J-Speaks: The Second Act of a Trail Blazer

The average career for an NBA player, whether you are drafted or not is around five seasons. The lucky few are blessed to play the game for 20 seasons and more common players have a cup of coffee in the league. It is rare for a player to go from being drafted to becoming a star in a short period and then have it all end before age 30. That is the precise situation that happened for the No. 6 overall pick in 2006 draft.

In June of 2006, the Portland Trail Blazers selected guard Brandon Roy, who went from being the 2007 NBA Rookie of the Year, a three-time All-Star (2008-2010) and in the blink of an eye his career on the hardwood concluded.

Degenerated arthritis in both knees was quickly taking its toll on the Roy. So much so that the former University of Washington Huskie needed treatment on those knees for up to eight hours just to be able to play. Unfortunately, the condition in both of his knees was rapidly deteriorating. All of this was happening at a time when the Portland Trail Blazers were a rising team in the West going from just 32 wins in his first season to 41, 54, 50 and 48 wins, including three straight appearances in the postseason.

After surgery to both knees, Roy was shelved for 35 games during the 2010-11 regular season. With the clock ticking on his career, the 2006 consensus First-Team All-American, then Pac-10 Player of the Year and 2006 First-Team All-Pac-10 selection made a remarkable last stand in Game 4 of the Trail Blazers First-Round series versus Dirk Nowitzki and the Dallas Mavericks.

Before the start of the final stanza, Roy said that then head coach Nate McMillan pulled him to the side and asked him what was on his mind. Roy basically said that he did not know how much longer that he will be able to play basketball, let alone play in the postseason. He wanted to get out on the and give everything that he had and that so-called last stand was an 18-point output in the fourth quarter that led the Trail Blazers to an 84-82 win that tied the series at 2-2.

“You don’t plan for a night like that to happen,” Roy, who team would lose that first-round series in six games said. “It was just an unbelievable night.”

After the game, Roy said to TNT’s Marty Snider that there were times he thought that he would never play basketball again.

While Roy’s career on the hardwood did not conclude at that point, it would be the last 20-plus point performance of his career.

He would hang up his sneakers for a season before a brief comeback with the Minnesota Timberwolves, but that return would last just five games and just like that the basketball career of Brandon Roy concluded at the age of 28, finishing with career averages of 18.8 points, 4.7 assists, 4.3 rebounds on 45.9 percent from the field and 34.8 from three-point range. Roy averaged 16.3 points per game in the postseason.

“I always wondered how good I could have been if I never had the knee pains,” Roy said. “There were games where I think I had 42 points and my knee was killing me. I had got it drained and I still went out there and I was able to perform. I just knew my body couldn’t do it and it was really hard. I didn’t want to watch basketball.”

Roy couldn’t watch the sport where he was one of young rising stars because when he did watch games with people that he was around, they would say nice and positive things, but it was a reminder to him that he was no longer an NBA player.

A couple of years ago, Roy made a return to Garfield High School in Seattle, WA, where he stared at and began the transition from star player to a part-time coach.

It was there that Roy found a new passion, to coach a game that had given so much back to him. While the opportunity to that at his alma mater was not available, the position at Nathan Hale High School was, which Roy found out from a close acquaintance of his.

When Roy reached out to the school to find out about the opening, no one was more shocked than the school’s Athletic Director Darby Haskins.

“It wasn’t so much that we had to convince him to come here,” Haskins said. “This was the position that he wanted. So, were glad to have him.”

Ten of the players on this year’s Raider team said the same thing that they were very happy to have a former NBA player as their head coach.

That of all things brought a smile to Roy’s face when he went home after practice one time and embracing being a coach.

What Roy, who is 32 years of age now has also put a major emphasis on in his second act in his basketball journey is to stay in the moment and to enjoy it. What he has also parted onto his team is to expect to be great and not to fight it. That when your expectations change, that means you are growing and you expect more of yourself and those around you.

Roy used a line he said to Snider in the previously mentioned final 20-point game of his career in that Game 4 playoff win versus the Mavericks to his team in that victory over Garfield High when he said, “You guys need to start playing with nothing to lose. And stop being scared. We’re fighting against expectations. Just play.”

That moment quickly bloomed when one of the top players in the nation Michael Porter, Jr., and his younger brother Jontay transferred in from Missouri, and suddenly, the Raider basketball program became a national powerhouse, where a 16-0 record earned them a No. 1 ranking nationally, which led them to having one of their games to be broadcast for the national public, a 69-65 victory at perennial powerhouse Garfield High, Roy’s aforementioned alma mater, where his No. 4 jersey hangs in the rafters.

“He puts no pressure on us. He lets us go out there and play our game. He’s been at the highest level. So, it’s cool to pick his brain. Just about the little stuff. About the league,” Porter, Jr., a senior forward for the Raiders said.

The team finished the season 28-0, including 15-0 record in District play and while this first season was successful for Roy, as his first NBA season winning as mentioned Rookie of the Year, he knows that each year will bring its own set of challenges as well as its own opportunities to rise and be great.

“I try to remind myself every season may not be the No. 1 team in the nation,” Roy said. “It’s just the work we’re putting into it. I hope that I coach long enough to where people don’t remember me as a basketball player,” Roy said of his second act in basketball.

When playing career of a pro athlete concludes, they hope to find another passion that they can put their heart and soul into like they did in the sport they played. That crossroad came sooner than expected for Brandon Roy, who found his new passion that kept him close to the game that made him a star. He hopes though to be more remembered for his second act in his basketball journey than his first.

“I hope that I coach long enough to where people don’t remember me as a player,” Roy said. “You’re playing career will be a short time in your life and I hope the second part of my life will be one that is remembered of as being a good player, who changed his path and became a great head coach and I hope that is something that I can achieve.”

Information, statistics and quotations are courtesy of 2/21/17 edition of NBATV’s “Beyond the Paint,” with Matt Winer; www.maxpreps.com/high-schools/nathan-hale-raiders-(seattle,wa)/basketball/schedule; http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandon_Roy and http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Portland_Trail_Blazers_seasons.