They’ve Just Begun the Book on Courtie Miller

It was just after dinner on a school night sandwiched between the first round and semifinals of the Southern California Regional Division II boys’ basketball playoffs.

Karen Miller slid to the edge of the couch in her Del Mar condominium and enthusiastically opened a scrapbook filled with memories of son Courtie’s basketball career at Torrey Pines High School.

Courtie sat quietly in the easy chair, watching her show a visitor some clips and pictures she had collected.

One night later, Courtie’s game-high 31 points would not be enough to advance the Falcons to the Southern California Regional championship game. The Falcons were eliminated by Dominguez, a snappy, well-disciplined team from Compton. So ended a season and, temporarily, Karen’s quest to get her hands on every newspaper in the county. She had been buying three daily papers each day and two local papers twice a week. She will add to her clips, which include two Times player of the year awards, after Courtie plays in the San Diego County 2-A vs. 3-A All-Star Game Saturday night at Serra High School.

The wall behind the television is covered with plaques, earned by Courtie for a variety of basketball achievements. Karen jumps up at one point and explains what each represents. Courtie watches.

The awards, the newspaper clips and the pictures mean the world to Karen. Last Labor Day weekend, a fire started by a spark from a neighbor’s barbecue destroyed Karen and Courtie’s condominium in Solana Beach. Karen was home. Courtie wasn’t. Karen grabbed the trophies and the baby pictures and took them outside. Then she ran back inside and upstairs for the scrapbook.

“It was pretty stupid,” she said. “I felt the wall, and it was warm, but it wasn’t hot. (The scrapbook) really was irreplaceable. I got the stuff I really cared about.

“I’m so darned proud of this,” she said, pointing to the wall. “This is what it’s all about. Honest to God, it feels better than anything I’ve ever accomplished.”

Suffice it to say, the memorabilia means a lot more to Karen than it does to Courtie.

Courtie just plays.

Growing up has been enlightening for Courtie Miller, if not always simple. Karen and his father, William, were divorced when he was 5. William rarely kept in touch, Karen said, and Courtie hasn’t seen or spoken to him in two years.

Karen says it hurt Courtie but didn’t scar him. Courtie brushes it aside, saying he isn’t affected. He has had other father figures. Coaches. Family friends. And he insists he doesn’t think about his father.

“I’m not bitter,” Courtie says. “If he comes up to me, I’m not going to be rude. He is my father, after all. But if I never see him again, it wouldn’t break my heart.”

When Courtie was midway through fourth grade, Karen made the decision to move from Pasadena in search of a change and a better environment for Courtie. The schools in the area had barbed wire on the fences. The Millers lived in a middle-class neighborhood, but drug dealing and crime weren’t far around the corner.

San Diego, by comparison, was paradise, though Courtie says drugs never tempted him anyway. He has seen the effect they have on people he has grown up with.

Courtie says he stays away from parties and doesn’t drink beer because it’s just not for him. He prefers to spend time with his girlfriend or stay home and watch basketball on television. But, he says, he doesn’t judge people who do drink. It’s a choice. Each person makes his own.

Courtie took a drink once. He had a swallow of champagne, or at least that’s what he thinks it was, at his grandmother’s house when he was 13. That was plenty.

“It was just awful,” he says. “It did not go down well. Alcohol, to me, doesn’t taste very good. If I’m going to drink something, I’ll drink soda or juice.”

There’s another reason.

“I don’t like to not have control of myself physically,” he says. “I like to have my senses.”

And not just for athletics. Basketball might be important to Courtie, but it’s not all-consuming. He likes to be aware of what’s going on in the world. Dinner at the Millers’ home is often eaten in front of the television, watching CNN newscasts. Karen and Courtie discuss the issues.

Take Oliver North. At first, Karen says, Courtie supported North. Karen didn’t. Courtie says it just took time for him to understand the issue. As he watched more newscasts, read newspapers and talked to people about it, he changed his mind.

He expresses it this way: “Anytime you circumvent the Constitution of the United States, there’s definitely something wrong.”

How does this tie in to his basketball career? Easy. It’s all relative. Making a jump shot, layup or free throw is cake and ice cream compared to what he sees people dealing with in the news each day.

“For me,” he says, “pressure is seeing kids on CNN in Afghanistan that don’t have any food. People are starving. People are dying every day for drugs and money. Living in Del Mar is a blessing for me.”

So he doesn’t put too much pressure on himself when playing. He doesn’t worry if his car isn’t the nicest in the Torrey Pines High School parking lot. An ’82 Citation is fine; it gets him where he wants to go.

“A lot of kids would kill to have a car,” he says, then pauses. “And a lot of kids do kill to have a car.”

Perceptive? Yes. Maybe impatient at times. He finds himself wishing he didn’t have to deal with the stereotype of the dumb athlete. Reporters, even teachers, sometimes slow their speech when talking to him.

Those are the ones who don’t know he spends hours in his room reading about the Vietnam War. Or who were never told that when he went to natural history museums as a kid, he would read every caption in the dinosaur section. Or who haven’t heard him describe his basketball relationship with Torrey Pines center Kevin Flanagan as “symbiotic.”

Until they find out, conversations are slow.

