Can’t-Miss Frustration

Alone on a summer afternoon at her family’s new home in Long Beach, Gaynell Cotton unpacked boxes in silence, deciding which shelves would be for glasses and which for plates, the same ones she used to feed the college coaches, agents, reporters, photographers, NCAA officials and friends who used to beat a path to her door.

A few miles away, her youngest son, Schea, 25, was playing for the Clippers’ summer league team at Long Beach State.

He missed the two shots he attempted that day, finishing with a final line that read: 19 minutes, no points, three rebounds, one assist, three fouls.

His dad, nicknamed Big James, and 27-year-old brother, Little James, who was drafted by the Seattle SuperSonics in 1997, mingled among the standing-room-only gathering. Wearing his signature white cowboy hat, Big James could not be missed -- the main reason Gaynell chose not to attend.

“I don’t want to deal with them people in the stands, listening to all that crazy stuff they say, that my son’s confused, that he’s troubled,” she said later in the day. “I don’t want to hear that no more.

“I challenge anyone to walk a day in his shoes. Anyone else’s son or daughter would be lucky if they survive.”

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Schea Cotton was 16 and had recently completed his freshman year at Santa Ana Mater Dei High when Sports Illustrated profiled him in a July 25, 1994, article.

The story began, “Schea Cotton greets you in a tank top, and you think, This is not a just world we live in.”

He was, already, 6 feet 5 inches and a steel-sturdy 215 pounds.

“At that time,” Cotton reflected, “I was just a kid in a candy store having a blast.”

And nearly everyone, it seemed, wanted a piece of him.

Girls, for example. He remembers approaching his burgundy ’89 Chevy Beretta after a game to find that he’d left a door unlocked. Rummaging through his belongings to make sure nothing had been stolen, he discovered that someone had placed red underwear in his glove compartment. Everyone knew red was Cotton’s favorite color.

As a sophomore, Cotton scored 33 points against Lincoln High of Brooklyn, N.Y., which had Stephon Marbury in its lineup. Marbury made eight three-pointers and piled up 39 points, but Mater Dei won by 15.

Led by Cotton, Mater Dei went 36-1 and won the state championship, its only loss coming in a Las Vegas showcase against Ron Mercer-led Mouth of Wilson (Va.) Oak Hill Academy. Cotton outscored Mercer, 26-20.

“The whole crowd just stood up and was applauding because Schea was about to go one on one with Ron Mercer,” recalled Clay McKnight, a former Mater Dei teammate who is a graduate assistant at Syracuse. “They were witnessing something special. That happened a lot with Schea.”

Cotton laced up 37 pairs of sneakers that year: Jordans, Barkleys, Pippens, whatever Nike sent he wore -- a new pair every game.

“I basically had a shoe contract in high school, to be honest, without the money,” Cotton said. “I grew up playing under a Nike endorsement.”

In the Pro Summer League, he wore Kenyon Martins, and not because Reebok paid him to.

“I’m all about bargains right now,” he said. “Those were about 60 bucks. Marked down from 90.”

Speaking of money, if the Cottons can put enough together, they just might find someone to make the movie they’ve been planning for two years. The title of the script: “When It’s All Said and Done.”

“This story will be compelling and controversial,” said Samuel Chi, a former Long Beach State student basketball manager who is helping the Cottons find investors. “It will raise people’s attention to what really goes on.”

Expect the NCAA, which the Cottons say they have spent $60,000 fighting, to be cast as a villain.

Cotton played his first Division I college basketball game for Alabama in 1999 -- two years and three schools later than originally planned -- because the NCAA invalidated his SAT score. Cotton, who has attention deficit disorder, was administered a test containing some boldface type and allowed extra time.

The NCAA also investigated the Cottons when Big James bought Schea a new Ford Explorer during his senior year at Bellflower St. John Bosco -- where he played for two seasons after transferring. Meticulous record-keepers that the Cottons are, the NCAA found nothing but boxes of receipts.

For Big James -- a self-described emotional man with a wide smile who has a physique in line with his chiseled sons’ -- the issue strikes a nerve.

“I don’t hate people,” Big James said. “But those ... NCAA guys. I hate them from the bottom of my heart.”

Cotton never played a minute at UCLA or North Carolina State, schools he would have enrolled at in 1997 and 1998, respectively. According to a timeline recorded by Gaynell Cotton, the family sued the NCAA in September 1998 and four months later the case was settled and sealed. A gag order prohibits the family from discussing the outcome, but it may be revealed in the movie.

