of success. Livingston's fear is that everyone will see him racking up stats and think it's all about the extension and the adulation. Or that even a hint of selfishness will prompt cold shoulders from his teammates. Or that he'll walk into the locker room one day and it'll be Richwoods High all over again, with sideways glances and newspaper stories about a hotshot who's all about himself....
So Shaun Livingston has a conscience.

Fear of racking up too many stats? Wow, am I not scared of that. This is an interesting take, and certainly there is some evidence to support it. But if it's true, it's going to be a real problem - the last thing an NBA point guard needs is a conscience.
Point guards share the ball for the good of the team, not to make their teammates like them. Usually it works out that way - if you have confidence that you'll get the pass, you'll run harder to fill the lane, and when you get the pass, you run hard again the next time. But if someone thinks they should be getting the ball more often and the point guard thinks otherwise, well tough.

Interestingly, all the things we thought could hold Shaun back haven't really been problems. Remember the 'He's too skinny and weak, he'll get pushed around' argument? When was the last time Shaun got pushed around? He's a great defender, and even does a good job when he gets switched onto small forwards. Most of the time, he's the one doing the pushing (and getting whistled for offensive fouls). Has his frail build contributed to his injury trouble? Maybe, but then again he's only missed 2 games in the last 118, so maybe it's time to put the injury knock to bed also. As for his shooting ability, it certainly looks like he can shoot - he just tends not to.

So if those were the only things that could possibly stop him from being a superstar, then why isn't he a superstar?

In this age of shoot first point guards, point guards who are called that primarily because they are the shortest player on their team and no other reason (think Gulbert Arenas), Shaun is a throw back. A true pass first point. But all the great pass first point guards were also significant scoring threats. Magic Johnson was a 20 point per game scorer most of his career. Even John Stockton, the ultimate pass-first point guard, was the second or third leading scorer for the Jazz for 12 consecutive seasons. And of course Steve Nash is so effective as a passer because he also happens to be the best pure shooter in the NBA. So you can be a pass-first point guard, but you can't be a pass-only point guard. A pass-only point guard is Brevin Knight.

We've spent some time comparing Shaun to other young point guards. This may or may not be fair, but it's valid as long as the Clippers use the `Point guard is a tough position to learn' argument. Certainly all of these young guys came into the league with more of a scoring mentality, which may explain why they seem to have transitioned to the NBA more readily. So Deron Williams, Chris Paul, Raymond Felton and maybe even Jarrett Jack seem to be ahead of him on the curve, and maybe it's because they are all more comfortable creating shots for themselves. But consider this: In 136 NBA games Shaun Livingston's NBA career high in scoring is 21 (Dec. 17, 2006 versus Houston). Here is a partial list of young point guards who have scored more in the NBA:

Steve Blake 25
Rajon Rondo 23 (twice)
Marcus Williams 27
TJ Ford 28
Monta Ellis 31
Jameer Nelson 29
Jose Calderon 24
Sergio Rodriguez 23
Sebastian Telfair 27

You could argue that all of these players have gotten the chance to be the starting point guard at some point. Well, so has Shaun of course. How is it possible that Shaun Livingston, with all his evident talent, has never scored more than 21 points in an NBA game? Perhaps even more telling is the fact that Shaun had two different 18 point games in April of his rookie year. 18 points as a 19 year old rookie, 21 as a 21 year old 3rd year player. At this rate, he'll put up a 30 point game in another 9 years.

Obviously, career high in points is a one-off stat (Sergio Rodriguez had one great game, big deal), but it speaks to Shaun's demeanor. He won't take over a game, even when he can't miss. 8 for 10 against the Wizards in January - why only 10 shots? 5 for 5 against the Raptors. Shaun needs to take over a game and he needs to get downright cocky about it.

Three plays in the last week illustrate my point.

The Dunk -

This happened during an encouraging sequence in which Shaun came as close to taking over as we have seen. In the fourth quarter of a two point game, with the Clippers struggling to score, Shaun blows by Ben Gordon of the Bulls and throws down one of the great dunks of the season, ducking his head under the backboard as he goes by. He celebrates by taking the ball, throwing it to the ref, and playing defense. What? Even Elton Brand, the most low key superstar in the NBA, let's out a yell when he dunks. The expression on Shaun's face never changed. Point guards have attitude. They let people know how good they are.

The Overpass -

In the fourth quarter of the Raptors loss, he had a wide open 10 footer, but instead passed the ball to Kaman, who took the exact same shot. Part of being a point guard is understanding the people around you and the situation - Shaun hadn't missed a shot in the game, and Kaman had missed 8 in a row. Why give him the ball in that situation? Is this a case of Shaun wanting Chris to like him? Screw that. Shoot the ball. Any time you make a pass, there is the potential for mishandling the ball - by definition, you should only pass up an open shot for a better shot. You should never pass up an open shot for the same shot, less so when it's a poorer shooter, and less still when it's a poorer shooter who is ice cold. Part of being a point guard is knowing all that, but first and foremost, shoot the ball when you have a good shot!

The Slow Down -

In the same game, after a steal, Shaun got the ball on the wing with only one defender back - a big, I think it was Nesterovic. Rather than take the ball right by him to the rim, he slowed everything down and set up the offense. Why? Are we really going to get a better shot than Livingston one on one in transition against Nesterovic? That's at least two points, and hopefully three.

I don't like to steal things from Mike Smith, traditional ball (© Michael Smith) notwithstanding, but he is right about Shaun's tendency to mope. TJ Ford almost stole an inbounds pass, and blew by him another time, as Shaun was muttering to himself about something or other. In the Celtics game, he missed an easy post up shot, and was shaking his head as Rondo sped past him for a lay up. The fact that he can't let himself get beat while he's moping being an obvious problem, it's also true that great point guards have short memories regarding their mistakes, and let everyone know about their triumphs. Shaun is the opposite. Shaun is the most humble and self-effacing player in the NBA right now. Point guards aren't humble.

Because these things seem to be personality traits, there is a frightening though real possibility that he will not overcome them. Although his body, skill and vision scream `All Pro', his personality whispers `whatever.'

He has a conscience. Point guards do not. He is humble. Point guards are not. I don't know if you can change those things.

 

Is it me or does Shaun Livingston look like Alicia Keys. Shaun Livingston has to bulk up and put some muscle on that rail thin frame because it's down right embarrassing to be compared to a woman....