TITO HORFORD : The Dominican Republic’s 7-1 Center Is Learning His Lesson at Miami

Educating Tito isn’t so hopeless after all. Right before this semester, Tito Horford--would-be Houston Cougar, would-be LSU Tiger, would-be UCLA Bruin, would-be Kentucky Wildcat--waltzed up to Bill Foster, his coach at the University of Miami, and said in his best Tropical Island voice, “Coach, I want to take American History. I want to learn about America!”

One of Foster’s assistants thought Tito might be better off taking Spanish, but Tito objected.

“What for? I already speak Spanish.”

So Horford--a 7-foot 1-inch Dominican who dominates--currently is learning about America as America ever so slowly learns about him.

For a while, he was Tito the Bandito, who never met a scholarship he didn’t like. First, he wanted to go to Houston. He loved Akeem. A Houston assistant went down to visit Horford’s home in La Romana. Oh oh. At that time of year, it was illegal for a coach to visit a recruit’s home. Houston, suddenly realizing this, turned itself in.

He couldn’t go to Houston.

But LSU was nice. Purple uniforms. He went there, but he’d oversleep. Five minutes before a preseason scrimmage against a junior college, he called Coach Dale Brown to say: “I overslept, coach. Can’t make it.”

Brown threw him off the team. Nowadays, Brown won’t mention Tito’s name. So Tito says he won’t mention Brown’s, either.

He’d liked UCLA. Walt Hazzard was nice. When Tito was in high school, Hazzard came to watch practice one day, and they rapped for two hours. They talked so long that Tito missed practice.

Then, Tito flew out to visit Westwood. He met Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. That was almost better than meeting Akeem.

The Dodgers’ Pedro Guerrero, a fellow Dominican, called to say: “Hey, Tito, amigo , you need to go to UCLA, man. They love you.”

But after the Houston ordeal and the LSU ordeal, UCLA was saying: “No deal.”

Well, then, there was always Kentucky, but then Kentucky said no. Tito Horford was all dressed up with nowhere to go, and--according to his high school coach--his mom back home kept saying: “Where’s my money, Tito?”

Tito Horford, the person, was never the problem. It was Tito Horford, the recruit, that got all messed up. He was sent here by his father and uncle five years ago to make the NBA, but they forgot he had to go to high school and college first.

When he arrived (he attended Marian Christian High in Houston), he was charming. His high school coach, Bob Gallagher, bought him a bag of potato chips, and Tito was too excited to eat them.

“My God, it was like we’d given him a million dollars or something,” Gallagher remembers. “He ripped them open and sat there and looked at them for three minutes.”

Tito was big at the time, about 6-10. He could post up on the right side, but not on the left. He had no hook shot.

“And he couldn’t dribble,” Gallagher says. “Not that you want a 7-foot guy dribbling, but--at some point--you might want him to dribble one foot.”

One day during a fast break drill in practice, Gallagher turned around and couldn’t find Tito. He looked around the gym, and there was Tito sitting in the stands and drinking a soda.

“What are you doing, Tito!”

“I’m tired.”

“That’s too doggone bad! Get your butt out here!”

In the Dominican Republic, Tito sat when he wanted to sit, and couldn’t understand Gallagher’s rage. He went running to the locker room to pout.

“He wasn’t a kid I could ride,” Gallagher says.

But Marian Christian High rode Tito’s back to three-straight Texas state titles. Recruiters came and saw and pawed.

Trouble.

Tito’s mom, Ana, is poor, and it’d be more accurate to say she’s dirt poor, because the floor of her living room is plain dirt. In the Dominican, a lot of young men get paid to play for club teams, and Ana thought the same sort of thing took place in America. Ana’s husband had been killed (Gallagher says he was run over by a train), so Ana would say: “Tito, where’s my money?”

And Tito was now Tito, the recruit. His mom needed money, and Gallagher--who had become his American guardian--says colleges would come around offering money. Obviously, then, here was a troubled teen-ager.

“He was a very confused boy,” Gallagher remembers. “He let anything and everything pull at him, and he had that Latin mentality--everything goes back to mamasita . Just before he needed to make a decision, he had to call mamasita . And here was a woman in poverty telling a boy with all his potential how to lead his life.

