Forever in the Shadows : DeLaittre Meanders Through Unremarkable College Career

Although former Simi Valley High basketball star Shawn DeLaittre cannot quite let go of his NBA dreams, he realizes he will probably wind up playing pro ball in another country. Australia is his top choice--for reasons that have nothing to do with basketball.

“I hear they have great beaches in Australia,” DeLaittre said, totally in character.

All through his career, DeLaittre hasn’t exactly let basketball interfere with his life. While Don MacLean, his 6-foot-10 high school teammate, played in summer leagues and was a gym rat the rest of the year, DeLaittre was more interested in surfing, spiking volleyballs and chasing girls at the beach.

“I haven’t exactly cheated myself out of having fun,” he said.

But now, with one season of eligibility remaining at Eastern Washington University, DeLaittre, 22, is wondering if he shouldn’t have taken the game more seriously when he was younger. He might have had more fun than MacLean, but it is MacLean who is playing with UCLA in the NCAA tournament and deciding how to spend his NBA bonus, while DeLaittre is home in Simi Valley on spring break, contemplating an uncertain future Down Under.

“If I could do it all over,” DeLaittre said, “I’d play in those summer leagues. That’s when all the (college) coaches are out checking out players.”

DeLaittre grudgingly accepts his fate, stunned by how quickly it happened. One day he’s a vital cog on the outstanding Simi Valley High teams of the mid-1980s, averaging more than 22 points his senior year at forward and helping the Pioneers win the Southern Section 4-A Division title. Then he wakes up in Cheney, Wash., an occasional starter on a team that went 6-21 this season.

Somewhere along the way, the DeLaittre basketball express got derailed. He looks for answers. The most obvious: At 6-5, he’s too small for forward and not quick enough for guard.

“Shawn is an in-between guy because of his size,” said Bob Hawking, DeLaittre’s former coach at Simi Valley. “If he was 6-10, his career probably would have paralleled Don’s.”

MacLean was highly recruited in high school before choosing UCLA, but DeLaittre, a three-time All-Southern Section selection, was virtually ignored: Only one college, University of the Pacific, visited him at his home. His size and lack of exposure in summer leagues probably hurt him, but he also blames other factors: MacLean took the spotlight away from him, DeLaittre said, and Hawking didn’t hawk him to the college recruiters.

“Our sophomore and junior years, everybody talked about Don and Shawn, but by our senior year, it was just Don,” DeLaittre said. “I think I was overshadowed by him.”

DeLaittre said Hawking had promised to handle his recruiting but dropped the ball, forcing DeLaittre to settle for Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. Hawking, however, said he tried his best.

“Unfortunately, recruiters looked at Shawn as a guy without a position,” said Hawking, now an assistant at UC Davis. “I was very frustrated and disappointed about” the lack of interest in DeLaittre. “We had said Shawn could play. I did everything I could to get him exposure, to help him get to the level he thought he belonged.”

Hawking acknowledges the imperfections in the recruiting process--”Kids slip through the cracks all the time”--and the capricious nature of success. “Shawn’s not the Lone Ranger in not being an NBA lottery pick,” Hawking said.

The recruiting experience disillusioned DeLaittre. He dropped out of San Luis Obispo after redshirting his freshman season, then played a season at Valley College, averaging nearly 18 points, and was noticed by Eastern Washington Coach John Wade at a junior college all-star game in Bellingham, Wash.

Wade offered him a scholarship, but DeLaittre was waiting to hear from other schools, particularly USC.

But only Eastern Washington called.

“Wade would call me at 8 in the morning,” said DeLaittre, who had been impressed by the coach’s persistence. “I figured, ‘Yeah, I’ll go to Washington. I’ll play three years. The Big Sky Conference is good.’ ”

DeLaittre can return to Eastern Washington, but he’s not too charged up by the prospect. The recently completed season has drained his enthusiasm.

“It was my first losing season,” he said, almost incredulously. At the two-guard position, starting 11 of 16 conference games and about half of the rest, DeLaittre averaged 10.3 points and had a career-high 24 against Northern Arizona.

“The season was a constant struggle,” said DeLaittre, who says he “was in (Wade’s) doghouse.”

Wade said he was down on DeLaittre for inconsistent play.

“I wouldn’t exactly say he was in the doghouse,” Wade said. “He shot 38% from the field and 34% on three-pointers. You know what I’m saying?”

DeLaittre, who averaged 12.3 points as a sophomore, believes he’s still improving. His defensive skills are better. He’s quicker and stronger (he says he bench-presses 270 pounds). Before playing in a pickup game while visiting a Simi Valley High physical education class last week, he even allowed himself to fantasize about the NBA.

“I think I could do what Danny Ainge is doing,” DeLaittre said. “I’m a good shooter. With the right breaks, I could fit in.”

Despite the divergence of their career paths, DeLaittre and MacLean remain “really good friends,” said DeLaittre, who drove MacLean to the airport last week for UCLA’s flight to Albuquerque, N.M. DeLaittre has even found himself in the strange position of defending his friend’s ability during locker room debates with his teammates at Eastern Washington.

“It upset me when the (other players) were saying, ‘He’s soft, he’s weak,’ but I was always in his corner,” DeLaittre said, adding that “Don has improved so much on his overall game and his rebounding and passing techniques.”

DeLaittre, who plans to pursue a master’s degree in business after graduating college, has seen other changes in MacLean, the Pacific 10 Conference’s all-time leading scorer.

Earlier this season, DeLaittre talked to MacLean after he scored only seven points in UCLA’s 74-61 win over Washington. “He used to get so upset when he wasn’t the high scorer,” DeLaittre said, “but now he’s just glad the team wins.”

DeLaittre said MacLean does have a regret about his basketball career. “Don says he wishes he could have enjoyed it more,” DeLaittre said with a grin, recognizing the irony.

And in assessing his own career, he realizes that it may not have met his expectations, but the adversity made him “work harder,” DeLaittre said. “I’m a better person for it.”