Brooks Wants to Prove Doubters Wrong Again : The 5-11 Guard From UC Irvine Thinks He Wouldn’t Be Over His Head in NBA

The big guys were choosing up teams back in June, and when they were finished, nobody had picked Scott Brooks. So off he went to try to prove how wrong they all were. Again.

By now, Brooks knows the routine. Show them you belong at one level and are capable of moving on to the next, then conduct an all-points search to find someone willing to give you a chance. Such is the basketball life of a player on the wrong end of the sport’s unwritten minimum-height requirement.

Brooks is a little like the kid at Disneyland who’s told he can’t go on the good rides because his head doesn’t quite reach the line on the sign. At every step of his uphill basketball career--from East Union High School in Manteca, Calif., to Texas Christian University (which he left because he was homesick, he said) to San Joaquin Delta College to UC Irvine--Brooks has had to convince people that height is relative. And now, he’s trying to convince professional basketball. Early results indicate that this won’t be easy.

Brooks, a 5-foot 11-inch guard who some say is closer to 5-9, was the West Coast’s leading scorer (and 16th in the nation) as a senior guard at Irvine last season with an average of 23.8 points per game. He was a first-team All-Pacific Coast Athletic Assn. selection and an honorable mention All-American. But after the National Basketball Assn. held its draft on June 22, Brooks watched a roundup of the day’s events on ESPN and looked for his name. “But it wasn’t there,” he said.

In the same draft in which Tyrone Bogues, a 5-3 guard from Wake Forest, was a first-round selection of the Washington Bullets--the 12th player chosen overall--Scott Brooks was overlooked. Again.

“I’m not going to dwell on that,” Brooks said. “Things like that have been happening all my life. Out of high school, no one even wanted me. I was lucky TCU was there. Out of a JC, I was lucky (Irvine Coach) Bill Mulligan was around. Now I’m in the same boat.”

The difference is that this time, he may be in too far over his head. On the NBA rosters at the beginning of last season, there were only two players, Spud Webb of the Atlanta Hawks and Michael Adams of the Washington Bullets, listed under 6 feet.

Mulligan had an inkling that Brooks might be snubbed in the draft after he wasn’t invited to any of the pre-draft camps attended by NBA coaches and scouts. The Irvine coach was so put off that he had the school’s sports information department issue a press release on June 1 in which he had some harsh words for the “so-called evaluators who decide who can play and who can’t.”

“These are probably some of the same people who thought (former Irvine All-American) Kevin Magee couldn’t play in their league,” Mulligan said in the press release. “Yes, the same Kevin Magee who is about to sign a new, four-year contract in Israel for one million dollars and who dominates every place he plays.”

Irvine assistant coach Bob Thate said he called representatives from about 15 NBA teams shortly before draft day, and four of those expressed interest in Brooks. Thate said he was told that Brooks wouldn’t go in the first two rounds but could be drafted in the third or fourth. Like Mulligan, Thate was stunned when Brooks wasn’t drafted at all.

“I just told Scotty that it’s another chapter in his book,” Thate said. “And it’s been a weird book.”

The plot has had its share of twists. For example: The only reason Brooks ended up at Irvine was that Mulligan stumbled upon him at the state community college basketball tournament in Fresno in 1985. Mulligan was there to recruit a player from Riverside City College, a team Brooks and San Joaquin Delta were playing against.

“They were playing in the last game of the night,” Mulligan said in a 1986 interview. “The last game was supposed to start at 9, but it didn’t start until about 11. I wanted to go out with the guys and have a drink, but I decided to stay. And that’s when I saw Scott. I’m really glad I stayed.”

More than two years later, Brooks is hoping to be discovered again. He has spent most of the last month playing on the Airport Park team in the Summer Pro League at Loyola Marymount, which consists mostly of free agents and past draftees trying to impress NBA scouts.

“Hopefully, the same thing will happen here,” Brooks said. “They might be looking at somebody else on the team and spot me. That’s just been a life cycle for me. I’m used to it. I just want to open some coaches’ eyes. Hopefully, I’ll find someone who’ll believe in me.”

Mack Calvin, a former American Basketball Assn. and NBA guard who’s now an assistant coach for the Milwaukee Bucks, seems to be a believer. Calvin was a 6-foot guard who played for the Los Angeles Stars in the ABA before he finished his playing career with the Lakers and Denver Nuggets.

He followed Brooks’ career at Irvine and saw him play in the summer league. He said he thinks that, with a year or two of seasoning, Brooks can make an NBA roster.

“He’s got a lot of things you like in a little man,” Calvin said. “He’s got the quickness, and he can shoot. But more important, he’s got a big heart. To be a small man in a big man’s game, you’ve gotta have some heart.”

An assistant coach from the Detroit Pistons has been impressed enough with what he has seen in the summer league to invite Brooks to the team’s preseason camp this fall. But the laws of supply and demand don’t seem to be in Brooks’ favor. Detroit is well-stocked with small guards, including second-round draft choice Freddie Banks, formerly a star for Nevada Las Vegas.

Brooks has a more realistic chance of hooking on with a professional team in Europe, or with the Continental Basketball Assn., that refuge for players hoping for a phone call from an NBA coach. On July 22, Brooks was a second-round draft pick--the 22nd player selected overall--of Albany of the CBA. Brooks said the idea of playing in Europe appeals to him, and Thate, who played four years in France and one in Belgium, is helping him establish ties there.

“He’d love Monte Carlo,” Mulligan said. “He might never come home.”

The forthcoming International Basketball Assn., a professional league that will open next spring for players 6-4 and under--or as Mulligan calls it, “that little league”--is another alternative, but not one Brooks prefers.

“It’s something to fall back on,” he said, “but if I can go overseas, I’m going.”

Wherever he ends up, Brooks knows skepticism will follow. He’s used to that. It’s part of the routine.

“There’s a lot of work ahead for me if I want to play anymore,” he said. “Nothing’s going to come easy now. Well, nothing ever has, really.”