Frank Burlison: Cotton is back where he belongs
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Millikan High basketball coach Jeff Breuklander said that the first time his players met the newest member of the Rams’ staff they had no idea of his basketball pedigree.“But their parents usually knew all about him, of course,” he said, chuckling.And, if they followed basketball much at all in Southern California during the 1990 s, […]
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Daily News
Millikan High basketball coach Jeff Breuklander said that the first time his players met the newest member of the Rams’ staff they had no idea of his basketball pedigree.

“But their parents usually knew all about him, of course,” he said, chuckling.

And, if they followed basketball much at all in Southern California during the 1990 s, why wouldn’t they have heard about Schea Cotton?

Barely into his teens, Cotton garnered media attention for his high-flying histrionics in a body whose dimensions would have been the envy of a lot of NFL linebackers – in a time when, if asked, most would have assumed the World Wide Web was a substance a certain superhero might spin if he was feeling really ambitious.

By the time he was a sophomore at Mater Dei High, he had been the subject of a Sports Illustrated feature. College stardom and an ensuing NBA career seemed like givens to many who read about him and then took a look-see.

“I was two years older than him,” Breuklander, a 1995 Millikan graduate, recalled. “But I knew everything about him as a player. In our eyes, he was kind of the LeBron James of our era.”

Today, the 31-year-old Cotton spends a lot of time on the Millikan campus, where he was recently hired to assist Breuklander with the varsity squad and coach the program’s sophomore team. He also lectures at camps and works as in individual coach with younger players throughout Southern California.

No, he didn’t go on to the college and NBA stardom that so many had projected for him.

In fact, the St. John Bosco graduate (he transferred there for his final two years of high school) played just two seasons of college basketball – one at Long Beach City College and the second at the University of Alabama – before entering the NBA Draft in the spring of 2000.

He wasn’t one of the 58 players selected over the two rounds of the draft and, ultimately, never played in an NBA game.

Cotton finished third in the balloting for the 21 st Press-Telegram Best in the West team, behind top-ranked Chris Burgess of Woodbridge in Irvine and No. 2 Baron Davis of Crossroads in Santa Monica.

Burgess was part of a recruiting class at Duke that included Shane Battier and Elton Brand and, after two seasons as a reserve, transferred to Utah.

Like Cotton, Burgess played for several NBA teams in summer leagues but never suited up in a “real” NBA game.

Davis, on the other hand, spent two years at UCLA before becoming the No.3 pick in the 1999 NBA Draft and, today, is the starting point guard for the Clippers.

There a message there, of course, for the members of the most recent (the 31 st) Best in the West team – and for those who think it’s a slam dunk to project college stardom and NBA careers for teen-agers.

Just as dominance and gaudy statistics on the high school level don’t guarantee success on the college level, the same can be said of the college to professional level jump.

You want examples?

How about Ed O’Bannon, the National Player of the Year after a stunning 1994-95 season in which he led UCLA to a national title?

Or how about Bo Kimble, who led the nation in scoring and helped Loyola Marymount to an Elite Eight run in 1990, and Harold Miner, the Pac 10 Player of the Year and a first-team All-America at USC in 1992, who carried the moniker “Baby Jordan”, like O’Bannon, also first-round draft selections?

Only Miner played as much as four seasons in the NBA and he was the only one to average more than six points per game – 10.5 his second season.

“At the end of the day,” said the general manager for a Western Conference NBA franchise, who, like other NBA sources contacted, didn’t want to be identified by name, “to stick in the NBA you have to do a whole lot things pretty well or at least one thing very well.

“Most guys, no matter how well they might have played in high school and college, don’t have that.”

Said the Director of Scouting for an Eastern Conference team: “Scouting, on any level, isn’t a clear-cut science.”

The aforementioned scouting director – who, like two other scouts contacted for this column, saw Cotton play while he was in high school and during his stints at the NBA Summer League when it was held on the Long Beach State campus – isn’t as surprised Cotton never caught on with an NBA team as are so many of those who saw him dominate on the high school level.

“Schea was always such a strong and explosive athlete who could manhandle most guys (on the high school level). He couldn’t do that (against NBA-caliber competition) and, at his size (6-6), his jump shot and ball-handling skills just weren’t good enough.”

Cotton’s travels to play professional basketball took him to a lot of the U.S. (he played for the Long Beach Jam in 2005), as well as to Yugoslavia, a couple of stops in France, Greece, Italy (Treviso), the Dominican Republic (twice), Venezuela (twice), China (Shanghai) and, most recently Durango, Mexico.

His literal travels “took me to places, like Paris and Greece, that I had heard so much about growing up,” he recalled.

They also left him with enough feel for the Spanish, Serbian and French languages “to hold conversations.”

His figurative travels have left him with plenty of perspective.

“After the last stop (in Mexico, earlier this year), I figured, ‘that’s enough,”‘ he said. “I need some stability in my life.

“No one can ever tell me ‘You weren’t good enough to play in the NBA’ but I’m not going to be one of those guys living in the past, talking about what should have been, either. The NBA (and not playing in it) is not going to define my life.”

James Cotton Jr., who played at Long Beach State and for two seasons in the NBA, said his younger brother “understands that basketball was just one part of his life. In basketball terms, 31 might be old. But, otherwise, he’s still a young man and has to prepare for the next 50 years or so of his life.”

And Schea Cotton has found the avenue he wants to follow.

“I feel I’m right where I need to be in my life right now,” he said. “I think I have a lot to give, not just in terms of coaching but in mentoring, too. I tell the kids to work hard, in the classroom and on the court, and to stay humble. I tell them the odds are against them (for long-term basketball success) but if you put forth your best effort every day, you’ve got a chance to be successful in whatever you do in life.”