On a late September weekend in 1994, Jason Terry, ranked by Blue Chip magazine as the No. 94 prospect in America, visited hometown Hec Edmundson Pavilion and told Washington coach Bob Bender he would play for the Huskies.
It didn’t appear to be a big loss for Arizona. Scouts said Terry couldn’t shoot.
A week or two later, the UA’s two leading point guard recruits committed elsewhere. Eddie Shannon would play for the Miami Hurricanes, and Kyle Cartmill chose Illinois State, of all places.
Suddenly in a pinch for point guards, Lute Olson thought maybe he could flip Terry and sell him on the idea of being Damon Stoudamire’s replacement.
It’s not like Washington had a lot to sell. Bender was coming off a 5-22 season and would go 9-18 while Terry was leading Seattle’s Franklin High School to a second state championship.
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You can imagine the exasperation in Seattle when Olson persuaded Terry to visit Tucson a few weeks later. Stoudamire, a consensus All-American from Oregon, would be his host. Terry would attend the UA-UCLA football game, where Desert Swarm, then ranked No. 14, drew a sellout crowd of 58,817 in a rousing victory over the Bruins.
It worked. A week before letter-of-intent day, Terry changed his mind. He would be a Wildcat.
Bender would go 115-143 at Washington and 4-16 against Arizona; he was fired three years after Terry became a consensus All-American at McKale Center.
Connect the dots.
Arizona doesn’t beat Kansas or Providence in the 1997 NCAA tournament, let alone win the national championship, without Jason Terry.
Bender probably doesn’t get fired at Washington if Terry had become a hometown point guard instead of a series of not-so-super guards like Donald Watts, who was ranked as Seattle’s No. 1 prospect during Terry’s high school days.
Ironically, Bender did get to coach Terry in 2003-04, as Terry emerged as a sixth man of note for the Atlanta Hawks; Bender was an Atlanta assistant coach.
I saw Terry for the first time in early February 1995, a day before Arizona’s regular season game at old Hec Ed Pavilion. Franklin High School was playing in a special Saturday afternoon prep doubleheader on the UW campus, and Terry was all over the court.
He was Fast and Furious before any movie was given that title.
Terry didn’t shoot well then, which is pretty crazy given that he recently became the third man in NBA history to make 2,000 three-pointers.
It was his energy, and that world-class smile, that permeated the arena that afternoon.
After the game, my former colleague Jon Wilner and I asked Franklin coach Ron Drayton if we could interview Terry. He said it might be a problem because, believe it or not, Terry was scheduled to sell popcorn in the Hec Ed corridor during the next game.
A few minutes later, Terry walked out of the Franklin locker room wearing a white apron and a cute little beanie that the vendors wore. We interviewed him while he sold popcorn.
And for the next four seasons at McKale Center he did everything but sell popcorn.
I was thinking about that during Arizona’s 87-57 victory over USC on Thursday, the night Jason Terry’s jersey No. 31 was placed in the rafters for posterity.
He stood at midcourt, accompanied by his wife, Johnyika and their five daughters: Jaida; Jasionna; Jasa; Jalayah; and their new baby, Jrue. Jasionna was born in Tucson during Arizona’s ’97 championship season.
Imagine how far he has come from selling popcorn at Hec Ed.
Terry has been paid $103 million by NBA teams. He helped the Dallas Mavericks win an NBA championship. But what moved me most Thursday was when he said “I stand before you today a graduate. That means a lot to me.”
He spoke about UA academic counselor Jennifer Mewes more than he did of any basketball game.
Talk about a role model.
During the first half, he sat in the bleachers, and with a towel over his expensive suit coat and fed his new baby, Jrue, her bottle. That moment was as good as any 20-point night he had wearing his CATS socks.
Jason Terry is one of Andrea Cheatham’s 10 children. To put her kids through school, she drove a bus in downtown Seattle for almost 30 years. When Terry reached the NBA and began earning his fortune, he bought her a house near a lake on Mercer Island.
Cheatham stood next to her son at midcourt on Thursday. “I promised my mom I’d get a degree,” he said. She looked away and dabbed at her eyes.
The popcorn vendor from Seattle became more than a ballplayer. He became a man.
