Turning From Trouble : CSUN’s Headstrong Boykin Has Put a Rein on His Court Outbursts

Life without a father didn’t create a momma’s boy.

The emotions built up inside Shelton Boykin more likely were unleashed on a basketball court than knotted up in his mother’s apron strings.

Boykin, a Cal State Northridge junior forward, long has wondered where those emotions come from.

“I got a lot of my mother in me,” Boykin said. “My patience and understanding. But I also have a fiery side, an aggressive side. I’m curious if he must be like this.”

He is the father Boykin has never met.

“He never calls or writes a letter or sends a postcard,” Boykin said.

“My mother told me the circumstances,” he said, not wishing to elaborate. “I used to be mad. I used to wish he’d come back. It would have been great.”

Someday, Boykin plans to visit his father in Mississippi, but he won’t be introducing himself.

“I’ll notice him from afar,” Boykin said. “I’ll see where the other half of me is from. I want to see where I get my looks and some of my personality.”

Boykin, the Matadors’ leading rebounder, believes he plays better basketball when his aggressive side flares in response to an official’s call, but Northridge Coach Pete Cassidy sees it as disruptive.

“If he doesn’t put it out of his mind, it is self-destructive,” Cassidy said. “He needs to keep his head in the game and help the team. He can’t be preoccupied with things he can’t change.”

Boykin’s temper and overzealousness have resulted in two technical fouls and a pair of intentional fouls.

The technicals cost Boykin his starting position against Cal State Long Beach on Dec. 12. Since then he has taken to turning away from officials, pacing the floor and, on occasion, he has been shoved and hushed by teammate Andre Chevalier. It has worked. Boykin has not been whistled for another technical.

Officials aren’t the only ones who have fueled Boykin’s ire.

He disliked a profile story about him last year while playing at Valley College and held a grudge against the writer for the rest of the season. Sources in the story questioned Boykin’s ability. Also, comments from Boykin fueled an NCAA investigation of the basketball program at Texas El Paso, where he played as a freshman in 1987-88.

(Boykin was quoted as saying, “When we wanted to go out, we’d get a car. They were nice cars, Cadillacs, Mercedeses, Jaguars. . . . The coaches didn’t loan the cars, but people around the area did. The coaches went by the book, but the people, that’s a different story.”)

Boykin’s hubris also appeared misguided after Northridge’s 113-89 loss to Colorado when he suggested that Shaun Vandiver, the Buffaloes’ 6-foot-10 center, didn’t do anything special during a 15-minute performance in which Vandiver had 27 points and 18 rebounds.

Teammates, though, say they know the true Shelton. They talk of the stray dogs he takes in and the Thanksgiving turkey dinner he served to his cats.

Consequently, Boykin is teased incessantly, not only because his teammates know they can get away with it, but because he provides them with endless material.

Boykin often says zany things. To wit:

* His outlook: “I don’t have no major problems to be depressed about. I ain’t lost millions of dollars.”

* His temper: “I leave it on the court. I’m not gonna cuss a lady at the (hotel) desk because she won’t give me my messages.”

Boykin is also prone to emotional swings that challenge the Northridge coaching staff. At practice, he clowns and laughs. At games, he is combative and competitive.

“He plays hard and he doesn’t take any guff,” teammate Sean Davis said.

From an early age, Boykin wanted more for himself than the mean streets of Pacoima could offer.

Once, on a drive into downtown Los Angeles, Shelton wound up in Beverly Hills. Boykin’s mother Gwyn thought they were lost, but Shelton was only showing her where he planned to live some day.

Boykin was going to extremes, but all he had in Pacoima were dreams. Fortunately, he was surrounded by friends who resisted the temptations of drugs and crime.

“I’m surprised that bunch did not get involved with drugs,” Gwyn said. “And none of them have (criminal) records. . . . I guess I was blessed.”

Boykin’s grandmother, Tempie Brown, also played a major role in raising him. He and his brother, Theron Webb, knew that if they misbehaved at school she would come calling with a stick in hand.

“They were always afraid,” Gwyn said. “They never gave her a reason to go down there. My mother set a standard for all of us. You have to do something. You have to go to school or to work, you can’t sit around.”

But family life wasn’t peaceful.

Boykin and Webb fought so often that Boykin had to move in with his grandmother.

“We have our differences,” Webb said. “I was always trying to push him to be tough, to let nothing stand in his way. He is tougher now, but it took a long time.”

While Webb was a help on the street, Boykin’s mother and grandmother prepared him to support himself and live on his own after high school.

“They groomed me to be an independent male,” Boykin said. “I can take care of a household, but I was not brought up to be a sissy.”

Boykin, 6-foot-4 1/2, did not take up basketball until he was 15. Four years later, he failed to make the transition from center at San Fernando High to guard at Texas El Paso, an established Division I team. As an unsuspecting freshman thrown into an already volatile situation, Boykin did not fit in. He played only 25 minutes all season.

“We were bitter enemies,” he said last year of his UTEP teammates. “First it was a problem because everybody was trying to take each other’s girlfriends. Then it was who got better pub (publicity.) Then it was who could dance better. It was stupid things.”

The lack of playing time and departure of the assistant coach who recruited him, former NBA player Nate Archibald, made it clear that Boykin wasn’t welcome the following season. Rather than drop out of school and athletics, he returned to hurdling--a sport he had taken up his junior year in high school--and finished third in the Western Athletic Conference.

As a long jumper and triple jumper in high school, the 220-pound Boykin did not look the part of a long and lean hurdler, but he attempted the event when one of his teammates pulled up lame. Boykin’s inaugural performance was promising but hilarious--at each hurdle he stopped and jumped.

“I’d be out in front, then the guy next to me would catch me at the hurdle and pass me,” Boykin said. “I’d sprint to the next hurdle and get ahead and he’d catch me again.”

A year later, no one in Los Angeles caught Boykin. He won the City Section championship in the 110-meter high hurdles (13.8 seconds) and in the 300 intermediate hurdles (37.4).

Similar success at UTEP did not make the basketball bug go away, so he transferred to Valley College where he was spotted by Northridge assistant coach Rusty Smith.

Smith later left Northridge to become an assistant at Eastern Washington. That left Boykin with Cassidy, whom Boykin says he didn’t know.

“The only problem he has with me is when a call is made,” Boykin said. “We don’t have any problems off the court. I can joke around with him.”

Boykin concedes that he has problems with authority.

“I always have my own opinion, even with Coach Cassidy, but I figure it is not going to hurt to try it his way.”

Cassidy would prefer that Boykin channel his aggression onto the basketball court, much as he did Feb. 14 when he scored a career-high 23 points and pulled down 13 rebounds in a two-point loss to U. S. International.

Despite a height disadvantage of from three to five inches against most opposing forwards, through Saturday, Boykin was leading Northridge in rebounding with 7.0 per game and had a team-high 11blocked shots. He was second in minutes played (24.6 per game), third in field-goal percentage (45.3) and assists (39), and fourth in scoring (7.2 ppg) and steals (21).

Curiously, Boykin wants to do what Cassidy does--teach and coach. And despite his cruise through Beverly Hills, he sees his alma mater as his destination--San Fernando.

“I can always go home,” Boykin said. “They accept me for me. They are sick of the stereotypes that (people from Pacoima) are bad people. I’m on the right path, but I don’t want to be a role model. I’ve had bad times and good times.”