Friday, February 18, 2000

Even Martin needs a hand to hold onto

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BY PAUL DAUGHERTY
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Kenyon Martin (AP photo) | ZOOM |

        She was always there. Tamara Martin waited for her little brother after school, to walk him home. She'd arrange to have a school gym door unlocked on weekends, so the brother she called “Boo” could practice basketball. When Kenyon Martin ducked a class at UC, Bob Huggins wouldn't call Martin's sister. He'd just make the threat. Martin went to class.

        Tamara even named him. Their mother wanted to call him John Samples, after her father. Three-year-old Tamara insisted he be called Kenyon Lee. He was.

        A kid's life is jumbled enough with a full set of family, in a fine neighborhood where all his wants are met. It's worse when Dad's a mystery and Mom works all day. But Tamara was always there.

        “No matter what,” Martin said the other day. “Always there for me. It's wonderful to have someone to count on.”

        We're not going to make Martin a sociology project. His background is so familiar in sports now, it's a cliche. He did grow up in Oak Cliff, a difficult part of south Dallas. He did not have his father around after the age of 7. He was on his own a lot, when his mother was at work.

        He's not unique in that. The difference was Tamara, who would walk him home, threaten to fight the kids who teased him about his stuttering speech, talk to him when days were bad, wrap him in her security blanket. She still does. “He called five times last week,” Tamara said. “You coming to Houston?” where the Bearcats played Thursday night. “You coming to Memphis? You coming to Senior Day?” Tamara Ridley still lives in Dallas, where she's an accountant and a married mother of two. She takes no credit for her brother's basketball stardom, or for the degree he hopes to earn sometime next summer. “That's all him. He wanted it. He got it,” she said.

        But a bit of it belongs to her, and to Martin's mother, Lydia. Nobody makes it on his own. Not completely. Not even Kenyon Martin, who has made handling himself and opponents on the basketball court look so routine, it's easy to assume he has everything else figured out, too.

        Maybe he does. But not without help.

        “Because my mom was a single parent, all we heard was, "They're not going to be anything; they're not going to make it.' Here she has two kids doing whatever they set their minds to,” Tamara said.

        A good thing about college sports is that athletes grow in ways not measured by vertical leaps or points-per-game. It happens more often than not, but usually with the jocks who aren't stars, who don't play on high-profile teams. They learn that hard work really is its own reward.

        Four years of swimming or soccer or tennis teaches life lessons you can't get in a book.

        By staying at UC for his senior year, Kenyon Martin has made himself millions of dollars. He has turned himself into a lottery pick in the NBA draft, probably a top-three choice. Seemingly out of nowhere, he has developed a soft, mid-range jump shot to complement his hard work near the basket. He has gone from a poor free throw shooter who didn't want the ball late in close games to a reliable one who is looking to get fouled.

        And that controlled madness on defense only gets better.

        But Martin is also a better person for having stayed four years. His stuttering is almost gone. His ability to relate to people, to take instruction, to listen, to learn and to cope is vastly improved from four years ago.

        “I'm a confident person now,” is what Martin said about that.

        When asked why he chose to stay at UC this year, Martin said: “I needed another year to grow up. I knew I could never get (my senior year) back. I thought if I came back, I would get more money. But it was bigger than the money.”

        Engrave that on every hot-shot underclassmen's thinking. It is bigger than the money.

        Boo is a man now, 23 years old, a fact Tamara sometimes can't fathom. “Off the court, he's still a little boy,” she said. To her, he's still the kid who skipped out on his after-school chores to play sports. He's the college sophomore she instructed to “put more arch on those horrible free throws.”

        He made 48 percent of his free throws last year; he's at 70 percent now. Everyone needs someone to be there for him. Even Kenyon Martin.

        Paul Daugherty welcomes your comments at 768-8454.

       

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