work out, you have to believe in yourself.”
And he has been through experiences like
having the NCAA twice stop him from
playing for powerhouses UCLA and North
Carolina State.
Schea Cotton visitng a favorite seaside court in his
familiar Pacific seaside setting. A documentary about the Los Angeles basketball
legend – his life– on, off and around the court.
He was quoted as recently as 2010 as
citing that decision, or lack thereof, as a
mistake. Not anymore.“I can’t say that,”
he proclaimed. “It’s not the be-all and
end-all for me. That ship has sailed. I have
a chance to impact so many lives across
the world. “I’m glad things went how they
went. If I could do everything over again, I
would do it the same way. I wouldn’t be the
person I am if I made the NBA.” He looks into the eyes of his charges and
sees the same stars in them that were in his
at the same age. “It’s tough to get out of
here,” said Cotton, “but everybody thinks that
they are going to get out of where they are.”
He picked himself up, playing at Long
Beach City College and then at Alabama
before suffering the ignominy of not
hearing his name called in the two-round
NBA Draft, which equates to a punched
ticket to being a hoops hobo, latching
on to teams in strange places like
Shanghai and Central and South America
(Dominican Republic, Mexico, Venezuela).
“I had to face things I never dealt with,”
he said, adding that knowing that the
players he dominated in national AAU
tournaments – up to and including Kobe
Bryant – were NBA superstars while he was
a stranger in strange lands. “I had no sense
of being” he added. “I was just a person
floating around in the wind.”
No Regrets
Because of his mindset, Cotton wasn’t
playing his best basketball, making him
far from the scholastic superstar that could
have declared for the NBA draft out of
high school at a time when others – Kevin
Garnett, Bryant and Jermaine O’Neal -
were making it fashionable again.
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Fall 2016
coachandplayer.com
Part of Cotton’s program is to get each one
of his players on his roster to the “Division
I program of their choice,” adding that if
he could “steer them” that way, it would
“I was the No. 1 player in the
country. That meant everything
that comes with it.”
The reason is simple. Cotton is convinced
beyond a reasonable doubt that himself
right now, in an alternate universe as
a former NBA player, would not be in
the trenches with the next generation
of kids just like he was when he and his
brother -- James, who had a brief NBA
career -- played basketball to “keep us off
the streets” in their neighborhood where
trouble was easy to get into.
be a “true blessing” for him. When he
prepares his players for the next level,
he does so with every dosage of pros
and cons. Cotton, an advocate of other
paths to professional basketball – like
junior hockey in Canada or minor league
baseball – is not exactly the president
of the NCAA Fan Club.“I don’t have
the greatest things to say about it,” said
Cotton, who was blocked from playing
initially at UCLA after achieving a
qualifying score of 900 on the SAT test
photograph by Michael Angulo