“To him, the end justified the means. It made no difference how the hell to get there, as long as you got there. If your job is to support your mother and your dad is dead, you support your mother, and it doesn’t make any difference how you do it. . . . There’s no rationale to it. Just do it.

“So a lie means nothing. The means of getting the money means nothing. You’ve done your job. You’ve helped your mom. That’s your job.”

Gallagher remembers the conversations with certain colleges, colleges he won’t name.

“I sat in a living room with a school that said, ‘Nope, we run an honest program. We don’t give anybody money. By god, we don’t need to. We’ve put kids in the pros.’ But then, 20 minutes later, they’d say, ‘But Tito, if you need some suits and some shoes and some stuff, don’t worry about it, we have friends.’ I almost dropped my teeth.”

Gallagher saw how Tito was gnashing his own teeth.

“He couldn’t sleep at night,” Gallagher remembers. “He never had an upset stomach before, but we introduced him to Maalox.”

Eventually, they introduced him to Bill Foster.

Foster formerly had built a nice program at Clemson. He’d coached Tree Rollins and Larry Nance and once took his team to the NCAA West Regional final. But Miami was starting a basketball program from scratch, and who needed the pressures of the Atlantic Coast Conference? Who needed to play Dean Smith in the Dean Dome every year?

So Foster took the Miami job, and decided Tito would be a natural down there. Miami’s a bilingual city and only a two-hour plane ride from the Dominican. Tito had a wife and a child back home, and Miami was as close as he’d get.

Foster checked it out with the NCAA. He asked them for their opinion. They told him to go for it, so Foster invited Tito down for a visit.

“I was criticized, that’s for sure,” Foster says. “But the thing I based my decision on was the two days he visited. I liked the read I got on him. I wasn’t worried about my reputation. . . . I saw no reason not to give him an opportunity to get things squared away. And where else was a I gonna find a 7-foot-1 kid with potential.”

The first nine months he was at Miami, he wasn’t eligible. So he studied. He is now entering his third semester, has 42 hours of credits and a 2.4 grade-point average.

His scoring average is even higher--13.8 per game--and so is his rebounding average--8.6 per game. He wasn’t eligible until December, and the Hurricane began the season with a 1-4 record. But they’re 9-6 since Tito has suited up. In a victory over Marquette, he scored 28 points, had 13 rebounds and 3 blocks.

Foster on Tito: “The perception of him was a malcontent who was selfish and had a big ego. We don’t see him that way.

“This is a new program. There’s no pressure on him to win in a hurry. He doesn’t have to take somebody to the Final Four in a hurry. At any other school, if he didn’t have them in the Final Four by his sophomore year, he’d be a bust.”

He’s had his problems. On a trip to Puerto Rico, he played listlessly. In an ensuing film session, he told Foster he knew the Puerto Rico teams were bad and figured he could play at half-speed. Foster benched him.

One day, he was 15 minutes late for practice (overslept), so the next day, he had to run on the track for 15 minutes. He told the coaches it wouldn’t happen again, and it hasn’t. One day, he skipped class. One day, he didn’t hand in a term paper. Foster yelled.

But the coaches protect him. He only does interviews once a week (Friday), and wouldn’t talk for this story. Foster has given him every article ever written about Chris Washburn, another young center with potential, who currently is in drug rehabilitation.

“I want him to know what his contemporaries have done,” Foster said.

His teammates adore him. They say he’s a great dancer. He carries around a portable stereo. He brags to the Miami baseball coach that he has a great fastball, but he won’t get a try-out. Apparently, he’s wild. But he appears happy, in no need of any Maalox.

Also, mamasita apparently is leaving him alone for now, and Foster is thinking Tito will stay at Miami for three or four years.

“He needs college,” Foster says. “Besides, he’s been through a lot of things. He’s getting to be his own man. He’s able to make better decisions than a year or two ago.”

But the pro scouts are out. In a recent game against San Diego State (2-18 record), Jerry West--the Lakers’ general manager--came to watch him, as did scouts from Phoenix, Dallas and Chicago.

“Figured I’d see him as a freshman,” West said before tip-off.

Tito went 15 minutes before getting a rebound.

Tito threw away two passes late in the game against San Diego State’s press.

Tito went to the line with 30 seconds left and the score tied and nearly shot an airball (it nicked the front rim).

Tito was benched in overtime.

“Tito should stay in school,” West said.

History class is going smoothly.