Cruel blow still haunts new Hawk

By Anendra Singh | 28th December 2009

A T A shade over two metres tall and lugging a 110kg frame, one would expect Jamil "JT" Terrell to squeeze the living daylights out of someone when doing something as routine as offering a handshake.

As the American basketballer glides past the sliding glass doors to the Pettigrew-Green Arena, in Taradale, his imposing figure turns heads but the almost limp hand he offers seconds later in the ritual of exchanging pleasantries keeps me guessing.

The hushed, gravelly Georgian drawl of the 0800 Easy LPG Hawks' latest signing also catches me off guard.

His youthful exuberance is equally deceptive - at a guess, he could pass off as someone in his early 20s but, as it turns out, the power forward is 29.

Like many starry-eyed American basketballers, the native of Pearson still harbours dreams of gracing the polished courts of the NBA domain.

"It all comes down to how you treat your body. I'm in excellent shape. People think I'm 24 or 25," he tells SportToday, a sense of self-satisfaction cloaking his face.

But looks can be deceiving as Terrell relives a past that still haunts him, leaving him pensive six years on as he tries to find rhyme and reason as to why his life took a turn for the worse.

"Now you get older and see what you should have done. People say it's too late [to make NBA] but some people still make it at 29," he says, his eyes reflecting a steely resolve but his self-belief wavering during the course of the interview.

To understand Terrell's defiance is to comprehend his turbulent past which bears the scars of an eligibility scandal in February 2003 that tore the fabric of the US college basketball structure.

Well on his way to becoming one of the top college players in the first division, the then St Bonaventure University centre was into his 25th game that season for his third-placed side when all hell broke loose. His dejected team finished last on the table, forfeiting points and not even bothering to play their last two matches.

The then university president, Robert Wickenheiser, resigned over the debacle, taking full responsibility for trying to interpret NCAA regulations affecting Terrell's transfer from Coastal Georgia Community College. The player had a welding certificate rather than an associate's degree, as the NCAA requires.

Against the advice of athletic department officials, Wickenheiser, with help from his son, Kort, an assistant basketball coach, deemed Terrell was eligible.

"I made an error in judgment," he reportedly told USA Today. "I wasn't trying to do anything devious. I kick myself 100 times a day for not calling the NCAA."

Terrell, who became the butt of jokes in the media and the internet, won a scholarship at West Texas A&M University, a division II school, but the whole affair left a stigma on his budding career.

His Coastal Georgia coach, Gerald Cox, reportedly accused St Bonaventure officials of having "just destroyed this kid".

"The whole incident was embarrassing to him. He doesn't want to be seen as a welder running down the floor with a basketball, which is the cartoon I came across in a pre-season magazine the other day. Jamil was an innocent victim in all of this."

The signs were there but Terrell didn't think much of it at the time. A Bonaventure coach who had signed him up had abruptly quit, telling him he was leaving because of a "better offer" to coach elsewhere.

"Nobody wanted to take the blame. A lot of people were blaming me, the media was blaming me ... " Terrell says, revealing he contemplated taking legal action against the varsity with the help of Cox, the only person who truly helped him and someone he consults to this day.

Terrell, who was eligible for an NBA draft, soon found himself drifting in the wilderness of lower echelons of basketball.

For a teenager who gave high school basketball a miss for four years to focus on his studies, Terrell found himself trying to pick up the fragments of a promising career. He left home and his mother, Cynthia Humphrey.

His next Bonaventure game was on February 26 and his mother was on cue to watch him play in first division but the day before all that changed.

"At this time I didn't know what to do or say. When everything was found out the following week she was heartbroken."

While at West Texas varsity, he was already sounding out his chances to play in New Zealand but the National Basketball League (NBL) teams here overlooked him.

The National Basketball Development League (NBDL) in the US beckoned so Terrell found himself in the mix with 70 others in a league he describes as a tier below the NBA but one open to "anyone who has money and wants to play".

He made the All Star top-10 team but, cruelly, missed the flight from Virginia to Florida for the game.

He played in another lower-tier league he calls "really bad" where midway through the season players earned US$300 ($425) in three months. Dissatisfied, he cut a track.

A three-month trial stint was next in Slovenia where he made the cut but midway through a two-year contract, after he made the country's All Star team and helped his team win the championship, the franchise couldn't pay him.

He returned home in April 2007, considering it a good time because his then girlfriend, Katedler, had given birth to their now 2-year-old son, Jalen, before the offer came from the Nelson Giants in May.

That season, a grinning Terrell reveals, he helped the Giants win the NBL title against the Hawks in the final.

The following season went downhill as the Giants curtailed "my freedom". They didn't ask him back after Nelson's semifinal exit.

Last November to April this year, he plied his trade in Turkey where the team didn't reach any great heights but he came out as the leading rebounder.

Hawks coach Shawn Dennis had approached him to play but Terrell chose to fulfil his Turkish commitment rather than make it here to tip off for the season.

Instead, the Manawatu Jets picked him up into the season but the import didn't warm up to the franchise based in Palmerston North because, he feels, it lacked professionalism last season.

"I didn't like the way the Jets handled their business."

Here since last month, Terrell loves the Hawks' culture and work ethics he believes will yield an NBL title next year.

"When you win one championship you get that feeling to win another and, for me, this is the right team to do with," he says.