July 10, 1992
He promises one thing: unswerving, unflagging commitment. No one, not even the lowliest, down-on-his-luck, last-chance CBAer chasing an improbable dream is happier to be participating at the Celtics' rookie-free agent camp this weekend than Darren Morningstar, the club's second-round draft pick out of the University of Pittsburgh.
He's a long shot, he knows that. He also knows he's 6 feet 11 inches, that there is a demonstrative need for size, and that he will set records for floor burns and overturned chairs and tables at Brandeis this weekend.
"I'm just going to do the best I possibly can," Morningstar said recently from Pittsburgh, between breaks from a variety of workouts, including weightlifting, swimming and running the stairs at Pitt Stadium. "For Darren Morningstar, that's going 120 percent. It's the only speed I know."
What he lacks in ability or talent -- and he went 47th in the draft for a reason -- he more than makes up for in confidence and derring-do. His best games in grade school, high school and college were against the best teams.
He also was an all-tournament selection at both the Portsmouth and Orlando Classics, albeit against less than top-flight competition (the top collegians stayed away from Orlando as if it had been quarantined).
He was rated among the middle-level power forwards, but there was no consensus on where he'd go in the draft. One team, the Pistons, had him in for a workout. Another, Utah, had expressed interest. Morningstar figured either the Pistons (19th) or the Jazz (23d) would be potential takers. Both then pulled draft day deals and he slid. And slid. And slid some more.
"Avalanched" is the way he put it.
Making things worse, he was there, in Portland, Ore., to see it all unfold before him. He had made the short drive from his home in Stevenson, Wash., to be on hand, and by the time the TNT folks got him on TV, he was talking like some wondrous amalgam of Kevin McHale, Oil Can Boyd and the guy who did the old Federal Express ads.
As he chatted nonstop, there also was an unforgettable picture emerging. Here was a guy with long sideburns, which have been "out" since, when? Nehru suits?
"I've trimmed them a bit since then," he said. "It was something I had fun with the last year. I spoke to a lot of banquets and girls used to come up to me and tell me I looked like Harry Connick Jr. That's why I did it."
As they watched the rambling interview from Boston Garden, smiles adorned the faces of the Celtics' heirarchy. Dave Gavitt remarked that Morningstar had instantly transformed himself into a worthy talkmaster successor to the garrulous McHale. Chris Ford was instructed by every media member to not even contemplate cutting the kid.
"I think it was the Lord's doing, my going to Boston," Morningstar said. "My ego had been hurt by not getting picked, and the only team that could have snapped me out of my funk was the Boston Celtics. I was just real excited getting drafted by the Boston Celtics. I was just hurt that it took so long."
Morningstar was at a loss to explain his free fall, although thinking he'd go 19th or 23d may have been on the optimistic, or even unrealistic, side. He thinks he may have suffered by not playing at the Chicago pre-draft camp, despite his fine outings at Portsmouth and Orlando. Like the Bulls' Scott Williams two years before, he sat and watched others getting taken ahead of him and wondered what was happening.
"I felt like I had been blackballed," he said. "I mean, these were guys I had just played against and beaten out a lot of them. It was a judgment call. If I had to do it over again, I'd have played. I guess I'll just have to beat out those same guys again."
Confidence has never been a problem for Morningstar. Part of his shoot-first, ask-questions-later mentality comes from an almost blissful ignorance of the real world, although he was raised by two elementary school teachers.
Stevenson is small, maybe 1,000 people, he said. It's depressed now, thanks in part to a huge reliance on the slumping timber industry.
"In some ways, getting out of Stevenson was like getting out of the ghetto," he said.
Basketball was his way out. Morningstar's father, Gary, hung up a basket in the driveway and had his son shooting hoops at age 3. Morningstar has a younger brother, 19, who also can play. His father is 6-4, his late mother 5-8. Morningstar says that somewhere in the family tree is a native American link. He doesn't know where.
"I think I'm part Swedish and part German with a little bit of everything else," he said. "Basically, I'm a real nice guy who likes life. I don't know what else I am."
In high school, he was a hoop terror. He averaged 35 points and 17 rebounds a game, twice being named an all-state center. He also compiled a 3.96 grade point average, one B ruining an otherwise straight A list.
While he was exploring college opportunities, and still only 6-8, David Robinson was leading the US Naval Academy to unimaginable basketball prominence. Morningstar watched from afar and liked what he saw.
"I wanted to mold myself after him as a player and a person," Morningstar said. "He was an All-American class act. But, basically, I was pretty naive. I wanted to combine basketball and academics, like Robinson did. And I saw Tom Cruise and Richard Gere (in the movies 'Top Gun' and 'An Officer And A Gentleman'), and they looked awful good in dress whites.
"I mean, I knew I could handle the regimentation and pay the price to be an officer and a gentleman," he went on. "But I was in no way, shape or form going to give them five years of my life after college."
He lasted six months at Annapolis. He played in five basketball games. In one of them, against an Iowa team that featured B.J. Armstrong and Roy Marble, he had 20 points. In his stint with the Middies, a long-held career goal quickly became a career objective: get to the NBA.
The Naval Academy coaching staff steered him to Pitt, and to former Navy coach Paul Evans. Morningstar had considered Virginia and Vanderbilt, both of which better suited his academic inclinations (he graduated after three years from Pitt with a degree in economics and is working on a master's in marketing and finance).
"After that Iowa game, it started to hit me that if you wanted to play on TV, play against the best, I felt, at the time, it was the Big East," he said. "I mean, I see Adam Keefe destroying everyone in the Pac-10 and he's only 6-8 1/2. I say to myself, that could have been me, maybe. But I don't have any regrets."
He improved each year at Pitt, topping off with a 12.3-point scoring average his senior year, including a big game (27 points, 10 rebounds) against Kentucky. He was third-team All-Big East (as well as the conference's scholar/athlete), and then came the successes at Orlando and Portsmouth.
Now, he hopes, the next step is the NBA, with the team he said he has wanted to play for all along. The last player to make the Celtics as a second-round pick was Brad Lohaus in 1987.
"I'm just looking forward to playing for the greatest organization in the history of basketball," said Morningstar. "I've never heard anyone say a bad word about them."
We could refer him to Boston Celtics vs. Brian Shaw or Boston Celtics vs. Dino Radja, or countless general managers who revel when the Celtics slip. But chances are, he wouldn't listen.
"I'm coming up there with the attitude that I'm a Boston Celtic and that I'm going to be a Boston Celtic for life," he said. "I pleaded with them when I was here to draft me. I would just love to play for them."
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