March Madness Kindles Fond Memories for Simon

Miles Simon will be up early and looking for somebody with a satellite dish this morning. The NCAA tournament starts and Simon will not be content with watching the smattering of games CBS offers. Simon wants to see them all, wants to flip from Kentucky against St. Bonaventure at 9:15 a.m. to Oklahoma against Winthrop at 9:30 a.m., from Arizona against Jackson State at 4:30 p.m. to Maryland against Iona at 4:45 p.m.

“My friend and I, we’re trying to find somebody with a dish,” Simon says. “This is the best time of year, isn’t it?”

On the day before the NCAA men’s basketball tournament begins, Simon is standing inside the Fullerton College gym. He comes here every day to shoot, to work out as best he can.

Three years ago Simon was one of those very special NCAA stars. In one emotional, spectacular weekend he scored a combined 54 points against North Carolina and Kentucky in the NCAA semifinals and finals. His Arizona Wildcats won a most unlikely NCAA title and, against Kentucky in the championship game, Simon made 14 of 17 free throws in a tense 84-79 overtime victory. “I don’t know how,” Simon says now, “but those free throws kept going in.”

Simon, once a star at Mater Dei, a Fullerton gym rat who used to take wonderful trips with his dad, Walt, to NCAA Final Fours--”We’d go buy scalper’s tickets if we had to, we’d do whatever it took, but my dad and I, we’d get to the Final Four because it was the best,” Simon says--stood in Indianapolis with a net around his neck and a smile that seemed eternal.

So much fun did Simon and his teammates have during that 1996-97 season that they all came back. Simon could have gone pro after his junior year, but he didn’t. Mike Bibby, the star freshman guard, came back. So did Michael Dickerson and Jason Terry. They all came back to win another title and all they learned was a lesson. “It’s a lot harder the second time around,” Simon says. “It wasn’t to be.”

Three years later Simon doesn’t look much different. He still wears his baseball cap backward and his face still looks as if he is 12. But Simon is 24 now. He was picked 42nd in the 1998 NBA draft by the Orlando Magic. Would Simon have been drafted earlier if he had left on the high of those 54 points and that NCAA title? “Maybe,” Simon agrees, “but our team was so close. I wanted to come back.”

He was buried deep on the bench last season. Far, far down the bench. He watched as Chuck Daly struggled to find a string to pull, a butt to kick, a way to motivate the Magic. He observed Penny Hardaway pout and whine and beg to get away. He played as hard as he could in practice and got nowhere.

Last summer Simon went to Portland so that he could play in summer games with another Arizona star, Damon Stoudamire, and instead Simon landed wrong on somebody’s foot and got his left ankle mauled. The ligaments were torn. “I wish I had just broken it,” Simon says now, nine months later. “It would have healed faster.”

Simon still doesn’t have medical clearance to play full-court basketball. So he goes to rehab every day. Then he lifts weights. Then he goes to the Fullerton College gym and shoots, shoots until sweat pours from his face, shoots until his arms ache as much as his ankle.

Many days his dad comes to the gym after work. Walt, a probation officer, is near retirement but he still loves basketball. Walt was a star once on this same floor at Fullerton College and he went on to play at Utah in college and, briefly, in the old ABA. He is not, though, the Walt Simon who was something of an ABA star in Louisville. The Louisville Walt Simon, who was the same age as the Laguna Niguel Walt Simon, died two years ago and California Walt got phone calls. “They wanted to know if I was still alive,” Walt says.

Walt is a step slow now, but he is alive. And he can still retrieve balls and he can still spot a flaw in his son’s shot. And he can still take a bet.

“Miles bet me $1,000 he could beat me with one hand tied behind his back,” Walt says. And how did this bet turn out?

“He beat me 5-4 today with one hand tied behind his back. But we only bet $20.”

Miles’ NBA dreams are not over. Not by a long shot, the kind Simon makes so easily, even now, even on his bum ankle. His year in Orlando showed him that “I can play in that league. I’m convinced of that,” he says. Simon is a free agent now. His hope is to get signed by an NBA team and join their summer league squad, then go to training camp. If that doesn’t happen Simon will play in the CBA or Europe, wherever he has to so that he can convince some NBA general manager to sign him.

Simon has gone back to Tucson a couple of times this year to talk to his former coach, Lute Olson, who, Simon thinks, “should definitely have been Pac-10 coach of the year. He should be national coach of the year.” Simon also was in the stands cheering for Mater Dei, a place he remembers happily. When Mater Dei beat Crenshaw in the first round of the Southern California Regional last week, Simon was down on the floor quickly, patting Coach Gary McKnight on the back, then sneaking out the Ocean View High gym door.

But Simon couldn’t totally sneak away. He was recognized and stopped. He was wished well. “How’s your ankle,” he was asked, and “What are you up to?” And one man came up and said, “That Kentucky game seems like yesterday.” Simon nodded. Yes it does. But it wasn’t yesterday and Simon’s basketball tomorrows are totally uncertain. Which doesn’t make the NCAA tournament any less a thrill. “I got goosebumps Sunday watching the draw,” Simon says. “It’s still a kick seeing who goes where.”

Diane Pucin can be reached at her e-mail address: diane.pucin@latimes.com