“We need somebody [to make the movie] who’s not afraid of the NCAA,” Gaynell said.

After playing just one year at Alabama, Cotton made himself available for the 2000 draft, saying he’d been assured by his agent and others that he’d be a first-round pick.

Cotton, 22 on draft day, attended a predraft camp in Chicago with 49 other draft hopefuls and remembers a speaker telling each player to look at the person next to him.

“One of you will not get picked,” he warned.

“I thought about that when my name wasn’t called,” Cotton said. “I thought, ‘Damn, I was one of those guys.’ ”

So much for being a sure thing.

*

Cotton has played basketball in six countries, for so many teams that he leaves some out when running through the list.

He has played in the Continental Basketball Assn. for the Sioux Falls (S.D.) Skyforce. In Belgrade, Serbia, for Vlade Divac’s former team, KK Partizan. In Treviso, Italy, in a summer league. In Shanghai for Yao Ming’s former club, the Sharks. In France for Brest and Evreux. In Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.

He has retained some French and Spanish. Serbian too.

“Dobar dan,” he said in Serbian. “Good afternoon.”

Several domestic opportunities haven’t panned out.

Orlando invited him to play for its summer league team in 2000. That lasted one day. Conrad McRae, a Magic player, collapsed and died of heart failure during the first of what were supposed to be two-a-day practices. The organization disbanded the summer team.

“I was devastated,” said Cotton, who’d eaten ice cream with McRae the night before he died. “I saw him die on the court right in front of me.”

Later that summer, the Anaheim Roadrunners of the American Basketball Assn. drafted him fourth overall, reigniting his fire for the game. Yet he never put on a uniform. That October the team missed the league deadline for securing the Arrowhead Pond as its home arena.

Last fall, Cotton worked out with the Huntsville Flight, a National Basketball Development League team. The first day, he sustained a pulled thigh muscle in practice. He gave it a go the next day but his body said no.

“I had about 25 guys in camp, and I needed to get the roster down to 10,” Flight Coach Ralph Lewis said. So he cut Cotton.

But Adidas representative Sonny Vaccaro refuses to buy Cotton as a victim of misfortune.

“Schea was the second coming,” Vaccaro said. “But he wasn’t that good. Let’s be honest. He was bigger than most kids and he was very well-hyped. I think Schea was manufactured as a media thing in California. He got caught in that.”

Cotton’s most steadfast supporters -- of whom there are many -- regret that no matter where Cotton goes, he will always be the can’t-miss kid who peaked in 10th grade.

“We’re all jaded, [saying], ‘He hasn’t done this, he hasn’t done that,’ ” said Virginia Tech Coach Seth Greenberg, who was at Long Beach State when Little James played there. “Schea was so good so young that we all want to create this unrealistic expectation for him and condemn him for what he has or hasn’t done. That is hard and unfair.”

Dennis Johnson is one who doesn’t find the expectations all that unrealistic or unfair.

“Schea was in the same [1997 high school] class as Lamar Odom, Tracy McGrady, Elton Brand, and he was by far the best,” said Johnson, the Clippers’ summer league coach until the team hired Mike Dunleavy. “He was more developed than everybody else, by far.”

Johnson now wonders whether anyone is a sure thing. “It’s really kind of scary,” he said.

Cotton pondered this while standing in the parking lot at the Long Beach Marriott, home base for summer league players. In his hand was the printout of a January article about LeBron James published in the Raleigh (N.C.) News and Observer.

From the story, headlined “Nothing Guaranteed,” Cotton read:

” ... It was appropriate, as millions of viewers watched James play on ESPN2 last weekend in UCLA’s sold-out, 12,800-seat Pauley Pavilion, that Schea Cotton’s name came up.

“The ESPN game analysts, Bill Walton and Jay Bilas, spoke briefly of Cotton as a legendary high school player who had played for Mater Dei High School in Santa Ana, Calif., the team that was facing St. Vincent-St. Mary.

“ ‘Well, you remember everybody talking about Schea Cotton being the next Michael Jordan,’ Bilas said. ‘ ... It just shows you that this is not an exact science, but I think it’s completely different when we talk about LeBron James.’ ”

“He said that?” Cotton asked, pausing for a few seconds. “Wow.”

Then, he added: “I’m happy for LeBron. He’s making his money. I just hope he stays grounded and is able to understand the business side of it so that when the pen starts writing the other way, he can take that on the chin and buckle down and be able to fight harder.