“I just wait for (reporters) to get going because I have to take a shower and get home,” he says. “They start off at what seems to me to be a kindergarten level.”

Then there are also those who assume Miller is cocky because of all the recognition he has received. Classmates sometimes come up to him and say something like, “Another award. You must think you’re so cool.”

“How do you react?,” Miller says. “There’s not much you can say. It kind of gets to me.”

Miller’s girlfriend, Ashli Carpi, a senior at Torrey Pines, has never understood why people think Miller is stuck on himself.

“I don’t know where they get that,” she says. “He’s real humble.”

The thing with basketball recruiting is it’s a far bigger game than the one on the court. Miller found that out during the past year.

He finally got to see the origin of all those letters he has been receiving on his recruiting trip to UCLA. It was on campus, in the middle of the tour, that he noticed the machine. There’s one in the football office. One in the basketball office. And they turn out these beautiful letters with nice type resting under a letterhead. And they’re all the same. The only difference is the kid’s name at the top.

“You figure there must be 15,000 guys across the country with the same letter,” Miller says.

Then there are the phone calls. Every night after dinner, Miller would talk to coaches. Some were fairly sincere, talked a little basketball, told a bit about their program and let it go at that. Others, essentially, didn’t know when to quit. Or even where to start.

Sample questions. What did you eat for dinner? How’s your mom doing? How’s your girlfriend?

“You can tell schools like that are just trying to butter you up,” Miller says.

At the beginning of the school year, Miller was “99.9%” sure he would attend UCLA to play basketball. The winning tradition was attractive. But when Karen and Courtie visited UCLA, they both began to have second thoughts.

Courtie remembers standing in the UCLA trophy room, looking at all the reminders of past championships. Courtie recalled when UCLA Coach Jim Harrick came up to him, put his arm around him and said, “Courtie, you’re a Bruin, aren’t you?”

Then came the pitch. Harrick, Courtie says, told him he could take him back to the office and sign him right away.

“That’s when I started to turn off to him,” Karen said. “He was real pushy. It really was kind of car salesman rhetoric. I just get (acting like) mother bear real fast.”

That alone did not sway Courtie away from UCLA. Jim Brandenburg did.

Originally, the Millers planned to have the SDSU coach over as a courtesy. But Brandenburg said the right things. He was sincere. Courtie was sold. Karen too.

“There was no BS,” Karen said. “He gave me goose bumps, and I’m a hard sell. I felt Coach Brandenburg was going to take care of Courtie.”

So Courtie signed to be an Aztec before the high school season even began. There was some speculation as to why he didn’t take the other trips. Stanford wanted him. So did USC and California. But Courtie was certain. He still is.

“I’m positive I made the best decision for myself.”

What’s the big deal? Why was Courtie Miller chosen a preseason honorable mention All-American by Street and Smith? Why did college coaches from all over the country try to get him to attend their schools? Why was he selected to Cal-Hi Sports all-state high school basketball team? What will this slender, 6-foot-8 forward have to offer the fans Saturday night in the all-star game?

Take a look back. Early in grade school, a coach recognized Miller’s potential. Renell Nailon, Miller’s close friend to this day, taught him the fundamentals when Miller played at the Solana Beach Boys Club. Nailon, the club’s athletic supervisor, saw something a little special. So he pushed Miller harder than anybody else. Sometimes too hard. Courtie would come home and tell Karen that Nailon hated him.

“I was extremely hard on Courtie,” Nailon says, “because he needed to develop an inner toughness. He needed a strong male role model.”

And basketball? Well, Miller was taller than the other kids. He was quicker, smoother and had softer hands. The tools were there. The polish wasn’t.

When Miller first came to Torrey Pines, Coach John Farrell saw he had an oil field that, if drilled deep enough, would pay off richly. Before Miller’s junior season, Farrell said Miller could be the best player in the county if he would just play up to his potential all the time. The year before, Miller had shown what he could do in sprinkles and splashes. But never consistently.

Miller admits he was a little lazy. Not willing to assert himself the way he needed to to take charge and lead the team.

All that changed last year. In one tournament game against highly regarded El Camino, Miller scored 34 points, many after he had dragged himself off the court for a few minutes in the third quarter with a turned ankle. He came back, took over the game and Torrey Pines won. He was the tournament’s MVP.

This season, he did what it took to win the San Diego Section Division II championship. A little bit of everything. There are still a few whispers from those who see he didn’t finish in the top five in the county in scoring and say he’s overrated. But the ones who count, such as Brandenburg, Farrell and Miller’s teammates, like what they see.

Brandenburg: “I think he has very good quickness and speed for a kid his age and size. He can accelerate and put it into gear in the open court. He’s a very instinctive passer.”

Teammate Kyle Armstrong: “The quality I like about Courtie’s game is he sees the floor like a point guard. You don’t usually see that in a guy his size.”

If Miller doesn’t succeed in college basketball, so be it. He isn’t counting on basketball exclusively. He has seen players at camps he has attended who could barely read or write. It makes him sad to think that basketball is their only hope.

Miller, Farrell says, has many options.

“Courtie’s the kind of guy that comes around once in a lifetime,” Farrell said. “Courtie Miller will be a success in life. I’m not worried about him. I think he knows what’s really important.”