“Because that’s when the character comes in. Adversity really shows you how much strength you have. I think he’ll be fine as long as he focuses on the basketball aspect of it and doesn’t let the hype get to him mentally.”

*

Schea and Little James went in 50-50 on the family’s $250,000 home, where Gaynell, 50, and Big James, 59, probably will retire. For now, the boys, though men, still live at home.

Schea figures it makes little sense to buy his own place since he could be shooting pull-up jumpers in the Philippines, Lebanon or France by September.

It might just be that he and Little James, who works in real estate, feel they owe some quality time to their parents. Cotton describes the family as “stronger than oak.”

Big James works more than 10 hours a day seven days a week, driving a truck and working construction. Gaynell handles the paperwork for the family business, J & S Construction. She shields her brutally honest husband of 30 years by handling most interview requests, though the attention gets to her too. She has needed a sleeping pill every night for the last seven years.

As for their youngest, he still has calf muscles the size of softballs and can still jump out of the gym. During one Clipper summer league game he soared to rebound a Chris Wilcox miss and finished with a dunk.

“Best first step of any 6-5 guy I’ve ever seen,” commented onlooker Jim Harrick, the coach for whom Cotton once hoped to play at UCLA.

Now, Cotton readies for the reality of his fourth post-college season, wherever it may come. On July 23, he agreed to play for the expansion Long Beach Jam of the CBA but said he probably will play abroad until December before joining the team.

The seven summer league games provided a stage for him to audition for a spot in an NBA training camp. The odds, again, look to be against him. He played a few ticks more than 13 minutes a game, averaging 4.1 points, 2.4 rebounds and 0.4 assists.

Clipper General Manager Elgin Baylor refused to speculate about Cotton’s odds of receiving a camp invitation.

Cotton said he drops to his knees every night and asks for such a break, that he get a nudge off the bumpy road and back onto yellow brick.

“To make it to the NBA, that would be my closure,” Cotton said. “I’m not going to stop unless I get a taste of it. I feel I have a four- or five-year window.”

If not? “I’m definitely prepared,” he said. “I’ve taken my lumps and bumps and I’ve been humbled in the process. I’m already at the point when it’s over with, the transition will be very easy for me.”

Cotton will make his money working “jobs,” his term for playing overseas. He’ll save his money -- he said he can earn $150,000 to $200,000 a season abroad -- develop the clothing line he’s planning, and invest in real estate. He recently sold two properties in Compton.

“My goal when I’m finished is to have businesses set up that will run themselves,” he said. “I can wake up at 10, go on the computer, make a couple stops, make sure everything is being run, spend some time with my wife and kids and live my life.

“The attention is nice, but you know what, I’ll be lucky if half these people remember my face when I start putting on weight.”

Cotton is single and in no hurry to marry. Early 30s sounds like a good time to him to begin a family, he hopes with a baby boy.

“He’s going to be a Junior,” he said. “The legacy has to continue.”

But will his children play basketball?

“Put it this way,” Cotton said. “If that’s their choice, I’ll be behind them 100% and help them every step of the way. But they can be a pianist, get into soccer, hockey, I don’t care. That’s going to be a hell of a bill to live up to.”

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Schea Cotton’s Travels

*--* TIME TEAM PLACE Sep 1993 to Dec 1993 St. John Bosco High S Bellflower Jan 1994 to June 1995 Mater Dei High Santa Ana Sep 1995 to May 1997 St. John Bosco High Bellflower School July 1997 to Sep 1997 UCLA Los Angeles Oct 1997 to June 1998 St. Thomas More School Oakdale, Conn Aug 1998 to May 1999 Long Beach City College Long Beach Aug 1999 to Mar 2000 University of Alabama Tuscaloosa, Ala June 2000 NBA predraft camp Chicago July 2000 Sum Pro League (Orlando Long Beach Magic) November 2000 Sioux Falls Skyforce Sioux Falls, S.D (CBA) Jan 2001 to April 2001 KK Partizan Belgrade, Serbia June 2001 to July 2001 Blue sum league Treviso, Italy Sep 2001 Shanghai Sharks Shanghai Jan 2002 to May 2002 Etendard de Brest Brest, France Aug 2002 Huntsville Flight (NBDL) Huntsville, Ala Nov 2002 M Evreux Evreux, France Feb 2003 to May 2003 Los Mina Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic May 2003 Texas Rim Rockers (USBL) Fort Worth July 2003 Summer Pro League Long Beach (L.A.Clippers team)

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NOTE: All of the overseas teams are first division except the two French teams, which play in the second division (Pro B2).